President Donald Trump made a superb selection to be his new national security adviser. Robert C. O'Brien has been the president's special envoy for hostage affairs since May 2018 and has assisted Trump in bringing home many of the more than 20 Americans who have returned to the United States since Trump was sworn in.
O'Brien's effectiveness has dovetailed well with the president's focus and priorities, but that isn't the sole reason for his being selected.
I should note that O'Brien is a close friend of mine, a former law partner at two different firms, a frequent guest on my radio show dating back more than a decade, and a collaborator on various essays and columns on national security.
In making this choice, Trump is relying not only on O'Brien's established ability to work well with the president and the secretary of state, but also on his skills honed by decades of representing diverse clients in complex litigation and arbitration before both international and domestic courts.
A wide-ranging reader (and a student especially of Winston Churchill), O'Brien is probably best known as a "navalist." So proponents of Trump's goal of a 355-ship Navy have another friend in the West Wing now. O'Brien can be counted on to continually remind everyone that Trump has spoken on behalf of rapid expansion of the fleet. Having toured a ship engine-drive production plant with O'Brien, I know he's schooled in industrial-base realities as well as top-line goals for the Navy.
Trump has been advocating rebuilding the military and arming U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines with the best and most lethal weaponry. Even a cursory reading of O'Brien's published work will show he has long argued for the same thing. Like Ronald Reagan before him, Trump is not quick to dive into entanglements abroad--he is not a "neoconservative" on national security matters but the old-fashioned sort of conservative. Mirroring his boss in that regard, O'Brien is in the classic mold of serious, experienced, historically literate national security specialists.
O'Brien is not as high-profile as many of his predecessors, but he is well known among the rising generation in the national security community. He has mentored many of its members over the past two decades. There is a tradition in national security circles, as there is in the military, of such conscious development of the next generation.
With the selection of a competent, fair and intelligent aide to assist in the execution of the administration's policies, Trump has made a confidence-building choice in a time of rising international tensions.
Editorial on 09/20/2019