Trump’s crony diplomacy is marginalizing Marco Rubio

Outsourcing high-stakes diplomacy to family members and business associates would provoke public outrage in most democracies. President Trump, however, has normalized the practice.

In this model of crony diplomacy, personal loyalty, private gain and informal networks routinely override institutional processes and the national interest, while accountability diminishes.

Against this backdrop, it may scarcely be surprising that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent overseas travels have skirted the world’s main hot spots. Rubio’s latest travels have taken him to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Iceland, Greece, Portugal and, most recently, Uzbekistan and India.

Trump, instead of relying on Rubio and the professional diplomatic corps, has repeatedly turned to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and business partner Steve Witkoff — a Manhattan real-estate figure — to spearhead high-stakes negotiations on Ukraine, Russia, Gaza and Iran. Both men entered their roles as “ special envoys ” for peace with no prior diplomatic experience. Both also have glaring conflicts of interest .

Rubio’s travel schedule heavily favors lower-risk regions while avoiding the main theaters of global conflict. Critics speculate that he is doing this deliberately to safeguard his own political future. By keeping his distance from the Trump administration’s messiest and most volatile foreign-policy crises, including his muddled China policy , Rubio stays clear of issues that could end badly.

Rubio may have calculated that his long-term career — potentially including a presidential run in 2028 — is best served by bypassing the administration’s core foreign-policy minefields .

Rubio, however, has remained the administration’s point man on Venezuela and Cuba. Neither Venezuela nor Cuba, though, has done much to burnish his record.

The Trump administration’s strategy since January of strangling Cuba has created a severe humanitarian crisis on the island without bringing about regime change. Meanwhile, the success of the U.S. military operation in Venezuela in capturing the country’s sitting president only emboldened Trump’s war on Iran, which has turned into a politically costly fiasco for him. Even as Venezuelans bristle over the U.S. takeover of their country’s oil wealth, Trump boasted : “We’ve taken out so much oil in Venezuela, we paid for the cost of the war [on Iran] about 25 times over.”

Venezuela’s oil-export revenues are deposited directly into accounts controlled by the U.S. Treasury, with Rubio effectively overseeing both its exports and finances, including when, how much and for what purposes funds are released to Caracas. This relationship has frequently been described as akin to a “weekly allowance” for approved humanitarian or infrastructure purposes. From afar, Rubio effectively runs Venezuela in neocolonial fashion.

Expanding Venezuela’s oil exports was one of the key objectives behind Rubio’s recent trip to India, where he paid a private visit to the world’s largest oil-refining complex in Jamnagar.

Refining Venezuela’s high-sulfur, ultra-heavy crude is significantly more energy-intensive, carbon-intensive and time-consuming than refining light, sweet crude. While light, sweet crude yields relatively high proportions of gasoline and diesel through atmospheric distillation, heavy crude demands extensive, multistage conversion to produce marketable products. Still, the Jamnagar refining complex has emerged as a leading buyer and processor of U.S.-controlled Venezuelan heavy crude.

With a crude-processing capacity of about 1.4 million barrels per day, Jamnagar stands out globally as one of the few hyper-complex private export hubs capable of processing different crude varieties into ultra-clean, Euro VI-compliant fuels on an enormous scale.

Calling India, the world’s third-largest oil importer , a “refining superpower,” Rubio pitched greater purchases of Venezuelan crude for processing at Jamnagar to help ease a global diesel crunch and other refined-fuel shortages. Jamnagar makes India a leading global exporter of diesel and other refined fuels, supplying markets across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Jamnagar’s refined-product exports dwarf those of individual refineries elsewhere, including in the U.S.

Owned by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, the complex features a dedicated export-only facility within a Special Economic Zone, allowing it to serve as a crucial swing supplier to international markets. That Rubio’s visit followed Elon Musk’s public attacks on Ambani, whom he mockingly styled “Prime Minister Ambani,” illustrated the blurring line between commercial rivalry, personal patronage and official diplomacy in Trump’s Washington.

India, seeking energy resilience through diversification, is unlikely to substantially increase Venezuelan oil imports, which in any case come with higher transportation and marine-insurance costs. Nor are Indian firms likely to accept Rubio’s proposal that they invest directly in restoring Venezuela’s dilapidated oil fields under American oversight, given the financial losses the companies have suffered from past U.S. policy reversals.

With political ties with New Delhi under pressure largely because of Trump’s policies, Rubio’s India visit sought to shift the focus toward energy security and corporate partnerships. By limiting his itinerary to India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, and the Jamnagar complex, Rubio emphasized pragmatic cooperation over diplomatic friction.

Rubio’s India visit, however, exemplified the limits of what a fragmented foreign policy can deliver in an era of American crony diplomacy.

Diplomacy is not merely deal-making , as Trump seems to believe. Since Trump’s return to office, U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East, for example, has increasingly reflected personal and commercial priorities. Kushner’s “New Gaza” proposal , unveiled at Davos, has been widely criticized as “real estate diplomacy” — a plan that treats large-scale devastation as a commercial opportunity.

Undercutting the secretary of state’s role, Trump has recast U.S. diplomacy in his own image — personalized, transactional, overbearing and opaque.

The result is a U.S. that is less credible, less trusted and ultimately less effective on the world stage.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground. “