Donald Trump owns the Republican party. He dominates the party’s politics, drives its public narrative, and determines the range of acceptable opinion. But that range is quite broad, particularly on foreign policy issues in which Trump is often inconsistent or even incoherent.  On some issues such as immigration, trade, or the fecklessness of allies, Trump has spoken with a clear voice and everyone in the Republican party at least pretends to agree. On most other foreign policy issues, however, he has left open many important details. Various Republican policy entrepreneurs are seeking to fill in these gaps, engaging in a bitter intra-Republican “war for Trump’s mind”. Whoever wins this war will likely determine the next US foreign policy. Until then, European attention should be focused on the battlefield.  

The combatants in this intellectual battle are not trying to change Trump or challenge him in any way. Rather they seek to build on his vague, instinctive approach and create a bridge to a more detailed foreign policy that they prefer. They divide roughly into three “tribes”. Primacists want a foreign policy that resembles the traditional leadership approach of the Reagan or George W. Bush administrations. The prioritisers want to focus strictly on Asia. The restrainers seek a more restrained foreign policy that would see the United States reduce its commitments around the world.

These three tribes have profound differences. But they are not seeking to convince each other or even the voters of their righteousness. They have an audience of one: Donald Trump. They are seeking to put forward a policy that, once Trump gets down to the business of governing in a second term, will feel like a natural extension of his policies and inspire him to appoint them and their friends to key positions in his administration.  

In June, a powerful contendor publicly joined the intra-Republican battle. Robert O’Brien, the last in the long line of national security advisors during Trump’s first term, published an essay in Foreign Affairs, making the case for a primacist foreign policy in a Trump administration. Arguably, the primacists have the longest bridge to build. Trump’s “America First” mantra and his disdain for traditional Republicans, as well as his experience of manipulation by so-called RINO (Republicans in Name Only) political appointees during his presidency mean that he is closer to restrainers and prioritisers. The essay nonetheless succeeds at constructing that bridge by using techniques that seem tailor made to convince Trump that he should have, or more precisely, already does have a foreign policy that is primacist.

First and foremost, O’Brien is uniquely well positioned to make the primacist case to Trump. He rose to the post of national security advisor from the rather obscure post of special presidential envoy for hostage affairs in late 2019. Like many appointees he got the job less because of his experience or policy alignment with the president than because he “looked the part”. In fact, his record indicated that he had conventional, hawkish Republican foreign policy views on issue like China, Iran, and Russia that differed from many of Trump’s more restrained public pronouncements.

Despite the somewhat odd hiring criteria, O’Brien proved able to persist and even prosper in the role. He survived the balance of the term and never fell out with President Trump, even though he considered resigning from his post after the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.  Unlike many other such conventional appointees, he has not criticised Trump since leaving office and has not attracted Trump’s public ire.

From this strong position, O’Brien constructs his arguments using six tactics apparently designed to make his policy more appealing to Trump. They are:

• Begin by flattering Trump. It’s not possible to overly flatter Trump and it is a necessary prelude to convincing him of anything. O’Brien’s article begins by hailing Trump as the embodiment of Reagan’s idea of peace through strength. Trump is, in this view, a rare American peacemaker, an avatar of strength that enemies dare not attack, and yet prudent in his use of American power.
• Accept the Trumpian Core. Trump’s inconsistency on foreign policy has its limits. From as long ago as the 1980s, Trump has demonstrated a consistent antipathy toward free trade and immigration and a strong belief that America’s allies take advantage of it. Any appeal to him must start by accepting these limits on creativity. So, despite O’Brien’s globalist credentials, he notes that “Trump grasped that ‘free trade’ has been nothing of the sort in practice”, and despite his strong support for alliances, he adds that Trump is right to insist that “alliances [need] to be two-way relationships.”
• Build the structure of your policy on top of anti–Bidenism. Trump often defines his policies in contrast to those of the people he opposes. So, the best way to build support for a policy is to attribute its opposite to Biden. If you want Trump to support economic decoupling from China, a policy he only inconsistently supported when he was president, note that the Biden administration has rejected “the idea we should decouple our economy from China.”
• Claim that Trump accepts your positions on issues on which he is inconsistent. Here, O’Brien simply asserts that Trump wants to support Ukraine and Taiwan in their respective struggles with Russia and China, even though Trump never said he would. Similarly, O’Brien simply denies that Trump’s more hostile anti-alliance messages and claims that “Trump recognizes that a successful foreign policy requires joining forces with friendly governments and people elsewhere.”
• Ignore Trump actions that don’t fit your policy. O’Brien, for example, doesn’t even mention Trump’s first term decision not to back up Saudi Arabia after Iran’s attack on its energy facilities in 2019. Similarly, he never mentions Trump’s invitation to Russia to invade delinquent NATO partners or his unwillingness to say whether he would provide support to Taiwan.
• Assert that your policy already is Trump’s policy. Overall, O’Brien’s article describes a traditionalist, primacist policy of American leadership and involvement in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In the name of “peace through strength”, he advocates massive increases in defence spending and increases in US commitments in all three theaters. Trump is, at best, uncommitted to many of these elements. But O’Brien simply presents his preference as Trump’s policy allowing Trump, if he so chooses, to adopt it without even having to credit its author.

In the end, O’Brien’s foreign policy is in fact the policy of the traditional establishment that Trump has always rejected. But that doesn’t matter very much because O’Brien presents a powerful policy package that his audience of one can accept and even believe that he created.  With such tactics, O’Brien can possibly win the war for Trump’s mind. But the prioritisers and restrainers will no doubt riposte. They will use a similar formula, but will likely have a better case to make that their policies are just extensions of Trump’s “America First” ideology and his strong antipathy to China. The war for Trump’s mind will grind on.