If former US president Donald Trump returns to the White House, he should sever all economic ties with China, consider deploying the entire US Marine Corps to Asia and resume live nuclear-weapons testing, his former national security adviser wrote in an article offering the most detailed account of what foreign policy might look like in a second Trump term.
The proposals are spelled out in an article that appeared in Foreign Affairs magazine yesterday, written by Trump’s last national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, who might get another top job if Trump wins a new term as president in November.
While O’Brien helped fuel the tougher stance toward China that emerged late in Trump’s time in office, the prescriptions he spells out go far beyond anything he publicly advocated at the time.
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“As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength, Washington should return the favor,” O’Brien writes in the article’s most explosive policy prescription, saying that “Washington should, in fact, seek to decouple its economy from China’s.”
There is no guarantee Trump would adhere to the policy proposals on China that O’Brien lays out in the article, especially one that would have such a seismic impact for the US and the world given how interwoven the two countries’ economies have become.
However, O’Brien said recently that he remains in “regular contact” with the former president, and he has taken the public stage more often in recent months, meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and criticizing US President Joe Biden for what he considered an insufficient response to attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria.
The article is only the latest in a series of such initiatives from former Trump administration officials and conservative think tanks, but O’Brien’s previous role and the prospect of his return give it more weight than others.
Christian Whiton, a US Department of State political appointee under former US presidents George W Bush and Trump who helped O’Brien produce the article, said that O’Brien gave a copy to Trump campaign adviser Susie Wiles.
Whiton said Wiles showed a printed copy to Trump.
However, Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign representative, disputed that account, saying it was not true that Wiles had shown the article to the former president.
“Let us be very specific here: Unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official,” Wiles and Chris LaCivita, a campaign senior adviser, said in a statement that Leavitt provided on Monday evening.
At more than 5,000 words, the article — “The Return of Peace Through Strength: Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy” — said that the 60 percent tariffs on China that Trump has floated should be only the first step, followed by tougher export controls “on any technology that might be of use to China” and other measures.
“This morass of American weakness and failure cries out for a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength,” O’Brien wrote.
He also advocates a military challenge to China beyond the additional attention the Biden administration has paid to the Asia-Pacific region.
O’Brien argued for the US to help expand the militaries of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, increase military assistance to Taiwan, and boost missile defense and fighter jet protection in the region.
O’Brien, who cofounded a consulting firm after leaving the White House, called for a complete reorientation of US forces, saying the US should consider deploying all its 177,000 Marines to the Pacific region, “relieving it in particular of missions in the Middle East and North Africa.”
The US should strengthen its nuclear arsenal by conducting underground nuclear tests for the first time since a self-imposed ban in 1992, he said, adding that the US should resume production of uranium-235 and plutonium-239 “if China and Russia continue to refuse to engage in good-faith arms control talks.”
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