It says much about Donald Trump's eccentric approach to foreign policy that his newest adviser on national security came to Americans' attention when he was sent by the U.S. president to help free the rapper, A$AP Rocky, from a Swedish prison in August.

Robert O'Brien, who had been the president's special envoy for hostage affairs since May 2018, dutifully journeyed to Stockholm to observe proceedings at the court where the entertainer appeared on an assault charge, no less – a mission that was said to have left the Swedes feeling rather miffed.

His path through the revolving door that has become the office of assistant to the president for national security affairs, to give the job its proper title, was smoothed by his gushing praise of Trump.

In April, the White House quoted O'Brien as calling the president "the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States."

An online blurb for the one-time lawyer's 1916 book "While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis" uses a favorite phrase of Trump in arguing for a "peace-through-strength" national security and foreign policy that, after the Barack Obama years, "will allow the next president to make America great again."

In a prescient forward to the book, the conservative author and pundit Hugh Hewitt wrote, "Don't be surprised if O'Brien emerges as the key voice and guiding hand of a new and serious National Security Council in the West Wing or at the Departments of Defense and State in 2017." 

Two years later, the prediction has come to pass and he is taking on the job as Trump's fourth national security adviser in three years, despite what many analysts regard as questionable credentials, particularly his relative lack of experience within the bowels of government.

It is just as well that the position is a presidential staff appointment and as such is not subject to Senate confirmation.

In-tray of tough issues

The web description of O'Brien's book, a series of essays, does give some clues to his views, positing that Obama's foreign policy in the eight years as president before Trump had "emboldened our adversaries and disheartened our allies." It calls the international nuclear deal with Iran "a 1938 moment," suggesting a sort of appeasement pact. 

O'Brien has a record of supporting a tougher approach from Washington toward Iran, China and Russia. 

He has an in-tray that does include the growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran following Trump's decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal, as well as the bitter trade war with China, which Trump's national security strategy issued in late 2017 refers to as a "competitor," and "rival power." 

Interestingly, he has in the past seemed more at odds with the president on Russia, advising Ted Cruz in a 2015 article on the Republican presidential debates to play up "how chummy (Trump) will be with Vladimir Putin if he is elected."

Nevertheless, many of the commentators in the American media expect O'Brien to be much more pliant than John Bolton, the man he replaces and with whom he served at the UN during the George W. Bush administration. He is certainly more low-key, and that is one plus with Trump who has bristled against any administration figure who also craves the spotlight like he does.

Jonathan Stevenson, who served on the U.S. National Security Council staff from 2011 to 2013, put it this way in the New York Times:

"Mr. Trump most likely hopes that Mr. O'Brien will prove to be not an irrepressible ideologue, a foreign-policy entrepreneur or a consensus-building process expert, but rather a functionary who will provide an official veneer for the president's often outlandish views and moves.

"This would mean the continued decay of the council-led interagency process. Thus unimpeded by contrary voices, Mr. Trump could continue with his tactic of the attempted grand bargain – with China, North Korea, even Iran in certain circumstances that now seem remote – which in turn would be put into motion by blunt instruments like tariffs, initiatives announced by tweet and military bluster and threats."

'Tremendous successes'

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, perhaps with the expectation that he will have a better working relationship with the national security apparatus, is also said to favor the new appointee.

The national security adviser occupies a privileged and influential position. Stephen Hadley, who held the post under George W. Bush, called it the best foreign-policy job in government. "You get to spend more time with the president than any other member of the president's national security team," Hadley said in a speech three years ago. "You are the first person to see the president in the morning when the president shows up for work in the Oval Office and the last person to see the president before he or she makes any major foreign policy or national security decision."

After his appointment, O'Brien said that he expects the U.S. to continue having "tremendous foreign policy successes" under Trump's leadership.

Given the list of difficult issues facing America, the 53-year-old is in danger of becoming a hostage to events. He will certainly find his new role far more challenging than, for example, securing the release American pastor Andrew Brunson, whose two-year imprisonment in Turkey raised tensions between Washington and Ankara.

Top Photo: President Trump and newly named national security adviser Robert O'Brien appear at Los Angeles International Airport on September 18, 2019. /VCG Photo