Trump Picks Rep. Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor

Waltz has suggested he would advise Trump to escalate in Ukraine to pressure Russia to come to the table

President-elect Donald Trump has asked Mike Waltz, a hawkish House Republican from Florida, to be his national security advisor in the incoming administration, multiple media outlets reported on Monday night.

Waltz was a staunch supporter of the Ukraine proxy war early on and was one of the few members of Congress to suggest the US send “military advisors” into the country. He was also critical of President Biden for supposedly not being aggressive enough.

In 2023, Waltz began to express skepticism of the war, saying the US involvement in the conflict was “not sustainable.” However, in an interview with NPR last week, Waltz suggested that he would advise the president to end the war in Ukraine by escalating.

When explaining how he thinks Trump could bring both sides to the table, Waltz said the US could ramp up sanctions enforcement on Russia and support Ukraine using NATO-provided weapons for long-range strikes inside Russia, something President Vladimir Putin has made clear would risk nuclear war.

“First and foremost, you would enforce the actual energy sanctions on Russia. Russia is essentially a gas station with nukes. Putin is selling more oil and gas now than he did prewar through China and Russia. And you couple that with unleashing our energy, lifting our LNG ban, and his economy and his war machine will dry up very quickly,” Waltz told NPR.

“So I think that will get Putin to the table. We have leverage, like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well. And then, of course, I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelenskyy to get them to the table,” Waltz added.

Discussing Iran, Waltz said that the US must go back to “maximum pressure,” referring to the previous Trump administration’s Iran policies, which involved withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, imposing crippling economic sanctions, and assassinating Iranian Quds Force Commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Waltz has also hyped up claims about Iran plotting to kill Trump, which Iranian officials have strongly denied.

Waltz is a staunch supporter of Israel and has repeated Trump’s calls to allow Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza. “The next administration should, as Mr. Trump argued, ‘let Israel finish the job’ and ‘get it over with fast’ against Hamas. They should put a credible military option on the table to make clear to the Iranians that America would stop them building nuclear weapons,” he wrote in a recent piece for The Economist.

Waltz argued in the Economist essay that the US is too bogged down in the Middle East and Ukraine and should be more focused on China. He is known as one of the biggest China hawks in Congress, declaring back in 2021 that the US was in a Cold War with China. He frequently calls for the US to send more weapons to Taiwan, saying last year that the US should arm the island “to the teeth.”

The Pentagon has declared China the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security strategy,” and the US military is openly preparing for a future direct conflict with Beijing despite the risk of nuclear war.

Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.