U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to serve as director of the CIA, the former president said in a statement Tuesday.

Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist whose lack of national security credentials raised eyebrows at the time, served as the country’s spy chief for eight months until Trump’s term ended.

"He will be a fearless fighter for the Constitutional Rights of all Americans, while ensuring the Highest Levels of National Security, and PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH," Trump said in a statement.

A former congressman from Texas prior to serving as spy chief, Ratcliffe was accused by Democrats and former intelligence officials of declassifying intelligence to help Trump politically in the runup to the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

His nomination follows the confirmed pick of Rep. Mike Waltz to be national security adviser and the expected selection of Sen. Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state. All three picks will likely see the second Trump White House get even more hawkish on China, which would prove reassuring for American allies such as Japan.

Ratcliffe has said that China “poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.”

“The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in December 2020.

On Japan, Ratcliffe lauded the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for his early moves to confront growing Chinese assertiveness in the region.

“Abe was probably the first China hawk,” he told Fox News in July 2022. “Shinzo Abe was saying before it was popular that China was not who they were pretending to be, and left unchecked they wouldn’t stop just at Taiwan, but they would threaten Japan.”

China claims Taiwan as a renegade province that must be brought back into the fold, by force if necessary.

Fearing the possibility of any invasion erupting into a full-scale conflict involving Japan’s ally, the U.S., senior Japanese government officials have repeatedly said that a war over Taiwan would also represent an existential crisis for their country.