Empire is great. In his speech, Rubio went way beyond offering the typical defense of US “leadership” or a muscular foreign policy, as so many of his predecessors, both Republican and Democratic, have done before him. He lamented the “contracting” of the “great western empires” in the wake of the second world war. Here are the facts that the US secretary of state chose to conveniently ignore as he extolled the “great western empires”. That Rubio may be good cop to Trump’s bad, but their goal is one and the same: to make empire great again.

Source: The Guardian February 18, 2026 03:02 UTC