Marco Rubio has been confirmed as President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, but America’s new top diplomat might not see eye-to-eye with the president in every facet of foreign policy.

That’s not to say Rubio, a former senator from Florida, won’t do all he can to implement Trump’s policies from the State Department.

But it’s possible friction or divergent priorities could see the two split before Trump’s presidency is over.

“I think it may even be likely that (Rubio) doesn’t last all four years, and that may come out of a sense of aspirations (Rubio has) for a higher office,” said Boise State Professor Michael A. Allen, a political scientist and expert in international relations.

Casey Burgat, legislative affairs program director at George Washington University, said he’s interested in watching how willingly Rubio bows to Trump’s wishes or how willingly he’ll push back.

“I don’t have a good answer for how it’s going to work, but you need two people that can work well together,” Burgat said.

Rubio served 14 years in the Senate, including appointments to the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees.

He also ran for president in 2016, and his foreign policy reputation is pretty well established.

“Rubio is about as traditional (of a) Republican as we had in the Senate, where he is seen as a little bit of an interventionist” who sees the U.S. as indispensable in defending democratic principles around the world, Burgat said.

Burgat said Rubio “is obviously hawkish” in his willingness to spend a lot of money on the military and in his beliefs that peace comes through strength. Rubio’s particularly a hawk when it comes to China, Burgat said.

Allen also said Rubio aligns with traditional Republican views on foreign policy. He said Rubio is very supportive of traditional U.S. allies.

While Trump has been a critic of NATO at times, Rubio cosponsored a bipartisan bill to prohibit any president from withdrawing from NATO without Senate approval or an act of Congress.

Burgat said Trump is “more isolationist, where it has to be America first. That there can be problems throughout the world, and even authoritarianism making its way through different regions. But as long as it doesn’t impact the health and financial security of the United States, then what do we care?”

Scholars with RAND and Texas A&M penned commentary last month that the isolationist characterization for Trump is off the mark and that Trump was far from an isolationist in his first term.

He didn’t significantly reduce the U.S. role in security affairs around the world, they said.

Trump embraced competition with China and pursued a policy of maximum pressure on Iran, they said.

Some folks might overstate the likely influence of those who call for a more restrained U.S. approach to the world within a second Trump administration, the scholars wrote in the opinion piece.

Elizabeth N. Saunders, a professor of political science at Columbia University, wrote before the election that Trump’s core beliefs on foreign policy have been remarkably consistent.

Trump thinks alliances are a rip-off for the U.S., he dislikes multilateral trade deals and he admires dictators, she wrote.

Saunders didn’t expect Trump to shift his positions in his second term, but she said he might be surrounded this time by fewer challengers within his administration.

Allen described Trump as a “neoisolationist, or America first.”

He said Rubio will provide more of a traditional Republican foreign policy voice within the administration, but he said Rubio has also evolved over the last eight years so that his foreign policy views now more closely align with Trump’s.

Rubio has become more critical of U.S. aid to Ukraine, for example.

And Allen said Rubio’s State Department priorities are very much aligned with Trump’s policies, such as efforts to curb mass migration and secure the border. Rubio talked about ending diversity and inclusion programs, stopping censorship, and ending climate policies that “weaken” America in a statement released Wednesday.

“These are very Trump-esque things he’s articulating within the State Department,” Allen said.

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