Trump’s team: are they hawks or freaks?
22 November 2024 13:08
Since the U.S. presidential election, the president-elect has begun to actively fill vacancies in his future administration. Some people are shocked and outraged by the personalities of Trump’s nominees for high positions, while others are sincerely admiring them. There are some eccentric characters among them, but there are also respected politicians from the Republican Party. "Komersant Ukrainian" took a closer look at the appointees who will be involved in Ukrainian affairs.
Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, will be nominated for the post of Secretary of State. This position in the US administration is analogous to the post of foreign minister. Currently, in Joe Biden’s government, the Secretary of State is Anthony Blinken.
Mark Rubio is 53 years old, a young age for a politician. He comes from a family of Cuban immigrants, and if he does take the post he is predicted to occupy, he will be the first Latin American to do so. He is well educated and has a fine knowledge of international politics. This is probably why he dislikes China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and, of course, the communist regime in Cuba, which deprived his family of their homeland.
Rubio was the initiator of sanctions against Russian leaders and state-owned companies. He himself, by the way, is also under Russian sanctions and is banned from entering the country (what a shame).
In general, Rubio is a traditional Republican who could not have been considered a fan of Donald Trump before; there was a time when Rubio even opposed him. That was only until Trumpism became mainstream in the Republican Party.
Now, when the condition for getting into the team of the newly elected president is personal loyalty to the leader, he declares Trumpist slogans. This is very important for continuing their careers in the newly elected president’s team: Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, veterans of Trump’s previous team, did not demonstrate such loyalty, and Trump emphasized immediately after the election that they would not be part of the new government. Rubio did not make the same mistake, but diligently criticized the current administration for helping Ukraine, because that was the requirement of the leader. If a trend had been set to make statements in support of helping Ukraine, Rubio would undoubtedly have followed it with much more pleasure.
Now he declares his commitment to ending the Russian-Ukrainian war at the negotiating table and expresses skepticism about Ukraine’s return of the occupied territories, as Reuters notes.
Michael Waltz
Another very important appointment for Ukraine, which Trump himself wrote about on Truth Social, is that Michael Waltz, a member of the Republican Party from Florida, currently a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a former Green Beret, or special forces officer, will become the National Security Advisor in his administration; Waltz is now 50 years old.
His military career is over, and now he will replace Jake Sullivan, who currently holds this post in the Joe Biden administration. Waltz, like Rubio, does not like China and Russia.
Trump himself wrote that his appointee is “an expert on threats from China, Russia, Iran, and global terrorism” and that he would be great at pursuing a policy of “peace through strength.”
At the beginning of the full-scale war, Waltz demanded that the Biden government arm Ukraine well, and now he is also a supporter of negotiations.
Pete Hagseth
One of the most bizarre personalities is Pete Hagel’s nominee for the post of Pentagon chief, Pete Hagel. Trump himself sings his praises: “Pete is tough, smart, and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice: our military will be great again, and America will never retreat.”
It’s not clear who, besides Trump, knows what exactly the conservative Fox News host and author of four books can do to the enemies of the United States. But enemies can make fun of him: he once came to the memorial in New York to honor the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack. A wonderful and patriotic act, of course, but it remains unclear why he came there in only his underwear and a scarf in the colors of the US flag, but with a huge American flag in his hand.
Hegseth is also a supporter of the COVID-19 conspiracy theory and believes that the omicron virus was invented by the Democratic Party. But he does not believe in the existence of germs, because they are impossible to see with the naked eye, and therefore, by his own admission, he has not washed his hands for ten years.
Despite his eccentricities, Hegseth has twenty years of service experience: he was a member of the National Guard and served in hot spots such as Iraq and Afghanistan. He also served at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. But he has not held any leadership positions that could give him experience in managing such a huge military structure as the Pentagon.
Hagesse’s nomination shocked the US political establishment. Many US military veterans and politicians strongly opposed the appointment of such a character. He has already been called the least qualified candidate for the post of Secretary of Defense in US history. However, we should recall that there is a safeguard in place for all unforeseen cases in the form of the need to approve candidates for high positions in the US Senate. Only time will tell how the fate of Trump’s nominees will unfold there, whether they will all overcome the upper house of Congress.
John Ratcliffe
Another example of the appointment of people loyal to Trump personally is John Ratcliffe, a candidate for the position of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was elected to Congress three times and headed the National Intelligence Agency during Trump’s first presidency, but only for the last eight months before the 45th US president resigned.
He passionately defended his boss during the impeachment proceedings. In 2020, he declassified Russian intelligence information about Hillary Clinton, without knowing for sure the degree of its reliability. This was done just weeks before the 2020 election.
He is currently the head of a pro-Trump think tank called America First.
Brian Hook
We should also be interested in Trump’s potential appointment as special envoy for Ukraine. His mission will be to negotiate an end to the war. His name is not yet officially known, but unofficially it is said that it could be Brian Hook, a diplomat, lawyer, and university professor. During Trump’s first term, he was special envoy for Iran and worked in the team of Mike Pompeo, who is pro-Ukraine.
It seems that most of Trump’s nominees for influential positions are more like hawks, and certainly do not resemble soft intellectuals. Of course, their hawkish habits will be limited to the party’s “general line,” but if the right command is given, these hawks will not be long in the tooth with the bad guys, and they will not be intimidated by Putin’s nuclear goat. They can show anything in return. Unlike the officials of the current Democratic administration, their successors are unlikely to tremble at the word “escalation.”
For Trump himself, the stakes are also high. If he succeeds in stopping the war in Ukraine, he is almost guaranteed a Nobel Peace Prize. But if he fails, he will be seen as a loser and a buffoon: he said too many words about ending the war the day after his election for everyone to forget about it quickly.
If he persuades the Ukrainian side to negotiate with the prospect of stopping arms and money, the Russians, who are advancing, albeit with huge losses, will be persuaded with both carrots and sticks. And the latter includes the audible saber-rattling of weapons. For this purpose, the aforementioned people in responsible positions are needed. However, these are just first impressions of the new Trump administration’s staff. In life, everything may turn out to be much brighter and more unpredictable.
