DAILY BRIEF U.S. / FOREIGN POLICY

Rubio Flies to Latin America. While He Was Boarding, Twelve Allies Were Sanctioning Israel. The US Stood Alone.

The diplomatic optics of September 9: Secretary of State Marco Rubio refused to join the UK-led 12-nation settlement sanctions while departing for Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The fracture between the U.S. and its closest allies on Israel policy is now the widest it has been in decades.

U.S. POSITION

“Obviously, we're not going to do what the UK did.”

“We don't want to see anything destabilizing going on right now in the West Bank with so much going on in the region.”

MARCO RUBIO

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was already departing on a three-country Latin American trip — scheduled to meet Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa in Quito, deliver press statements alongside Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Roberto Kury, and conduct engagements in Colombia and Peru — when reporters pressed him about the 12-nation Western alliance settlement ban announced by the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. His response was unequivocal: "Obviously, we're not going to do what the UK did. We don't want to see anything destabilizing going on right now in the West Bank with so much going on in the region." The State Department's public schedule for September 9 confirms Rubio's full travel calendar: Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru from September 8-10, with U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee in Jerusalem simultaneously delivering the administration's on-the-ground position — characterizing the UK ban as "discrimination against the Jewish people" and suggesting American states could retaliate.

TRAVEL TRACK THREE-COUNTRY SWING

Colombia

Ecuador

Peru

The gap between the U.S. position and the position of its three closest allies — the UK, France, and Canada — on Israeli West Bank policy has become the single most visible diplomatic fracture in the Western alliance. All three are NATO members. All three are part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement with the United States. Canada and the UK are among America's most important bilateral trading partners — the same Canada whose retaliatory tariffs activated yesterday and whose Prime Minister Trump has described as an adversary. In that context, the simultaneous trade war with Canada and diplomatic separation from the UK and France on settlement policy produces a strategic tableau in which America is at odds with three of its most historically reliable partners on two distinct policy fronts simultaneously, while fighting an active war in the Persian Gulf and managing a potential Federal Reserve rate hike next week.

ALLIED ACTION

nations

THREE CLOSE ALLIES NAMED

United Kingdom · France · Canada

LATIN AMERICA TRACK

Rubio's Latin America trip carries its own strategic significance independent of the Israel-UK dispute. Ecuador and Colombia are both countries where fentanyl precursor chemicals and drug trafficking organizations intersect with American domestic drug policy in ways that the Trump administration has prioritized. Peru has significant lithium and critical mineral resources that American energy and defense supply chains are increasingly interested in. The trip is substantive — the State Department's public schedule confirms specific bilateral meetings with national leadership in each country — rather than a diplomatic detour. But its timing, departing as 12 allied nations announced the most significant collective diplomatic action against Israeli settlement policy in decades, creates the appearance of an administration that is simultaneously managing too many simultaneous foreign policy crises to attend any of them with the sustained focus they require.

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the alliance management system that has defined American foreign policy since 1945 is operating under stress

FROM THE BRIEF

The Israel-US-UK-France diplomatic triangle will dominate the foreign policy news cycle through the balance of this week — colliding with the 9/11 anniversary on Friday, the Federal Reserve meeting on September 15-16, and the ongoing Iran war escalation that has produced three rounds of ballistic missile attacks and tanker strikes in the past week. The administration's strategy of supporting Israel unconditionally while managing multiple simultaneous allied relationships that are strained on different bilateral issues has reached a point of complexity that diplomatic communication alone cannot contain. When the U.S. Ambassador to Israel is suggesting that American states might "retaliate" against one of America's oldest allies — Britain — over a trade policy decision, the alliance management system that has defined American foreign policy since 1945 is operating under stress that previous administrations have not tested at this frequency or severity.

KEYNOTES

Three points shaping the diplomatic picture

Rubio's refusal to join the settlement sanctions — framed in de-stabilization language ("we don't want anything destabilizing") rather than policy disagreement — reflects the administration's assessment that any U.S. distancing from Israel on West Bank settlement policy would undermine the leverage the U.S. needs to sustain the Gaza peace deal's Phase Two negotiations, even at the cost of the diplomatic fracture with UK, France, and Canada that Tuesday's coordinated announcement has produced.

Ambassador Huckabee's suggestion that American states could "retaliate" against the UK for its settlement trade ban — a statement made on camera in Jerusalem and not immediately walked back by the State Department — represents an unprecedented escalation of the Israel policy dispute into threats against bilateral US-UK economic relations, creating legal and political complications that the diplomatic community is already describing as beyond the normal scope of allied disagreement on Middle East policy.

The simultaneity of Rubio's Latin America trip, the 12-nation settlement sanctions, the ongoing Iran war, the Canada trade war, and the Federal Reserve's September 16 rate decision — all arriving in the same 72-hour window — is the most acute test of the Trump administration's foreign policy bandwidth that the second term has yet produced, and the diplomatic posture that emerges from this week will define how allied governments assess American reliability and strategic coherence heading into the midterm election season.

SOURCES

UK, France, Canada to Sanction Israeli West Bank Settlements; US Won't — Vanguard News
Why the U.K., Canada, and France Are Banning Trade With Israeli Settlements — TIME
Public Schedule — September 9, 2026 — U.S. Department of State