A major international crisis is “much more likely” during President Donald Trump’s second term, given the president-elect’s “inability to focus” on foreign policy, a former US ambassador to the United Nations has warned.
John Bolton, President Trump’s longest-serving national security adviser at 17 months, was scathing in his criticism of the president’s lack of interest in knowledge, facts and a coherent strategy. He explained that President Trump’s decision-making is driven by personal relationships and “flashes of neurons” rather than a deep understanding of the national interest.
Mr. Bolton also dismissed Mr. Trump’s claims during this year’s campaign that he was the only one who could quickly end the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine while preventing World War III.
Mr Bolton told the Guardian: “He’s typical Trump. He’s all about bragging rights.” “The world is more dangerous than it was when he was president before. The only real crisis we’ve had was the coronavirus. This is a long-term crisis, and it’s against certain foreign powers. It’s not about the pandemic.
“But the risk of a 19th-century-style international crisis is very likely in President Trump’s second term. Given President Trump’s inability to focus on coherent decision-making, how will that play out? I am very worried.”
Mr. Bolton, 76, is a longtime diplomatic hawk who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has criticized the U.S. military against Iran, North Korea and other countries over their attempts to manufacture and procure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. I’ve asked for action.
He served as a State Department arms negotiator in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bolton served as President Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.
Bolton recalled: “I believed, like every American president before us, that the weight of his national security responsibilities, the weight of the problems he faces, the consequences of his decisions, and the way he thinks about them,” he said. “It was a method that could produce serious consequences.”
“It turns out I was wrong. By the time I got there, many behavioral patterns were already set and would never change. Even if I had been there earlier, He may not have been able to make an impact. But upon arrival, it became clear that intellectual discipline was not in President Trump’s vocabulary.”
Mr. Trump has departed from traditional US foreign policy and campaigned under the banner of “America First,” which advocates isolationism, non-interventionism, and protectionism, including steep tariffs.
Bolton said he agreed with “many” of Trump’s decisions during his first term, but found them to be consistent, like “a series of flashes of neurons.” “He has no philosophy, he doesn’t implement policies as we understand them, he doesn’t have a national security strategy.
“I said in the book that his decisions are like an archipelago of dots. You can try to draw lines between them, but even he You can’t draw the line. You try to get one right decision after another. At least that’s what his advisers thought, he could string together enough decisions. That wasn’t the way I saw it.”
The 45th president “could be attractive,” Bolton acknowledged, highlighting his personal relationships with dictators such as China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. . But he lacked the necessary qualifications for the job and showed blatant disregard for the president’s daily national security briefings.
“He doesn’t know much about foreign policy. He’s not a big reader. He sometimes reads newspapers, but he doesn’t read them very often because he doesn’t think the gist documents are important. He doesn’t think these facts matter. He thinks looking the other person across the table in the eye will get the deal done, and that’s what matters.”
Bolton added that he believes President Trump has a friendship with President Putin. “I don’t know what President Putin thinks about his relationship with President Trump, but he knows how to play President Trump and believes that President Trump is easy to mark. Trump clearly sees that. Not yet.
“If you base everything on personal relationships and don’t understand how the other person sees you, that’s a real lack of situational awareness, and it’s only going to cause problems.”
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Trump has repeatedly praised authoritarians such as President Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and has not ruled out withdrawing from NATO. Asked about President Trump’s now-infamous affinity with powerful people, the former national security adviser said:
“These other bigwigs don’t have a nasty independent legislature or judiciary, and they’re doing bigwig things that Trump can’t do and he just wishes he could do. It’s more fun without the constraints that a constitutional government imposes.”
In recent days, President Trump has again upset diplomats by threatening to take back the Panama Canal, asking the United States to buy Greenland and suggesting Canada become the 51st state. Kim Darroch, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Washington for four years from 2016, told Sky News that Trump’s second term would be “like a 24/7 bar brawl”.
Mr Bolton agreed that it could be even more volatile and destructive than last time, adding: “He’s confident in his judgment now that he’s been re-elected. “It will also become more difficult to impose discipline on decision-making.”
President Trump has said he will end Russia’s war with Ukraine within a day, raising concerns that he will cut off U.S. military aid and force Ukraine to surrender territory. . Mr Bolton commented: “I’m very concerned that he wants to take this off the table. He thinks this is Biden’s war.
“He said on the campaign trail that if he had been president, that would never have happened, but that’s certainly not provable or falsifiable. He wants that, but this strongly implies that he doesn’t care about any conditions, and I think he doesn’t care. And that’s very dangerous for Ukraine.”
He praised President Trump’s nominations of Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mike Walz to serve as secretary of state and national security adviser, respectively. But he called the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence and Kash Patel to director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) “really dangerous,” adding that Gabbard’s opinions were from “another planet.” claimed to belong.
Gabbard has long led a hawkish foreign policy and national security establishment that became famous in 2016 when Ben Rhodes, then President Barack Obama’s vice presidential national security adviser, called it a “lump.” I’ve been criticizing it. But Bolton rejects that characterization.
“I don’t think there’s a lump in foreign policy,” he said. “There is a very problematic group of Democratic liberals, but the Republican outlook remains fundamentally Reaganite. Trump is an insane person, and when he leaves politics, the party will return to normal.” But we have four more years under President Trump, and a lot of damage could be done in that time.”
