WASHINGTON – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Republican Representative Mike Waltz as his national security adviser, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Nov. 11, calling on a retired Army Green Beret who was a major critic of China.

Mr Waltz, a Trump loyalist who also served in the National Guard as a colonel, criticized Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and expressed the need for the US to be prepared for potential conflict in the region.

The national security adviser is a powerful role that does not require Senate confirmation.

Mr. Waltz will be responsible for briefing Trump on key national security issues and coordinating with various agencies.

While criticizing the Biden administration for a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Mr. Waltz publicly praised Trump’s foreign policy views.

“Disruptors are often not nice … Frankly, our national security establishment and certainly a lot of people who are steeped in bad old habits in the Pentagon need this disruption,” Mr. Waltz said during an event earlier this year 2024. “Donald Trump is that disruptor.”

Mr. Waltz has a long history in Washington political circles.

He served as director of defense policy for Defense Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates and was elected to Congress in 2018.

He is chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee that oversees military logistics and also on the Select Committee on Intelligence. He also sits on the Republican China Task Force and has argued that the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be if there is a conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.

In a book to be published in early 2024, titled Hard Truths: Think And Lead Like A Green Beret, Mr Waltz laid out a five-part strategy for preventing war with China, including arming Taiwan more quickly, reassuring Pacific allies and modernizing planes and ships. .

On Ukraine, Mr Waltz said his views had evolved. After 2022 Russian invasion of Ukrainehe called on the Biden administration to provide more weapons to Kiev to help it repel Russian forces.

But during an event in October, Mr. Waltz said there needed to be a reassessment of US goals in Ukraine. “Is it in America’s interest, are we going to invest the time, the treasure, the resources that we need in the Pacific right now?” asked Mr. Waltz.

He praised Trump for pushing NATO allies to spend more on defense but, unlike the president-elect, did not suggest the US withdraw from the alliance.

“Look, we can be allies and friends and have tough conversations,” Mr. Waltz said in October.

Mr. Waltz demonstrated his loyalty to Trump in early 2024 when he appeared at Trump’s May 16 court hearing in Manhattan, one of the few lawmakers to do so.

Mr. Waltz, who was in the running to become defense secretary, could put some in uniform.

As a congressman from Florida, he has been at the forefront of a conservative movement that opposes the teaching of certain theories about racism and has criticized military officials for it.

He also bemoaned the Pentagon’s failure to fire underperforming generals and civilian bureaucrats.

“We have to introduce a culture of responsibility in that place. Nobody ever seems to get laid off, with these massive cost overruns, massive waste,” Mr. Waltz told Fox News last week. “We don’t need managers there. We need reformers.”

Trump is expected to take a much darker view of his military leaders in his second term after facing resistance from the Pentagon on everything from his skepticism about NATO to his willingness to deploy troops to quell protests on the streets of the USA.

He criticized the military for being political under the administration of US President Joe Biden.

In 2023, Mr. Waltz introduced a bill in Congress that would have required an audit of “unnecessary and political DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs” in the military and “restore a merit-based culture in our ranks.”

During a tense congressional hearing with the top US general in 2021, Mr Waltz criticized the US Military Academy at West Point for teaching critical race theory, which argues that the legacies of slavery and segregation have created an uneven playing field for black Americans. Reuters