As Donald Trump rushes to fill out his cabinet and enact his America First agenda in the United States and abroad, a clear throughline for his foreign policy and national security team has been a vocal loyalty to the president-elect – at least in this election cycle.
The rapidly expanding roster includes established – and some Maga supporters would say establishment – foreign policy hawks, and a neophyte defense secretary who until this week was still a conservative commentator on Fox News.
The putative team is a study in contrasts. Within minutes on Wednesday, Trump nominated the hawkish senator Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state and then chose Tulsi Gabbard – a former Hawaii House Democrat who has been accused of defending Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and said the west provoked Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine – as his director of national intelligence (DNI).
Like Trump’s own reading of world politics, his personnel choices appear to be driven by an idiosyncratic and impulsive understanding of personal relationships and rivalries – and a preference for a certain malleability of character as well.
“Clearly, these are loyalty choices in many respects, and that’s that’s not so unusual,” said Dr Ian Lesser, distinguished fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a prominent thinktank. “There are policy lines that run through these picks, but loyalty seems to trump professional experience in some cases.”
Former allies have spoken derisively of the process. “The word loyalty is often used,” said John Bolton, a former national security adviser under Trump. “I think that’s the wrong word. Actually, I think what Trump wants from his advisers is fealty, really a futile sense of subservience.”
Among those who were discarded for apparent insubordination during the selection process were Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state and CIA director, and his UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who criticised him during the campaign.
“He may get [fealty], but I will tell you that that will not serve him well over the course of his next term – and it certainly won’t serve the country well,” said Bolton.
Many, such as Rubio, hold views that are in the mainstream in Washington: they are China hawks, vocal supporters of Israel, and have hewed their skepticism of US support for Ukraine to match Trump’s own.
While not complete unknowns, Lesser said, “they’re not, in a sense, from the known world, as far as the foreign security policy establishment is concerned”.
But others, such as Pete Hegseth, the military veteran and former Fox News commentator tapped by Trump for secretary of defense, pending a confirmation process, have no government experience and appear to have chosen for their theatricality and close rapport with the president-elect.
Hegseth also appears primed to carry Trump’s crusade against government efforts at inclusivity and diversity into the defense establishment. “The dumbest phrase on planet earth in the military is ‘our diversity is our strength’,” Hegseth said on the Shawn Ryan Show, a podcast, earlier this month.
Others are more conventional choices. Michael Waltz, a Florida congressman who Trump has chosen as his national security adviser, is a former Green Beret who previously served as a defense policy director for secretaries of defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.
“There is a stark contrast between Waltz and Rubio, on the one hand, with [Pete] Hegseth on the other,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution. “Loyalty to Trump is a common thread. That said, he is somewhat forgiving, especially since Rubio once ran against him.”
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Among establishment actors, the “real concern is about Hegseth and his largely invented tirades against a supposedly woke military and chairman of the joint chiefs”, said O’Hanlon.
If there is a common denominator in the new-found cabinet, then it lies mainly in Trump’s own vision of an America First foreign policy: one in which his brand of economic nationalism translates into foreign policy (making China an economic and therefore strategic rival); where support for Europe may be made contingent on US commercial interests; where US support for Ukraine is seen by the real estate developer as a losing deal; and where lip service is given to ending war around the world but Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is first told his country should do what it has to do in Gaza.
Most of those views sit comfortably with the conservative foreign policy set in Washington, but the litmus test for many of the appointees has been Ukraine and Nato, where Trump’s skepticism about the war has moved many in his party to oppose further aid for Kyiv. Many of those selected for the cabinet had openly supported US support for Ukraine in the past. Those now chosen for his administration appear to have received the memo.
In choosing Rubio, Trump appeared to nod toward the reality that he does not hold carte blanche, including over the US Congress, and repeatedly noted that Rubio had managed the “Washington gridlock” and would continue to do so after a likely confirmation.
“I have worked with Marco Rubio for more than a decade on the intelligence committee … and while we don’t always agree, he is smart, talented, and will be a strong voice for American interests around the globe,” said Mark Warner, a Democrat and the committee chair for the Senate intelligence committee.
Rubio’s reported rival was Ric Grenell, a combative and controversial former ambassador to Germany under Trump who had feuded with Angela Merkel and other leading German politicians in one of the testiest periods for transatlantic relations in recent memory. But instead of choosing a close and loyal supporter, Trump went with the more conventional choice for secretary of state.
“I think what these picks suggest is that the idea that we’re moving towards isolationism is not correct,” said Lesser. “We may be moving towards more unilateralism … but not isolationism in the classic way. You cannot hold those views about China or Israel or Iran without being, in some sense, internationally active.”