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.
Photo: Reuters
“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.”
Passengers aboard Korean Airlines Flight KE189 arrived in Taichung safely yesterday after a scare the previous day encountering uncontrolled decompression, which injured 13 passengers. Flight KE189 departed from Incheon at 4:45pm on Saturday bound for Taichung with 125 passengers on board. The flight was above Jeju Island when a fault in the pressurization system occurred 50 minutes after takeoff. Online flight tracker Flightradar24’s data show that the plane dropped more than 8,000 meters within 15 minutes, before it returned and landed back at Incheon Airport at 19:38pm. Thirteen passengers on board had a headache or earache due to the incident and were hospitalized. A different
China might seek to isolate Taiwan and weaken its economy through a “quarantine,” which would make it difficult for the US to respond and force Taipei to negotiate on unification, CNN reported on Saturday. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “increasingly bellicose actions” toward Taiwan have heightened concerns that Beijing would use its military against Taiwan, it said, citing a report by think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). However, China might choose to initiate a quarantine, rather than a military invasion of Taiwan, to avoid US involvement, it said. “A quarantine [is] a law enforcement-led operation to control
President William Lai (賴清德) should backpedal from his new “two-state theory” and return to the “one China” principle in line with the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution, to foster and rebuild mutual trust across the Taiwan Strait, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday. Hsiao made the remark after the Chinese government on Friday revealed guidelines saying that its courts, prosecutors, and public and state security bodies should “severely punish Taiwanese independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession crimes by the law, and resolutely defend national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.” The Democratic Progressive Party’s “kneejerk” reaction every
URBAN HEAT: The average temperature in Wanhua District tends to be higher because it is a low-lying area, while Xinyi District is hotter because of overdevelopment, experts say Heat in the nation’s metropolitan areas is becoming increasingly difficult to dissipate due to climate change and increases in areas experiencing urban heat effects, a study conducted by National Cheng Kung University’s Building and Climate Lab (BCLab) showed. The lab used weather data collected on Saturday last week and created a temperature map, which showed high-temperature areas in Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan have expanded and could soon be connected to each other. The phenomenon is similar to a 60km-long corridor near Tokyo experiencing urban heat effects, the study showed. The lab’s temperature map showed that Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), which