‘Terrifying’: Trump’s Cabinet picks trigger unease in Europe

BRUSSELS — At first, European diplomats even felt some relief about the shape of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s new Cabinet when he chose Florida Republican Marco Rubio to be America’s top diplomat.
It didn’t last.
Trump’s subsequent choices — the barely known Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence — have heightened fears that Europe may need to prepare for the worst, and be ready to step up without its traditional NATO ally in a world riven by strategic flashpoints.
Gabbard, a former congresswoman who is known for amplifying conspiracy theories, meeting with Syrian leader Bashar Assad and embracing Russian President Vladimir Putin, was viewed as a particularly stunning choice.
“This is really terrifying,” Nathalie Loiseau, former French Europe minister under President Emmanuel Macron and now a European lawmaker in his Renew Europe group, posted on X.
“The time of European restraint and the hope that the USA would protect us is over,” said Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the German who heads the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defence.
Marek Magierowski, the former Polish ambassador in Washington, was cutting about Gabbard and her past “pro-Russian” comments. Three days after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, she called on the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. to “embrace the spirit of aloha” and agree on Ukraine’s becoming a neutral country.
“As she becomes the head of the entire U.S. intelligence community, this is a very disturbing signal for sure,” he said on Polish television.
When Rubio’s name first emerged as Trump’s secretary of state pick at the beginning of the week, the initial reaction was cautiously optimistic, with diplomats, experts and officials in Europe, the U.K. and Israel noting he was an experienced foreign policy hand who backed NATO, was tough on Iran and wanted to defend Taiwan against any Chinese invasion. 
Mike Waltz, the former Green Beret chosen as national security adviser, was also seen a safe choice. Foreign policy analyst Ulrich Speck defined the initial reaction as a “big relief.”
A European diplomat in Washington who, like others quoted in this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely, said: “They are a bit less awful than others.”
But after Gabbard and Hegseth were named, there is much more confusion.
“I’m not sure whether it’s really possible to make any sensible predictions about the direction of this administration based on the staff picks,” said another European diplomat.
The big question is what the nominations say about Trump’s approach to power and if anyone can be a restraining influence. “What’s clear is that there is not going to be any counterweight to Trump,” said the first European diplomat. “They owe him everything.”
EU officials and diplomats noted Trump had a habit of sidelining Cabinet officials and even U.S. intelligence agencies in pursuit of direct arrangements with autocrats like Putin or China’s Xi Jinping, and were skeptical that anyone could truly temper his instincts.
Rubio and Waltz have considerably altered their lines on Ukraine in recent months to be closer to Trump’s calls for a peace deal, with the Florida senator voting against a major aid package for Kyiv earlier this year, they pointed out. 
Given the risk of Trump’s bulldozing foreign policy, a third EU diplomat said the bloc had to get ready to carry more of the weight on Ukraine.
“We know from the first iteration of Trump’s presidency how unpredictable policies might be,” the diplomat said. “Even if these two gentlemen [Rubio and Waltz] were to take a more moderate approach to Ukraine, that does not relieve the EU of the duty of preparing to do more.”
In Kyiv, officials were leery of making any comment for fear of angering Trump.
One intelligence official, who spoke on condition of being granted anonymity, tried to put a positive spin on Gabbard, saying that her job will be “just preparing information for the White House” and will not involve actual policy.
They also tried to downplay her previous pro-Kremlin comments. “All I can say [is] that a person who makes statements that are not pro-Ukraine is not always working for Russian money. He or she just can have [a] different view on things.”
Of Trump’s choices for foreign policy and security roles, Rubio is by far the best-known among Washington’s allies, having visited Europe twice in the past five years — once in 2017 to Germany and France and again in 2020 to the Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
Tom Tugendhat, a conservative U.K. lawmaker and former minister who said he’d known Rubio for a decade, praised him as a “serious figure” who has been a “clear voice” on topics such as China. Indeed, the two men share a hawkish stance toward Beijing, which has sanctioned Tugendhat.
“He is someone who has for a very long time invested in many relationships around the world and who has demonstrated himself to be a serious player,” Tugendhat said, adding that Waltz was also a “serious person.”
Pavel Fischer, a Czech senator who knows Rubio via their joint work for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), called Rubio an “important leader” who had rallied lawmakers around the world to focus on China. 
Rubio’s hawkishness on China made him a “good fit” for Trump, who had pushed European allies to take action against Chinese tech firms Huawei and ZTE during his first term, Fischer said.
Analysts echoed the view that Rubio and Waltz would ramp up pressure on Europe to bolster defense spending, but would ultimately maintain Washington’s prior commitments toward Ukraine and Taiwan. 
Rubio has been careful to downplay Trump’s anti-NATO comments. Asked earlier about Trump’s suggestion that he would “encourage” Russia to attack any NATO member country that didn’t meet its alliance financial obligations, Rubio downplayed the statement. “That’s not what happened, and that’s not how I view that statement,” he told CNN in February.
Speck said Rubio was unlikely to back a deal that would allow Putin to declare victory over Kyiv. “With regard to Ukraine, there is now some hope that the U.S. will not simply abandon Ukraine but engage in a serious process that doesn’t give Russia a victory one way or another,” he added.
The fact that Waltz pledged after his appointment, in a post on X, that “America will keep its allies close” and “not be afraid to confront our adversaries” was also taken as a positive sign.
There is much less optimism regarding Gabbard.
“This is seriously big and bad,” François Heisbourg, senior adviser for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, posted on X. “I hope the Senate will block her confirmation — but I don’t expect that to happen.”
Even on the earlier appointees, Heisbourg added: “The question is not so much ‘Can they rein in Trump?’ as ‘Will they want to?’ They are on board for the ride.”
Officials like Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who served as secretary of defense for two years during Trump’s first term, were also seen as restraining forces or “adults in the room” upon their appointment — only to be fired after disagreeing with the president.
John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, warned in October that the president-elect’s foreign policy stance was likely to be far more radical during his second term than the first, saying: “The odds that he will withdraw from NATO are very high.”
“We’re in for a very, very rough few years in transatlantic relations,” Heisbourg added.
Jamie Dettmer, Jacopo Barigazzi, Veronika Melkozerova, Julius Brinkmann and Nahal Toosi contributed reporting.