Marco And Mike Are Good News For India

'Communist China continues to aggressively expand its domain in the Indo-Pacific region.'
'It's crucial for the USA to continue its support in countering these malicious tactics.'
'India, along with other nations in the region, is not alone.'

President-elect Donald J Trump's expected pick for US secretary of state is Marco Rubio and for national security advisor is Mike Waltz.

The good news for India is: Both are China hawks.

Here's a quick guide to who these two men are:

Miami-born Marco Antonio Rubio, 53, of Cuban extraction -- his dad was a barkeeper and his mom worked in hotel housekeeping -- became, in January 2019, Florida's senior senator, after defeating Senator Bill Nelson and is now running his third term in the United States Senate.

He and Trump go back quite a few years.

What began as a rivalry when Rubio made a bid for the presidency in 2015 and lost out to Trump, who defeated him in the Florida Republican primary the following year, bloomed into a friendship and support.

The New York Times called Rubio 'virtual secretary of state for Latin America' for the advice he offered Trump in his first term on strategy in those parts.

Rubio went to college on a football scholarship but attended law school graduating as juris doctor cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law.

Rubio was accused by The Washington Post of misrepresenting his family's migration tale from Cuba when he said they left Cuba to escape Communism, although they had departed before Fidel Castro came to power.

He said in clarification that his family had returned to Cuba in the interim and then came back to America.

His maternal grandfather arrived in the US without legal papers and narrowly escaped being deported.

Rubio gained his first political spurs when he was hired out of law school at a chance meeting with a campaign recruiter in a Miami coffee shop to work on Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.

His charm, ambition, good looks, enormous drive helped him make a dazzling rise in Florida politics, that began with that initial foray in politics, where he made connections that would eventually land him, at age 27, the office of West Miami city commissioner.

He made history later when he became the first Cuban-American speaker of the Florida House which led a top Florida democratic senator to comment: 'It's no secret that Marco wants to be the first Cuban-American president. He's smart, he's ambitious, and, candidly, I wouldn't want to be the guy that gets in his way. Because you'll regret it'.

Rubio, whose favourite films are Wedding Crashers, Pulp Fiction and The Godfather, is married to Jeanette Dousdebes, a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader and bank teller, of Colombian heritage, who he met at a party when she was 17 and he 19. She runs a Bible class from their home.

Rubio, wary of China, is therefore sweet on India and put forth the US-India Defense Cooperation Act (external link) in the US House of Representatives suggesting that India be treated as an ally on the level of Japan, Israel, NATO and South Korea, saying that 'Communist China continues to aggressively expand its domain in the Indo-Pacific region, all while it seeks to impede the sovereignty and autonomy of our regional partners.

'It's crucial for the USA to continue its support in countering these malicious tactics.

'India, along with other nations in the region, is not alone'.

He also suggested several ways to contain Pakistan in the same proposal.

Michael George Glen Waltz, 50, a former Pentagon strategist, is also from Florida, from Boynton Beach near Trump's Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach territory.

He has an army background (the son and grandson of US navy chiefs), studying at the Virginia Military Institute and put in many years of sterling service -- he's decorated with four Bronze Stars and is a colonel by rank -- as a Special Forces officer in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan.

Waltz worked under both secretaries of defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates at the Pentagon in the George W Bush administration, and in the White House as Dick Cheney's counterterrorism advisor, and balanced both his military and political career till he retired from the military during his second term in Congress.

He representS Florida's 6th Congressional District since 2018.

He has said before 'People ask what I do for a living and I tell them I'm a juggler.

'In the foxhole, nobody cares about party, race or religion (and the more legislators with similar thinking) the better the country will be'.

He expanded his career options, when he wrote Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret's Battles from Washington to Afghanistan.

He has been a Fox News commentator and ran a small business too, ananalytics and training company.

Good for India, he's another feisty China critic, member of the House China Task Force and is considered one of the most hawkish Congress members with respect to China, especially when he declared: 'We are, I believe, in a cold war with the Chinese Community Party. They are certainly in one with us'.

A critic of the way the Harris-Biden administration has managed the investigation of the Trump assassination attempts, Waltz said, 'They're trying to kill him. And we know from the intelligence community Iran doesn't want Trump back'.

When he becomes Trump's national security adviser, warrior-diplomat Waltz is likely to be handling the Ukraine-Russia war and Israel's battle with Hamas and Hezbollah.

His Jordanian-Christian army veteran wife, Dr Julia Nesheiwat, was the homeland security advisor for Trump and also worked for the Bush and Obama administrations.

Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com