In the most significant appointment yet for India from the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump on Monday announced Mike Waltz, a Congressman from Florida who is the co-chair of the India Caucus, as his new National Security Adviser.
Waltz, 50, is a retired Army colonel who served as a Green Beret, an elite special forces unit of the US Army.
Since 2019, he has been serving as a member of the US House of Representatives. In all, he has been an unyielding critic of President Joe Biden's foreign policy and currently serves on the House Armed Services Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the House Intelligence Committee.
He has also called on Europe to do more for Ukraine and has been critical of the support from the US, which is not stringent enough, coinciding with the main foreign policy goal by the President-elect. Simultaneously, he has become one of the most vocal opponents of the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
Waltz has praised Trump for pushing Nato allies to spend more on defence, but unlike the President-elect has not suggested the US pull out of the alliance.
"Look we can be allies and friends and have tough conversations," Waltz said last month.
Waltz is also on the Republican's China task force and has argued the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be if there is conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.
Waltz has been public that he is willing to serve in the administration and was considered a candidate to lead the Pentagon. The role of National Security Adviser doesn't require Senate confirmation.
Waltz is also co-chairman of the India Caucus in the House, the largest country-specific group in the US Congress.
Trump is truly announcing his lineup really fast, as he gets down to business to unveil the top personnel of his incoming administration, to include White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles-the first woman to occupy that position.
The second is the controversy surrounding the appointment of Stephen Miller, a known critic of the H-1b visa programme. In fact, he had attempted to kill the programme when he was appointed as a senior adviser during Trump's first administration.
Since last week's election, the president-elect has been quietly assembling a roster of senior staff. Already tapped: Tom Homan for border czar; Elise Stefanik for US ambassador to the United Nations; Lee Zeldin for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
According to his website, Waltz was born in Boynton Beach, Florida. He grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. He attended the Virginia Military Institute and served 27 years in the US Army and National Guard.
As Trump's NSA Waltz will have to deal with Ajit Doval, the Indian NSA who had dealt with a rotating roster of NSA beginning with his first Michael Flynn in 2017 and then H R McMaster, John Bolton, and then Robert Brien; all in the Trump administration.
Then there's Jake Sullivan, NSA to President Joe Biden. Sullivan is completing his term and most probably will not be seen in the administration until the latter part of his tenure on January 20, 2025.
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