John Bolton
Subject: Trump’s Foreign Policy
Bio: Trump’s former National Security Advisor
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics and politics.
Today’s topic is Trump’s Foreign Policy.
Our speaker is Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton. We are going to hear about the next administration’s foreign policy and why Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities before Trump even takes the oath of office.
What do you expect from a second Trump term in terms of foreign policy?
John Bolton:
Trump will be just as unpredictable in the second term as he was in the first. He does not have an overarching national security philosophy. It will be another series of ad hoc decisions. If Biden did it and thought it was important for him, Trump will reverse it. The single best example of that would be in Ukraine where Trump has said he's going to end the war and where JD Vance has already laid out a proposed settlement, which I think would be very satisfactory to Moscow and not to Ukraine.
Larry Bernstein:
What do you think of Marco Rubio as the choice for Secretary of State?
John Bolton:
Marco Rubio certainly has the experience for the job. I agree with him in almost every area except Ukraine.
Larry Bernstein:
What is Rubio’s foreign policy philosophy?
John Bolton:
He adheres to a Reaganite philosophy. The real question is how he does deal with Trump.
Larry Bernstein:
How does Rubio think about China? Is he different from the establishment in any material way?
John Bolton:
What is remarkable in a bitterly divided Washington is how much agreement there is with China and the nature of the threat it poses to us from economic to political and military. For a strategic understanding, it is not just China as a threat to Asia. It's the emerging China-Russia axis, which has its outriders like North Korea, Iran, Syria, Belarus, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela. You can see it now with 10,000 North Korean troops fighting with Russia against Ukraine. The threats China poses all along its Indo-Pacific periphery is very real in the East and the South China Sea, along the land borders from Vietnam to India, but it is the global threat of this emerging axis war in Europe, war in the Middle East, potential war in Asia. The threat of China in Asia is real, but the threat of China in the other regions is real too.
Larry Bernstein:
China has decided not to play ball with IP or fair trade in any sense of the word. They have scared all their neighbors with military threats. If the world's doing an arms embargo to Russia, they will go ahead and sell them weapons.
Trump will have an opportunity to make a deal on all fronts: Military, tariffs, economics, and intellectual property. Everything's up for grabs. Tell us how you think Trump is going to negotiate with the Chinese.
John Bolton:
You have rightly pointed out the Chinese are a problem in a whole range of areas. I mean, they have been stealing intellectual property for decades. Nobody has done anything about it. It is absolutely incredible. He is talking about major tariffs with China.
Larry Bernstein:
Do we need to increase our defense budget to contain Chinese military power?
John Bolton:
We have a 285 ship Navy now, a bipartisan commission seven or eight years ago said, you need a 335 ship Navy. We are a long way away. You got to be willing to spend money. I do not know that Trump will be willing to spend the money.
Larry Bernstein:
Do you expect Xi to meet Trump soon to make a deal?
John Bolton:
At some point here, Xi Jinping calls him up and says, Donald, I'm so glad you got reelected. That guy, Biden was such a problem. We have got so many issues in the relationship; you and I know we can deal on this. Forget our advisors. Let's get together as soon as possible. Come to Beijing.
The last time you came, I gave you the biggest welcoming ceremony in Chinese history. I'll do even better this time and Trump will be on that plane before you can count to 10. He wants the deal of the century on trade, and I do not know what he would be prepared to sacrifice to get it.
Larry Bernstein:
Next topic. Is North Korea a real threat? How did Trump deal with North Korea differently than the Biden administration? Did the Biden administration, when the grownups were in the room, did they make much better progress than Trump did? Is it just a sideshow? And if so, what do you expect in this next administration?
John Bolton:
Trump very much wanted to deal with Kim Jong-un. When it was clear in the Hanoi meeting, one was not going to happen after it was over, he said, why are we even worried about this? And I said, because they are building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that can kill Americans. And he said, well that is a good reason. He also said he and Kim fell in love. I think Trump will go to Pyongyang in search of a deal. The current South Korean government's going to be upset by that, as will the current Japanese government. I do not think Trump will care about it.
It is interesting now that his bromance partner, Kim Jong-un has 10,000 troops fighting with the Russians against the Ukrainians is he really going to get tough on North Korea at a time when they're fighting alongside the Russians?
Trump does not see how the Chinese and the Russians use the North Koreans as a distraction for us while they are increasing their own power.
Larry Bernstein:
Is it just a distraction?
John Bolton:
Every country that gets a nuclear capability to destroy American cities is a direct threat to us. Neither Biden nor Obama or in the first Trump term did we do what we should have been doing on missile defense. We have not built up our capabilities to deter China or anybody else. We need to cut domestic expenditures and put into defense.
Larry Bernstein:
The Japanese Prime Minister was the first foreign dignitary to visit the Trump administration. There seemed to have been significant benefits for the Japanese to reach out initially. How do you think foreign dignitaries will respond this time around?
John Bolton:
The foreign leader in the first term who dealt with Trump most effectively was Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan. He put a lot of effort into it. He talked to Trump on the phone, visited with him, played golf with him. It took up an inordinate amount of his time as Prime Minister, but Abe had his eye on the ball to advance Japanese interests, particularly with respect to the threats from China and North Korea, and I think it paid off for Abe.
Larry Bernstein:
There was a famous photograph where Trump was sitting down, and Merkel was standing up along with the other senior leadership of the European Union. They were unable to persuade Trump to do whatever it was at that moment of time.
If you go back to that phone call with that original Zelensky that resulted in the first impeachment, Zelensky asked for some money and arms and Trump said, this is a German problem. Don't call me. Call Berlin.
We are finished being the world’s policeman. Europe needs to deal with it. They are not spending enough money on defense. They should pay for Ukraine not us!
John Bolton:
I do think he could withdraw from NATO in part because he does not understand what a collective defense Alliance does. His view is we are defending Europe, we do not get anything out of it and they are not paying. That is not the way it works. The security we get is having Europe on our side, huge trading area. His response to that would be they screw us on trade deals, and the answer to that is negotiate trade deals better.
We are also a leader, and I will tell you the European countries are not leaders and in any effective alliance you need a leader. We go first. They need to pick up their game. There is no doubt about it. Even Barack Obama called them free riders, but the question is, do you understand this to be a national security interest and to say, because they are not doing their part, we will give up our national security that's a mistake.
Larry Bernstein:
GoThe only reason he would want to leave NATO is so that they would pay their fair share. But there's also Article 5. There was a famous incident where a reporter asked Trump, would the United States fight to defend Montenegro if attacked? And he said no. The reporter said what about Article 5? We're not going to war. As NATO expanded around Russia, there is an expectation that the United States would go to war to protect Latvia and Estonia, but Trump won't defend them.
If you are not going to apply Article 5, should we be in NATO?
John Bolton:
Do you think the bigger headline is Trump impairs NATO's ability to defend itself or Trump withdraws from NATO? That is the bigger headline and that's why he'll do it. The answer to the expansion is the Russians have never crossed the NATO border, and NATOs did not have a strategy to expand toward Russia. It was the Central and Eastern European countries that came pleading to us saying we were overrun by the Soviets. We do not want to be overrun and we're willing to do our share.
What Donald Rumsfeld called New Europe are paying their share. It is old Europe that is not. Finland and Sweden abandoned 75 years of neutrality after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine because they saw that the only real defense was behind a NATO border.
At one point Trump said, countries that are not spending adequately on defense, the Russians can do whatever the hell they want. If the Russians believe that they would, and NATO would fail even without a Trump withdrawal.
Larry Bernstein:
Trump only needs 24 hours to solve the Ukraine war. What is he going to do?
John Bolton:
He will threaten and bluster and storm around. He is not going to solve it in 24 hours. I think Trump will conclude it was Zelensky’s fault.
Larry Bernstein:
There are some Europeans who think that Ukraine needs to fight to win, and Biden has been holding one arm behind Ukraine's back and that maybe when Trump says that he can end this in 24 hours, what he really means is he's going to tell Putin, I'm going to let Ukraine fight to win. Do you think that is a possibility?
John Bolton:
On a scale of one to 10, I'd say zero. I think he wants to end this war. I think he wants to end the war in the Middle East because he sees them as Biden's problems. After all, if he had been president, neither war would have happened. He wants them off the table. To me that says he does not care how they end. He just wants them over with. So, the terms of whatever deal is out there, it's just not going to bother him that much. But he's not going to want to undertake a decision that extends the war or enlarges the US presence in it because he just wants them to disappear.
Larry Bernstein:
Israel is doing its final mop-up operations in a Gaza. They continue each day to infiltrate Lebanon. But the head of the dragon is Iran. What do you think Bibi and Trump will do together to get the dragon?
John Bolton:
They are talking extensively about what to do before January the 20th. Again, if the idea is getting this thing out of the way by the time Trump takes office, the issue is what Israel needs to do before the 20th and what maybe extends after that because they're not going to get to do it all.
The real question is will Israel strike Iran's nuclear program before the 20th of January I think that this is the time to strike. There may never be a better time to strike the biggest threat to Israel. The biggest Iranian threat to the US is the nuclear program. The biggest threat to the Arab states in the region is the nuclear program. The biggest threat worldwide is proliferation of Iran's program. This is the time to do it. Will it happen? I do not know, but I think Trump is saying to Netanyahu, if there's any chance, you're going to do it, do it before the 20th of January.
Larry Bernstein:
Why is that?
John Bolton:
Because then it is not his responsibility, and he can blame it all on Joe Biden.
Larry Bernstein:
If he does not do it by January 20th, does that shut down a later attack?
John Bolton:
It makes it a lot more difficult, not impossible. It could be if nothing is happening and let's say Iran strikes Israel again in January before the 20th, then I think happening after the 20th wouldn't be a problem. I think Iran is terrified of Netanyahu. I do not think it's as terrified of Biden at all. And I think it does not know about with Trump, this potential for a have the big deal with Iran.
Larry Bernstein:
If the objective is regime change, does that change your menu of targets? Should they take out elements symbolically important to the regime? I know that originally there was a discussion of a military base, nuclear assets and oil fields were top three. And Biden said, you can only go after the military. And they asked Trump about it and Trump said, I don't understand. Isn't the whole point the nuclear facility?
John Bolton:
I think the nuclear targets are about 110% of the objective. I would not go after the oil initially because that would harm the population economically. I'm not objecting in principle, but to facilitate regime change, you want to do something that shows this regime has brought Iran to the brink of disaster and that if it doesn't change, worse will happen. And I think taking out the nuclear program, which Israel can do very substantially. It shows to the Iranian people that the regime can't defend itself. And I think attacking the nuclear facilities alone would demonstrate to the people and to the military that this regime, its days are numbered.
Larry Bernstein:
I thought the reason that the US opposes taking out the oil fields is that Iran would probably take out the oil fields in Saudi Arabia and other places around the Gulf causing a global problem.
John Bolton:
That was certainly Biden's concern before the election, and I do think the Gulf Arab states have a legitimate point that they would be more at risk because Iran would say in effect, well, if we cannot pump oil, you're not pumping oil either. I think you can take steps to defend the Gulf Arab facilities much better if you did decide to go after Iran's oil. But an effort to stop the main threat which is nuclear and overthrow the regime as soon as possible, attacking the nuclear sites alone suffices.
Larry Bernstein:
When would be the most appropriate time to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?
John Bolton:
Winston Churchill says that when you see a problem you could solve early and at lower cost you consistently don't do it until you hear the jarring gong of survival, which is what Israel now hears. Over the years, the nuclear weapons program that Iran has had and its support for terrorism have been an increasing threat across the Middle East.
Iran arming, equipping, training, financing, and guiding terrorist groups all over the Middle East, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah and Lebanon terrorists on the West Bank, Shia militia in Iraq and Syria plus Iran's own conventional forces and its aspirations to have nuclear weapons.
We have sat around and watched them for decades. Everybody has made this mistake and we made another mistake October 7th of 23 when neither Israeli nor American intelligence had a clue that Hamas was about to attack the Gaza Strip.
I think this should have been an indication to us that the strategic threat posed by Iran to Israel the Little Satan. We are the Great Satan. The Ring of Fire strategy that the Iranians have created was targeted against Israel. But if you look at a map, it applies to every oil producing monarchy on the Arabian Peninsula.
Given this challenge, Israel's performed remarkably. If U.S. intelligence community had the capability to do the attack on the pagers and the walkie talkies with somebody called Operation Grim beeper, I would be overjoyed. But we did not, nor did we have the creativity or the daring to do what the Israelis did in early 2018, which is raid the Iranian nuclear archive. They went into a warehouse in Tehran and carried out file cabinets and computers and discs and all.
The only thing they did wrong was they did not bring enough trucks to take more of it and they just drove out of Iran. It told us everything we needed to know that we suspected but did not know about the Iranian nuclear program the Israelis found when Iran began to construct a nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert built by North Koreans, a clone of the North Korean reactor at Yang Beyond, we didn't find it. The Israelis found it and they destroyed it as they had destroyed Saddam Hussein's reactor in 1981.
Larry Bernstein:
What will it take for the Iranian regime to fall?
John Bolton:
I think the regime is weaker than it's been at any time since the 1979 revolution. There are multiple reasons why the people of Iran are opposed to the regime. Number one is the ethnic differences. Persians are roughly 50 to 60% of the total Iranian population. There are Arabs, Kurds, and others who do not particularly like being part of the Persian empire.
The young people who are perhaps 60% of the population under 30 know they could have a different life. They can see it on the internet, they can see it across the Gulf, Doha and Dubai and elsewhere.
There's enormous economic dissatisfaction. There were riots in 2019, brutally repressed, but the economic conditions have only gotten worse. It is across the country. It's farmers, small shop owners, villages and small towns as well as Tehran.
Then two years ago, roughly with the Amini killing and the outbreak of the female opposition, this is important. It is not about a dress code. It is a challenge to the fundamental legitimacy of the Ayatollahs, which rests on their being able to say, we have the word of God, and we will tell you how to live and what to do and how to be. And the dress code is a piece of it. But when you attack the legitimacy of the Ayatollahs control of the dress code, you are attacking their legitimacy to give the word of God. And once they lose that, that is a real legitimacy problem.
The trouble is the people do not have guns.
I think the United States could be helping the opposition by providing communications equipment. It is a very disorganized movement. That is a good thing in a way because they cannot cut the head off because there isn't any head. But it is just very dispersed all across the country. It does not involve any military assistance on our part. We can find out they need more financial assistance. We could provide it. The Israelis could provide it. The opportunity to overthrow the regime comes when the Ayatollah Khameini dies. Now he is 85, he is sick. The actuarial tables are going to get to him. It is only a matter of time. He is only the second supreme leader. It is not like there is some constitutional process to pick a successor. The successor, many of them wanted, Mohamed Raisi, died in a helicopter crash some months ago. At least that's what they say happened to him.
The new president Pezeshkian is a bureaucrat. He is a fill in. He is not a legitimate successor supreme leader. The Ayatollah Khameini’s son wants to be supreme leader. A lot of people don't like that. That is why Raisi was elevated. When the Ayatollah Khameini dies, that's when the regime could fracture and when all these different sources of opposition to the regime could come together.
I want to come back to the female thing for just one second. It really is fundamentally different than the economic discontent, the youth discontent, the ethnic discontent because of a basic biological fact. Every revolutionary guard general has a mother, sisters, wives, and daughters. And the unanimity of opinion among the women in Iran is by everything I've heard is something to behold. In their homes every day the Revolutionary Guard General comes home, puts his cap on the hook on the wall, and then starts hearing it from the female relations, how much they dislike the rule of the Ayatollah. This regime is very weak and it's a shame we can't do more to bring it down.
Larry Bernstein:
You were UN ambassador. We have a new UN ambassador proposed Elise Stefanik. What do you think about her ability to make a difference in that institution?
John Bolton:
We have had many examples over the years of UN ambassadors who have come from political backgrounds. It's often enhanced their own political careers. Henry Cabot Lodge being the first example of that, and I think the UN today is in such a precarious position that somebody who went in with a real reform agenda to root out the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic structures up there, could do a lot of good work. It could be that Stefanik goes up there, spends two years, and then she is qualified to run for president. I thought of it once.
Larry Bernstein:
That is funny.
An example of an historical US success with the United Nations was when Adlei Stevenson used it during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He used it as a platform to articulate to the world and the global press that this was a real problem. I do not view the United Nations in that way today.
The United Nations is running a relief effort, which is being used for attackers on 10/7. It feels like a failed institution. Should the President of the United States reform it? What changes can the US make to the United Nations, or should we just abandon the institution altogether?
John Bolton:
What is most wrong with the UN is its political institutions have failed completely. The general assembly is a waste of time. The security council is gridlock. The Human Rights Council is a joke. Many of the specialized agencies do good work in their fields. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, International Maritime Organization, some of these people have never heard of. That is because they do their jobs and they're not politicized. But by and large, the central purpose of the UN structure was to preserve international peace and security. And on that, it is essentially totally worthless.
If you want to reform the UN abolish mandatory contributions. Contribute only voluntarily and insist on the revolutionary principle: We only want to pay for what we want, and we insist that we get what we pay for. That would rock the boat.
Larry Bernstein:
Aaron Friedberg spoke on my podcast, and he said that the major multinational institutions in the world have been co-opted by our enemies. China and Putin have taken advantage of it. His example was Interpol. Putin put out arrest warrants on Russian dissidents in Spain and they were arrested.
Friedberg recommended that the United States and its allies start new institutions. We have used international institutions historically to our benefit. How should we think about global multinational institutions that are led by the US?
John Bolton:
Withholding funding is how you get them to perform the way you want. Jeanne Kirkpatrick was once asked if we should withdraw from the United Nations. She paused for a minute and said, no, it is not worth the trouble. If the US were to withdraw from a few more organizations, like we have withdrawn from UNESCO several times, Obama put us back in, Trump withdrew again. Biden went back in. Let us withdraw from it, not go back in and just make sure some of them don't have any opportunity to suck us back into them. And then you could consider forming others.
Larry Bernstein:
There is a liberal and conservative foreign policy establishment, and you have been a leader of the conservative establishment. As you mentioned with China, there's agreement in the establishment on what we should do.
Sometimes there's disruption to the establishment. Ronald Reagan disrupted the establishment when he said, tear down that wall.
Trump and Vance want to disrupt the foreign policy establishment. Trump incorporated the foreign policy establishment in his first term. What will a disruption mean in Trump’s second term?
John Bolton:
There is nothing wrong with disruption. The question is, what are you going to replace the existing establishment with? And I think there are real differences between conservative Reaganite approaches and the Democrats. It was bitterly divided during the Cold War on what to do. The trouble with the Neo-Isolationist is they do not have a coherent strategic vision. Their talking points are domestic talking points. For example, we care more about Ukraine's border with Russia than we do about our border with Mexico. It's a total non-sequitur. You can care about both for legitimate national security reasons.
Larry Bernstein:
What are you optimistic about this new Trump administration?
John Bolton:
The single most important priority in foreign affairs today is to increase the American defense budget. Our spending has been inadequate for 35 years since the collapse of communism. We could cut military expenditures, and for 35 years we have been living on fumes. The threats now are real. From nuclear weapons capacity, cyberspace, asymmetric warfare, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the scope of the threats is greater than ever. And our capacity to meet those threats is not what it should be. This is an opportunity for Trump to cut domestic spending, cut domestic regulation, maybe even increase taxes, and begin to reduce the national debt. But a prerequisite for a strong American economy is a strong American presence in the world to keep that economy secure. And that's going to mean increased defense expenditures. I think Congress would support a major increase if Trump proposed it. I hope that's what he does.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to John for joining us.
If you missed our previous podcast the topic was Harris Almost Won. Our speaker was Eric Adelstein who is a partner at AL Media. Eric and his firm worked on the Harris Campaign as part of its advertising team. I want to hear firsthand about what the challenges were of running a 100-day presidential campaign with a $1.5 billion budget.
Eric explained the headwinds that Harris faced and why she ran an excellent campaign. He reviewed what lessons were learned, and what it takes to run a presidential campaign going forward.
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.
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