The Varied Career (But Unvarying Principles) Of Robert O’Brien

>> Andrew Roberts: Robert O’Brien, you were the 27th National Security Adviser, serving between 2019 to 21. I've just noticed that you are also the fifth national security adviser to come on this show. I wonder if you could justify the role of national security adviser. We didn't have one in Britain for a long time.

We assumed that the role could be done by the chief of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the foreign secretary and the defense secretary all sort of coming together. Is there really a role for somebody who is going to be an extra voice in the president's ear?

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, I think the idea of the national security advisor in the United States, and it's a role that's developed over the years since the National Security Act of 1948, I believe.

Where the national security advisor was not actually set forth by statute, but developed out of that regime, is to serve as a principal foreign policy advisor and national security adviser to the president. And you're not aligned, you don't have line authority as national security advisor, you don't have a cabinet department, you don't have line authority over the military or the intelligence community.

But what you do have is you have convening authority. You can use the power of the presidency in the White House to bring together the principal advisors of the president from the cabinet departments and the agencies, pull them together. And the idea is to get the best advice and counsel from them and synthesize it and get it to the president of the United States.

If you can develop through a series of committee meetings and a process that starts at like an assistant secretary level of convening the agencies together. The IC, the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, the Defense Department, the State Department, all the agencies that would be involved in a national security issue.

You start at the assistant secretary level at the policy coordination committee meeting, move it up to a deputy's committee meeting and then get to a principal's committee meeting where you actually convene the cabinet secretaries in the situation room. And try and figure out how the US is gonna respond to either a potential crisis or a current crisis or a long-term challenge or threat.

And of course, that's one of the roles of the national security advisor, is to make sure that the urgent and the things that are happening today don't distract us from what we need to be looking at 5, 10, 20 years down the road as a country. And you have to balance out the crisis de jure with our long-term interests and the policies that we need to put in place to secure America's safety and freedom and our way of life over the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years.

And so there's that tension and there's a tension between the different departments and the different advice that these leaders wanna give the president and trying to come to a consensus. And if you can't get a consensus, bringing those different views to the president and letting him make, as the elected leader of the free world, the elected leader of the country, of America.

Is to get the president to make a decision on a particular policy issue and then make sure it's implemented. So it's really a convening authority as national security advisor to try and pull together all the different agencies that are relevant to a specific issue and then make sure the president gets the best options and counseled advice he can.

And I think the best way to do that is to be the honest broker, not to wear your policy preferences on your sleeve. And we all come to the job with our policy preferences and our own ideas about various issues. But I think the best practice is to let the cabinet secretaries and department heads come to the president with their various views and let him make a decision.

And then you're there to be at his sounding board and to give him advice, hopefully in private, and be the last person he talks to to help him make the decisions he's gotta make or she's gotta make. Eventually we'll have a she, we're a little bit behind the UK on that front, Andrew, we don't any female president yet, but I assume that's coming in the not-too-distant future.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, I think you've justified your role and your presence on this show very well in that case. Born in Los Angeles, you have a BA in political science from UCLA. Then you went on to the School of Law at Berkeley, Berkeley, as you pronounce it. History is obviously very important, both with politics and with law.

Who taught you history?

>> Robert O’Brien: So I had a couple of great history professors and political science professors, Leo Snowis at UCLA and Hugh Midgley at a semester that ended up at BYU, although he was a political scientist. But look, I was probably a little deficient on my history courses, although I took all the relevant classes you needed to.

So I tried to supplement it with my own reading. So if you look at the people that taught me, it would be Gibbons and decline and fall, and McCauley with the history of the UK, some of the top writers in the US. McCallum and Meacham and our historians, and a guy named Andrew Roberts, who wrote a couple of terrific biographies on Churchill and Napoleon, among others.

Max Hastings, of course, on military history. So I had great faculties in political science and history at both the UCLA and professors of law who were informed by history at Berkeley. But I tried to supplement it with a lot of reading on my own.

>> Andrew Roberts: And I happen to know, thank you for mentioning Churchill, that you have a pretty impressive Churchill collection of his first editions and various other artifacts.

And tell us a little bit about your Churchill mania, because you obviously share it with me.

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, look, I mean, I grew up in kind of the shadow of World War II with grandparents and parents who were born in that period. And of course, we had the great leaders, we had Churchill and Eisenhower and Roosevelt.

And Churchill just had such a special place for Americans, we claim him as half-ours through his mom. And he made that great aside when he addressed Congress for the first time in 41, where he said, if his father had been American and his mother had been British, maybe he would have gotten there on his own, which is a terrific icebreaker for the speech.

But look, he stood up against fascism, and before that, fascism and communism and imperial Japan, and was literally on his own and had very few resources for a period of time, and rallied the free world, deployed the English language as its primary weapon. And kept a commonwealth and an empire together to go up against some of the darkest but most advanced military machine in history.

And he prevailed and bought time for America to figure out what it needed to do. And we got in the war and ultimately prevailed. But for a year or two, Churchill was standing up for all the things we believe in, freedom, liberty, and our way of life against the monsters in Berlin.

And that's something that it's a debt of gratitude the world should owe Churchill, but also the British people, for being so stalwart at a period of time when it would have been very easy to cut a separate piece and try and preserve what they could Good instead they, fought the Nazis and prevailed and, then Churchill was obviously very prescient with the Cold War.

Seeing the dangers of soviet communism and standing up with his great speech in Missouri and in Fulton. And just along with, from an American point of view George Washington and, Lincoln and Churchill is one of the three or four people that preserve liberty and our way of life that interested me.

And, of course, going to the London and visiting Chartwell and Blenheim and the cabinet war rooms, it's hard not to get a little enthusiastic about Sir Winston.

>> Andrew Roberts: You've had an immensely varied career, haven't you? At the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva, you were a major on the judge advocate general's corps.

You were a US representative at the United Nations General assembly. Then between 2018 and 19, you were special presidential envoy for hostage affairs with the rank of ambassador. These seem to be very disparate, did you have a particular career path and you fitted all these in, or did you just go from to extraordinary job?

 

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, I talk to a lot of young people, Andrew, you do, and they'll ask, how do you become national security advisor? And, there's no real career path to it, I don't think, at least there wasn't in my case. The predominant thing I've done in my life is I've been a lawyer, I've been a litigator in courts in California and international arbitration tribunals around the world.

And I've had to earn a living for my family, but I've always had an interest in foreign policy and national security. And I've had the opportunity and been called upon, from time to time by different administrations to come in and help, and it's been varied but I think the.

The diversity of the experience that I've had whether it was in Geneva, which was a great commission, deciding claims in more of a legal position deciding claims against Iraq. Rising out of Gulf one, learning the Middle east from that perspective, spending time in Afghanistan as the co chair of the State Department rule of law program.

There for several years under both, the Bush and Obama administrations, the Cultural Property Advisory Committee. Dealing with memorandums of understanding between the US and partner nations around the world to stop the trafficking of antiquities. So it's been relatively varied obviously, the UN, you touch on every issue that the face is a world so, you're really a generalist in that context.

But probably the most meaningful job I've had just from, helping people, was working as a hostage envoy, and that was not a planned position was supported. I feel that's how I became the hostage envoy was because I was on losing presidential campaigns. And so I'd done a number of campaigns, two for Governor Romney and one for Scott, Governor Walker.

And I'd supported President Trump in the general election, but wasn't part of his campaign. And I got a call about, six months into the administration, they said, look, we've got a position that needs to be filled, we think a lawyer would do a good job for it. That's President Trump's committed to bringing Americans home who are held abroad either wrongfully detained, by foreign governments.

So held hostage by terrorist organizations, is that something you'd wanna do? And, I thought about it and talked to my wife about it, I knew it would cut into my law practice. I just started a new firm, left a big national firm, and started kind of a local Los Angeles litigation boutique with a partner who was a former federal judge.

And so it wasn't convenient timing but, we thought about the folks who were overseas and in dungeons and jail, and I thought, let's give it a year and see if I can have any success at it. And fortunately, with Secretary Pompeo's backing and President Trump's backing, we got a lot of Americans home.

And, that's how I developed a relationship with the president and deepened my relationship with Secretary Pompeo, who I'd known when he was a congressman. And one thing led to another, I became national security advisor but, doing the job of the hostage envoy, working with the families of Americans who were held abroad.

Having to deliver tough news to them in some circumstances when their loved one didn't make it home, and. But also being, sharing the joy of the, reunion when someone did get home was a very, very special year and a half for me. And we got a lot of folks home, but I don't focus on that, I focus on the people that we didn't get home and, some of them are still out there.

And so I always ask Americans to pray for those who are still held abroad, I need to get home.

>> Andrew Roberts: You mentioned prayer, you were brought up as a Roman Catholic and later became a Mormon, Tell us about that.

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, it's one of those personal things, but it's, as with all religious matters, I've got great respect and love for the Catholic Church.

I went to Catholic boys school and, my family's primarily Catholic, but I had friends and colleagues who were Latter day Saints. I spent some time at BYU as an undergraduate, trying to investigate the church and developed a testimony that it was the restored gospel. And so I joined the eldest church it was, but, it's one of those things where I see a lot of continuity in Christian religions.

Whether it's Anglican and your home country or Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter day Saints. We've got to have those Judaism, Christian traditions and values that inform our worldview. And I think the power of prayer is a blessing that we have in our lives, that whether you're Catholic or Anglican or Jewish or Muslim.

Whatever your religion, those values that we learn can inform our public life, not because you're advocating for a certain religion or sector or outcome. But you're ennobled as a person and hopefully do a better job as a government official because you're informed by your faith.

>> Andrew Roberts: When you meet world leaders that you've met, like Narendra Modi and Erdogan of Turkey.

People who at least recently don't seem to have been showing as much appreciation for religious tolerance and religious freedom. Does the fact that you do have a strong personal faith affect your views about people like that or not?

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, look, I had good relations with both President Erdogan and Prime Minister Modi and, they always treated me with a lot of respect, and I tried to return that attitude.

I mean, when you're doing diplomacy, sometimes, Andrews, there's an old saying, that the art of diplomacy is saying that the nastiest possible things in the nicest possible way.

>> Robert O’Brien: And I always tried to try to do that, sometimes we had to get a little tough with our partners, and Turkey's a NATO ally.

We certainly don't want to lose Turkey but, my first interaction with the Turks was as the hostage envoy, which was a little different than my kind of a broader portfolio as national security advisor. And we were trying to get an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, who was a wrongful detainee in Turkey home.

And he was detained basically for religious reasons and political reasons to get leverage over us, to let someone who was being in exile here in America to return him to Turkey. And that wasn't gonna happen, and we needed to get Pastor Brunson home so. So we had pretty tough conversations with our Turkish colleagues, but at the same time, we tried to keep in mind that there were NATO allies and that geopolitically, Turkey occupies a pretty important space in the globe.

And we certainly didn't want to, quote, lose Turkey. As national security advisor, we had a number of tough calls with the Turks, but I always try to deal with them on the basis of respect and the fact that Erdogan was the elected leader of Turkey. We believe in democracy, and the Turks picked Erdogan in relatively free and fair elections.

And a lot of people nowadays like to say, well, a country's autocratic if they elect a leader that a certain political group here doesn't like or likes. And Erdogan obviously had some issues with religious freedom, and there were a lot of complaints about that. But at the same time, I thought keeping an open channel of communications with him and his national security advisor was the best way to resolve those and to try and protect the religious minorities that are in Turkey.

And give them some space to practice their religion and worship according to their faith. And I think we were relatively successful during our time in office, but it was a challenge. But personally, I got along quite well with President Erdogan, and I think that allowed us to have some of the tougher conversations that we needed to have and reach some outcomes, whether it was Syria or Libya or the Gulf rift.

Or some of the issues that were taking place with the Europeans and refugees, had a good relationship with him. I think Modi is really an incredible leader. And obviously, there are concerns about Hindu nationalism and the rights of minorities, but they're also under attack from Islamic extremists in India, and they've had their own 911 in the capital.

And so you have to take those things into account. But again, Modi was overwhelmingly elected several times as a prime minister, and he stood up to China. He's rebuilding India's defenses. He's turning India into a modern country. So there's good and bad with some of these leaders, but for the most part, we had good relations with both those gentlemen.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: You mentioned Muslim fundamentalism only four months or so after you were appointed to the national security advisor positioned by President Trump in January of 2020. So, four months after you were appointed, you were amongst those taking the decision to kill Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds force, which was done by drone.

Tell us about that. That must have been a fascinating period.

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, look, I'll talk about in generalities. It's not something I talk about specifically because I've been targeted as of other leaders in the country by the Iranians. I mean, the general principle is that if there was gonna be an attack on a US embassy or US facilities by our adversaries, we weren't going to put up with another Benghazi in the Trump administration.

And so we took the measures necessary throughout the Trump administration to protect Americans and protect our partners and allies from a malign activity. And so the operation you discussed fell into that category. But whether it was Baghdadi or others, the leader of ISIS or other actors that were seeking to do harm to America and seeking to kill Americans, we were going to take actions to protect the United States of America and our citizens and our partners and their citizens as well.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Do you have hopes that the Abraham Accords, which I think are quite widely seen as the greatest foreign policy achievement of the Trump presidency, do you feel that they might be extended further? They were pretty extraordinary, jaw dropping diplomatic breakthrough, as they were. But do you think they're something that can be built on beyond the Accords themselves?

 

>> Robert O’Brien: So I hope so, Andrew. It was really a spectacular moment, world history and middle eastern history, that we had our Israeli Jewish friends coming together with our Arab colleagues and friends and making peace. And up until the time of the Abraham Accords, there had only been two peace deals with Israel and their neighbors.

One was with Egypt and one was with Jordan. The Camp David Accords and then the Jordan Accords. And those weren't the warm pieces. They were kind of cold pieces. They were security arrangements with border countries and the breakthrough with the Bahrain and the UAE, and then ultimately Sudan and Morocco and even Kosovo, which, granted, is a European country, but with a Muslim majority.

All coming together under the rubric of the Abraham Accords to have what I call a warm peace, because the people realize that each of their countries would be better off if they had commerce and tourism and religious pilgrimages available. That we had Moroccan Jews who were able to go back and visit their grandparents and great grandparents cemeteries.

And at the same time, we were able to have Arabs from the Gulf visit the Al Aqsa mosque and visit the third most important site for, or fourth most important site, depending on who you're talking to in the Muslim world. And in Jerusalem, and go up to the Temple mountain and see those important mosques and make pilgrimages there.

Those are unique opportunities. And every time I go on a, someone will show me an Instagram or a tweet or something from a bar mitzvah, a bat mitzvah that's taking place in Dubai. It's hard to believe that there's a big industry of bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs in Dubai now.

And I think it's wonderful to see. I think, look, there's obviously a strategic reason for the Abraham Accords, the country strengthening themselves against Iran and Iran's malign activity. There's an economic component with the great banking center and wealth that's generated in the Gulf states and the tremendous innovation and tech boom, that's taking place in Israel.

And how those, the capital markets in the Gulf coming together with the entrepreneurs in Israel to progress and make tremendous modern advances that help all of our daily lives, whether even if you're not in Israel. Every computer we're using has some tech that's come out of Tel Aviv.

I mean, it's probably second to Silicon Valley as an innovation center. Those things are important. But there's an importance to peace itself, of human beings getting along. And it's not just the absence of war, but it's promoting humanity, promoting these pilgrimages, bringing people together. And I think that's maybe everyone focuses on the economics and the strategic, but I think there's an intangible that just comes from peace itself that is important to us as humans.

And so I was honored to be a part of those negotiations and the signing. And I had a chance to fly with Jared Kushner, who worked with me closely on the Accords. And we took the first commercial flight on Ll from Ben Gurion airport to Abu Dhabi International airport.

And we were joined by our Israeli colleagues. Meir Ben-Shabbat, the national security advisor of Israel, led his delegation. And we landed and the red carpet was rolled out in Abu Dhabi, and sheikhs and princes were in their bobs and dishtashes, all white and amassed there to greet us.

And my good friend John Rakulta, the ambassador to, To the UAE from the US was at the foot of the plane, and so to be able to walk down and see that coming together between Israel and the UAE as a result of the Accords on that first commercial flight.

Which symbolized the Accords taking shape, was a special opportunity for me and something I won't forget.

>> Andrew Roberts: What if you were national security advisor? Let me start that again. You were national security advisor less than four years ago, if you were national security adviser today, what would be keeping you awake at night?

What would your top three priorities be when it comes to threats to the United States?

>> Robert O’Brien: I can tell people before I was a national security advisor, I was much more intelligent on national security affairs, and after I left office, I regained all that knowledge.

>> Robert O’Brien: When you're in the thick of it, muddling through, you're humbled by both the information you're receiving and the challenges you're facing and trying to keep your country and our allies safe.

But when it comes to your question not to step on Jake Sullivan, the current national security advisor, and his views, but I think he would share them. The answer is China, China, China, one, two and three. China is an existential threat to our way of life, to our liberty.

The communist and I wanna differentiate between the Chinese people, who are amazing, and we've got terrific Chinese-American immigrants here. They're innovative, they're ingenious, they work hard, they contribute to the fabric of American life, maybe other than us Irish, they're the great immigrant success story in America.

>> Andrew Roberts: I don't think Anglos have done too badly in America.

 

>> Robert O’Brien: Our Brits and Israeli friends and Latins and Italians, that's the great blessing of America, is we can all argue who's the best immigrant group here, but Chinese-Americans have done a lot for the country. And so I wanna differentiate between the communist party, which is really a malign group of thugs, and the Chinese people, who are hardworking and clever and have a long history and traditions of civilization that stretch back 5,000 years, a lot longer than America.

But the Chinese Communist Party is a real cancer, and they're holding their own people down, they're committing genocide in Xinjiang with the Uyghurs. They've extinguished democracy in Hong Kong in violation of the Sino British declaration, which has the effect of a treaty and was lodged at the UN and was totally ignored and ripped up.

Tibet has been taken, and the people of Tibet are suffering at least a cultural genocide. And talk about lack of religious freedom with what's happened with Buddhists in Tibet is a terrible thing. We've got them threatening Taiwan, which is a wonderful democratic country, off their shore, and shows that the Chinese people can engage in democracy and have a capitalist democratic system and freedom and liberty, the same as the British and American people.

But that's the threat to the plotline of the Communist Party of China, who claim it. Chinese people need to be governed by the center, by a strong hand and a whip hand, and can't be trusted to govern themselves, and Taiwan gives lie to that myth. We've seen what they attack the Indians on the line of actual control and being quite brutal in their combat with the Indians as they attempt to take rest land away from India.

So we've got a very dangerous country and led by a communist party that the west has to rally and understand that this is a threat not just the way of life to the Chinese people who are under the boot of the communists. But it's a threat to our very existence and how we want to live our lives.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, I'd like to drill down on several of those, as I imagine you'd expect. Let's start with your mention of Hong Kong and the human rights abuses there. You, when you were national security advisers, tried to do something about that, didn't you? You essentially threatened that there'd be sanctions if they continued to behave in the way that they were threatening, tell us about that.

 

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, I never talk about conversations I had with the president, but that was an action that we took, that the president took. And we saw how democracy was being extinguished and how the Sino British declaration was being torn up by the Chinese. And Hong Kong is a great city, I've been there both pre and post, both under British rule and after British rule.

I'm not welcome back there anymore, I was one of the officials who was sanctioned by the Chinese when we left office, so I can't go back to Hong Kong.

>> Andrew Roberts: That's a badge of honor.

>> Robert O’Brien: Or Beijing at this point. But the people of Hong Kong are great, Hong Kong is an amazing city, as you know.

And we saw Hong Kong being destroyed, and we saw the democracy protesters, the students being abused and beat up and bullied, and we intended to do something about it. So I remember we briefed the president, and the president said, let's go out to the Rose garden. And we literally walked out to the Rose garden.

And the President, we drafted a statement, and the President gave a statement, and we were, I think, the first western government to actually sanction a Hong Kong official. For the actions that they were undertaking to defeat their own and defeat their democracy and subjugate their own people. And I'm proud of that, but obviously, there's limited action, we could take a.

But I think we went as far as we could at the time dealing with the Chinese and sending a message to the communists. But unfortunately, the subjugation of Hong Kong continues, and we weren't able to stop it.

>> Andrew Roberts: Looking at the recent news coming out of China, I'd like you to say what you think about these various news stories, such as that the Chinese have bought 50,000 suicide drones from Iran.

They only last weekend used water cannon against a couple of Filipino ships in the South China Sea. There's a spy facility being set up on China, sorry, on Cuba, by the Chinese. What are these kind of data points tell you about Xi the Wolf warrior?

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, what do you say with the Chinese, and, look, you've got to take them very seriously and very credibly, I tell people America has never faced a test like we, I've seen with the Chinese.

And you make that point, which is with that partial list of malign activity that they're involved in. The Chinese are relentless, they operate across every sector in every region of the world, across every technology sector, they engage in political warfare. They engage in gray zone activities, as they do in the South China Sea with the Philippines and other countries that are attempting to assert their rights.

But it fundamentally comes down to the idea that the Chinese believe, along with the Russians and the Iranians. And there's kind of an unholy alliance between the three of them because they all have divergent interest fundamentally. But the one thing they all agree on is that they wanna replace the order that was set up after World War II.

They wanna replace what was one time Pax Britannica and then Pax Americana. And they wanna replace that with a new system of world governance in which they're at the center and they dictate the terms of how the world will function. And all of these things that you mentioned, whether it's trying to take Philippine territory and work and steal the fisheries and the oil and gas in Vietnam or the Philippines exclusive economic zones or hurting the.

Destroying democracy in Hong Kong or getting involved in Latin America in a way, by supporting the cartels with fentanyl or putting a spy base, or I should say rehabbing the old Russian spy base in Cuba to put pressure on us and to divert our attention from their region of the world where they're engaged in this activity against India, the Asian countries in the SCS and South China Sea.

And wanna use activities in our backyard in Latin America to divert us. All these are part of a fabric or cloth, the buying of the suicide drones from probably better they're not people. So that's the one way drones loiter munitions from Iran, which they'll use against Taiwan the same way the Russians have used those same drones against Ukraine.

It's all part of a fabric that they wanna determine a different way of life for us and end liberty not only in their own region, but control how we live. And you see, it could be bad enough if the Chinese communists were only subjugating their own people and eliminating free speech in their own country.

But if you're the general manager of the Houston Rockets and you tweet something about the Hong Kong protest, the Chinese threaten to shut down the NBA in Hong Kong and impose a major financial penalty on a us business. And unfortunately, the NBA, instead of standing up to the Chinese and saying, well, if you're gonna deprive your own people of basketball, that's your problem.

Unfortunately, they kowtowed and we've had this. If Chinese students in America speak up against the regime, their families are taken hostage or threatened. And Chinese organizations in our country put pressure on those who want freedom. So they're extending their reach not to, they've developed social credit scores for their own people.

But we also, it was reported in the Washington Post that the Chinese have dossiers on 50,000 world leaders and thought leaders, you've probably got a dossier being in the House of Lords.

>> Andrew Roberts: I do hope so. I feel rather undervalued if I didn't.

>> Robert O’Brien: I guarantee there's Andrew Roberts file in Beijing and the ministry of States.

There's one on me and Pompeo and others. And they wanna be able to exert their influence not only to quash debate and speech in their own country, but they wanna extend that around the world. And so it's a very dangerous situation, and it's something that I think the world's waking up to.

And I think in addition to the Abraham Accords, I think one of the accomplishments of the Trump administration, especially the last year and a half when I had something to do with it. Mike Pompeo Washington was working hard on it, was developing a bipartisan consensus that the Communist Party of China was a real threat to America and our allies.

And I think that's something that has now been taken up even in Europe. And folks who are more commercially minded and are dealings with China, they're starting to realize the malignant effect of the CCP around the world.

>> Andrew Roberts: And Matt Pottinger, who you appointed to the national security advisory, to the NSA and indeed is going to be on this podcast fairly soon, I'm very pleased to say, has said that Taiwan urgently needs to institute conscription.

Do you go along with that as well?

>> Robert O’Brien: I do. And look, Matt was a fabulous deputy to me. And in fact, my first meeting with Kissinger, probably a weekend to be a national security advisor. I met with Henry and tried to meet with all my predecessors, including some of your colleagues at Tuvor, Secretary Rice and general McMaster.

I met with Henry and I walked into his apartment. He said, good job on Pottinger. Matt has a tremendous reputation. He's also had a very career as a journalist, as a marine, as a marine intelligence officer, as a China expert, spent time on Wall street. So he brought a lot of tools to the table.

But it was his expertise on China which was incredibly helpful to me as national security advisor and to the president. He is right on the issue of its not just conscription with China, with Taiwan, they have some conscription, but its relatively benign. I think its three months of military activity and training.

Its been extended to a year. And its somewhat narrow in the net of the young men and women that are brought into the military. That needs to be expanded. But I made a, a proposal in the Wall Street Journal after leaving office that one of the things that the Taiwanese need to do is they need to have shooting clubs like they have in eastern Europe and the Baltics and Poland.

There's not a gun culture in the ROC and the Republic of China, Taiwan, of course. And they need to develop a gun culture. They need to have shooting ranges where they teach people how to use AK-47s and Chinese weapons and use the same munitions that the Chinese will use when and if they invade so that they've got a supply from the enemy of the munitions they need.

Once the Chinese invade, handing out weapons on the street corner to people who are untrained and using them, it's too late at that point. But if there was a territorial defense mentality and training it, even civilians in clubs who understood basic gun safety and marksmanship. And you think of the challenges that would pose to the Chinese if they invaded, if they knew that on every street corner there'd be two or three or four people with AK-47s patrolling their neighborhoods and interdicting Chinese patrols and making that totalitarian governance of Taiwan after an invasion impossible.

That would have a real deterrent effect on the Chinese, in my view. But the Taiwanese have to overcome their aversion to guns and kind of watch what's happened to Ukraine and get prepared, both through conscription, but through also civilian territorial defense, I think is very important.

>> Andrew Roberts: Presumably a clash with China is at least possibly going to start with a blockade.

Do you think that the American navy is large enough? Do you think that the United States red lines are clear enough? And do you believe that, in the words of some historians, there's a Thucydidean trap, a reference, obviously, to Athens versus Sparta in the fifth century BC, where a military clash is more likely than not?

 

>> Robert O’Brien: So, no to the first question, that the US Navy is not big enough. I've been an advocate for a 350 plus ship navy for many years, going back to the early 2000s. I don't claim any particular oppressions. I was an army jag officer, so I'm not a naval person, as Roosevelt or Churchill would have referred to each other.

But I did kind of get a good slot in that role in a campaign back in 2008. And we spent a lot of time looking at the navy and spent a lot of time with former secretaries like John Lehman, who built up the 600 ship navy for Ronald Reagan and others.

And we need a bigger navy. And America is a maritime power, and without a sufficient navy, our security is in danger, but so is our allies. So the US Navy is not big enough. It was big enough, given the old Chinese threat, but the Chinese are building a destroyer every month or two.

It's an incredible act of military expansionism that we haven't seen since, probably the Kriegsmarine, and the Kaiser's attempt to build up a German Navy to displace the Royal Navy prior to World War One. We see the Chinese trying to do the same thing with the US. So the navy's not big enough but I think the Biden folks have now acknowledged that we need 380 ships.

So that's 100 more ships than we have now. We're gonna have to figure out how to build those in shipyards here because we don't have the industrial capacity to get there. We may have to do some things with allies, maybe with South Korea, like the UK has done with the US, some of your tankers.

So we're gonna have to figure out how to get to the 380 ships. Number two on the blockade, are the red lines sufficient? I think the biggest concern I've got is that a non-kinetic grey-zone activity by the Chinese. And Normandy style amphibious Invasion of Taiwan probably leads to an immediate American military response, and an effective one at that.

But it's gonna be harder to convince the American people that a blockade, which is an act of war under international law, as you know, would merit the US to sinking Chinese ships and escalating to a kinetic response. And then the question is, would America and its allies, and that would include Britain and France and Japan, the other major naval powers, India, would they escort ships into Taiwan?

The reason a blockade is so dangerous to Taiwan is, Taiwan's gotten rid of its nuclear power, and it has storage facilities for a couple of weeks of oil and gas to power the entire Taiwanese economy, which is a massive economy. It makes all the advanced three and four-nanometer chips that we all rely on for military platforms and also for our dishwashers and cars.

So if the Chinese took off the fuel supply, it's not gonna last very long. And so a blockade could be very effective, and we're gonna have to figure out a way to counter the blockade and message the Communists that we will counter blockade and we'll do it effectively and make sure that they can't choke off Taiwan.

And then going to your last question about Athens Spartan, the Thucydides' Trap, which Graham Allison wrote about at Harvard. I don't think a clash of the rising power and the established powers is necessarily predetermined. I believe in peace through strength. And the Romans talked about this, Ronald Reagan perfected it.

I think the people who look at historical trends, geopolitical trends, economic trends, demographic trends, tend to put all their focus on that, and they don't put enough focus on the choices we make as nations and that our leaders make, for good or bad. And I think if the leaders of the Free World decide to tell the Chinese that this isn't gonna play and that they can continue to have commerce and be part of the world, but they're not gonna dominate the world and they're not gonna change our way of life, and we're strong about that.

When you look at the balance of power, when you look at Europe and Japan and Oceania, with Australia and New Zealand, and America and Canada, and Mexico and North America, you got the Chinese who have no real allies other than North Korea, maybe Pakistan, and an unholy alliance with Russia, who they wanna steal Siberia from the first chance they get.

You take our side of the table every day but the only way they can win is if there's dissension and a lack of unity in the Free World. And so, I think the Free World can change the outcome and avoid a Thucydides' Trap, but we have to put in the effort and roll up our sleeves and stand by our values and invest in our defense and capabilities, and that's what will deter the Chinese.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Earlier on, you mentioned South America. Xi has been to South America ten times. Recently, there's been $700 billion of Chinese money invested in various noble points and key industries in South America. And rare earths, of course, is something that they look at both there and in Africa.

Does the Monroe Doctrine still apply in your hemisphere?

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, it did and it should again, but right now it's on life support. The point you make about Chinese activity in South America is a really important one, because, look, I think early on, the Chinese kinda prodded and poked around in Latin America more just an irritant to us, to show us that if we stayed engaged in their region, in Asia, that they could get engaged in our backyard.

And it was an attempt to, I don't think it was a serious attempt to develop alliances or massive inroads in Latin America. I think that changed, and I think it expedited during COVID. So even though there were bans on travel during COVID, I made the point of going to Colombia, to Brazil, to Panama, to try and strengthen our position in Latin America.

I made those personal trips. The president was on the phone with leaders in Latin America throughout the COVID pandemic. We tried to make sure we got supplies, and PPE, and vaccines, to Latin America. We tried to make sure that the relationship with Mexico stayed on a healthy plane, which I think was furthered by the revised NAFTA, the USMCA Agreement.

But look, America is blessed by geography and we've been blessed by our neighbors. And to have China take a major role in Latin America, especially with some of the left-wing governments, as you mentioned, get the rare earths out of Chile and the soy and the farm products out of Brazil.

And in turn for that, those purchases try and foist Huawei products on those countries. They've already got a close relationship with the left-wing government in Argentina. So I think we have to pay a lot more attention to Latin America as America, but also as the UK and Europe.

And we really can't lose Latin America and ignore it too often. It's the last thing on the agenda. And this goes to the thing I mentioned, one of the items I mentioned at the outset of our interview. As national security advisor, you're driven by the day-to-day crises like, what happened in Ukraine today?

Was there a mass shooting somewhere? Was there a terrorist incident? And those tend to suck the energy out of the room and there's only so much bandwidth. And unfortunately, the long term but important priorities can sometimes get pushed aside. And Latin America, I think, falls into that category and has for many years for the United States.

It's something I tried to elevate, and President Trump tried to elevate. There's no immediate crisis with the Chinese involvement. I think we saw the cultural affinity with Latin America, geographic affinity. We've got demographics, where we've got a lot of people from every country in Latin America living in America, in the United States, and a big diaspora here.

So I think our ties to Latin America can be strong, but there's also a history of alleged imperialism and US high-handedness. And so, we need to make sure we handle our Latin American allies with respect and dignity, but we need to be engaged, because if we don't, the Chinese will be, and we'll wake up in a world where the Chinese dominate Latin America in our backyard.

That'll be a strategic and geopolitical threat for the United States, and we need to make sure that doesn't happen.

>> Andrew Roberts: You mentioned COVID, what's the latest thinking about how it started?

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, look, I think it's clear and everyone says this, I'm not gonna talk about classified information, but there's no question it started in the Wuhan lab, in my view.

I don't think that it was intentional. It was probably from sloppy practices. But once it spread, the Chinese covered it up. I said at the time it was a Chernobyl type event, because the communist parties cover up these sorts of mistakes and thousands died. In Wuhan, the Chinese knew what was happening, they banned travel from Hubei province and Wuhan within China.

But then, they allowed those folks to travel overseas, thinking that if they were going to hit with a terrible pandemic, the rest of the world should suffered as well. And then they used the pandemic for their Wolf warrior diplomacy to try and extort from countries that needed PPE.

Because we outsourced all of our manufacturing to China for ventilators and masks, and protective gear, pharmaceutical precursors. They tried to leverage their position as the storehouse and the manufacturing giant for those items. To get deals for Huawei and other diplomatic wins for China in Africa and Europe and other places.

And so, they took advantage of a crisis that they created, that they covered up, that they didn't share information. And the heroic Chinese doctors that tried to get the information out to the world disappeared. And the information was taken down off the Internet, but they tried to leverage a crisis that was their fault to make diplomatic gains.

And I think that was just wrong, it wasn't very humane or brotherly. When we were facing a pandemic that didn't discriminate against race, religion, and country, and the Chinese tried to use some of the crisis that was their fault to gain political advantage and geopolitical advantage. I think that's something that's somewhat unforgivable.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Moving on to Russia and Ukraine, President Trump has said that he could see a way to ending that war and do it quickly as well. In his view, if you were national security adviser under him again, how would you go about trying to do that?

>> Robert O’Brien: Look, it's going to be tough, what we don't want to do is see the peace process.

The negotiating to the Chinese, and let them be the broker that ultimately gets an end of the war, that the United States and Europe need to take the lead. When it comes to Ukraine or Russia, with any negotiation, there are carrots and sticks, and we've got a lot of sticks that we haven't used against the Russians yet.

We haven't sanctioned the Russian Federation central bank. So they're still trading in oil and gas and extraction materials, and agricultural products all over the world. So, we say they're heavy sanctions and there are to some extent, but they're also half measures. Because, other than trading in oil and gas and minerals and agricultural products, what the heck does Russia sell.

I mean, when's the last time, Andrew, you went on Amazon and said, I've got to get that latest thing from Russia, it hasn't happened. According to one Chinese think tank, Vladimir Putin has increased its personal wealth as a result of the war because of the increase in oil prices.

Even though they're having to sell their oil at somewhat of a discount to get around some customers not wanting to buy Russian oil. But they're still finding ways to sell to the Indians and the Chinese and others. So, we've got some leverage with the Russians, where also the Russians don't have a natural alliance with the Chinese.

The Chinese have vowed to reverse the century of humiliation and get all their territory back. Well, far more territory than is in Taiwan, is in Siberia and eastern Russia that the Russians took as a result of the 1860 Treaty of Peking. And at some point, the Chinese are gonna turn on the Russians and get all that property back, or try to.

We've got to let the Russians know that, the alliance with China is not founded on long-term interests, but is an alliance of convenience. And so I think we've got some points we can make with the Russians, obviously with the Ukrainians. We shouldn't impose a peace on Ukraine, and we shouldn't use our role as the arsenal of democracy, and supplying them to encourage them to give concessions.

We saw how that ended with Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia, it didn't end very well. I don't think Putin would be sated, if we forced the Ukrainians to cede him a bunch of land that he's not entitled to and the Russia's not entitled to. Because, I think that only encourages aggression against Poland and the Baltics and maybe other countries.

So, we've got to support the Ukrainians, and again, another lever we have against Russians is the type of equipment that we're prepared to give the Ukrainians. I mean, Britain has been on the leading edge of that, getting on some really high tech gear and platforms. And the US can probably up the game and or at least threaten up the game for Ukraine, and that would put pressure on the Russians.

But ultimately, as you know, as a Military historian and historian, all wars end around a table. And even in an unconditional surrender, there are Japanese officials on the deck of the Missouri, or Admiral Donitz is in his sitting in a room signing away the instruments of surrender. In the first Iraq war, there was a memorandum that Tariq Aziz signed acknowledging resolution 687 and ending the war.

So, even in situations where there's a clear victor, you have to end up around a table to come up with the post-war arrangements. And we're going to need to do the same with Ukraine, and how that will look, we'll have to see. But I think a vigorous US president getting involved in that, that process and putting more pressure on the Russians could lead to a peace deal, but we'll have to wait and see.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: You were President Trump's fourth and last national security adviser, what was it like working for him?

>> Robert O’Brien: I had a very professional relationship with the President, I didn't know him before going into services administration as a hostage envoy. We developed a good relationship, bringing Americans home. And I think that was a President Trump likes metrics and success.

And we brought, I think, during his administration, 55 Americans home from countries all over the world. And we did it without paying ransoms, and without trading hostages, without trading terrorists or bad actors. And so, with very few concessions, but with a lot of diplomacy and also a lot of, use of our military to rescue folks.

We had a good record, so I got to know President Trump through that way. And then, his national security advisor, I think he took national security very seriously, he was very sober. He was sobered by the fact that, he had a military aide carrying around the plans for nuclear retaliation if there was an attack on the US.

That's a very sobering position for the president and for the national security adviser, for that matter. I had the backup set of the football and I was safe in my office, and you take these issues seriously. I think, he felt that was an area where some of the things that maybe people didn't like about the president politically, some of the partisanship, and that sort of thing didn't play a role.

So, we'd sit down and we developed strategies on how to promote American interests. And how to keep our country safe and how to help our allies do the same thing, even if our allies sometimes had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that conclusion. Like the NATO summit, where we rung $400 billion in concessions out of Non-American NATO allies, increased defense spending.

But we're seeing the results of that defense spending now with the Russia challenge in Ukraine. The ability of many countries to have given their surplus soviet gear or old soviet gear to the Ukrainians early in the invasion, was made possible by the fact that They were spending more money on new platforms.

So I think we turned out to be right on that front. And so we had a good relationship. It was very cordial, very professional. And President Trump could be a very charming guy. I mean, he can be a tough guy as well. But I had a very positive relationship with him.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Tell me, what are you reading at the moment, what history book? Which biography have you got on your bedside table?

>> Robert O’Brien: Well, so I'll flatter you, the last year I was national security advisor, I didn't get a lot of chance to read, but I get home pretty late at 1011 at night.

But I made it through the year, Napoleon biography. So that was a terrific-

>> Andrew Roberts: Central reading for any great decision maker, I think, Robert, you'll find. But thank you very much for the gratuitous plug. But tell me what you're reading right now.

>> Robert O’Brien: You did it right because there's the whole school of thought that Napoleon was Augustus and the great reformer and the father of the EU and all that sort of thing.

And on the other side, there's a monster in Hitler and that sort of thing. And so there's not a lot of middle ground on Napoleon scholarship. And I think you hit the sweet spot, so that was great. But right now I've got two books I've just started. One is a biography of Jim Baker, the secretary of state and former chief of staff and secretary of the treasury, and someone who you and I both know in the Zoo.

Great man and was very kind to give me some of his time when I was national security advisor, to give me his thoughts on how to deal with the chief of staff and how to work in the White House. And so I appreciated that. And so Peter Baker wrote a biography of him a couple of years ago.

I've gotten through the first section of it on his personal life, but he's an interesting Washington figure that doesn't get enough, probably attention. He was chief of staff, secretary of the treasury, secretary of state, did all the key negotiations at the end of the Cold War and also did a lot domestically.

The one job he wanted never got was national security advisor. I can one-up Secretary Baker on that, but he's had an amazing career. And then I've also just cracked open a book by Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia. I mean, for a long time, Jeremy Wilson's biography is kind of the gold standard on Lawrence.

And so I just started reading Scott Anderson's book. We'll see how it plays out. He's taking a broader view and looking at other figures. And Lawrence's interaction with Americans and Germans, and others in the region during the time and kind of the conflict that Lawrence had with winning the war.

But also being concerned about the imperialism and making sure that the promises made to the Arabs are fulfilled. So I think that'll be an interesting book, but I've just started on both those, and I'll give you a better review once I finish them.

>> Andrew Roberts: Thank you, yeah, Lawrence of Arabia is such a fascinating figure.

His reputation seems to go up and down with each decade, and one can understand why, because, of course, issues that we face today are not the same ones as the 1950s and 60s. Yeah, I know, he's a classic bellwether figure. And what is your favorite what-if? What's the counterfactual that fascinates you?

 

>> Robert O’Brien: It's really, and again, the problem with the counterfactuals is you can paint a great picture for your counterfactual of what would happen. But mine is what happens at the end of World War II. In two cases, one, we pursued the soft under belly approach that Churchill advocated in 43 at the Cairo conference.

And we tried to go over the Alps, which would have probably been a little more difficult than maybe we expected, as we saw in the fighting up in Monte casino and going up to the spine of Italy, but also going to the Balkans. And I think the idea was, one, you lessen the chance of a world war one type stalemate in western Europe on the western front.

But Churchill said we wanna join the Russians. Well, I think that was a polite way of saying we want to cut the Russians off and save these historic capitals, save Trieste and save Vienna and save Prague and save Warsaw from the Russians. So in other words, if the allies had gone up to the soft underbelly, cut the Red army off, surrounded the Nazis and then forced to surrender, obtained a victory and got the unconditional surrender.

But did it in a way that there was a standoff between us forces and the Russian forces that would have ultimately gobbled up eastern Europe.

>> Andrew Roberts: So if you've been national security advisor five years before the post was created, Robert, would you have gone with Churchill's idea?

>> Robert O’Brien: So it's a hard one, but he continues it in 45, because at Yalta the Russians promise.

I mean, remember, the reason World War II starts is because Russia and Germany divide Poland. And that's the final straw. And the UK declares war and France declares war. And it doesn't go well at the beginning, but the Russians were knee deep in the partition of Poland with the Molotov Ribbentrop pact.

So we basically go into World War II over Poland. I mean, at least in Europe, in the US, it was Pearl harbor-

>> Andrew Roberts: Only over the western side, we didn't know until six weeks later that they had done the deal, it was a secret. And of course, about the eastern side of Poland.

But you're absolutely right, yeah.

>> Robert O’Brien: So we go to war for Poland. The free world goes to war to defend Poland and Yalta, the Russians promised free and fair elections. That's in, I think, February of 45. By August of 45 at Potsdam, we've recognized a Russian government in Poland, and the free and fair elections go out the window with the settlement at Potsdam.

So the freedom of Poland is surrendered. Now, in June of 45, Churchill has at least a British high command, his war council come up with plans to do basically a surprise attack on the Russians and free Poland. But obviously they can't do it with the Americans. The Americans have no interest at that point in fighting Russia.

But as everyone's watching now with the bomb, with the Oppenheimer movie, which is an interesting movie, it's what we're seeing. We know at Potsdam, or Truman knows at Potsdam that we've got a monopoly on the bomb. Now, we still are at war with Imperial Japan and we don't know if we're gonna have to have a land invasion.

We want the Russians to help us, but the point is we've got a monopoly for at least the next four years on the bomb. Could we have taken, freed Poland, freed Czechoslovakia and avoided a cold war? And if we had, Mao probably doesn't have the supporting needs for China.

China probably stays, I mean, I don't want to say free under Chiang Kai-shek, but it remains in the free worlds camp. We probably don't have a Korean war. We may not have had a Vietnamese war, but there were some local issues there that drove that. But the whole history of the world changes potentially with a free Poland and free Czechoslovakia.

So we kinda had two chances. We had the 43 opportunity to go through the soft underbelly and then we had the Interrogam between Donuts, surrendering in Potsdam to push the Russians back, and we don't do either. And we end up with a 50-year cold war.

>> Andrew Roberts: I think that the code name that was given by the British high command for the idea of going to war with Stalin just after the war with Hitler was over.

Operation Unthinkable tells you the way that they felt about trying to undertake that, thank you.

>> Robert O’Brien: That was the general staff exercising some prudence in naming that operation.

>> Andrew Roberts: Absolutely, Robert O'Brien, 27th National Security Advisor, thank you very much indeed for coming on Secrets of Statecraft.

>> Robert O’Brien: My privilege to be with you, Andrew thank you for having me.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Thank you, Robert O'Brien. On the next episode of Secrets of Statecraft, I'll be speaking to the China expert Matt Pottinger, who served in the Trump administration as senior director for Asia in the National Security Council.

>> Hoover Representative: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom.

For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts, or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.