Judge Rubio by how he judges Tillerson

Marco Rubio promised when he ran for reelection to the United States Senate that he would serve as a check on the next president — regardless of whether it was Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. The early signs are that Sen. Rubio intends to keep his promise.

In mid-December, Rubio posted a statement on his official website concerning President-elect Trump’s choice to replace John Kerry as secretary of state.

“While Rex Tillerson is a respected businessman,” Rubio wrote, “I have serious concerns about his nomination. The next secretary of state must be someone who views the world with moral clarity, is free of potential conflicts of interest, has a clear sense of America’s interests, and will be a forceful advocate for America’s foreign policy goals. … I will do my part to ensure he receives a full and fair but also thorough hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

The committee’s hearings are tentatively scheduled to begin next Wednesday. A Rubio vote against Tillerson could sink the nomination.

Tillerson, as CEO of ExxonMobil, has no diplomatic experience. Further, Tillerson has had a long relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And that fact, given the state of relations between America and Russia and allegations that Putin intervened in the election in Trump’s favor, raises all kinds of — pardon the expression — red flags.

Apparent lobbying for Tillerson by former Vice President Dick Cheney raises more alarms. As characterized by some media reports, Rubio was set to take a more negative approach to Tillerson until he heard from Cheney.

There is some irony here. When Trump’s team first sought to deflect CIA findings that Russia had tried to tilt the election to him, the transition staff said the spy agency could not be trusted because, during the George W. Bush administration, it had peddled the false claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Recall that Cheney claimed in 2002: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends … and against us.”

The Iraq invasion in which Cheney and Bush entangled the United States has made the world a more dangerous place and complicated matters for foreign policy hawks like Rubio. How can the United States get tougher on the likes of Syria, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea when, because of the Iraq fiasco, America’s tolerance for foreign intervention — particularly military intervention — is low.

Approaching the issue from the opposite direction, however, Rubio and other critics of the current administration are correct that President Barack Obama’s policies — for which Clinton was in part responsible — have, despite tough talk, lacked credible backbone and been embarrassingly inept and disastrous in Syria.

The task for Rubio and other hawks — and perhaps it is an impossible task — is to find a series of policies, economic sanctions and other actions that put pressure on our adversaries without tipping entire regions — or the entire world — into a conflagration.

Rubio has portrayed himself as a foreign policy expert. His second term in the Senate — where he begins as an influential member of the party that controls both houses of Congress and the White House — should give him ample opportunity to try to prove it’s true.

Russia has been a central cause of the bloodbath in Aleppo. A question for Tillerson and for Trump — and therefore for Rubio — is whether Trump and Tillerson are Putin’s patsies or are capable of not only standing up to Putin but also prevailing over him in a confrontation that, everyone must hope, would play out solely in the diplomatic arena.

We have been one of Rubio’s harshest critics, particularly for his reluctance during his first term to show up for work. But Rubio struck the right tone by expressing concern about Tillerson while remaining neutral and promising a thorough hearing. Follow-through will be the key.

Until the hearings, it is too soon to draw conclusions about Tillerson — or about Rubio.