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Secretary of State Marco Rubio will deliver a speech in Greece on Wednesday calling for the revival of Western civilization and urging allies to join the United States in rejecting the West’s decline.
Western revival has been a recurring theme during Rubio’s tenure as head of the State Department. He has often denounced what he sees as an erosion of the values on which Western civilization was built.
And his speech on Wednesday will build on that. Remarks will begin at 11:30 a.m. ET, 6:30 p.m. local time in Greece, and will take place at the ancient ruins of the Acropolis citadel.
“Secretary Rubio will deliver a speech from the cradle of Western civilization, in which he will call on Americans and Europeans to unite in a great revival of the Western spirit – a legacy that stretches from Athens and Rome to Christendom to the founding of the American Republic,” Dylan Johnson, State Department assistant secretary for global public affairs, told Fox News Digital.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the media October 7, 2026, during a visit to Athens, Greece. According to the State Department, the US delegation focused on strengthening cooperation between the countries in the areas of defense, regional security and energy security. (Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)
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“In the context of the Acropolis, Secretary Rubio will view the history of ancient Greece as the first full expression of the qualities that would define the West: curiosity, courage, ambition, and a restless spirit of exploration and discovery of the unknown,” Johnson added.
“He will warn that too much of our civilization has forgotten these essential qualities and urge our Western allies to join with the United States in rejecting decline, defending our common heritage, and together facing a new era of great power competition.”
During his visit, Rubio announced a new counterterrorism partnership between the United States and Greece.
He stressed Greece’s strategic importance on Wednesday, calling it “a source of stability in an unstable world.”
“Seeing a world facing these destabilizing events, you recognize the importance of this alliance with Greece to the United States,” Rubio said. “It is a source of stability in an unstable world.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis October 7, 2026 in Athens, Greece. (Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)
At the Munich Security Conference in Germany in February, Rubio gave a speech on the topic that earned him a standing ovation from European leaders and was viewed millions of times online. One popular X user described it as “one of the greatest” speeches given by a Secretary of State in decades.
Many others insisted the speech boosted Rubio’s potential 2028 presidential chances.
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Rubio described the five centuries before the end of World War II, a time when the West had expanded across the globe, building “vast empires.” But, he said, after the war, Europe was in ruins and “godless communist revolutions” in Europe made people believe that Western domination was over for good.
“Against this backdrop, then as now, many came to believe that the era of Western dominance had ended and that our future was destined to be a faint, feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make,” he said.
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Rubio urged European leaders to reinvigorate that spirit.
“That’s why we don’t want our allies to be hampered by guilt and shame,” he continued. “We want allies who are proud of our culture and heritage, who understand that we are heirs of the same great and noble civilization and who, with us, are willing and able to defend it.”
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“And that is why we do not want our allies to rationalize the broken status quo, rather than what is needed to address what is needed to fix it. For we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly guardians of Western-managed decline. We seek not to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”
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