President-elect Donald Trump has been quick to fill out his national security team, and the initial selections have provided some insight into what his second term could entail.

The president-elect announced that Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) will serve as his national security adviser and that he will nominate Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Ratcliffe to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and there have been widespread reports that he will tap Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to serve as his secretary of state. The biggest surprise so far has been that of Pete Hegseth, a veteran and Fox News host, as the defense secretary nominee.

Trump intentionally chose to surround himself with people who would be loyal to him and his agenda, a corrective decision after the beginning of his first administration was marred by conflicting interests and disloyalty among his Cabinet and staff. He went through multiple national security advisers and defense secretaries during his first term.

“I think the No. 1 thing that we’re seeing here is something that I predicted and expected, and that is you want individuals that he can trust, that he feels are loyal,” Bradley Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner, prior to Hegseth’s selection. “I think that’s probably the No. 1 consideration for President-elect Trump. If you look at the statements of these three individuals in recent months, they have definitely positioned themselves as individuals who fit that description.”

The new administration will be coming into power in slightly more than two months, and unless conflicts across the globe come to a sudden end, they will have to figure out the administration’s strategy on Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon and Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, all the while turning the national security community toward the Pacific region, particularly regarding the looming threat from China.

Waltz is a combat-decorated Green Beret who served in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa and has previously served in both the Defense Department and as counterterrorism adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. Stefanik made her name during Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 and proceeded to become one of Trump’s biggest backers on Capitol Hill.

While Hegseth’s selection was a surprise across Washington, the Fox News host previously served as an infantry major in the Army National Guard and served tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Combat Infantryman Badge during his service. His nomination will likely be one of the more contentious confirmation hearings, even though the GOP is in the majority in the Senate.

Israel

When it comes to Israel, they all have long been strong supporters, and Stefanik, in particular, has been outspoken about increased antisemitism in the United States on college campuses as well as at the United Nations.

“I can’t wait for [U.N. Secretary-General Antonio] Guterres to meet Elise Stefanik,” Danielle Pletka, a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner.

Waltz and Hegseth have both ardently supported Israel’s military operations in the region in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.

Trump also announced he would nominate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel, and his selection provides some insight into what will be in store for the U.S.-Israel alliance. Huckabee has been supportive of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including saying in 2019 that Israel had the right to annex parts of the West Bank.

Israel’s current government is its most pro-settlement government effort, and some hard-line members have already publicly called for the nation to annex the West Bank given Trump’s victory, though such a move would cause an international uproar. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced that Yechiel Leiter, a settler and longtime activist for settlement expansion, will be the next Israeli ambassador to Washington.

“[Trump] has been focused on doing what’s right for the United States, and sometimes that’s meant restraint, and sometimes it’s meant a punch in the face,” Pletka said. “It appears that his priority is restoring the deterrence we lost so badly in the Biden years. And if I were in Tehran, Moscow, or Beijing, I’d be very, very nervous.”

Trump also announced his appointment of Steven Witkoff, a friend of his, to be a special envoy to the Middle East. The incoming president said Witkoff “will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE.”

“These are all reasonable people who are obviously in line with Donald Trump’s view of the world, but have some serious expertise and standing and are very capable,” Eliot Cohen, a foreign policy expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner ahead of the Hegseth announcement. “These are not off-beat or bizarre kinds of appointments, far from it. … Each of those individuals should be able to discharge their duties in a pretty reasonable way.”

Ukraine

While the Trump transition team has not formally announced the president-elect’s intent to nominate Rubio as the secretary of state, his rumored selection, along with Waltz’s, represents both a strong commitment to Trump’s “America First” stance but is also far from the isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

Both have questioned the Biden administration’s strategy toward Ukraine and most recently voted against providing additional aid to Ukraine, though neither Rubio nor Waltz is considered to be among the isolationist part of the party.

Hegseth, for his part, agrees with Trump’s perspective that Europe is relying too heavily on America to defend itself.

“Outdated, outgunned, invaded, and impotent,” Hegseth wrote in his book. “Why should America, the European ’emergency contact number’ for the past century, listen to self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to? Maybe if NATO countries actually ponied up for their own defense — but they don’t. They just yell about the rules while gutting their militaries and yelling at America for help.”

China

Waltz, Rubio, and Hegseth all seemingly believe that China’s continued military expansion poses a significant threat to the U.S. in the long term, and their addition to Trump’s national security team likely indicates that addressing the concern will be a top priority.

Prior to their selections, Waltz co-wrote in the Economist that the U.S. should “urgently” bring the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East to an end so the U.S. can “finally focus strategy attention where it should be: countering the greater the threat from the Chinese Communist Party,” while Hegseth said on a podcast last week that China has “a full spectrum long-term view of not just regional but global domination, and we are we have our heads up our a**es.”

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Similarly, Rubio has called China the “threat that will define this century,” and Beijing has sanctioned him in the past.

Many names have been floated as options for filling the remaining national security vacancies, including those below the secretary level. For one, former Rep. Chris Stewart is being considered for director of national intelligence, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.

Cami Mondeaux contributed to this story.