Rubio and China
Stability there doesn’t need to be “restored.” At most, it needs to be preserved, and there isn’t much reason to think Rubio is actually interested in doing that. This is another instance of how Rubio abuses the meaning of the word stability to mean something very different.
.. The statement is odd in another way, since Rubio’s agenda of confronting China would require the U.S. to have a closer relationship with dictatorships in the region such as Vietnam. That would almost certainly preclude speaking “with clarity and strength” about rights and values as far as Vietnam is concerned. Rubio wants to pay lip service to “rights and values,” but he also favors an aggressive and combative foreign policy that inevitably requires the U.S. to make dubious bargains with local dictators.
.. As he usually does, Rubio prefers a combative approach without weighing the costs or thinking through the consequences of the hard-line position that he favors. He assumes that more confrontation will force China to change its behavior in the way that Washington and other governments prefer, but this is placing a huge wager based on nothing more than an ideological attachment to “strength.”