2025-11-13
1 小时 6 分钟I'm Dan Kurtz-Valen, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
I think what's changed is that the president has said it a full first term,
and so this isn't a new president who doesn't know where the levers of power are.
President Trump is very, very aware where all these levers are.
Robert O'Brien served as Donald Trump's national security adviser from 2019 to 2021.
O'Brien's predecessors in that position lacked the administration to become some of the most vociferous critics of their former boss.
O'Brien, in contrast,
remained a staunch defender of Trump's foreign policy through the Biden administration and into Trump's second term.
And perhaps as a result,
he can now help make sense of the thinking behind Trump's approach on key national security issues,
drawing out the objectives and the assumptions driving policy on China, on Ukraine,
on the Middle East, on Venezuela, and on much else.
Shortly before the 2024 election,
O'Brien wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs called The Return of Peace Through Strength,
Making the Case for Trump's Foreign Policy.
Last week, he published a follow-up to that essay,
giving Trump high marks for his approach to the world over the past 10 months.
O'Brien and I spoke on Monday, November 10th about the second term policy so far,
about where he sees continuity and where he sees change from the first term,
and about where Trump's foreign policy may be going from here.