Fmr. Nat'l Security Adviser John Bolton Speaks at Politico Security Summit
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Sanctions and Air Travel00:15:27
unidentified
world and that really disadvantages us from a security perspective and economic perspective.
One last thing on that.
USAID, one very interesting thing is that farmers in Illinois, along with farmers throughout the Midwest and Heartland, often sold their crops to USAID or through USAID programs.
And we didn't really realize it until USAID programs got dismantled.
So we're not only harming our national security, but also our economic prosperity in Illinois and other places too.
Wow.
Congressman, thank you so much for the conversation, for your time today.
I just want to tip, I think the next time we meet on this stage, I think I might be introducing you as Senator Christian Worthy, so I look forward to that.
But please thank me.
Please join me in thanking Congressman Roger.
He promoted me twice in like two seconds.
Please join me.
Welcome to the stage, former National Security Advisor, John Bolton and Politico's Capital Bureau Chief, Rachel Bade.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Phelan, thank you so much.
Hello again.
I'm back.
I'm Rachel Bade, the Capital Bureau Chief here at Politico, and I am very excited for this next conversation.
Obviously, doesn't really need an introduction.
John Bolton served as President Trump's former national security advisor in his first term before their rather infamous falling out.
And I'm sure you all know he's a household name on all things national security.
So serving a number of GOP administrations, including as ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush.
So let's just start with this.
Ambassador, there are not a lot of areas where you agree or might agree with someone like Laura Loomer or Rand Paul.
But this week I think we found one.
What is your take on this new $400 million jet that the president wants to accept from Qatar to be Air Force One?
It's not safe to fly on any other country's plane.
That's why we buy planes from Boeing.
They're taking longer than it should, but that's the only secure thing.
I don't think it would have mattered what country gave us the plane.
They'd still have to strip it down basically to the airframe to make sure there wasn't anything in there that we didn't want to have it and to redo it, which is going to take an awful lot of work.
I mean, I don't know whether this plane has aerial refueling capability, but Air Force One needs it.
And you just don't kind of put a hose on the end of the Boeing 747 and expect it's going to do it.
It's going to take a lot of work.
And it's all totally unnecessary.
unidentified
Let's talk a bit about Iran, because there have been a lot of questions about President Trump's posture toward Iran and what he actually wants.
You have people like JD Vance, Vice President, and much of sort of the MAGA wing saying that they don't want war and they don't want to get sucked into war.
And then we also know that Michael Waltz, who had been reportedly coordinating with the Israelis about a potential military action of some sort against Iran, he was pushed out, although we don't know if it's because of ideological reasons or more internal drama.
But I guess I'm wondering, people sort of take that, they take different meanings from these things.
And I'm curious, do you think, as somebody who worked with President Trump, do you think he actually wants a deal with Iran?
Or is this sort of like a check the box and then we're going to go to war?
He doesn't have a national security grand strategy.
He doesn't do policy as we understand that when people describe him as transactional.
That's what it is.
He was persuaded in April and early May of 2018 when I was getting him ready to get out of the 2015 Obama deal.
He was persuaded by French President Macron and Chancellor Merkel of Germany to try for a big deal with Iran that would include their terrorist activity, their ballistic missile program, as well as the nuclear program.
But he at least understood he had to get out of the 2015 deal.
Now, Iran's never going to deal on terrorism or the ballistic missile program, and they're not really going to deal on the nuclear side either.
They've shown no evidence whatever that they've changed their strategic decision to get nuclear weapons.
I think this is a waste of oxygen.
And if he does agree to a deal, it'll be a deal that Barack Obama will heartily endorse.
unidentified
Well, that was actually my next question, if you thought Iran would ever agree to some sort of proposal where enrichment was only allowed outside the country.
Like, are they going to, would they ever sign off on something like that?
There's not only no evidence of that, the EU3, as we called them then, because Britain was still in the EU, but Germany, France, and Britain tried exactly that line of negotiation in the early 2000s, that Iran could have civil nuclear reactors but have no enrichment or reprocessing capability, no capability to reprocess plutonium out of the spent fuel, which is the other road to nuclear weapons.
And the Iranians just said flatly no.
I mean, the central flaw of the 2015 deal was to allow Iran any uranium enrichment capability whatever.
We don't even allow, when we license our nuclear technology for the construction of civil reactors, we typically insist that the country receiving the license commit not to do uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.
And our Arab friends in the region said, you won't even allow us to do uranium enrichment, yet you're going to allow the Iranians to.
unidentified
I was going to say, what is the, you know, to somebody who might make the argument, maybe someone in more the JD Vance wing of the party, that it's okay as long as they're making promises that it's not going to, you know, end up with a nuclear weapon.
Is it just, you know, they're lying through their teeth on that?
There has never been a single inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency that's ever been on one of Iran's military bases where the weaponization work is done.
You just don't enrich uranium and then, you know, light a match and hope it goes off.
You have to build a nuclear weapon, which they've been hard at work on.
And that work has gone on essentially unscrutinized by the international community.
unidentified
So basically, you think we're going to wind up with Obama's Iran nuclear deal with just a MAGA label slapped on it?
This group that's now in charge in Syria used to be the Al-Nusra Front, which is an al-Qaeda affiliate.
Al-Jalani, as he used to be known, Al-El-Shara, as he is now having abandoned his nom de guerre and trimmed his beard and put a coat and tie on instead of his combat fatigues, had a bounty on of about $10 million for his terrorist activities.
Of course he's saying that he's given up terrorist activities because he wants Western money.
He wants access to all kinds of things from the West.
I think his words are not nearly enough given his own personal record.
As Trump said, he's got a strong background.
Yes, the man was a terrorist and could well still be.
So Trump's asking to exchange diplomatic relations with Israel and kick terrorists out.
That's fine.
He should have gotten that promise before he lifted the sanctions.
He also should have asked for a complete transparency in all of the Assad regime's hostage taking of Americans and other foreigners, everything that's in their archives.
He should have asked for international inspection or U.S. inspection of all potential chemical and biological weapons sites.
He should have asked for complete opening of the Assad regime's archives on its dealings with Iran on the nuclear program, like the Deir al-Zor reactor.
He should have asked for guarantees that the new regime in Damascus will resist Turkish efforts in northern Syria, that he'll bring into a real broad-based government, the Kurds in eastern Syria, the Druze, the Alawites, and other minorities, and that he'll make a serious effort at peace with Israel.
One more thing, that he kicks the Russians out of the Tardis naval station and their air base a few miles away.
Now, you might not get all of them.
I just got started, actually.
I could name a few other things we want to say.
Show you're not a terrorist.
Don't tell me you're not a terrorist.
Show me you're not a terrorist.
unidentified
You just mentioned Russia.
Let's talk about Ukraine and Russia.
So today in Istanbul, I believe it was Putin's idea for him to meet with Zelensky.
He didn't show up, naturally.
You have said the other day that you think Putin is overplaying his hand.
You've also said that you think Trump is being suckered by Putin, who's just sort of dragging these talks out.
Do you think there actually comes a point where President Trump gets basically fed up with Putin sort of slowing this process down?
Like, could he and would he actually slap sanctions on Putin in Russia?
Look, he's given Putin enormous concessions already.
He's conceded before negotiations start that he's not going to demand that Ukraine be restored to its full sovereignty and territorial integrity, which has been the position of the entire West since the day of the second invasion in February.
He said that there's going to be no NATO membership for Ukraine, no NATO security guarantees for Ukraine.
That's pretty much the most Putin could hope to get.
That has simply encouraged Putin to go further to demand that all four of the Donbass provinces of Ukraine be ceded to Russia, which he doesn't control militarily.
These are the kinds of things that could push Trump over the edge because he doesn't want to be humiliated.
But on the other hand, Trump's gone a long way to appease Putin and not put things in place.
Let me just say one thing about the sanctions.
The Europeans are preparing a package of sanctions.
It will be, according to the press, their 17th package of sanctions since the invasion.
And we're in the same position.
We've put on sanctions time and time again.
This is not the way to do sanctions.
There's no reason after the invasion why all 17 packages that they eventually imagined shouldn't come on immediately.
Sanctions only work when they're massive, when they're swiftly applied, and when they're strictly enforced.
And we just haven't done that with Russia.
That's why Russia continues the war.
So if you ask me if U.S. sanctions package 7 is possible with Trump, the answer is yes.
Will it have any more effect than the first six?
I kind of doubt it, given the poor way we enforce sanctions.
unidentified
I want to zoom in a little more on President Trump's psychology here.
And I mean, as somebody who worked with him, can you speak to why he always uses the stick with Vladimir Zelensky and the carrot with Putin?
I mean, what is it about not being able to take out the stick and just say, look, you need to come to the table, fly to Istanbul and say, I'm here.
Trump sees international relations as equivalent to the personal relationships of their leaders.
So if he's good friends with Vladimir Putin, he thinks that the U.S. has good relations with Russia.
And conversely, if he doesn't have good relations with Volodymyr Zelensky, dating back to the famous perfect phone call that led to the first impeachment, then we've got bad relations with Ukraine.
He sees it the same way with Xi Jinping.
They're friends.
When he met with Kim Jong-un, he said in response to a question a few days later, we fell in love.
Now, that's not the way Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin see Donald Trump.
But, you know, would you slap your friends around gratuitously in public?
No, you'd try and work with them.
Would you slap people you don't like around in public?
Yeah, you do it all the time, including in the Oval Office.
unidentified
That's interesting.
Just to stay on this topic a little longer, can you sort of take us into or give us a look at how President Trump sort of approaches these foreign policy decisions?
Like, does he go around the room?
Decision-Making Chaos00:11:31
unidentified
And, you know, there's been this sort of narrative about President Trump that he likes people who disagree and he likes to hear all different things and then he decides.
And I think that's part of the problem with decision-making with Trump.
It's not disciplined.
It's not driven by data and by options.
It's very ad hoc.
And often it's the last person who sees him who influences the decision.
I thought, this is the mistake I made before I took the job.
I thought that, like every one of his predecessors, that the gravity of the responsibilities in the national security area, the enormous impact of the decisions that he would have to make would discipline his thinking so that the National Security Council process would present him with all the data he would need to be fully informed.
It would present him with a range of options.
It would give him the pros and cons of the options.
And then he could make a decision.
That's the farthest thing from the way decision-making was done, certainly during the time I was there, and I think through most of the first term.
I don't think, as far as I can see from the outside, it's gotten any better in the second term.
unidentified
And it sounds like you wrote in your book a little bit about this and how he didn't at one point said something along the lines of I should have chose Keith Kellogg or someone else because that person only speaks when spoken to when you were trying to push back on something.
Well, this is, you've been reading, I'm sure, about the changes that apparently are about to be made in the National Security Council staff, which will radically transform what it does and what the National Security Advisor does.
It could be that Jake Sullivan, who's your next guest, will turn out to be the last real national security advisor.
The event you were talking about was Mike Pompeo and I were in Brussels with him in 2018 before the NATO summit, trying to persuade him not to withdraw from NATO.
And at one point he turned to Pompeo and said, you know, I knew I should have made Keith Kellogg National Security Advisor.
He only gives me his opinion when I ask for it.
Well, the name of the job is National Security Advisor.
You know, he wants people who will say yes, sir, and he wants the National Security staff, according to the reorganization reports, but based on my own experience, not to say, but Mr. President, have you considered A, B, and C?
Have you thought of options X, Y, and Z?
He just wants people to say, okay, sounds good to me.
unidentified
So you just brought up the new Marco Rubio's latest job of what, a half a dozen or something like this?
I can't keep track.
You've been critical of this new role, saying, you know, it's going to be tough for him to be Secretary of State and National Security Advisor.
Just walk us through what was your typical 9 to 5 when you were in that job?
I guess it's not 9 to 5.
It's probably like, what, 7 to like 10 p.m. or something like this.
But point being, was there any room in your day to oversee the State Department at the same time?
The circumstances when Henry Kissinger filled both positions were the depths of Watergate when people thought Nixon was cracking up, and he may have been.
And he stayed on in that position for some time after Gerald Ford became president until Ford himself recognized this wasn't working.
And we're just, we should be happy that we had Henry Kissinger.
It's no knock at all on Marco Rubio, but there's only one Henry the Kay, and the positions really have very different functions.
Running the State Department, being in charge of American foreign policy is a more than full-time job, and doing the coordination work of the NSC to make sure the president has everything he needs to make decisions and then following up with the bureaucracies, including the State Department, including Defense, the intelligence community, Homeland Security, Treasury, all the rest of them, is what the NSC does.
And you can't do both simultaneously and fulfill what Brent Skolcroft set up as the honest broker role for the National Security Advisor.
unidentified
What do you make of the new Marco Rubio?
I'm sure you've been watching some of the things he's been doing on the world stage.
I mean, once a big supporter of certain types of U.S. foreign aid, that's Gonzo, co-sponsor of a resolution to bar the U.S. from ever recognizing Russia's sort of, you know, ownership of certain parts of what was formerly Ukraine, Crimea.
Now, you know, Russia's saying they want all of these things, Donbass, et cetera.
Well, it's a fact that the president is the decision maker on big foreign policy issues.
And in any position you take at any level of government, you have to appreciate that your superiors can overrule you.
And if that gets you upset, then you're really not suitable for government employment because much of your life is getting your positions overruled.
The question, though, at that level is what positions that you lose the internal debate on so fundamentally contradict your basic philosophy that your integrity prevents you from going any further.
And I think Marco Rubio has integrity, and I think there's going to come a point where he won't be able to serve any longer.
And I don't, obviously we haven't reached that point yet.
I mean, after all, we've spent all four months in the administration yet, and we only have 44 months to go.
Is there anything new that's coming?
But I reached my point.
Others reached their points.
We'll see what happens.
unidentified
I have wondered, because, you know, there was always this theory around Senator Lindsey Graham, who, big, you know, defense hawk, DOD hawk, but also Trump ally.
And, you know, he sort of employed the strategy of like, you pick your battles.
You know, you suck up to the president where you can, you know, you buy some, win some chits, and then cash him in at some point when you need to.
And I've sort of wondered if Rubio is doing the same.
You've been critical of President Trump's special envoy, Steve Wishkoff.
Look, I think he's already shown himself vulnerable to Vladimir Putin's manipulation.
He conveyed Russian propaganda that he heard from Putin on the situation of the Ukrainian troops inside Russia, conveyed that back to Trump, who promptly said it publicly, said the Ukrainians are surrounded.
They're about to be slaughtered.
That was not true, but that's what the Russians wanted the world to believe.
We can only imagine what other Russian propaganda went from Putin through Witkoff to Trump.
We've seen him take the word of the Ayatollahs and their various commitments, quote unquote, on the nuclear program.
You know, I think it's a real danger for Trump politically if he allows these negotiations to end in humiliation for the United States and for him personally.
unidentified
So you're a big fan.
A couple last questions for you.
One is one that I believe a question you get all the time.
What's different between Trump 1 and Trump 2?
We were just talking about this a little backstage, and you said you actually recently came to some new thoughts on this.
Well, it's a stretch to get into it as national security, but there is a connection.
I think he has closed the border with Mexico.
He has done fairly quickly what he accomplished in the first term, and that's important not simply for illegal immigration, but for drug trafficking concerns, human trafficking concerns, espionage agents coming across the southern border.
And he did it by relying on the theory of deterrence.
If you're in Central America or South America or China for that matter, and you think walking toward the Rio Grande across Mexico is going to lead to you being turned away at the border, then you're not going to walk across Mexico.
You're going to stay where you were and hope for a change in administration.
So I think that's a very important political issue for Americans for good and sufficient reason.
And I think he has fulfilled his commitment to close the border for all intents and purposes.
unidentified
Yeah, well, if he does land this Ukraine-Russia deal, which the previous person I interviewed up here, Senator Schmidt, says he thinks is going to happen, that would be huge.
And everybody, stay tuned for part two of our conversation about national security.
Up next, we have Playbook Managing Editor and Author Jack Blanchard, my colleague and former National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan.
Thank you.
We have more now from the Politico-Security Summit with Republican Representative Rick Crawford of Arkansas.
He discusses foreign intelligence and cartels at the U.S. southern border.
After his remarks, we'll also hear about the Trump administration's approach to counterterrorism with Sebastian Gorka, who serves as White House Deputy Assistant to the President.
Tail End of a Long Day00:00:28
unidentified
Thank you, everyone, for showing up.
We're getting to the tail end of a long day.
And as Jack said, we have Congressman Rick Crawford, the chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
There's a lot going on these days, so we'll kind of jump right into it.