Donald Trump is forming his cabinet and selecting members of the team that will lead the US domestic and foreign policy tomorrow. Therefore, it is particularly important for us to know who in the team of the new owner of the White House will deal with issues related to Ukraine.
The electoral advantage of the Republicans in Congress, the Senate and the White House allows Trump to gain full power and freedom to make decisions and appoint his preferred candidates. Trump chose Florida Republican Senator Mark Rubio as his candidate for Secretary of State, who has previously supported assistance to Ukraine and even criticized his fellow party members for doubting the continuation of assistance to our country. The new Secretary of State still has to be confirmed by Congress in January 2025, but given the Republican advantage in the U.S. Senate, his nomination should be voted on without any complications.
But in recent years, Rubio has expressed skeptical rhetoric about the nature of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and in April he did not support a bill to allocate $61 billion to support Ukraine. At the same time, Rubio has been ambiguous about how to end the war, calling Ukraine’s struggle for independence against the Russian occupiers a “stalemate war.”
“I think that Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong when they have stood up to Russia. But, at the end of the day, what we are funding here is a stalemate war, and it has to be brought to an end. I think there should be common sense here. You don’t have to be a fan of Vladimir Putin to want the war to end,” Rubio said.
Trump chose Michael Walz as his National Security Advisor, who has taken a tough stance on China and Russia. Last year, when Walz visited Kyiv, he criticized Biden for the slow pace of deliveries and tweeted that Ukraine should have had weapons before the war, not the second year after it began. Walz is considered to be a hawkish candidate who demands to counteract Russia and China, pointing out their aggressive intentions towards the West and the United States as the leader of the democratic world. With such candidates, US foreign policy has a chance to become more decisive and stronger.
Trump may appoint Brian Hook, a career diplomat who is called a “hawk” and a critic of Iran, as a special representative for negotiations to “end the Russian-Ukrainian war.” Brian Hook, 56, a lawyer by training, worked in the Republican administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. He was responsible for the Iranian direction: he was the head of the interagency sanctions coordination group, supported the withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal and the operation to eliminate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Currently, the powers of the US special representative are not clearly defined, but the press claims that the main task of such a potential appointment is to fulfill Trump’s promise to end the war quickly.
At the same time, a problematic aspect of Trump’s personnel policy was the initiative to appoint Tulsi Gabbard, a politician and former US Army reserve officer who repeated Russian propaganda, as Director of National Intelligence. In 2022, she left the Democratic Party, calling it an “elite cabal of warmongers,” and joined the Republicans a month before the presidential election.
Tulsi Gabbard is known for her position against providing military assistance to our country. Moreover, in 2022, the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council claimed that Tulsi Gabbard was working for a foreign audience for the Kremlin’s money. For example, she claimed that “the United States is guilty of military aggression” against Russia, “provoked” the aggressor for many years, and “the ruling elite of Washington wants to kill as many Russians as possible with the help of Ukrainians.”
On the air of the American Fox News channel, which supports Trump, Tulsi Gabbard spread Russian propaganda theses about weapons of mass destruction in Ukrainian biolabs. In 2018, Gabbard accused Poland and Ukraine of anti-Semitism, glorification of Nazism, and Holocaust denial. However, the Association of Jewish Communities (AJC) rejected these accusations and called Gabbard’s words “anti-Ukrainian defamation” used by the Russians.
Hubbard even met secretly with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whom she called a “fact-finding mission” and refused to call Assad a war criminal. The appointment of such an intelligence candidate is a serious problem for a successful confrontation with the Russian aggressor, unless Trump changes his choice or Gabbard changes her position.
The new potential team of Donald Trump’s administration, which still needs to be confirmed in the Capitol, is made up of candidates who do not agree on the vision of US foreign policy. Some of Trump’s nominees take a completely correct, conservative and pro-Western position, some want the war to end as soon as possible, and some have been found to be spreading Russian propaganda, unless this can be attributed to populist rhetoric for the sake of ratings. But no matter who works in the US State Department, the decisive influence on the course of our struggle for independence depends on the Armed Forces, the crisis management abilities of the current Ukrainian government, and the resilience of the Ukrainian nation.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk