Trump cabinet hopeful wants the 'Israel model' for US China policy

Robert O'Brien just put forward a template, but its a proven failure

Former Trump national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien’s monumental and much discussed new essay inForeign Affairs may be the closest thing we are likely to get to an intellectual foreign policy blueprint for a second Trump term.

Over the coming years, it may well serve as the foreign policy template for future Republican administrations. In the same way George F. Kennan’s ‘X’ article (published in Foreign Affairsin 1947) and Paul Wolfowitz’s Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, otherwise known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine, served (for better, or, in the latter’s case, most certainly worse) as templates in past eras, O’Brien’s essay will likely define the terms of the foreign policy debate for at least the reminder of the decade — if not beyond.

The article, in keeping with shifting geopolitical realities, is heavy on Asia, light on Europe. It is also reflective of the thinking of a certain brand of Republican foreign policy realist, exemplified by the likes of Elbridge Colby and O’Brien (both of whom are reported to be in the running for top national security positions in a second Trump term) for whom China looms large — indeed, as the peer competitor the U.S. must prepare to confront.

O’Brien writes that, in his view, “Congress should help build up the armed forces of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam by extending to them the kinds of grants, loans, and weapons transfers that the United States has long offered Israel.”

Here, and without explicitly saying so, O’Brien seems to be referencing what in other contexts has been referred to as the “Israel model” of U.S. security assistance. The model is of course based on the way America’s security assistance to Israel functions: In the absence of any treaty obligation between the two nations, the U.S. provides Israel with generous grants, loan guarantees, military, economic and diplomatic support in return for (presumably, but in fact, hardly ever) cooperation and the furtherance of American national security objectives in the region.

Right now, even before the Oct. 7 attacks, that guarantee is in the order of $3.8 billion a year.

Recall that as the Ukrainian counteroffensive ground to a halt late last year there was a lot of talk in Washington about how to sustain assistance to Ukraine in the face of growing Republican opposition in the House. One way around the presumed opposition (opposition that never actually materialized in any meaningful way) was floated by Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan: the Israel model.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/robert-obrien-trump/