Donald Trump still has time to create global chaos, says John Bolton

Illustration: Tom Jellett

Former White House national ­security adviser John Bolton believes the US is entering a dangerous phase with a delusional Donald Trump refusing to accept that he lost the election, delaying the presidential transition to Joe Biden amid the possibility that he may use military force abroad or “cut a deal” with Iran or North Korea that would secure their ­nuclear weapons program.

“People instinctively say, ‘My goodness, what if he uses military force somewhere? How about if he cuts a terrible deal with the ayatollahs in Iran or with his friend Kim Jong-un on a nuclear weapons program that could be just as dangerous?’ But it would be consistent with the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal,” Bolton says in an interview for this column.

Bolton is critical of Trump’s recent purge of defence and security administration officials. He is concerned about reports that Trump is thinking of bombing Iran without considering the strategic consequences. He adds the drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan — without consulting Australia — as one of the many “stupid things” the President has done in recent weeks.

It is about satisfying his vanity and buying time to contest the election, Bolton suggests. “He wants to do it because he gets a lot of attention out of it. You and I are talking about it, and so are a lot of other people. Does (drawing down troops in the Middle East) make any sense from a US strategic point of view? No. Does it make sense from Donald Trump’s point of view? Sure, it does.”

Bolton worked for Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, and as George W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN. He spent 519 days as Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September last year, and wrote a damning account of his experience in The Room Where It Happened (Simon & Schuster).

He details how Trump was ­ignorant of basic facts, lacked a ­rational and consistent foreign policy, and was consumed with doing whatever it took to get re-elected. Bolton confirms Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Biden in return for military aid. He pleaded with Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win re-election. And in 2018 Trump decided the US would quit NATO and had to be talked out of it.

“I felt that despite all the reports about Donald Trump, the weight of the presidential office and the gravity of the responsibilities he faced would have an impact on him, as it has on every other American president,” Bolton says. “But it became clear that that was not true. He didn’t fully appreciate what it meant to be president or what was necessary to be successful.”

Australia’s foreign policymakers lived in perpetual fear that at any moment Trump could rashly plunge bilateral relations into crisis, including junking the ANZUS alliance. Bolton says he understands how they felt as other allies lived with the same anxiety.

While he disagrees with some of Biden’s foreign policies, and argues much is still unknown, it nevertheless represents a return to normality. “Trump doesn’t have a foreign policy, he doesn’t have a strategy, he doesn’t have a philosophy,” Bolton says. “I describe his decisions as an archipelago of dots: they are all there but they are not connected. So in that sense, almost anything would be better ­because it would be more coherent and more likely to be sustained over a period of time.”

The Trump presidency ends at noon on January 20 next year. Bolton believes Trump will have ­departed the White House by then and will not have to be dragged out by force. But it will be “a character test” for Republicans if Trump is still proving obstinate in the new year. He notes that conservative ­Republican Barry Goldwater told Richard Nixon he had to resign in August 1974.

“(Trump) will not leave graciously, and it will be unfortunate and it could be ugly, but he will leave voluntarily,” Bolton says. “There have been a few cases in American history where the outgoing president did not accompany his successor to the inaug­uration; this could well be one of them. That is unfortunate too and it is why ­Donald Trump making a concession speech is important.

“When somebody loses, their supporters are obviously disappointed and so is the losing candidate, but when the loser makes a concession speech and when the loser goes to inauguration ceremonies at the Capitol, it is saying to their followers, ‘I have accepted defeat and you should too.’ Not doing that will cause harm to the country.”

Bolton is hopeful the Republican Party will move in a new direction post-Trump and look to a future presidential nominee in the Reagan tradition, who has ­little in common with Trump’s policies, style or approach to the presidency. “The party needs to have a very extensive conversation about how to avoid this kind of ­catastrophe in the future,” Bolton says. “I want to get back to a Reaganite party and avoid the divisiveness and the personal attack style of Donald Trump.

“We have enough policy disagreements with our Democratic friends, and within the Republican Party, but let’s talk about the disagreements and avoid the rhetoric and divisiveness.”

As the Trump presidency draws to a close, Bolton warns that anything can still happen and an alliance partner such as Australia should continue to tread carefully. “I would say grit your teeth, keep your head down and stay out of the line of fire,” Bolton advises. “You know Winston Churchill once said, ‘You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, usually after they have tried everything else.’ The past four years constitutes trying everything else.”