Lindsey Graham’s death removes one of Washington’s most influential China hawks

The death of US Senator Lindsey Graham has removed one of Washington’s most influential advocates of a hardline approach towards China at a moment when Republicans are debating how aggressively the United States should confront Beijing and project military power overseas.

Attention is now turning to whom South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appoints to fill the vacant Senate seat – and whether Graham’s successor will inherit the late lawmaker’s unusually prominent role as both a congressional China hawk and a close adviser to US President Donald Trump on foreign policy.

Trump has suggested that McMaster appoint Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to fill the seat.

Graham, who served in Congress for more than three decades, first in the House and later in the Senate, died on Saturday night from an aortic dissection – a tear in the body’s main artery – according to a preliminary report from the Washington medical examiner’s office.

While Graham was best known internationally for his outspoken support for Ukraine and Israel, China had increasingly become one of his defining foreign policy concerns in recent years. He repeatedly argued that Beijing posed one of the greatest long-term strategic challenges facing the United States and called for Washington to adopt a more confrontational posture.

“He is one of the heads of the war party in Washington,” said Doug Bandow, a senior fellow for foreign policy at the Cato Institute. “He is an uber hawk, and basically hawkish against most everyone.”