US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to deliver a speech in Athens on Wednesday evening on the future of Western civilisation, calling on Americans and Europeans to unite for a “great renaissance of the Western spirit”.
Dylan Johnson, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs, previewed the speech in a statement to Breitbart News. Rubio will deliver it with the Acropolis as his backdrop.
According to Johnson, Rubio will draw on the historical legacy of ancient Greece to develop a broader message about the shared heritage of the United States and Europe and the challenges facing the West in a new era of great-power competition.
“Tomorrow evening, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will deliver a speech from the birthplace of Western civilisation, where he will call on Americans and Europeans to unite in a great renaissance of the Western spirit, a legacy stretching from Athens and Rome to Christianity and the founding of the American Republic,” Johnson said.
With the Acropolis behind him, Rubio will look back to ancient Greece as the first comprehensive expression of qualities that would later define the West, Johnson said. These include “curiosity, courage, ambition and a restless spirit of exploration and discovery of the unknown”.
The US official said Rubio will warn that “much of our civilisation has forgotten these fundamental characteristics”. He will also call on US allies across the West to “join the United States in rejecting decline, defending our shared heritage and confronting together a new era of great-power competition”.
Rubio will deliver the speech during his visit to Athens, where he will lead the US delegation on Wednesday at the sixth Greece-US Strategic Dialogue.
According to the US State Department, his visit aims to deepen bilateral cooperation on key priorities for the US administration, including defence cooperation, regional security and energy security.
