Why Trump's team is every bit the nightmare we feared
Following his victory, United States President-elect Donald Trump wasted no time in assembling his foreign policy team.
It is not certain that all of his nominees will be confirmed, but the people he has put forth give us a good idea of what a Trump 2.0 foreign policy will look like, and it's every bit the nightmare we feared.
A few of his picks have even surprised some Republicans. But if the first Trump term is any indication, even those who manage to overcome this confirmation process in Congress may not last very long in office.
Still, the nominations themselves tell us a lot about what Trump's foreign policy approach will be this time around.
They also tell us that Trump himself intends to be more central to the policy process and that his cabinet will play less of a role in policy formation than it did in his first term.
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Trump team 2.0
Trump's nominees reflect an extreme approach to foreign policy, especially in the Middle East.
For all of Trump's talk on the campaign trail about being the "anti-war candidate", he wasted no time in shedding that illusion.
For all of Trump's talk on the campaign trail about being the 'anti-war candidate', he wasted no time in shedding that illusion
His first move was to task Brian Hook with leading the State Department's transition team. Hook is a leading Iran hawk and was a strong voice in favour of the so-called "maximum pressure" strategy that Trump employed, and which President Joe Biden largely maintained. The strategy led to Iran accelerating its nuclear programme and heightened tensions in the region.
Hook was also a key player in crafting the Abraham Accords, Trump's plan which brought about normalised relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Bahrain, disregarding the concerns of the Palestinian people. But Hook was also seen as a professional diplomat, a man with experience and an understanding of foreign policy.
Trump's subsequent picks raised many more eyebrows.
Trump began by nominating former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the ambassador to Israel. He has no experience in foreign affairs and is a radical Christian Zionist who believes the entire "Greater Israel" is a divine gift to the Jewish people and explicitly denies the very existence of a Palestinian identity.
House Representative Elise Stefanik, who has led the charge in Congress to demonise supporters of Palestinian rights with spurious charges of antisemitism, is Trump's pick for US ambassador to the United Nations. Though it's hard to imagine anyone doing more to undermine international law and Palestinian rights than the current Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Stefanik's success in melding the concepts of antisemitism and anti-Zionism together is a dire warning.
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Trump's pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, is a man who believes in military force to achieve policy goals. He is an extreme Iran hawk and has strongly implied support for Israel's ambitions to confront Iran in the hopes of defeating the Islamic Republic.
Marco Rubio is Trump's nominee for secretary of state and has foreign policy views cut from similar cloth as Waltz. Rubio is a strong supporter of the use of military force and sanctions and is less enthusiastic about diplomacy. Some describe his approach as similar to the neoconservatives who got the US into the disastrous war on Iraq.
On the intelligence side, Trump's nominee for director of the CIA, John Radcliffe, served in the first Trump administration. His approach to military force is similar to Rubio and Waltz's.
But the pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has been of two minds on the question of military intervention, although she is also seen as espousing Islamophobic views. She has long been among the most outspoken opponents of regime change interventions and using American military might for political ends. But she is a strong proponent of the so-called "war on terror" and believes in using military force aggressively in that effort.
Gabbard is a mix of views on other issues as well. She opposes Israeli settlement expansion yet has called the BDS movement antisemitic, even while also voting against using the law to stifle boycotts.
A lieutenant colonel herself in the US Army Reserve, she has given full-throated backing to Israel's genocide in Gaza and stated that Hamas must be "defeated militarily and ideologically".
Her attitude towards Palestine, like her view of military intervention, will be characterised as nuanced by those who like her and schizophrenic by those who do not. And while perhaps slightly less extreme than some of Trump's picks, she clearly considers the fight for Palestinian liberation as being of a piece with what she sees as the threat of "Islamic terrorism".
But perhaps the most frightening of Trump's nominees is former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth as secretary of defence. Hesgeth has tattoos representing the most hardcore Christian nationalism, images that reflect not faith but praise for the Crusaders of the Middle Ages. Not only does he support using US troops on American soil - which could put the lives of Palestine solidarity protesters at grave risk - but he has also supported building the Third Temple where the al-Aqsa Mosque currently stands and called for a crusade against Muslims.
Taken together, Trump has assembled a team that is mainly composed of far-right Christian nationalists and neocon-style militarists. True, Gabbard - whom many deride as a Russian asset, although there is no hard evidence to sustain this beyond her opposition to the war in Ukraine and, indeed, her alarming defence of Bashar al-Assad - does not fit neatly into either of those categories, but she is exceptional among Trump's early picks.
Trump in the driver's seat
Trump's interest in foreign policy has always waxed and waned, but this time around, he seems intent on exercising more complete control over policy.
In his first term, Trump's top foreign policy staff included people who had some foreign policy experience and had a cache of respect and supporters in Washington, the military, and the global business world.
They included people like former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, generals like Jim Mattis and HR McMaster, neocon John Bolton, and long-time CIA officer Gina Haspel.
By the time he had replaced all of these people with a crew less versed in foreign affairs and more "loyal" to Trump personally, the Covid-19 pandemic had taken Trump's attention away from foreign affairs.
Many observers here in Washington, myself included, believed that Trump had brought in generals and executives with a great deal of global experience to dispel doubts about his own inexperience in foreign policy. This time, as he infamously said in an interview shortly before the election, he wants people who will support his decisions, not debate them or offer alternatives.
This, however, should not be taken to mean that no one else will have input on his decisions. It just won't be his senior staff. He'll listen to influential donors, such as Miriam Adelson, who has pushed for Trump to give Israel the green light to annex much of the West Bank.
It will include his family, certainly, and likely some of his closest ideological compatriots. However, when it comes to foreign affairs, Trump's ears will likely be filled by foreign leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, and President Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE.
Policy will depend on how Trump reacts to the different requests he gets from those who are working to influence him and what he sees as his personal stake in any policy decision.
This will create a chaotic situation in the Middle East, where leaders will have to deal with a US president who is apt to change his mind from day to day.
In the short term, it seems that Israel is trying to end most of their operations in Lebanon in an attempt to give Trump the basis he wants to claim he has brought "peace to the Middle East".
But it is clear that the Netanyahu government has no intention of slowing its genocide in Gaza, and that means the situation will remain volatile and unstable.
Trump will listen to influential donors, such as Miriam Adelson, who has pushed for Trump to give Israel the green light to annex much of the West Bank
While an end to Israel's bombardment of Lebanon would likely lower the immediate threat of a regional conflict, it's clear that Trump's team reflects his significant hostility toward Iran. So, there will be more opportunities for Netanyahu to find a way to continue pursuing direct conflict with Tehran with US support.
Trump's dealings with various Gulf countries and those of his family will also influence Trump's thinking, and so will Netanyahu.
As a result, the Arab states and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, at a recent summit in Riyadh, resolved to support Iran and condemn Israel's genocide. Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran continue to improve as well. These steps are firmly rooted in preparing for a more unpredictable US.
During Trump's first term in office, there was a set of "adults" in the room, yet even they could not always fully prevent Trump's reckless behaviour.
This time, the adults will not be in the room. The people immediately surrounding Trump are all loyalists who know that they have their jobs because they won't disagree with the leader.
That means we're now counting on people outside the government to convince Trump to veer away from potential disaster. Much will depend on whether any of them are willing to try to stem some of Trump's worst impulses.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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