NATO Foreign Ministers met in Brussels on Dec. 3 but without the presence of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Experts quoted in media reports say this is the first time since Colin Powell skipped a meeting in the runup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that a U.S. secretary of state has not been at a NATO foreign ministers meeting. In a pre-ministerial press conference on Dec. 2, Secretary General Mark Rutte dismissed Rubio’s absence, saying “Marco Rubio is very much involved, of course, in all of this when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine.” NATO, he seemed to be saying, will go on without Rubio.
When asked why Rubio would not meet with NATO allies, especially during these ongoing Ukraine war negotiations, a senior State Department official told NBC News that Rubio “has already attended dozens of meetings with NATO allies and it would be completely impractical to expect him at every meeting.”
