Donald Trump has chosen a pair of establishment Republicans from Florida to senior positions in his administration as he builds a national security team that looks more aggressive than the isolationist America First foreign policy he has publicly championed.

Trump was expected to choose Senator Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, the US’s top diplomat, and has tapped Congressman Mike Waltz, a retired Green Beret known as a China hawk, to be his national security adviser. become a powerful role. that would help shape Trump’s policies toward the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as around the world.

Rubio is a known foreign policy hawk with tough policies on China, Iran and Venezuela, where he has led the U.S. effort to oust the president, Nicolás Maduro. He was one of the first China hawks in Washington, where Beijing is now viewed with extreme skepticism by both parties, and co-chaired the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

On Ukraine, he is likely to align his views with those of Trump and those around him, including Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr., who have sharply criticized the continued funding of Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion. Rubio was one of 15 Republican lawmakers who voted against a $61 billion additional aid bill in the Senate earlier this year, leading to a months-long delay in crucial funding for Ukraine’s military.

Rubio said on national television earlier this month: “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly courageous and strong in their uprising against Russia. But what we are ultimately financing here is a stalemate war, and it must be brought to an end or that country will set itself back a hundred years.”

Rubio, who nicknamed Trump “Little Marco” during his first presidential election campaign, has gone from a regular target of Trump’s insults to a loyal surrogate for the Republican president-elect.

Trump had regularly denigrated him in the past as a member of the Republican establishment, calling him a “puppet” and saying he was a “nervous case.” But he has worked closely with Trump during the campaign and has worked with Democrats and fellow Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Intelligence Committee, making it likely he will have an easy confirmation process on that body.

That’s a big relief for a reported rival for the role of secretary of state, Ric Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, who has proven himself as a loyalist but was known in Washington and Europe as combative and would do so. have gone through a tough confirmation process.

Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, is a former Green Beret who has argued that Trump should take swift action to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, returning US focus and military resources to the Indo-Pacific region and China.

This policy is in line with Trump’s isolationist tendencies when it comes to seeking a quick solution to the war in Ukraine, even if this is achieved by forcing Ukraine to make concessions to Russia.

“Supporting Ukraine ‘as long as necessary’ in a war of attrition against a greater power is a recipe for failure,” Waltz and co-author, Matthew Kroenig, wrote in an op-ed for The Economist this year. “The next administration must strive, as Donald Trump has argued, to ‘end the war and stop the killing.’” They said the US should use economic leverage over energy sales to “bring Mr. Putin to the table.”

“If he refuses to talk, Washington can, as Mr. Trump argued, supply Ukraine with more weapons with fewer restrictions on their use,” they continued. “Faced with this pressure, Putin is likely to take the opportunity to end the conflict.”

Regarding Israel’s war in Gaza, the pair seemed willing to give Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche to “let Israel get the job done,” as Trump has said. They also proposed launching a “diplomatic and economic pressure campaign to stop (Iran) and limit their support for terror proxies.”

“Washington should maintain a military presence in the region, but now that the war in Gaza and Lebanon is over, it could return critical capabilities to the Indo-Pacific,” they wrote.