With the Acropolis as his backdrop, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will call on Americans and Europeans on Wednesday evening to join in what he will describe as a “great renewal of the Western spirit,” invoking ancient Greece as the beginning of a shared inheritance that he will argue the West must now defend.
The address, a detailed preview of which was provided to Breitbart News and reported by its Washington bureau chief, Matt Boyle, will take Mr. Rubio’s visit beyond the immediate issues on the bilateral agenda.
He is expected to trace a line from Athens and Rome through Christendom to the founding of the American republic, and to connect that history to a new era of great power competition.
“Tomorrow evening, Secretary Rubio will deliver an address from the birthplace of Western civilization, where he will call upon Americans and Europeans alike to join together in a great renewal of the Western spirit,” said Dylan Johnson, the assistant secretary of state for global public affairs.
Mr. Johnson described that inheritance as one “stretching from Athens and Rome to Christendom to the founding of the American Republic.”
Against the backdrop of the Acropolis, Mr. Rubio will look to ancient Greece as “the first full expression of the qualities that would come to define the West,” Mr. Johnson said, citing “curiosity, courage, ambition, and a restless spirit of exploration and discovery of the unknown.”
The address is also expected to carry a warning. Mr. Rubio will argue that much of Western civilization has forgotten those qualities and urge American allies to join the United States in “rejecting decline, defending our shared heritage, and confronting a new era of great power competition together,” according to Mr. Johnson.
The speech comes during a visit focused on the expanding strategic relationship between Washington and Athens. Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Rubio met Greece’s foreign minister, George Gerapetritis, before the two opened the sixth United States Greece Strategic Dialogue.
The State Department has said the visit will focus on major administration priorities, including defense cooperation and regional and energy security. Previous rounds of the dialogue have covered defense and security cooperation, energy and developments in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The setting gives Mr. Rubio’s message a distinct Greek dimension. In choosing the Acropolis as the backdrop for an address about Western identity and great power competition, he is placing ancient Greece at the beginning of the political and cultural tradition he is asking the United States and Europe to defend.
