Trump builds hawkish team with Rubio and Waltz tipped for top jobs | Trump’s administration

Donald Trump has tapped a pair of Republican incumbents from Florida to top roles in his administration as he builds a national security team that looks more hawkish than the America First isolationist foreign policy he has championed in public.

Trump was expected to pick Senator Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, America’s top diplomat, and has tapped Congressman Mike Waltz, a retired Green Beret known as a Chinahawk, to become his national security adviser, a powerful role that would help shape his politics on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza as well as around the world.

Rubio is a known foreign policy hawk with tough policies on China, Iran and Venezuela, where he has led the US effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro. He was one of the earliest China hawks in Washington, where Beijing is now viewed with extreme skepticism by both parties, and he has served as co-chairman of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

On Ukraine, he is likely to tailor his views to those of Trump and those around him, including Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr., who have voiced sharp criticism of the continued funding of Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion. Rubio was one of 15 Republican lawmakers who voted against a $61 billion supplemental aid bill. USD in the Senate earlier this year that led to a months-long delay in crucial funding for the Ukrainian military.

Rubio said earlier this month on national television, “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong in standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we’re financing here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion , otherwise that country will be set back 100 years.”

Rubio, whom Trump nicknamed “Little Marco” during his first presidential bid, has gone from a regular target of Trump’s insults to a loyal surrogate for the Republican president-elect.

Trump had previously regularly disparaged him as a member of the Republican establishment, calling him a “puppet” and saying he was a “nervous basket case.” But he has been in lockstep with Trump during the campaign and has worked with Democrats and other Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, making it likely he will have an easy confirmation process in that body.

That stands in sharp relief to a reported rival for the role of secretary of state, Ric Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, who has proven loyal but was known in Washington and Europe as combative and would have stood facing a tough verification process.

Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, has argued that Trump should move quickly to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to shift US focus and military assets back to the Indo-Pacific region and counter China.

These policies align with Trump’s isolationist tendencies in seeking a quick resolution to the war in Ukraine, even if it is achieved by forcing Ukraine to make concessions to Russia.

“Supporting Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ in a war of attrition against a major power is a recipe for failure,” Waltz and a co-author, Matthew Kroenig, wrote in an op-ed for The Economist this year. “The next administration should aim, as Donald Trump has claimed, to ‘end the war and stop the killing’.” They said the US should use financial leverage on energy sales to “bring Mr Putin to the table”.

“If he refuses to talk, Washington could, as Mr. Trump claimed, supply more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use,” they continued. “Faced with this pressure, Mr Putin is likely to take the opportunity to defuse the conflict.”

On Israel’s war in Gaza, the pair appeared ready to give Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche to “let Israel finish the job,” as Trump has said. They also suggested launching a “diplomatic and economic pressure campaign to stop (Iran) and to limit their support for terrorist proxies”.

“Washington should maintain a military presence in the region, but with the war in Gaza and Lebanon over, it can transfer critical capabilities back to the Indo-Pacific,” they wrote.