Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau hit back Saturday after former Obama ambassador Ivo Daalder criticized Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s foreign travel.
Landau reposted Daalder’s post on X and accused him of expressing a foreign policy establishment view that places too much importance on approval from European capitals while looking down on diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere.
Daalder, who served as the U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013 under Obama, questioned both Rubio’s destinations and his attention to major international issues.
“Secretaries of State travel the world, to our biggest allies and to address the most pressing issues,” Daalder wrote. “But Marco Rubio does neither. His solo travels take him where assistant secretaries go. Rarely the boss.”
Landau, the State Department’s second-ranking official, responded by calling the post an example of the thinking he believes has damaged American foreign policy.
“THIS post perfectly encapsulates the decadence and degeneracy of the contemporary US foreign policy establishment,” Landau wrote.
He argued that Daalder’s criticism treated visits to European allies as the proper work of a secretary of state while suggesting that engagement with Latin American countries belonged to subordinates.
“In this view, a US Secretary of State is only supposed to travel to NATO capitals because a successful US foreign policy is what makes diplomatic counterparts in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels raise a champagne toast to ‘shared values’ while flinging open their borders, destroying their economies, and apologizing for Western civilization,” Landau wrote.
Landau then named three South American capitals to challenge the suggestion that those destinations were beneath the secretary of state.
“God forbid a US Secretary of State show his face in Bogotá, Quito, or Lima because that’s where mere ‘Assistant Secretaries’ are supposed to tread,” he continued.
Bogotá is the capital of Colombia, Quito is the capital of Ecuador, and Lima is the capital of Peru. Landau cited the cities in defending high-level American engagement with the region; his response did not provide dates or an itinerary for Rubio’s travel.
Daalder’s quoted post did not specifically mention NATO or those South American destinations. His criticism was that Rubio’s solo travel did not take him to the United States’ biggest allies or address its most pressing issues. Landau answered by challenging what he described as the assumptions behind that assessment.
The deputy secretary also accused the foreign policy establishment of producing failures on both sides of the Atlantic.
“This smug approach led not only to predictably catastrophic results in the Western Hemisphere but also in Europe itself, where the combination of moral vanity and strategic incoherence also proved toxic,” Landau wrote.
He did not identify particular policies or events in that passage, instead directing his criticism broadly at the establishment’s priorities and record.
Landau previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico during President Donald Trump’s first administration and became deputy secretary of state in March 2025.
He ended his response by accusing establishment figures of spending their time on academic work and professional recognition while dismissing Trump and Rubio.
“But sure: keep holding your academic seminars, writing your unread articles, awarding each other meaningless prizes, and looking down your noses at Donald Trump and Marco Rubio,” Landau wrote.
