John Bolton’s Biggest Fears About Trump 2.0

For five decades, John Bolton has been a fixture in the foreign-policy firmament of Republican administrations—an uber-hawk, a “bull in a china shop” of global diplomacy, and a consistently thoughtful and forthright proponent of a certain vision of U.S. power. He was a senior official at the State Department and the National Security Council in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. 

Most recently, he served a frustrating year and a half as former President Donald Trump’s third national security advisor, a role in which he sought, ultimately in vain, to bring coherent and constructive foreign policy into the White House. He chronicled that experience in The Room Where it Happened, a memoir that was just revised and re-released earlier this year with an explicit warning about the perils of a second Trump presidency.

Foreign Policy spoke with Bolton about Trump, his likely agenda for a second term, the biggest foreign-policy fears that he provokes, and the “virus of isolationism” that seems to have infected Bolton’s Grand Old Party.

This interview has been edited and lightly condensed for clarity.

Foreign Policy: In your book, you write that Trump is manifestly unfit to be president. In a recent survey of presidential scholars, he was ranked the worst president of all time. How much worse could Trump 2.0 possibly be?

John Bolton: I think he will start at the bottom end, where he was on Jan. 20, 2021, and then it will get worse from there. His agenda, as it always has been, is about Donald Trump. People have a lot of trouble understanding that he does not have a political view of the world—he doesn’t think in policy terms; he thinks of everything through the prism of what will benefit Trump. So he comes to office, if he’s reelected, with a bagful of grievances against anybody who ever disagreed with him or opposed him, which is why when he talks about retribution, he is very serious about it. 

And his idea of the federal government is very primitive: He didn’t know much about government when he first took office—he didn’t learn much when he was in office—but he will look at particular agencies, like the Justice Department, as a vehicle to bring litigation or even criminal prosecution against his adversaries. He looks at the Defense Department as a kind of personal police force. He has enormous antipathy toward the intelligence community. I think that what will happen as this personal agenda plays out, [is that] you will see increasing chaos within the federal government and, at times, real constitutional trouble.

FP: You mentioned the intelligence community, and just recently a lot of intelligence and security officials, yourself included, have sounded the alarm that Trump’s return could lead to a wholesale politicization or evisceration of U.S. intelligence. Beyond his indictments for mishandling classified documents, how concerning is that?

JB: I think it’s very concerning because Trump doesn’t have a clear idea of the U.S. national interest—he thinks about his own interest. That’s going to dominate his dealings with the intelligence community and law enforcement to a certain extent, since he looks at the FBI as complicit in problems caused to him before and during his presidency.

I think it’s this idea that people are personally loyal to him—it’s not loyalty to the Constitution, it’s whether or not you do what Trump wants you to do. 

FP: In the book, you said the most destructive element of Trump’s time in the White House came in the arena of foreign policy. What worries you the most? The willingness to abandon Ukraine, the affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarians, the threats to leave NATO?

JB: I think in the broadest sense, he doesn’t understand foreign policy, and he doesn’t have a vision of what American security needs to rest on. He has repeatedly indicated that he sees relations between states as essentially as being coextensive with relations between their leaders, so if he has a good relationship with Vladimir Putin, in Trump’s mind, Russia and the United States have good relations, which is obviously a long way from reality. The hard men of history— like Putin and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un and others—don’t mistake personal relations for what they see as their national interests, so Trump is not even playing in the same game as these adversary leaders are. 

Part of his bundle of grievances is traditionally felt from traditional allies of the United States, which is why I do think his threat to withdraw from NATO is very serious. He came within an inch of withdrawing in his first term at the NATO summit in Brussels in 2018, and I think he will withdraw in a second term. You know, a headline that says “Trump Undercuts NATO” is not much of a headline. A headline that says “Trump Withdraws From NATO,” that’s a headline, and that’s what Trump wants.

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FP: But with Ukraine so much on the agenda, and Trump and his acolytes blocking aid, there’s this debate in the United States security community that boils down to whether the main concern for U.S. foreign policy should be the Russian threat to Ukraine, Europe, and NATO, or the Chinese threat to Taiwan and the Western Pacific. Where do you think the U.S. focus should be?

JB: The Pacific view exists, and it has for many years, but it ignores the reality of a new era in international affairs we’ve entered into. What we’re going to see dominate for the rest of this century is this new axis between Russia and China. It is like the Sino-Soviet alliance of the Cold War, but this time very much with China in charge and Russia as the subordinate, with their cadre of outriders, such as Belarus and Syria. It’s a global problem. 

To say we can pivot to Asia and ignore everything else simply invites China to enter into areas we pivot away from. So now you see things like joint Iranian, Chinese, and Russian naval maneuvers in the Arabian Sea. America has a global range of interests, and the notion that you can geographically limit that range of interests is historically and factually wrong today. So I think it’s very important that a strong American presence remain around the world, and the idea that you can hive it off into discrete geographical conflicts is badly mistaken.

FP: If you listen to voices such as U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, it seems as if an argument could be made that the post-1945 global role that the United States has had for so long was an aberration, and that isolationism, especially in the GOP, is more the norm. Is that mistaken?

JB: Yes, it’s completely mistaken. The reason is this isolationist impulse has occurred from time to time in history. But the long scope of American history is expansion, starting from 13 colonies on the Atlantic Coast to becoming a continent-wide country, then expanding into the Pacific. If you read George Washington’s farewell address, he says the time will soon come when we can be the equal of Europeans, and his advice was a limited policy to pursue while we were small and weak. It doesn’t apply now, and we’re not going to have an American economy like we do now by pulling back behind the Atlantic and the Pacific. 

I think one of the problems here is the mistaken view that many people had after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, [when] people talked about the end of history and the peace dividend. For 30 years, leaders of both parties have not explained why a strong American presence in the world is critical for national security interests. Even when people talk about it, they talk about it in abstract terms. 

What it really is, is America protecting core national interests. We have alliance systems and presence around the world, not as acts of charity for Europe or Japan or South Korea—we’re doing this because it is in our interests to do it. But for 30 years, there have been very few leaders who have [explained that reality to American voters], and that is what allows the virus of isolationism to spread again.

FP: You brought up economic strength. In a second Trump term, given what we saw in the first term, he has talked about much more aggressive trade wars. What concerns do you have about Trump’s next trade agenda, especially when it comes to rallying partners and allies to economically contest China?

JB: ​​I don’t think he is going to rally friends, allies, and partners to contain China economically because he is going to be complaining about U.S.-EU trade, U.S-Japan, U.S-South Korea trade. And it’s not even necessarily the case that he is going to confront China, despite his talk of reimposing extensive tariffs on China. If Xi is sensible enough to call Trump the day after he wins the election, and say, “Congratulations, I’m so glad you’re back, we need to get together as soon as possible to talk about renewing our trade negotiations,” Trump would be looking for the first available opportunity.

What he really wanted from China was what he constantly referred to as the biggest trade deal in history, and it was an obsession with him. He didn’t understand the nature of the threat that China posed from stealing intellectual property and trying to gain technological advantage; he had to be persuaded by others. 

He was very negative on China because he blamed them for the COVID-19 pandemic, and he believes it cost him the election in 2020. If he thought he and his buddy Xi could make the biggest trade deal in history, he would take that in a heartbeat.

FP: But the trade deal with China—those goals were never actually met.

JB: Well, that was entirely predictable to everybody except Donald Trump. But this is a man who is focused on deals, so if Xi gives him the opportunity to make another deal, there is nothing in Trump’s mindset that would lead him to avoid trying to make it.