A second Trump administration will coincide with the ascent of new China hawks to increasing levels of influence, one of whom previously told RealClearPolitics that the United States is already engaged in a new “Cold War” with the Chinese Communists. President-elect Trump announced Tuesday that Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, the first Green Beret elected to Congress, would serve as his national security adviser, heralding the pick as “an expert in threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, and global terrorism.
” In a January 2023 interview with RCP, Waltz outlined the threat in specific terms. “The Chinese Communist Party has entered into a ‘cold war’ with the United States, and we need to wake up not only our institutions, but I think the broader American public to that fact,” he said. The Chinese spy balloons floating across the continent at that time, Waltz told RCP, ought to deliver “a Sputnik-like wake-up call.
” The announcements came fast and furious to start the week, reflecting a Trump transition team that is far more organized and efficient than the effort put forward ahead of his first term. The common thread among national security picks so far: an eagerness to confront an aggressive China. The former, and future, president will soon confront an increasingly aggressive power in the Indo-Pacific.
But China has changed in the time since Trump occupied the Oval Office. In the wake of a global pandemic, which began in Wuhan, China, the communist superpower has.
