John Bolton
Subject: Should the US Abandon NATO?
Bio: Trump’s National Security Advisor (2018-2019)
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and culture.
Today’s topic is Should the US Abandon NATO?
Our speaker is John Bolton who was Trump’s National Security Advisor in his first administration. John will discuss why the Americans are frustrated with the Europeans underwhelming investment in their own defense. We will discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine, America’s ongoing security interests on the European continent, and whether it makes sense to kick Turkey out of NATO.
Let’s get started.
Relations between the United States and Europe has been tenuous. Vice President Vance's speech in Brussels related to their democratic values was received in a hostile way.
John Bolton:
Europeans were very upset. I thought it was an impolitic thing to do. One of the criticisms of the neoconservatives, of which I am not one, is that they are constantly harping on human rights in authoritarian societies when we should worry about what our bilateral interests are internationally, not their internal practices.
What Vance did was attack our allies for deficiencies as he saw them. He has not attacked Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. He criticized Germany for not being as pro-free speech as we are. He is accurate about that. But if you were in a country that had produced Adolf Hitler and vaporized 6 million people, you might be worried about that coming back.
You can have different approaches to freedom that are not equivalent to ours. They have parliamentary systems in Europe, which I find unsatisfactory. That does not mean they are not trying to be democratic. Vance did not acknowledge the complexity of life that we share with our allies as part of the overall Western tradition.
Larry Bernstein:
He said that the anti-immigration parties in Europe were denied the ability to run. The Romanian courts outlawed the first primary where the anti-immigration party won recently. Marine Le Pen was denied the ability to run for president for the next five years. And what Vance was saying is that in a democracy you cannot prevent the public from expressing its views. And that is what got the Europeans.
John Bolton:
Marine Le Pen was found guilty of committing fraud. The sentence that they imposed was consistent with their law. They are still being subject to challenge in court. Some of the countries that have come out of 70 years under communism, they are not perfect but aiming to be part of the West. I would still include them as an ally imperfect though as they are. We have worked with imperfect allies before. Franco Spain was a NATO member, the Greece under the colonels was a NATO member. Had no problem with that.
Larry Bernstein:
Democracy offers the opportunity to switch governments. Marine Le Pen is currently the most popular figure in France. And countries have rules that could ban them, but when you remove the democratic process to elect her, the only way for her to take power would be non-constitutional. The French have done that many times. The last attempt was when de Gaulle took office in a non-constitutional way in the late fifties. Now France leaves itself only that choice. What Vance is saying you only offering Le Pen’s allies an unconstitutional way to change leadership.
John Bolton:
You are making a political point, which I agree with. The lawfare efforts against Trump benefited him. You can make a straight-line argument that his indictment in New York for the so-called financial fraud he committed, did more to help him get nominated by people outraged at what the New York attorney did than almost anything else. What they have done to Le Pen may benefit her movement politically.
Another way to look at it which is when you have got a target on your back, do not do stupid stuff like commit penny fraud with EU disbursements for European parliamentary business. Why do you get caught up in a mistake like that?
Larry Bernstein:
The purpose of this podcast is to focus on whether we should remain in NATO. So, let's get to it. NATO was created immediately after the Second World War to contain Russian power. That is no longer a serious threat. Why should we continue to have NATO in this form?
John Bolton:
I wouldn't keep NATO in this form. The threat of Russian aggression is real. They have done it in Georgia in Ukraine twice. Other countries are clearly at risk in Europe and in the Caucuses in Central Asia. What NATO does is advance American interest by stabilizing much of the European continent. It was perceived weakness in NATO in the Biden and Obama administration that allowed the Russians to take advantage of it.
I would make NATO a global organization following the advice of former Spanish prime minister José Maria Anzar almost 20 years ago now, who said, admit Japan, Australia, Singapore, Israel, make it a global organization given the China-Russia axis that is now forming. Potential conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia are related. Making NATO global today is an even better idea than it was 20 years ago.
Larry Bernstein:
Tell me about what you think of Article 5 and should we have NATO without Article 5?
John Bolton:
NATO is an association that must admit new members unanimously. Article 5, contrary to what people say, does not automatically require a use of force. Each country must go through its constitutional decision-making process. NATO has the purpose of being strong because that is how you deter opposition. The Soviets and then the Russians have never crossed a NATO border. They have crossed other borders, but deterrence worked for everybody in NATO. Finland and Sweden watched the Russians in Ukraine concluded abandoning over 75 years of neutrality that the only safety was behind a NATO border. Deterrence works. The point is not whether we go to war over Estonia. The point is how do you prevent the war from beginning?
Larry Bernstein:
Sometimes treaties prevent war sometimes they don't. In Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August, she discusses the treaties that set-in place the process that World War 1 started. You're right, it can lead to deterrence, and if it doesn't, then you have a world war. In the conversation between Zelensky, Vance and Trump, Trump said, “I don't want World War III.” Let's say you deter war with a 99% probability, that leaves a 1% probability of World War. That may not be worth it to Americans. Estonia's independence may not be worth a 1% risk of the loss of major cities in the United States.
John Bolton:
There is no human institution that does better than 99%. NATO for 76 years has avoided war with Russia. And the advantage to the United States in this organization is that it gives us many things that help preserve stability on a continent where three times in the 20th century, two hot wars and one cold war. Peace and security benefit the United States. We are not doing this because we like Estonia. We are doing it because it benefits us.
Larry Bernstein:
The Turks have not been great allies. During the Iraq War, the plan was to send one of our armies through Turkey into Iraq, and the Turkish Congress voted against allowing the US military to go that route. It is their country. They have those rights.
We have had authoritarian regimes in NATO, and now Turkey is in a funky place, and I would rather have them on my team than not. The Bosphorus is a fantastic place to reduce the ability of the Russian fleet to move in and out of the Black Sea.
But our interest and Turkey's interest may not align, and a military alliance probably should relate to like-minded states working together. It is not just geographical. How should we think about NATO in the context of someone who really is not an ally?
John Bolton:
I had written that we should expel Turkey. If in the last presidential election, Erdogan had fixed it the way he fixed earlier elections. The opposition parties could not produce enough evidence for that. So, I've not called for Turkey to be removed.
I hope that Erdogan is an aberration and that the Turkish people do not share his desires for Turkish Empire in the Middle East. You cannot ignore, as you say, the Bosporus and Dardanelles. Geography is critical to us and merits putting up with a lot of pain, but there is a limit to it.
Larry Bernstein:
I had Victor Cha speak at my book club. He had written a book about why is it that the Europeans have a continental wide alliance, but in Asia we do not. We have an alliance with Japan, an alliance with South Korea, an alliance with Philippines, but there's not an Article 5 between those nations. And what Victor Cha said that those nations do not like each other and trust each other. And they were worried that their fight might break out between them.
It gets to the heart of what we are talking about with NATO. It's a military alliance, and so we want to integrate the military in a cohesive command structure with similar equipment. We had an experience in the beginning of World War II where the British, Australians, Americans, and Dutch were under a single command. It did not work very well, and the Japanese blew up the fleet in the first meeting. They were saying, we need to do this in a better way with a combined fleet under a single command.
That process about command and control is a different question than Article 5. I wonder if we created something for one purpose and we are trying to tailor it for another where our interests may not align as it had in the past.
John Bolton:
During the Cold War, John Foster Dulles tried to create alternatives to NATO. There was the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, SEATO treaty that did not work for a variety of reasons, and it has to do with the proximity of the Soviet threat to Europe. The threat was real and that concentrates people's attention.
Their attention was not so concentrated in the Asian context, and the cultural differences were greater as well. Europe was divided ethnically, linguistically, and religiously, but culturally, it was Western civilization. There was once a book called From Plato to NATO about Western Civilization. You could not write a book about that in Asia. Today looking at the Chinese and North Korean threat that you have got an agreement in the Biden administration to have trilateral military exercises among the forces of South Korea, Japan, and the United States.
This is a huge step forward. It's not NATO by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a direct enhancement of our security as well as South Korea and Japan. We be looking for common defense mechanisms to make us and make our allies more secure.
Larry Bernstein:
Article 5 may be meaningless. Trump was asked in his first administration, if Montenegro were attacked, would the United States respond with Article 5? He said, no. But what about Article 5? Yeah, I know, but it is not in our national interest. We are not going to go to World War III for Montenegro. We are just not going to do it.
The Quad, which is US, Japan, Australia, and India. Richard Fontaine was on my podcast with the Center of New American Security, they did a war game after Taiwan was attacked. India chose to sit it out. This is the reason for the Quad to exist. And in that scenario, India chose not to participate.
Taiwan is in the first island chain is not critical to Indian security, and they do not want to go to war with China. How should we think about Article 5 in the context of what is in the interest of that specific nation?
John Bolton:
Well, picking on little man and Montenegro is easy enough to do, but the point is when you admit them to NATO, you think they are part of a larger interest that would be threatened. Russia's designs on Ukraine do not stop there.
I am not the least surprised that today India said we are not getting involved in war with China. The issue for India is when it is going to learn that the, as Daniel Moynihan once said to an Indian diplomat some years back, the second world is gone. There is no Cold War. Why are you still in the third world?
India is directly threatened by China. Its ties to Russia are outdated, particularly as Russia grows closer to China, its principal enemy. But this is going to take time for India to adjust.
Larry Bernstein:
The Houthis were sending missiles into the Red Sea, undermining shipping in the Red Sea, and that sea lane is predominantly Asian-European trade. And the question is, who should protect that sea lane? Should it be the Europeans, or should it be the Americans? Who should be responsible for European defense? For allies that are capable or should be capable?
John Bolton:
We are responsible for our own security. Freedom of the seas has been a principle of American foreign policy. We should have pounded the Houthis on about October 9, 2023, not waiting until today. That was another failure of the Biden administration.
This is something that we have done throughout American history. In 1801 to 1805, Thomas Jefferson fought the Barbery pirates because as the bumper sticker in America went at the time, millions for defense, but not 1 cent for tribute, which is what you had to pay to these pirates as tributes.
Jefferson said, we are not going to do that. In 1801, they created a Navy of six ships to fight the Barbary pirates, which are in Libya and Tunisia of today. That is a long way from colonial Virginia. 225 years ago, we were ready to fight them even though the Europeans would not. That shows that we are committed to freedom of the seas as a principle, and it is the right thing to do. We are doing it for us, and we should finish the business and make sure the Houthis cannot close that maritime passage ever again.
Larry Bernstein:
I took the opposite lesson from that Barbary Pirate example. Here is how I think about it. The Americans were part of the British colonies, and Britain was King of the Sea, and American shipping that passed through Gibraltar would face these pirates and pre-revolution the British took care of it. And then post-revolution, the British said, you were not willing to pay for the value of the empire. There was a kidnapping of an American captain, Congress got whipped up and paid for the American Navy to go bust some heads in North Africa. The British Navy was willing to support its allies to a point when they were part of the empire, it was indirectly taxed to pay for that. And now they were on their own.
John Bolton:
You referred to Britain as King of the Seas at that time. Now we are King of the Seas, and that is good for us.
Larry Bernstein:
Vance is saying it is expensive to run this thing, and it's fair if we each have responsibilities for sectors of the world and pay our respective share. Trump is trying to give Europe a kick in the ass.
John Bolton:
In the 1990 Persian Gulf War, which was led by the United States to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush decided that since a lot of countries would not contribute troops, they could contribute money. So, he sent his Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, all over the world asking for money. They called it the Tin Cup exercise.
We made money on the first Persian Gulf War through the tin cup exercise. We held command, we held leadership, we provided the preponderance of the troops, and we won. It is that intangible political benefit of leadership and defense of our interest that cannot be accounted for in dollars and cents. When you turn everything into a financial transaction, you are losing an intangible value. What Trump is ripping through decades of goodwill, reliance, trust, deference to the United States which is going to be very hard to get back.
Larry Bernstein:
In Ukraine, Trump would prefer if the Europeans ran the show, paid for it, managed it, and was responsible for it in every sense.
John Bolton:
It's fundamentally in America's interest that the Russian unprovoked aggression does not prevail in Ukraine, not just because of Ukraine, but because of the rest of Europe, or Taiwan, which would be threatened if China reads the lesson that the United States doesn't care enough about the breadbasket of Central Europe, a huge country with enormous potential that we just let go to the Russians. That would tell the Chinese, we are not going to come to Taiwan's aid. This is how deterrence works. And not withstanding that our allies are weaker than we want them, it is still in our interest to prevail over Russian aggression on the continent of Europe. That is why we went through three wars in the 20th century.
Larry Bernstein:
How should we think about the U.S. role, the allies and whether there should be collective actions? It's nice that America can be the policeman to the world. But it is expensive.
John Bolton:
What happens if we do not act? We are spending a little bit over 3% of GDP on defense. In the Reagan years, we were at 5% and 6%. In the Eisenhower years, we were at 15% and we spent what we needed to spend to defend ourselves. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we have been experiencing the peace dividend. People talked about the end of history. They were simply wrong, and European defense expenditures plunged and so did ours. Today that is beginning to change. Trump is now saying we will have a $1 trillion plus defense budget. Japan has said they are going to double their defense budget from 1% to 2% of GDP over the next five years, which will make them the third largest military power in the world. If you take public opinion surveys in Japan today by a substantial majority view, an attack on Taiwan as an attack on Japan.
Hopefully, we can deter a Chinese attack. But conflicts throughout history have been not on the homeland of the dominant power but along the periphery. That is where you have to decide whether the larger goal of protecting our allies is worth it. I think it would be in the case of Taiwan, because if we let Taiwan fall to Beijing, nobody in Asia would give any credibility to our promises of deterrence in the future and think that would make them more susceptible to the Chinese.
Larry Bernstein:
Trump wants the Europeans to pay more for their defense, and in the last 25 years they have not. Robert Gates gave a speech to Brussels recommending they spend more money. You talked about the peace dividend. I'd rather spend money on our elderly than buy a tank. Everybody would. What is the best way to increase European defense spending?
John Bolton:
Trump's not the first one who noticed that the Europeans were not spending up the par. It has been true since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that Trump's pressure in his first term increased their spending. His problem is that he does not understand the alliance, and that is why he is not averse to tearing it apart. He thinks we defend Europe, they do not pay for it, and we do not get anything out it. I disagree fundamentally with the last point. We get a lot out of it, which he does not appreciate.
It extends our security buffer. Would you rather fight in Poland or in Florida? The NATO alliance gives us a lot of space in Europe that the Russians must get through before they get to us.
Iceland does not have a military, so should we throw Iceland out of NATO? Look at a map. Would you like an Iceland with Russian and Chinese air and naval bases on it? I do not think so. It is critical as is Greenland to the overall defense of the North Atlantic, and these are things that should be considered.
I am not excusing the Europeans or the Canadians not doing their duty by spending at least 2%. Trump has raised the target figure to 5%.
I think that is where the U.S. should be, and his defense budget of a trillion dollars is not enough. We live in a difficult world. People need to wake up to this. The loss of Ukraine to Russia that would wake people up. Maybe the loss of Taiwan will be required to wake up to the threat of China. Question is whether they wake up too late.
Larry Bernstein:
I like to end each podcast with a note of optimism. What are you optimistic about as it relates to the US relationship with NATO?
John Bolton:
NATO remains incredibly important. It's the most successful political military alliance in human history and throwing it away would be a huge mistake.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to John for joining us.
If you missed the last podcasts, they were a two-part series on the 80th anniversary of the Nazi surrender in World War 2. Our speaker was Craig Symonds who is the author of the book Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings. Craig is a Professor Emeritus of History at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Craig discussed the unexpected challenges of the allied invasion at Normandy. Craig also explained what distinguished the great allied generals on the battlefield.
Our second speaker was the What Happens Next Culture Critic Darren Schwartz who reviewed the movie classic Patton that starred George C. Scott that won multiple Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.
I would also like to make a plug for next week’s show with Eric Labs who is the Congressional Budget Office Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons. Eric will discuss the future of the US Navy.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, goodbye.
Check out our previous episode, The 80th Anniversary of the Nazi Germany Surrender: How the Allies Won the War, here.
Share this post