President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Mike Waltz as his White House national security adviser, and observers say the selection is fairly conventional.
The national security adviser is a powerful role in the White House, briefing the president on pressing national security issues and co-ordinating with different federal agencies, and it does not require Senate confirmation.
"Mike has been a strong champion of my America First foreign policy agenda, and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of peace through strength," Mr Trump said when he made the announcement in November.
Mr Waltz, a colonel in the National Guard and a three-term Republican congressman from Florida, is long-time Trump loyalist who supported the president-elect's claims that the 2020 election was rigged. He is a China hawk and has been a vocal critic of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was the first Green Beret to be elected to Congress, after several combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, according to his biography.
Mr Waltz worked as an adviser to defence secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, and he advised former vice president Dick Cheney on counter-terrorism.
"He's pretty conventional, I think, in his views," said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. "And like his successor during Trump's first term, the question remains: will he last?"
The first Trump White House saw four national security advisers over the course of as many years. Mr Trump often clashed with his national security advisers, firing two of them over social media. His first pick, Michael Flynn, resigned only weeks into the job amid revelations he had lied to then-vice president Mike Pence about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US.
This time, observers say, Mr Trump has given priority to loyalty in his choices of people being hired to key positions.
"He's essentially assembled a team of loyalists and implementers," Mr Katulis told The National. "Many of these picks are shape shifters, they basically mold themselves to what the boss wants, and I think he's trending in that direction."
Mr Waltz has credited the reaching of the ceasefire and hostage release agreement to the "Trump effect" and has said that the US would continue to support Israel.
"I want the people of Israel to be very clear and to hear me loud and clear: you're dealing with President Trump … who fully supports Israel," he told Fox News on Thursday. "No one has done more for Israel than President Trump. We will have their back to make sure Hamas never exists as a terrorist state and certainly does not govern Gaza."