In Modi, Trump sees a bit of himself: Trump’s former NSA Robert O’Brien
Robert O’Brien, Trump’s last NSA, spoke to HT about the relationship between Trump and Modi, the US and India, China, and what’s in store in Trump’s next term
Washington: Robert O’Brien served as Donald Trump’s national security advisor (NSA) between September 2019 and January 2021, and before that, as the President’s special envoy for hostage affairs. As Trump’s NSA, O’Brien was a key participant and actor in the evolution of US-India ties, accompanying Trump on his visit to India. He remains a widely respected figure in the America First movement, he is seen to enjoy Trump’s confidence, and his protégés and colleagues are filling the ranks of the incoming administration’s national security team.

Currently the chairman of American Global Strategies, in a wide-ranging conversation, O’Brien spoke to HT on Wednesday about Trump’s worldview, the China challenge, the strengths and potential pitfalls in the India relationship, Quad, the intersection of America and India’s industrial policies and more.
While O’Brien is not a part of the incoming administration and does not speak for it, this remains among the most detailed viewpoints from a close aide of Trump on what to expect in terms of US policy approach to the Indo-Pacific in general and India in particular from January 20.
You worked very closely with President Trump in his first term. Could you give us a sense of how he sees the world and what your experience was of working with him? So when you used to take a foreign policy file or issue to him, what was his broad framework of thinking about an issue?
The first thing you need to understand about President Trump — and this is what I think people who came before me in my position and others in the foreign policy world didn’t understand — is that Trump had a very well-defined view of the world before he took office. He hadn’t served in a public office before. He had been an elected official or appointed official, but he had spent 50 years as a real estate developer, not just in New York, but around the world. He travelled extensively. He had done deals around the world in many different countries. And so he had a very good feel for how deals work and how commerce works around the world. Trump had far more savvy and had far more of a worldview than people give him credit for. Policy advisors before I got there thought that they had to teach him a foreign policy, or they had a policy that they wanted to implement, and they didn’t want to implement the president’s policy. So that’s number one.
Also Read | Very positive but not closed chapter: US envoy on India’s probe into Pannun plot
I think number two is that Trump is 100% committed to the United States of America. He wants what’s best for our country and everything he does, he is going to look through the lens of how this help the American people. Now, in some cases, that may be good for our allies or bad for adversaries, but he is always looking out for what’s best for the common American worker, not necessarily the elite, not the Wall Street guys and the Davos crowd, but what’s best for the average American. And so that’s where some of his views on tariffs come from and his views on industrialisation in America and onshoring, nearshoring and friend sharing in the critical industry come from. He wants to see Americans with good high-paying jobs and he believes a lot of those jobs were in manufacturing; those were shipped overseas, especially to China over many years. And that a very small number of Americans got rich shipping US jobs overseas, especially to China. And that was bad for the American worker and the country as a whole. And we can’t just be a service-based, financial services-based economy, and to be a superpower and to give everybody in the country beyond Wall Street a fair shot, we need a well-developed manufacturing industrial base.
Let me give one more example of America First. So I started in this administration as a hostage envoy before I became a national security advisor. My job was to get Americans home who were detained abroad. If we believed they were unjustly detained, or taken hostage by Iran or al-Qaeda or some non-state actor, my job was to help get them back. And Trump was 100% supportive of me in that work. Before my time in office, getting American hostages home was not a priority. He made it a priority and I think the reason he made it a priority is because he was offended by the fact that someone would take an American hostage just because they had a blue passport and then have the temerity to try and leverage the United States government to do something for them —either pay them money or change policy or take a certain action because they had taken an American hostage. And so I think that went to the essence of America First. Trump didn’t care if they were Black, White, Republican, Democrat, Muslim, Christian. What he cared about was the fact that they were an American and someone had taken them hostage to try to make him do what he didn’t want to do.
But what Trump also said many times is that America First didn’t mean America alone. And so you saw, for example with India, Trump developed a very strong relationship with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi. He had a very high regard for Modi. He thought Modi was a very smart politician. I think he saw some of himself in Modi because Modi was all about making sure that India was truly taken care of. The Indian people responded to Modi in a big way with big rallies. Trump was very impressed with Modi’s political acumen and the fact that he put India First. And so he had a lot of respect for Modi because I think he saw himself in Modi.
CHINA THREAT WILL DEFINE US POLICY FOR 50 YEARS
In the second term, what do you think geographically and thematically would be the key priorities of the incoming administration?
A: Well, look, American foreign policy for the next 50 years is going to be defined by the rise of China and the threat the Communist Party of China poses to not just America, but to our allies and to our way of life and to liberty and democracy. And so one of the reasons that I think Trump went to India right before Covid, even though a lot of people had advised him not to do so — not me, I was totally in favour of the trip and was a 100% behind — is because we, the free nations in the world — India, the US, UK, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore — are going to have to come together to defend our way of life against Communist Party of China. And so I think that’s going to be the key motivating factor for US foreign policy for Trump in the next term. And for any president beyond.
Take Quad for example — the Canberra-Delhi-Tokyo-Washington alliance. It is not quite an alliance yet. It’s a diplomatic group, but I think it has the seeds of being a very important alliance. And so I think the Indo-Pacific will be the region and the threat within that region of course is China. So that’ll be the first geographic priority.
I think the second big priority is resolving the situation in Ukraine. Too many Ukrainians are dying, and the Ukrainians are running out of people to prosecute the war, to defend themselves. So I think bringing peace to Ukraine will be very important.
And then of course the Middle East. Every time you try to pivot away from the Middle East, the Middle East comes out and grabs the world by the neck and pulls us back. And of course in the Middle East, the primary bad actor is Iran and Iran is today weakened. Even though they are weakened, they’re still engaged in activity directed at the United States and Israel. And so I think expanding the Abraham Accords bringing Saudi Arabia, and some of the other Gulf countries and at least creating peace between those countries will be very important as we confront Iran. So I think expanding to the Abraham Accords will be an important priority in the Trump administration.
On China, there has been some apprehension in some capitals in the Indo-Pacific. His NSA pick (Michael Waltz), Secretary of State appointee (Marco Rubio), the President’s own past record in his first term indicate that he will continue to take a strong posture on China. But the presence of certain tech industry leaders, the presence of certain people from Wall Street in his cabinet, and his own deal-making abilities makes some people worried that a grand bargain with China or a tactical reset with China is a possibility. Would you like to speak to that apprehension?
When history books are written and they look at Trump’s first term, I think there are going to be three things that people see with China. One, Trump created a broad bipartisan consensus on the threat that China poses to America. That’s Trump’s accomplishment.
I think the second thing from that time period is the Chinese attack on the Indian patrol on the Line of Actual Control in the Himalayas when they brutally slaughtered Indian troops in a barbaric way, like barbarians. And I think that was a major mistake of Beijing, and the Indian people reacted in a way that Beijing didn’t expect.
Maybe the third thing is the unleashing of Covid and the way that China tried to take diplomatic advantage, even if it was an accidental release from their lab, to tell countries that if they didn’t install Huawei equipment or bow to Beijing’s will they wouldn’t get PPE or ventilators or vaccines. So I think those three things are kind of one of the turning points in how the rest of the world views China.
In the second term, you are correct in that the national security team — NSA Waltz, UN ambassador (Elise Stefanik), Secretary of State Rubio, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director — are all very hawkish on China. They have long records of that, and they have talked about it at their confirmation hearings.
But look, the President is a dealmaker. I don’t think he is looking for a grand bargain with China, some sort of division of the world with China. But I think there are going to be areas where deals can be had. I think that’s one of the things that Trump does. He deals from a position of strength, he sets up an overall kind of paradigm. And then if the Chinese come to him and say, hey, look, we want to reinstitute the phase one trade deal, that they abandoned during Covid, and make it stronger, I could see Trump doing some sort of deal on certain tariffs or on certain economic issues. And look, that could be good if the Chinese want to do a fair deal, not what the Chinese call a win-win deal, which is only a win-win for China and a loss for everybody else. But if they want to have a fair deal and a reciprocal deal on trade issues, on economic issues, I think that’s something that Trump would certainly entertain. But even his new Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, who took over for Robert Lighthizer, is definitely a China hawk and he knows all the Chinese negotiating tricks and he is not going to fall for them. So I think that there’s a potential for a deal, probably a trade deal.
But I don’t see some sort of grand deal where the president divides countries. First of all, it’s not for America to tell countries that there is a Chinese sphere of influence that they have got to give up their independent foreign policy and kowtow to Beijing. No American president would do that, especially not Trump.
INDIA LIVES IN A NASTY NEIGHBOURHOOD… CHINA WANTS TO SUBJUGATE INDIA
Let’s move back to India. You were NSA at a time of national security crisis for India in Galwan. In the domain of national security, defence, intelligence cooperation, there was clearly deeper convergence under Trump and Modi. Could you give me a flavour of that and could you talk a little bit about those areas and whether you see that deepening and how in the next term?
Well, first of all, we saw India buy very high-tech American equipment to counter China and realise that the Russian kit, as we have seen in Ukraine, is not very useful. And so we have seen the Indians buy the P8 which is a very highly capable aircraft. And then a suite of combat systems. We have seen India buy other high-tech American weapons, rotor-wing aircrafts, helicopters. And so I think the Indians are moving towards the US. We saw a lot of joint naval exercises and ship passing exercises and general naval cooperation. So I think that’s very helpful.
And then Ajit Doval and I had a very strong working relationship. He could be over the phone and call me anytime; I could be able to call him anytime. I remember, in Covid, there was an outbreak and we had certain generic medicines from India that we didn’t have enough. I called him immediately. Millions of tablets were shipped to us. After the Chinese attack on the Indian patrol, India needed warm weather gear and things of that nature. We got it to them immediately. No question. It’s just what do you need. We will get it to you. We will work out everything else later. So there was a trust level between the US and India because we are both democracies. We are the two biggest democracies in the world, and there’s a real trust level between the two countries that’s very difficult to duplicate.
The other thing that’s happened is that there are a lot of Indian Americans. They are highly successful and they are becoming more politically active in both parties, not just at the elected leader level, but getting involved in the party politics. And there there is a real comfort level between Americans and Indians and Indian-Americans. O’Brien is an Irish American name. I am a 100% American, but there is always some affinity for the home country. And I think the same is true with Indian expats. So there’s just a real close kinship I think between the two countries.
You mentioned that Quad had the seeds of a more robust alliance. Do you think, as somebody who is a friend of India, that India needs to do more on the security dimension of Quad? Is that the future of Quad?
India has to do more, but not for America. It’s not like a NATO situation where we have been defending Europe at great costs. We haven’t been defending India. We certainly have been a partner of India and, as a democratic ally, we would do everything we could to help India as we have done in the past. But that’s not an alliance that we’re getting shortchanged on.
But India has to understand and does understand that it is in a very nasty neighbourhood. They got China on one border and Pakistan on the other border, and both are nuclear powers. Both have large land armies and both are historic adversaries. Both want to take land from India. Pakistan wants to take Kashmir and China would take as much of India that could scoop up. The Chinese view India as an opportunity to gain land and treasure and political influence and they want to subjugate India. And so if I was an Indian, a US alliance is for my own national security. I would be pumping a lot more money in the national defence. I would quickly be transitioning from less capable Russian equipment to highly capable US equipment and Western equipment.
INDIA HAS OPPORTUNITY OF THE CENTURY BUT NEEDS TO REDUCE REGULATIONS, TAXES
Do you think that there is a contradiction between Trump’s firm commitment to made in America and bringing manufacturing home and make in India and the fact that India needs capital, including from the US? Is the focus here only on onshoring and not friendshoring?
I would definitely include friendshoring with onshoring and nearshoring. We are seeing a number of big American companies, especially Apple, leaving China and the number one destination is India. We can’t make everything in America. There is a lot of stuff we can’t make here. We should make what we can here. But there are some things just cost-wise and location-wise and supply chain-wise, we need a trusted supply chain. So again, going back to Covid, we had a trusted supply chain with India. We needed pharmaceuticals at the outset of Covid because before it really hit in India, it hit in the US. India was able to supply pharmaceuticals very quickly. And so that’s an example of why it’s important to friendshore. So certainly Trump wants a reindustrialised America, but also we need a trusted supply chain. China, unfortunately, is not a trusted supply chain. We saw that in Covid. We saw how the Chinese behaved. So I think it’s a huge opportunity, maybe the opportunity for the century for India.
But look, I hear this from certainly from all the big tech companies, the over-regulation that’s taking place in India, especially when it comes to the European style digital legislation, that really targets US companies. Its attempts to over-regulate the tech industry is going to drive big tech investment away from India to other places, Vietnam or Indonesia or Malaysia or even South America.
India has got the inside track now to become one of the tech manufacturing hubs of the world. But if it over-regulates and overtaxes and also it doesn’t get its tariffs down for America, has reciprocal tariffs with America, that’s going to be something that irritates the relationship as well. But if it deals with tariffs and lowers the regulatory bar, including on the tech companies. I think India has got a once in a century opportunity to harvest much maybe 70-80% of the manufacturing taking place in China that’s leaving. And trust me, all the big firms want to leave China. If they haven’t left yet, they are looking for opportunities to leave.
India has a big population, a lot of really smart people, highly-educated, with excellent educational institutions, and so I think it has got a huge chance here. But India can also blow that chance by overregulation.
On tech cooperation, the Biden administration initiated iCET (an initiative on critical and emerging technologies). On defence co-production, semiconductors, space, telecom infrastructure, there has been progress. Do you see high-technology cooperation deepening under Trump?
Look, it’s something we started. I give Biden credit. He certainly tried to nurture the US-India relationship. So I don’t take anything away from him on that front, but I think you are going to see strong cooperation between India and the US going forward.
TARIFFS ONE IRRITANT IN TIES
How significant are the trade-related issues? There are some signs that India, this time, may even have the appetite for a free trade agreement. Do you think that there is a way to break through the logjam and aim for an FTA or would that be too ambitious?
So I think it’s ambitious because of the Indian position. India traditionally has been a very high tariff country. Trump really likes Modi. He understands the strategic importance of India and America being partners. We want to see manufacturing go to India. But I think the one fly in the ointment with the Indian relationship in the US are the tariffs, the Indian tariffs. If India was prepared to reduce its tariffs with America and make them reciprocal, then there is a basis for an FTA or some lesser trade agreement. I think if the tariffs stay high, they could become an irritant in the relationship.
But I think it’s hugely in India’s interest to get the tariff situation resolved. Because if it does, then the opportunities, especially on the manufacturing front, are so enormous. Everybody I talk to wants to move to India for manufacturing. So there is a huge opportunity here. But I think tariff is actually the one thing that could interfere with that opportunity.
DON’T WAIT TO BE ASKED; SAY YOU WILL TAKE ILLEGAL ALIENS BACK
On immigration, two things have changed since you were in office. One is that the scale of illegal immigration from India has increased. Last year, there were reportedly over 100,000 illegal immigrants from the southern border, and that’s of course one of Trump’s core priorities. The other is this debate that we saw at the end of December on H1B visas. Trump has taken a clear position in its favour. How do you see both of those playing out?
Well, I think one thing that can happen on illegal immigration is cooperation from Modi and the Indian government. If India stepped up and didn’t wait to be asked, but firmly stepped up and said, number one, we will take our illegal aliens back and accept them, and two, we will take whatever steps you think are necessary to stem the flow of the illegal immigrants to the southern border, which shouldn’t be a problem, that would go a long way. So rather than be like Mexico or Venezuela, other countries that have not been as helpful with immigration and maybe in some cases even encouraged illegal immigration, if India stepped up and said, we want to be part of the solution, I think that would be a huge sign of goodwill to the new administration.
On H-1B visas, I’ve personally been in favour. I think Trump actually talked about this with Prime Minister Modi, getting more Indian students to America. The overseas students in STEM are dominated by the Chinese who learn skills, go back to China and then use them against us. Whereas with the Indians, the skills that they obtain, if they go back to India, great, they are going back to a democracy. And if they stay in America, they have got our values and they share America’s values. So I think having more Indian students studying here is a win-win because they go back to India, an ally, or they stay in America with common values. Neither of those things is true with China. So I think number one, we got to focus on how to get more Indian students here.
There is a middle ground on H-1B. I am certainly in favour of them. When you look at the great entrepreneurs we have got in our country, so many of them came from India on H-1B, or their parents came from India on H-1B, and even politicians. I look at the incoming FBI director Kash Patel’s parents. You have got Ricky Gill who worked for me at the National Security Council. You have Nikki Haley. Or Vivek Ramaswamy. Or even from other places, Elon Musk, David Sacks, Peter Thiel are a bunch of great foreign entrepreneurs who share our values. It’s one of our huge advantages over China. No one is begging for an H-1B visa to get into China, right. Unless you’re Chinese, you want to get out of China. I have never seen anyone trying to get into China. People want to get into America. We have to exploit that advantage for the benefit of the American people.
But there are things with the visas that probably can be reformed that would probably reduce the opposition. Because right now, if someone comes over and is sponsored by a company, that company has extraordinary leverage over the individual who comes over to work. They can pay them less money, they can control their lives. That’s not good. So I think that the process needs to be reformed and if it’s properly reformed, if it is truly a situation where there is no American worker to take the job, and so then we turn to H-1B visa holder, that’s great. But I think some companies are exploiting the system. We need to make the whole system better. We shouldn’t throw it out or we shouldn’t just expand it. We should fix it.
THE MODI-TRUMP BONHOMIE
As we wrap up, take us back to the Trump-Modi relationship and give us a flavour of what that dynamic is like when they meet.
One of the things that was quite amusing and actually sweet was at the Howdy Modi rally in Houston. Trump gave a speech and Modi came and got him and took him by the hand and then let him by the hand around the arena. The Secret Service had an absolute meltdown because then Trump walked off with Modi into the crowd and they did a circuit of the entire arena. They walked around the entire arena, shaking hands, and the poor secret service, the security detail, was chasing after them, climbing over people, climbing over little bars and gates and fences and trying to keep up with the two of them. And they had a grand time. They were laughing and talking and shaking hands. And I think that symbolises the friendship between the US India. It was a walk around the arena in Houston at the Howdy event with the two of them holding hands, not necessarily the American custom, and shaking people’s hands, laughing, talking and truly enjoying each other’s company.
