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In leaning on hawks Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, Donald Trump is setting the stage for an existential battle against China—although, as always, the president-elect’s knack for dealmaking may intervene.
Trump, who rhetorically at least has long broken with the historic bipartisan consensus in Washington for an assertive US global role, tapped two Florida politicians who still believe in traditional US engagement with the world.
But Rubio, a senator said to be tapped for secretary of state, and Waltz, a congressman named national security adviser, differ sharply from President Joe Biden’s vision of internationalism.
Rubio in a speech last year said that the United States was already in a broad global conflict with China, which “doesn’t just seek to be the most powerful nation in the world, they seek to reorient the world.”
The Biden administration also described China as the top long-term adversary of the United States and ramped up sanctions, but tensions have markedly eased recently, with Biden’s top diplomat Antony Blinken focusing on dialogue to prevent unintentional conflict.
The Biden administration believed the United States “should compete with China as effectively as it can on each issue in ways that may be to China’s detriment,” said Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.
“Now we see people who are longtime proponents of the view that the Chinese Communist Party is an existential threat to the United States.
