Foreign Policy

Matthew Petti | 11.15.2024 9:53 AM

If President-elect Donald Trump gets his way, his National Security Council will be a very lively place to be. Michael Waltz, who would be chairing the council as National Security Adviser, has declared that there is "no peaceful solution in Syria as long as [Bashar] Assad is in power," because Assad has "been gassing his own people for years." But Tulsi Gabbard, who would be sitting in the meetings as Director of National Intelligence, has met the Syrian ruler in person, arguing that "Assad is not the enemy of the United States, because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States."

That's just one of the intense contradictions on display in the incoming second Trump administration's foreign policy staff. Trump has flirted with both extremely hawkish and extremely dovish positions. And his staffing is similarly all over the place.

Many of Trump's nominees are conventional war hawks. His secretary of state nominee, Marco Rubio, is open to regime change wars in Latin America. Brian Hook, running the State Department transition, is obsessed with regime change in the Middle East. Elise Stefanik, nominated as ambassador to the United Nations, and John Ratcliffe, nominated to run the CIA, also want more intervention there. Waltz, perhaps the most radical of them all, is on record supporting U.S. boots on the ground in Ukraine and a reinvasion of Afghanistan.

But on Wednesday, Trump nominated some surprising antiestablishment figures: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) for attorney general and........

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