Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump’s Replacement for Bolton Is Also a Hawk

Robert O’Brien, the new national security adviser, used to work for the man he will replace.

September 18, 2019 at 9:00 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss?
Photographer: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP

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In some ways President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, seems like the opposite of the man he will replace, John Bolton.

His current job in government is special envoy for hostage affairs, meaning he has had to negotiate with the sorts of rogues Bolton shunned. Last year he helped bring home the American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was imprisoned by the Turkish government. Earlier this year he negotiated the release of U.S. citizen Danny Burch from Yemen. In April he said that a necessary (though insufficient) step for Syria to rejoin the international community would be for it to help find and free the journalist Austin Tice.