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Athens — As the United States wages a costly war with Iran and Europe struggles with the grinding conflict in Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood before the Acropolis on Wednesday and reached back more than two millennia to argue that the answer to the West’s current problems can be found, at least in part, in ancient Greece.
In a speech timed to the sunset from the Pnyx, where Athenians gathered for their democratic assembly, Rubio cast ancient Greece as the source not only of Western democracy and philosophy, but of what he described as the character that fueled the West’s rise.
“Here, in Athens, we found the first full realization of all the essential traits that would come to define the West,” Rubio said, citing “fierce individuality and relentless ambition,” and “a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory.”
He argued that those modern Western societies had allowed those qualities to erode.
“The ideal of many ideologies in our time has, frankly, become a world of perfect safety, a world devoid of risk or failure, where neither the glory of victory, nor the shame of defeat,” Rubio said. “We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.”
His remarks were delivered before roughly 250 invited guests, including senior Greek government officials, members of the diplomatic corps and representatives of the business, educational and cultural sectors, according to a senior State Department official.
The speech expanded on themes Rubio laid out at the Munich Security Conference in February, when he warned that Europe faced “civilizational erasure” and argued that the U.S. and Europe needed to recover a shared Western identity. Still, his conciliatory tone in Munich came as a relief to European officials after Vice President JD Vance had used the same stage a year earlier to sharply rebuke the continent’s leaders.
In front of the Acropolis, Rubio traced the development of the West from ancient Greece through Rome, European Christianity and eventually the United States, citing Alexander the Great, Caesar, Charlemagne and Columbus along the way. He portrayed America’s frontier expansion, industrial development and space program as later expressions of the same drive.
Rubio said the West now stands at a crossroads, “because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century.”
“The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all,” he said.
“Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice,” Rubio continued. “We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power, to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialize our economy, to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.”
The history Rubio presented was arguably selective. He spoke relatively little about democracy or political equality at a site closely associated with both, focusing instead on competition, national loyalty and the willingness to take risks. He argued that modern societies too often seek “perfect safety” and concern themselves more with “the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best.”
“The men who made the Parthenon, they built upwards. They held that the highest and most noble aspiration in life was to surpass all others, to strive to be the best in all things,” he said.
The highly produced speech came during a trip largely devoted to more immediate questions of American power: where U.S. forces can operate, how NATO allies can help counter Russia and Iran, and how American energy can displace Russian supplies in Europe.
Greece was the second stop on a three-country tour that began in Iceland and ends in Portugal on Thursday. In Iceland, amid growing U.S. attention to Arctic security, Rubio left open the possibility of an increased American military presence, saying, “We’d never do anything without cooperating with officials here about what’s available. I think there is a willingness to do more together.”
In Athens, Rubio met Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis for the sixth U.S.-Greece Strategic Dialogue, focused on defense, energy and regional security. At a news conference Wednesday, Rubio called Greece a “strong and model NATO ally,” while Gerapetritis said Greece could provide maritime assistance in the Strait of Hormuz if a viable peace process is established.
Rubio was also asked by CBS News whether he was confident U.S. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle’s tenure had complied with State Department ethics rules, amid congressional scrutiny over allegations that Guilfoyle used her diplomatic position to benefit private business interests in Greece.
“This is not the format where we’re going to address this,” Rubio said. “Suffice it to say our embassy has been doing a great job. Our ambassador has been a strong ambassador.” Guilfoyle has denied wrongdoing.
Rubio’s visit and Acropolis address come at a complex moment for the Trump administration.
The U.S. is seven months into its war with Iran and has yet to secure an agreement to end it. Vice President JD Vance said this week that Iran would need to make a “meaningful” reduction in its uranium enrichment capacity, raising questions about whether the administration was backing away from its earlier insistence on zero enrichment.
Asked Wednesday by CBS News to clarify the U.S. position, Rubio declined to say what level of enrichment, if any, Washington might accept.
“I don’t understand what the confusion is about the nuclear program. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Simple, period and end of story,” he said. “I’m not going to go into, you know, into the details about what would be acceptable or not.”
The war has also helped push oil and gasoline prices sharply higher, adding an economic and political cost at home as the midterm elections approach.
In his remarks before the Acropolis, Rubio directly raised Iran. After invoking the Spartans at Thermopylae and Achilles’ pursuit of glory at Troy, he contrasted Western ideas of sacrifice with what he called a “cult of death” among Iran’s “radical mullahs.”
“Our heroes may be willing to die for their cause, but they do not worship death,” he said.
The speech also comes as Rubio’s own political future attracts increasing attention. President Trump has publicly raised both Rubio and Vice President Vance as possible future standard-bearers for his movement.
Rubio did not overtly mention his own ambitions Wednesday, but pointed to recent administration achievements, including the Greenland deal he helped broker last month.
“It is a vision we saw in action,” Rubio said, arguing the agreement would “reshape the Arctic and bolster the security of all of NATO.”
“We want to win together,” he said. “We must win together.”
Rubio later headed to Portugal for the last leg of a four-day European trip.
