Former Ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, delivered a campaign speech in an American Legion hall in New Hampshire last week, warning constituents that the United States must prepare for a war with China.
Haley recapped the size of the Chinese navy, warned of China's advances in artificial intelligence and hypersonic missiles, and worried about the development of "neurostrike" weapons that can scramble the brains of military commanders in the field.
According to Reuters, Haley told the crowd of about 100 people gathered on an icy night in Rochester that China had been preparing for war for years and needed to be treated like an "enemy," not a "competitor," and that the United States was not ready.
"We've barely gotten started," she said.
Trump, who leads Haley in the Republican presidential nomination, has taken an entirely different tactic in New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Tuesday. At rallies across the state, he tells voters that he alone can keep the nation out of "World War Three" and defends his relationships with some of the world's most authoritarian rulers, including China's Xi Jinping.
The Battle For New Hampshire
Per Reuters, with just two candidates left in the Republican race, the New Hampshire vote pits the most hawkish in Haley against the more isolationist Trump, who would rather avoid foreign entanglements in keeping with an "America First" approach. Trump is favored to win the primary, while Haley hopes to draw enough support to argue that she is a viable threat to Trump moving forward. The nominee will face President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in the Nov. 5 general election.
Foreign policy is normally not the main focus in U.S. presidential elections, where domestic concerns are usually at the forefront of voters' minds. But with the war in Ukraine still raging, Israel's war on Gaza, and China taking a more aggressive stance in Asia, these are not normal times.
"The world is on fire," is a line Haley often uses at her events.
According to a Monmouth University/Washington Post poll of potential primary voters released on Monday, Trump is more trusted on foreign policy over Haley by a margin of 57% to 32%.
Jennifer Horn, a former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, said at a roundtable on Monday that Haley's approach might appeal to centrists and moderates but that the bulk of the party under Trump has become isolationist."I don't think it's won her any votes," Horn said. "It's like Nikki Haley is the old Republican Party and Donald Trump is the current Republican Party."
However, The National reported that Trump has also bragged about deliberately marring Haley's birth name as part of an effort to suggest there was something foreign about his last viable Republican opponent. Talking about Haley -- who was born in South Carolina, Trump speculated about "wherever she may come from." Late last week, he even reposted a false charge that she was ineligible to serve as president because her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth.
Haley equated the crude attempts to portray her as a foreigner as nothing more than a "temper tantrum," and called Trump "insecure" before she concluded, "I don't sit there and worry about whether it's personal or what he means."
