Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' resignation has many in the establishment wing of the GOP worried, but Trump’s base is celebrating the possibility that he could pick a successor more aligned to his non-interventionist foreign policy. There’s no man more qualified or better suited for that job than former Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.

Trump has seemed to turn a page on his presidency, with establishment figures like John Kelly and Mattis no longer in his administration and Republicans in the House headed to the minority. He seems to have begun pivoting towards more of the populism he campaigned on in 2016. He refused to bend on border wall funding the way he’s done in the past and has pushed for more a restrained foreign policy. This is welcome news to his early supporters, but Trump cannot do it alone, he needs to hire a staff that firmly believes in his convictions.

Webb, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former secretary of the Navy, fits that mold, sharing many of Trump’s views on foreign policy. Webb, like Trump, was a critic of neoconservative foreign policy including the Iraq War and he vehemently disagreed with former President Barack Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya and Syria.

“Is there an absolutely vital national interest that should lead us from containment to unilateral war and a long-term occupation of Iraq? And would such a war and its aftermath actually increase our ability to win the war against international terrorism?” Webb wrote in The Washington Post in 2002.

Webb’s argument that America should only go to war when it meets a vital national interest in squarely in line with Trump’s position. Trump’s argument for reducing troops in Afghanistan and pulling out of Syria has been that it’s his priority to focus on America first instead of expensive wars that don’t serve as a vital national interest to the United States.

“I won an election, said to be one of the greatest of all time, based on getting out of endless and costly foreign wars and also based on strong borders which will keep our country safe. We fight for the borders of other countries but won’t fight for the borders of our own!” Trump tweeted on December 22.

Webb’s realistic foreign policy comes from experience. He served the U.S. honorably as a Marine during the Vietnam War and earned the Silver Star, the Navy Cross, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. He even joked during the 2016 Democratic primary that his greatest enemy is the man in Vietnam who threw a grenade at him but is no longer here to talk about it. Still, it says a lot about Webb, he knows about the horrors of war from a soldier’s perspective.

Despite his cautious position on American imperialism, Webb could not be defined as a peacenik. He’s opposed to slashing defense spending and has voiced concerned about America keeping its technological and military advantage in the world.

The former Virginia senator is also in agreement with Trump that China poses an existential threat to the United States as the world’s lone superpower. Trump has been ramping up efforts on China by imposing crippling tariffs and attempting to curb tech exports to the Communist country. During a 2016 Democratic presidential debate, Webb said that America must stand up to China in the South China Sea.

“To the unelected, authoritarian government of China: you do not own the South China Sea. You do not have the right to conduct cyber warfare against tens of millions of American citizens. And in a Webb administration, we will do something about that,” Webb said during the debate.

There’s no more qualified individual who’s more in line with Trump’s foreign policy than the former Virginia senator. If Trump is honest in wanting to shake up his administration and hire a staff that are more in line with his thinking of the world, then he should hire Webb for defense secretary.

Ryan Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer based in New York.