TEMPE, Ariz — Robert O’Brien and Jeff Flake have known each other for “quite a while,” said Flake, a U.S. ambassador to Turkey under former President Joe Biden, about O’Brien, who was national security adviser to President Donald Trump during his first administration.
“We’re maybe two of the only Americans in government who will speak Afrikaans,” Flake jokingly added, addressing attendees at an auditorium inside the Walton Center for Planetary Health at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. Flake learned Afrikaans thanks to his Latter-day Saint mission to South Africa and O’Brien because of his wife who is of South African descent.
Besides their unique language skills, O’Brien and Flake share other things in common, including that they are both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have prioritized public service. Both of them also share a polite demeanor and agree that Washington, D.C., is becoming “meaner.”
Flake hosted O’Brien at ASU on Tuesday as a part of the Dialogues for Democracy series.
The series, which concluded with O’Brien, included other well-known figures like Susan Rice, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Steve Kerr, nine-time NBA champion and current head coach of the Golden State Warriors, and Mark Cuban, the billionaire “Shark Tank” investor and former principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
During his remarks, O’Brien spoke about his duties in the Trump White House, including in the Situation Room, and shared his thoughts on the president’s way of doing things.
O’Brien and Flake’s friendship
O’Brien and Flake both worked on former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. At the time, Flake was a Republican Arizona representative who was running for a Senate seat. O’Brien led Romney’s advisory team as co-chair of the International Organizations Work Group, according to Romney: A Reckoning.
The former officials may be friends, but where O’Brien is loyal to Trump and the “America First” agenda, Flake has publicly spoken out against the president even though they are both Republicans. Last year, Flake campaigned for Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona.
O’Brien and Flake disagree on tariffs
O’Brien and Flake found common ground on taking a tough stance toward China, but they disagreed about tariffs.
“It would seem that the best case would be to team up with our allies and then go after China,” Flake said. But the current administration has been bullish with its allies before turning to China, Flake added.
He then asked O’Brien whether he thought the wide-ranging tariffs were of concern.
According to O’Brien, the tariffs will bring “some great deals.” While he said “Liberation Day,” the day when Trump rolled out tariffs on most of America’s trading partners, was “disruptive,” he defended Trump’s approach for four reasons.
First, tariffs can be leveraged to bolster American natural security, O’Brien said. For example, the U.S. can ask Canada to deploy more ships in the Arctic to deter Russia.
His second reason is that tariffs can create an income stream for the federal government.
Third, tariffs, albeit forcefully, will bring back domestic manufacturing, and perhaps bring back some 90,000 factories that left the U.S. in the last decade, said O’Brien.
Lastly, he said, these duties on foreign goods help make “free and fair trade policy” a reality.
Although O’Brien touted Trump’s “unpredictability” as a secret weapon, Flake didn’t agree.
After their discussion, Flake explained his thoughts about tariffs to the Deseret News.
“Uncertainty is not good, and predictability is what businesses need,” he said. “(Tariffs) can be used effectively, and I think they should be used in certain cases, on China and others, but I think the important thing is to be with our allies when confronting the biggest issue — China, theft of intellectual property and the other issues that they have.”
Inside the role of Trump’s national security adviser
O’Brien spoke about his time working for Trump in pivotal roles and joked that it helped to have a tough boss.
During all the negotiations and meetings with congressional subcommittees, people would rarely bring up Trump by name, and O’Brien said this was his secret weapon.
“You can deal with me, or you can deal with my boss,” O’Brien joked, adding they would decide to deal with him.
O’Brien touted the Abraham Accords as one of Trump administration’s biggest successes that “healed the Gulf” and paved the way for peace and free trade between formerly adversarial countries in the Middle East.
The Abraham Accords did two things, he said. First, they installed a series of normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Second, it allowed Israel to partner with Arab Gulf states that were looking to balance Iran’s ambitions for power in the region.
Making these deals wasn’t an easy task, especially since the diplomatic channels had eroded in the years prior, he said.
“I think we were quite lucky,” said O’Brien.
The stakes were high, he said, as the instability in the Middle East created a security issue for the U.S. and the rest of the world.
“But I think ... there’s a benefit to humanity from having people get along and stop wars,” the former national security advisor added.
Making phone calls, an easy way to stop war
Flake made a comparison between Trump and Biden based on his time as an ambassador representing the U.S. in Turkey: “Joe Biden didn’t have ... the inclination to pick up the phone to call a foreign leader and that is often a good instinct,” Flake said, jokingly adding, “Usually you will have a note taker, which (President Trump) doesn’t.”
Flake gave an example. Weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. asked Turkey to cut off Russian ships’ access through the Black Sea, a key military area in the ongoing conflict.
By invoking the Montreux Convention, Turkey regulated the straits, ultimately giving Ukrainian troops leverage.
“I would have loved, loved to have the president pick up the phone, call (Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), and say, ‘Thank you. That was tough. I know it was tough. But it was great for the alliance.’ And then hang up before Erdoğan can ask you to do anything,” Flake said with a small chuckle.
He asked O’Brien whether he saw any downside to Trump’s unpredictability. O’Brien replied that the ideal policy is that which infuses the “American capability and the presidential unpredictability.”
The U.S. commander-in-chief has the right diplomatic chops, he argued.
O’Brien quoted the late U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who said, “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war‚” meaning it’s always better to talk than go to war, despite being known for not being an appeaser.
O’Brien noted that Trump is good at taking phone calls from all sorts of countries. “And counterintuitively, he was always incredibly forceful with foreign leaders ... probably even more so with adversaries.” Trump prioritized diplomatic relations with the big nuclear powers of the world, said O’Brien, adding it helped to have open dialogue with these nations.
He recalled an instance in December 2019, when Trump approved sanctions on the second part of the Russian gas pipeline. Putin, who hoped to easily export gas to Germany, now faced economic fallout, thanks to Trump’s foreign policy.
Trump rang up Moscow and delivered the news in “the nicest possible way,” O’Brien said. He wanted to tell Putin himself, which O’Brien described as courageous.
“He said, Vladimir, ‘You’re so smart. You’re such a great leader. And you’ve got this country with 11 time zones — It’s so big. You’re governing so well and everything,’” O’Brien recalled Trump saying before delivering the blow about the sanctions.
“‘I’m sure you understand it’s bad for us. It’s bad for Western Europe. And I know that it’s going to be upsetting to you. But really, you’ll figure out a way around it. You’re just so driven. You’re so great. Listen, I’ve got to go. Thanks a lot, Vladimir,’” Trump said, according to O’Brien.
O’Brien on what to expect with Russia
One of Trump’s biggest promises during his campaign last year was delivering an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine. The former national security said he believes Trump is still the man to make this promise a reality.
O’Brien said he expected “some sort of freeze in current lines” to account for Russia’s advances on Ukrainian territory over the course of the last three years. It “isn’t great,” he said, “because in some ways you’re rewarding Russia” for its invasion into Ukraine. But it is the likely way forward in peace negotiations.
Kyiv isn’t in a position of power. “They’re running out of men and material. Even if we can’t get them missiles and rockets and tanks and aircraft, there are not any Ukrainians to fight the war,” O’Brien said.
Meanwhile, sending U.S. troops is out of the question because of the threat of escalating the situation into a nuclear exchange, he noted.
Trump is “the only person that can bring the parties together and get the deal done,” he said. “If we’re seen by the Russians as being on the Ukraine side, we’re never going to be able to mediate a deal.”
He noted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hesitation to sign a critical minerals deal, but said he is glad to see the Ukrainian president coming around to it. In fact, as of Tuesday, Zelenskyy said the negotiations are progressing positively, as per the Kyiv Independent.
But Ukrainians aren’t the real issue. O’Brien said that the Russians are some of the toughest negotiators he’s come across. “Everything has to be a quid pro quo,” he added.
O’Brien: Iran, the source of problems in the Middle East
The root of Europe’s problems is Russia, said O’Brien. In the Middle East, it’s Iran, which sponsors terrorist organizations in places like Peru, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
“And until we deal with Iran, we’re not going to have peace in the Middle East,” including in Gaza, where Hamas and Israel are at war, he said.
Iranians aren’t like the Chinese, who are fueled by Marxism and Chinese nationalism, or the Russians, driven by the idea of restoring the Russian Empire. They “are motivated by theology and a belief that the Twelfth Mahdi is going to return.” According to this belief, “the last Imam” will return, along with Jesus Christ, to defeat Satan, he said.
“They believe in their hearts that they can usher the return of the Twelfth Mahdi by creating chaos in the Middle East,” O’Brien said. “It’s a very difficult ideology ... to negotiate with.”
On Tuesday morning, Trump held a meeting in the situation room about ongoing negotiations with Iran over a nuclear deal. The Trump administration is exerting a lot of pressure on Iran for continued and clear dialogue.
But, as O’Brien noted, these talks don’t address the root causes of Iran’s anger. “Since 1979, the Iranians have out-negotiated us at every turn,” he said. “But I think they’ve got something different from President Trump. I’m not sure if they understand what’s different.”