Donald Trump greets Marco Rubio during a campaign rally in North Carolina on Nov. 4, 2024. Evan Vucci/AP

A few weeks ago, Vice President-elect JD Vance dubbed Donald Trump “the candidate of peace” during a blitz of Sunday morning show appearances.

Vance was talking about a guy who during his last term reportedly expressed interest in firing missiles into Mexico, and mussed about nuking both North Korea and hurricanes.

And, less than a week after Trump’s election victory, the notion of the president-elect as anti-war, a common theme for Vance, has been badly undermined by Trump’s selection of a series of national security hawks—people who advocate using military force to solve international problems—for key administration jobs.

On the campaign trail, Trump found some success in positioning himself in an anti-war lane. He pledged to immediately impose a peace deal for Ukraine and pushed (extremely vaguely) for an end to the war in Gaza. He also bragged, incorrectly, that there were no wars during his administration. (Trump was helped by Vice President Kamala Harris’ reluctance to distance herself from President Joe Biden’s establishment-oriented foreign policy.)

“If these appointments are as advertised, it looks like an appeal to the unreconstructed Liz Cheney caucus.”

Since Trump’s election, there has been a scramble among supporters close to him to and........

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