The US President-elect Donald Trump has officially appointed Republican Mike Waltz as his national security adviser.
Trump himself declared this.
"I am appointing Congressman Mike Waltz to the position of National Security Adviser in my Cabinet. Mike is the first ʼGreen Beretʼ elected to Congress, he previously worked in the White House and the Pentagon," Trump commented on the appointment.
The National Security Advisor is a role that does not require Senate confirmation. He is responsible for briefing the president on key national security issues and coordinating with various agencies. This position is currently held by Jake Sullivan.
Future US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
Waltz has a long history in Washington political circles. He served as director of defense policy under Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, and was elected to Congress in 2018. He chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee, which oversees military logistics, and sits on the Select Committee on Intelligence.
Waltz also sits on a Republican task force on China and says the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be in the event of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.
In Hard Truths: Think and Rule Like a Green Beret, published earlier this year, Waltz laid out a five-part strategy to prevent war with China, including ramping up Taiwanʼs armaments, reassuring Pacific allies and modernizing aircraft and ships.
Waltz praised Trump for pushing NATO allies to spend more on defense but, unlike the president-elect, stopped short of suggesting the United States withdraw from the alliance.
What Waltz said about Ukraine
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, he urged the Joe Biden administration to provide more weapons to Kyiv to help push back Russian forces. He also met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and came to Ukraine.
But at an event last month, Waltz said there must be a reassessment of the United Statesʼ goals in Ukraine.
"Is it in Americaʼs interest to spend the time, money, and resources that we desperately need right now in the Pacific region?" Waltz asked.
In addition, Waltz wrote an article for FoxNews last year in which he claimed that "the era of blank checks for Ukraine from Congress is over," WSJ notes.
"Stopping Russia before it drags NATO, and therefore the US, into war is the right thing to do. But the burden cannot continue to rest solely on the shoulders of the American people, especially while Western Europe gets a pass," he wrote.
He told NPR this month that Trumpʼs promise to hold talks between Ukraine and Russia was "absolutely reasonable" and said that if Russian leader Vladimir Putin didnʼt cooperate, the US had "leverage, like removing the handcuffs on long-range weapons, which we also provided to Ukraine."
He also admitted that the goal of the leader of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin is to restore the USSR. And if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he will not stop until he involves NATO in the conflict.
"The USA will be obliged to send American troops to fight. If nothing is done in the face of aggression, the Third World War will begin," Waltz wrote.
- On November 11, Trump declared that he had chosen a representative of the Republican Party Elise Stefanik for the post of the US ambassador to the United Nations.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.