Quotes from Robert C. O'Brien

China's rapid inroads into Africa are made possible by a combination of Chinese money and a willingness by Beijing to deal with some of the world's most unsavory leaders and human rights abusers like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir in the Sudan.

Taiwan needs to start looking at some asymmetric and anti-access area denial strategies and really fortify itself in a manner that would deter the Chinese from any sort of amphibious invasion or even a gray zone operation against them.

Not many Americans understand how many Army divisions we have, the percentage breakdown of the Air Force's fighter/bomber mix, or the three 'Triad' legs of our strategic nuclear force. But just about everyone understands the Navy's 'ship count' and what it means for a president to send a carrier battle group into a crisis zone.

For decades, the United States condemned the Chinese Communist Party's coercive population-control policies - too often alone in its criticism, while other nations turned a blind eye as they sought commercial advantages in China.

While some national security advisers have eschewed the Scowcroft Model and sought to 'operationalize' the NSC or pursue their own policy agendas without regard to the cabinet, the president and the country are best served by the NSC's adherence to its intended 'honest broker' advisory role.

Abraham Lincoln once noted that 'the ballot is stronger than the bullet.' Foreign adversaries, who can't match the military, economic or diplomatic power of the U.S., understand Lincoln's wisdom. They seek to sow chaos and confusion in our electoral process to gain an advantage over us.

We've turned a blind eye to Chinese economic activity, the manipulation of the renminbi, the dumping, the unfair trade practices. We've turned a blind eye to intellectual property theft.

The NSC staff should not, as it has in the past, duplicate the work of military officers, diplomats or intelligence officers.

The prospect of an Africa dominated by China means that progress in human rights and democracy in the region will stall and could be reversed.

For decades, conventional wisdom in the United States held that it was only a matter of time before China would become more liberal, first economically and then politically. We could not have been more wrong - a miscalculation that stands as the greatest failure of U.S. foreign policy since the 1930s.

The United States Navy is of critical importance to the defense of this country and to maintaining freedom of the seas internationally.

I have been with President Trump as he has spoken with leaders from countries on six continents, including Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom and many more.

Despite repeated calls for reform from nations like the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan, the court has become an ineffective, unaccountable and politically motivated bureaucracy. There are serious concerns about corruption and misconduct at the highest levels of the ICC Office of the Prosecutor.

Both cyber and old-fashioned human-intelligence industrial espionage has occurred for decades without any significant retribution by the United States.

I made it very clear that the United States will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections, and the Russian side committed not to do so.

The Navy has demonstrated time and again that it is unwilling to embrace innovative approaches that are both efficient and effective with regard to its force structure.

First and foremost, the United States did not ratify the 1998 Rome Statute that founded the ICC. Successive administrations have stood by that decision and, as a result, American citizens are not subject to ICC jurisdiction.

The 'Scowcroft Model' recognizes - and embraces - the unique but necessarily modest place the National Security Council and the national security adviser occupy in the American national security architecture.

It is hard for anyone born after 1945 to imagine a world where the oceans - the global commons - are not open for trade and commerce or where freedom of navigation is imperiled.

The details of the CCP's anti-Uighur campaign are heartbreaking, but they reflect the Marxist-Leninist disdain for individual human beings. Whenever Chinese people dare defy the party by asserting their individual humanity, they stop being useful to the state and become a problem to solve the only way the CCP knows how: suppression and coercion.

By interacting with NATO vessels on E.U. anti-piracy duty, the Chinese are gaining valuable insights in to Western naval doctrine.

Freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law... are universal values of the human spirit.

The world has grown increasingly dangerous, with a nuclear madman in North Korea testing an ICBM a month, mullahs in Tehran plotting the takeover of the Middle East, Russia engaging in 'frozen conflicts' in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, a very hot civil war in Syria, and China appropriating a vast swath of the Pacific to itself.

Corruption and manipulation of the ICC by foreign intelligence services subvert the original mission and purpose of the ICC.