Rubio in Athens: US secretary of state to deliver a speech on defending Western civilization at the Pnyx, with the Acropolis as backdrop

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will deliver an important speech at the Pnyx, with the Acropolis as a backdrop, today, Wednesday, October 7, at 18:00 Athens time. The speech is devoted to the defence of Western civilization. Its content was previewed by Dylan Johnson, Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs, in a statement to Breitbart News.

According to Johnson, Rubio will speak “from the birthplace of Western civilization” and will call on Americans and Europeans to unite in a great renewal of the Western spirit, a heritage that, as Johnson put it, stretches from Athens and Rome to Christianity and the founding of the American Republic. The secretary of state will point to ancient Greece as the first full expression of the qualities that defined the West: curiosity, courage, ambition and a restless spirit of exploration of the unknown.

The speech will also carry a warning. Rubio will argue that much of the Western world has forgotten these qualities, and will ask allies to side with the United States in rejecting decline, defending their shared heritage and facing together “a new era of great-power competition”.

Rubio arrived in Athens on Tuesday evening, October 6, at about 21:20. At Athens International Airport “Eleftherios Venizelos” he was received by Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis, in the presence of US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, and the two ministers left the airport together.

Wednesday’s programme

The US secretary of state’s day begins at 09:00 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he will meet Giorgos Gerapetritis. The two ministers will make joint statements and open the sixth round of the Greece–US Strategic Dialogue. After 11:00 Rubio is expected at the US embassy for the inauguration of the building’s renovation works.

The Strategic Dialogue session is set for 12:00 at the Conrad Athens The Ilisian hotel, with both foreign ministers taking part. At the same venue, at 12:30, Rubio and National Defence Minister Nikos Dendias will attend the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between the Hellenic Armed Forces and the Florida National Guard. The pairing of Greece with Florida under the US National Guard’s State Partnership Program was announced in April by Ambassador Guilfoyle and Dendias.

In the afternoon, after the speech at the Pnyx, Rubio will be received at 19:00 by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Maximos Mansion. The day ends at 20:00 with a dinner in his honour hosted by the Greek foreign minister.

Athens is the second stop of Rubio’s tour of Iceland, Greece and Portugal from October 5 to 8. On Tuesday he was in Reykjavík, where he met Iceland’s prime minister and foreign minister, according to the State Department’s official programme. In the Greek capital he leads the US delegation at the sixth round of the Greece–US Strategic Dialogue, with defence and energy on the agenda. His next stop is Lisbon.