Trump’s Appointments Reflect a More Openly Hawkish Face of US Empire

After mounting his comeback win against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has already announced a slew of administration appointments. Compared to other presidents-elect, and to his own first term, Trump is ahead of the typical timeline in announcing these appointments, giving observers an earlier-than-usual view into how the second Trump administration could function, both in the domestic and foreign policy arenas.

On the foreign policy front, Trump will inherit several major international crises and tensions that Joe Biden has been unable to resolve during his time in office, chief among them Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, Russia’s war in Ukraine and escalating U.S. rivalry with China over Taiwan. Trump has already named several high-profile cabinet members who will shape much of his foreign policy and could oversee the consequential conclusions of those conflicts.

Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, has been tapped for the coveted secretary of state position. Rubio is a well-known China hawk who has recently led the charge against TikTok and other Chinese-based tech companies, a stance that dovetails well with Trump’s promise to impose a 60 percent tariff on all goods exported from China. Beyond economic warfare, Rubio has called China the “threat that will define this century” and pushed repeatedly on known pressure points in U.S.-China relations, including the status of Taiwan.

Rubio — the grandson of Cuban immigrants who moved to the U.S. before the Cuban revolution but hated Fidel Castro from afar — is an ardent anti-communist who has argued vociferously against the legitimacy of the sitting governments in Cuba and Venezuela and supported devastating sanctions on both. In 2020, Rubio met with Venezuelan opposition politician Juan Guaidó, who led an ill-fated coup attempt in Venezuela in 2019. Rubio has long displayed antipathy toward leftist leaders in Latin America (and an embrace of right-wing ones), an interest that could substantially reorient U.S. foreign policy priorities in the southern hemisphere.

Rubio’s aggressive stance toward China will no doubt be compounded by Trump’s newly announced pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, currently a House representative from Florida. Waltz has pushed his anti-China rhetoric even farther than Rubio, arguing that the war in Ukraine represents a wake-up call to “[arm] Taiwan NOW before it’s too late.” The U.S., of course, already provides Taiwan with ample weaponry and military equipment, so Waltz’s commentary might be better understood as a call to increase U.S. saber-rattling toward China, with Taiwan as a helpful foil. Rubio and Waltz are clearly both hoping that the conflict that Waltz has described as a “cold war” with China will heat up under the new Trump administration.

Rubio and Waltz are clearly both hoping that the conflict that Waltz has described as a “cold war” with China will heat up under the new Trump administration.

Arguably Trump’s most surprising pick so far has been his choice for secretary of defense. Trump frequently clashed with Department of Defense appointees in his last term, and his more conventional Republican establishment appointees sometimes checked his more extreme impulses through their reluctance to carry out his most radical orders. For his second term, in an apparent attempt to institute more accommodating leadership at the Pentagon, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who served in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, to lead the Department of Defense.

During his time at Fox News, Hegseth has become known for advocating for leniency for military personnel found to have committed war crimes abroad while serving. Hegseth has no governmental experience whatsoever, nor has he served in any command role within the U.S. military, putting him at odds with every defense secretary going back at least to the middle of the 20th century. His primary qualification may be that Trump appreciates his abilities as a television presenter to be the next public face of the empire.

It is difficult to determine how Hegseth — as someone with no experience in policy making — might steer the Department of Defense, with its nearly 3 million employees and its $850 billion budget. He has a clear desire for U.S. troops to act without limits or fear of consequences, and has said he believes women should not serve in combat roles in the military. He has also been broadly critical of diversity initiatives in the military. During Trump’s last term, he encouraged the then-president to bomb cultural sites in Iran. As head of the Department of Defense, he might focus on internal house cleaning, seeking to remake the military into a more homogenous, more overtly male-dominated entity, with even less care for international law and a firmer belief in U.S. supremacy.

Hegseth has become known for advocating for leniency for military personnel found to have committed war crimes abroad.

Hegseth is not the only Trump appointee in the realm of foreign policy that has alarmed Washington observers. Trump also announced this week that he will nominate Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence. Gabbard, who ran in the 2020 Democratic primary for president, has since cultivated an image as an independent-minded maverick who left the Democratic Party, endorsed Trump and joined the Republican Party. The director of national intelligence position, which oversees the entire U.S. intelligence community, is a position of extreme sensitivity with regard to U.S. intelligence secrets and operations.

Gabbard’s selection came as a surprise to some foreign policy pundits since, over the last few years, she has met with, and sometimes appeared to advocate for, foreign leaders whom most of the U.S. security establishment consider antagonistic to U.S. geopolitical interests. This includes a 2017 meeting with Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, after which Gabbard described Assad as “not an enemy of the United States.” Gabbard has also been a vocal critic of U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine, arguing that the responsibility for the war rests partly with President Biden, who could have averted conflict by foreclosing the possibility of Ukraine ever joining NATO.

Gabbard has also frequently trafficked in anti-Muslim rhetoric, repeating right-wing talking points about “radical Islamic ideology” that are often used to justify the criminalization and surveillance of Muslim communities. Her direct attacks on Islam helped her book appearances on Fox News and other right-wing media beginning during Barack Obama’s administration, which helped establish her bona fides on that side of the political spectrum. Her derogatory statements about Islam have only accelerated as protests against Israel’s war in Gaza have taken place across the U.S. She has referred to student protesters as “puppets” of a “radical Islamic organization,” a stance that puts her squarely in line with most of the current Republican Party (and significant parts of the Democratic Party, too).

While Gabbard’s selection as director of national intelligence will almost certainly irk foreign policy traditionalists, likely in both parties, her heterodox stances on the U.S.’s role abroad may be better received within the more isolationist parts of Trump’s administration. How her skepticism about U.S. interventionism abroad integrates (or not) with Rubio and Waltz’s hawkish views will be a question of critical importance in the early days of the next administration.

Trump has also begun to announce high-profile ambassadorships. Among these early picks, the most consequential is likely to be his selection of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee, whose daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, served as Trump’s press secretary in his last term, is well-known for his Christian evangelicism. Mike Huckabee is also a Fox News veteran, who hosted a show for seven years on the network.

Huckabee diverges from the Biden administration and longtime historical precedent in the U.S. by actively stating his opposition to a two-state solution.

Huckabee’s pick as ambassador to Israel likely portends an even more openly hostile stance toward Palestinian human rights and comes with possibly apocalyptic consequences for the West Bank. Huckabee, an avowed Zionist (like President Biden), has long supported Benjamin Netanyahu. But he diverges from the Biden administration and longtime historical precedent in the U.S. by actively stating his opposition to a two-state solution, thus breaking with what has been official U.S. policy for decades. And in fact, Huckabee goes much further than that in his dismissal of Palestinian rights. He has said that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal, contradicting the overwhelming consensus of international law experts. Huckabee’s nomination is being warmly received by the most right-wing sectors of Israeli society.

Beyond that, though, Huckabee ascribes to a particular brand of Christian evangelical thought, rooted in the belief that the existence of modern Israel is ordained by God. Huckabee has close ties to Christian Zionist organizations, including Christians United for Israel (CUFI), one of the largest of its type in the U.S., which is already celebrating his nomination. CUFI’s founder, John Hagee, with whom Huckabee has publicly appeared multiple times, has claimed, among other things, that Adolf Hitler was Jewish.

But Huckabee’s connection with Hagee and CUFI isn’t just alarming because of its founder’s overt antisemitism; Hagee is part of an extreme segment of the Christian Zionist tradition that believes that a cataclysmic war in Israel and Palestine will be the precipitating event for the second coming of the Christian messiah. Hagee and others in this line of thinking, therefore, encourage the hastening of violent conflict between Israel and its neighbors as much as possible. Whether Huckabee himself is aligned with this particular strain of Christian Zionism is not clear, but his close connection with the broader movement, and with Hagee in particular, should be enough to raise the highest level of alarm about what policies Huckabee intends to support toward an Israeli state that is already deeply enmeshed in the bloodiest campaign of its entire existence.

It is not a foregone conclusion that all of these nominees will make it through the Senate confirmation process. Although Republicans now control the chamber, more moderate caucus members, or those with more traditional views of how the federal government should be run, might be hesitant to confirm some of Trump’s most unorthodox picks. Hegseth and Gabbard, in particular, could face strong headwinds. However, that is dependent on whether Republicans are willing to risk antagonizing Trump, who is infamous for his ability to hold and prosecute personal vendettas, at the outset of his second term. If these nominees are confirmed, they will comprise among the most unusual, and unpredictable, stewards of U.S. foreign policy that the country has ever had.