If Donald Trump returns to the White House, he should cut all economic ties with China, consider sending the entire US Marine Corps to Asia and resume live testing of nuclear weapons, his former national security adviser writes in an article with the most detailed account of what foreign policy might look like during a second Trump term.
The proposals are outlined in an article to appear in Foreign Affairs magazine, written by Trump’s last national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, who may get another top job if Trump wins another term as president in November. Although O’Brien was a hardliner and helped fuel the tougher stance on China that emerged late in Trump’s term, the prescriptions he enunciates go far beyond anything he publicly advocated at the time.
“As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength, Washington should return the favor,” O’Brien writes in the article’s most explosive policy prescription, saying that “Washington should, in effect, seek to decouple its economy from that of China.”
