February 25th, 2014
02:19 PM ET

Sen. Rubio to CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "We are certainly in the midst of a geopolitical battle for influence around the world."



Interview Preview: 

WOLF BLITZER, CNN:  What about Chuck Hagel's proposal, the Defense secretary, yesterday, to cut back pretty significantly U.S.  Military troop levels and eliminate some expensive hardware?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLORIDA:  Well, I'm not in favor of it.  And we have to understand that part of that is the budget deals that have been made around here.  And the reason those budget deals had to be made is because of a refusal in this place to do anything about the entitlement programs that are bankrupting themselves and our country.  That being said, I find it ironic that at a time, yesterday, where the Chinese attacked Filipino fishermen with water cannons, where there's tensions between Japan and China, where North - North Korea feels threatened - there was a North Korean Navy intrusion into South Korean waters, with the unrest in the Ukraine that, god forbid, leads to some sort of Russian military intervention, instability in our own region and Iran on the verge of becoming a nuclear power and Syria falling apart and the Middle East so unstable.  At a time of all of this, the U.S. is announcing that we may be having troop levels as low as they've been since before World War II.  I think that's a pretty startling contrast in terms of where our priorities are and what the world's challenges look like.

BLITZER:  But if you eliminate 200,000 troops, which we had in Iraq, 150,000, which we had had in Afghanistan, you don't need that big of a standing army.

RUBIO:  Well, first of all, that's a - I think that's all predicated upon how we identify our challenges around the world and what are they.  For example, many of the calculations we have made in terms of our force posture is dependent upon the notion that Russia is complying with all sorts of different agreements that they've agreed to.  But we've seen on the intermediate rocket and the intermediate missile agreements that they're in violation of those.  In fact, Russia basically has violated virtually every significant arms treaty they've ever entered into and do so to this day.  I think it's based upon the idea that Iran is not a nuclear power and we could prevent that from happening.  I think it's based - and I don't think it's accurately looking at the expansion of military capability not just from the Chinese, but also from the Japanese.

BLITZER:  So it sounds to me like you - you're concerned that we could be on the eve of another cold war.





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