What does Trump really intend?  What is bluff, braggadocio, and bargaining and what is not?  Because he does not have a philosophy or a national-security strategy, and often doesn’t seek pre-conceived objectives, observers from left to right are often confounded.  Trump is the very epitome of “transactional,” his one immutable focus being himself.  Accordingly, assessing such aberrational behavior, what’s really happening inside his head, can be nearly impossible.  Media, politicians and businesspeople alike frequently persuade themselves he is simply posturing, but are continually surprised by what he does.  Consider Ukraine, NATO, and tariffs.

Trump, many said, would never embarrass himself by a Ukraine settlement that conceded too much to Russia.  During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly boasted that the Ukraine war (and the Middle East war) would never have occurred had he been President, thereby criticizing Biden’s (and, later, Kamala Harris’s) weakness.  However, neither Trump supporters nor opponents perceived his obsession with resuming his personal friendship with Vladimir Putin.  To Trump, good personal relations between leaders signify good relations between their countries, an enormously oversimplified view of the world.

But he wanted better ties with Putin.  Putin said he wanted peace, and Trump accepted it(https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-intensifies-attacks-as-us-ukraine-prepare-for-talks/8002466.html). That is why Trump has made so many concessions to Russia, and why Volodymyr Zelensky rightfully feels so beleaguered.  This is the personal motivation so many observers missed, speculating instead on “policy” reasons why Trump would not change America’s Ukraine policy.  He had no desire to vindicate Ukraine’s freedom and independence, and felt no imperative to show strength against Russia’s unprovoked invasion to deter, for example, China’s irredentism regarding Taiwan.  

Moreover, starting in his first term, Trump has wanted a Nobel Peace Prize.  He envied Barack Obama’s award, in his first year in office for no apparent reason, and felt he deserved one too.  Accordingly, Trump saw resolving either Ukraine or the Middle East as possible paths in his second term’s opening months.  This is likely the reason Trump often bragged  that he could resolve Ukraine on his first day in office, or at least in twenty-four hours after getting Putin and Zelensky alone in a room.  It also explains why, in his March address to Congress he called the war “senseless”(https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/03/remarks-by-president-trump-in-joint-address-to-congress/).  Obviously, such a war is easier and quicker to end than one where real issues are at stake.  This is a man in a hurry for his Nobel.  

Those who believed Trump would not undercut Ukraine or, even worse, shift sides to support Putin, were repeatedly surprised.  They took comfort, for example, when Trump’s named long-term advisor Keith Kellogg as his chief peace negotiator.  But Moscow objected that he was too “pro-Ukraine,” and he was swept aside, purged one might say.  Kellogg showed Trump unwavering fealty, but that was, as always, insufficient for Trump.  Personnel decisions are not safe predictors of how he will act.

On NATO, observers said, Trump was merely bargaining when he declared America wouldn’t defend members not meeting the 2%-of-GDP military-spending target.  And so too, they said, he was just bargaining when he raised the target to 5%.  But Trump means what he is saying here.  NATO is not safe from US withdrawal, especially if allies fail to grasp that the potential for withdrawal is still top-of-mind for Trump. 

Then there’s Trump’s fascination with tariffs.  The damage Trump has caused Ukraine and NATO pales by comparison to what his tariffs will do to America’s economy and the entire international economic system.  If Trump had acted on April 1 instead of 2, he could quickly have said it was all an April Fool’s Day joke, thereby saving the global economy trillions of dollars of damage when markets started heading south.  Unfortunately, however, Trump is totally serious(https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/how-trumps-30-year-fixation-on-tariffs-began-with-japan/2025/04/01/405961e9-d836-4d40-bcaa-ede5b7658214_video.html), a fact evident long before “Liberation Day.”  

Here too, “experts” and anxious businesspeople steadfastly ignored Trump labelling “tariff” the dictionary’s most beautiful word.  Tariffs, they said, will be targeted, carefully calibrated, and he’ll do deals quickly.  It’s all a bargaining tactic, Treasury Secretary Bessent said in October, 2024:  “escalate to de-escalate”(https://www.ft.com/content/fa08cc45-e6d1-4e19-b49b-047c5a23ca39).  Even as global stock markets drop like rocks, experts are still rationalizing what his “strategy” is. 

Wrong again.  Trump is more likely to win the Nobel Prize for literature than for peace. As with Ukraine, Trump listens primarily to himself, not to others.  He creates his own world, this time an imaginary trade world, and then lives in it.  Trump isn’t lying so much as he is ruling a parallel universe(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/03/tariffs-trump-global-trade-talks/), like a boy’s tree house, where numbers mean what he says they mean.  He doesn’t react well when the real world’s numbers don’t match:  after all, who’s in charge here?  

Trump can’t tell US friends from its enemies, either politico-militarily or economically, and doesn’t seem to care.  What matters are Trump’s friends and enemies, which are manifestly not the same as the America’s.

Turf-fighting is a way of life at the State Department, as in much of the federal government. The department’s complex and varied responsibilities have, over time, led to an organizational chart that has defied multiple attempts at rationalization. Its internal culture has simultaneously grown more entrenched. The Foreign Service is perhaps the government’s strongest civilian bureaucracy, buttressed by the department’s civil-service employees.

This is not the “deep state” so attractive to conspiracy theorists but a species of bureaucratic culture possessed by every federal department and agency and well-explored in public-choice economics. The State Department’s cadres instinctively resist political direction and control, trying to emulate the centuries-long insulation from politics of Europe’s foreign ministries. My own experience led me to conclude in Surrender Is Not an Option that the only solution to the department’s formidable bureaucracy is a “cultural revolution,” one that will take years to accomplish since the culture itself took many decades to evolve.

Every secretary of state, therefore, faces massive obstacles to giving new directions to their bureaucracy, especially Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Worryingly, however, Trump has announced multiple appointments that could add serious complications to Rubio’s leadership and ability to successfully implement the administration’s foreign policy.

None of these Trumpian decisions are fatal, nor are further confusion, obstructionism, turf-fighting, backbiting, leaking to the press, and a generally Hobbesian foreign-policy involvement. Perhaps sweetness and light will prevail. However, the risk is palpable that Rubio’s enormous responsibilities will be considerably more difficult because of assignments and personalities he may have had a precious little role in deciding.

Trump’s practice is superficially similar to prior administrations: The White House routinely makes political appointments, while the State Department proposes career ambassadors. Critically different, however, are the natures of the positions being filled (or created), the unprecedented reality that some are already performing their “duties,” and whether they have direct access to Trump. By contrast, Rubio has kept a low-profile since being tapped, the customary approach before Senate confirmation.

For example, Trump chose Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before announcing Rubio, similar to 2016 when Trump picked Nikki Haley before Rex Tillerson. That did not turn out felicitously, either for Tillerson or his successor, Mike Pompeo. Whether or not our U.N. ambassador has Cabinet rank (and my view has always been “should not”), there can only be one secretary of state. Other opinions are welcome, but the department can only have one boss. Take my word. You have to watch those U.N. ambassadors.

Matt Whittaker, tipped for senior Justice Department roles (and perhaps still Plan B for FBI director), is to be our NATO Ambassador. Trump’s negative views on NATO are well-known, whereas Rubio has always been a strong NATO advocate. Will Whitaker report directly to Trump or to Rubio, and with what effect?

There is no doubt Keith Kellogg will have a direct line to Trump in his coming, newly-created role as assistant to the president and special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Assistants to the president serve in his executive office, not at the State Department or another department. Trump once told me, “You know I wanted [Keith] as national security adviser after [H.R.] McMaster. He never offers his opinion unless I ask.”

This is the very paradigm of the fealty Trump wants from subordinates. Who knows what role Rubio will have in Ukraine policy?

The list of newly-concocted positions goes on: Massad Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, as senior adviser to the president on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, and Steve Witkoff, a Trump family friend, as special envoy for the Middle East. Ever since Henry Kissinger and then Jim Baker, those roles have been for the secretary of state personally. Two more newly-forged, ambassadorial-style positions will go to first-term alumni: Richard Grenell as presidential envoy for special missions, “including Venezuela and North Korea,” and Mauricio Claver-Carone as the State Department’s special envoy to Latin America, which presumably still includes Venezuela. However, with Ukraine covered by Kellogg and two envoys already working in the Middle East, Grenell’s exact role is unclear.

Perhaps for belt-and-suspender purposes, the president-elect has not only nominated Warren Stephens, a respected investment banker, to be ambassador to the United Kingdom but just weeks later named Mark Burnett, producer of the former president’s television show The Apprentice, as special envoy to the U.K. Donald Trump said Burnett would “work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” which sounds suspiciously like the ambassador’s job.

Of course, all these appointees could also complicate the National Security Council’s interagency process, so Rubio will not likely be the only top-level Trump official wondering, “Who’s on first?” There may be more: Donald Trump hasn’t even taken office yet.

John Bolton served as national security adviser to then-President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The new administration should reject mandatory ‘assessments’ and fund only programs that work.

By John Bolton

Elise Stefanik, Donald Trump’s pick for the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has her work cut out for her. Fortunately, she’s already aware of the U.N.’s flaws. In a September op-ed for the Washington Examiner, she applauded Mr. Trump for withdrawing from the “corrupt and antisemitic” Human Rights Council and defunding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the U.N.’s permanent refugee organization for Palestinians, during his first term. She also praised House Republicans for voting to sanction the International Criminal Court.

Ms. Stefanik joins a long line of U.S. officials dismayed by the U.N.’s profound failings, including its deep-seated bias against Israel. As one of those officials, my contributions to U.N. reform include implementing President George W. Bush’s decision to remove America’s signature from the treaty establishing the ICC, advising Mr. Bush to vote against creating the Human Rights Council and then doing so, and leading the effort to repeal the U.N.’s infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. Several years later, in 2018, I recommended that Mr. Trump withdraw from the Human Rights Council and defund Unrwa.

But the job is far from over. No one should underestimate the difficulties that lie ahead or the effort that will be required to achieve real, lasting U.N. reform. A major obstacle is our own State Department. Its bureaucracy historically has been unwilling to do the heavy lifting required to muster support for transforming the U.N. That burden will fall not only on U.S. missions to U.N. components but also on the State Department’s regional bureaus, which are responsible for bilateral relations with the other 192 members. For decades, the regional bureaus have found reasons not to engage, pleading that innumerable bilateral issues be given higher priority. Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio will need to crack the whip for reform to succeed.

The new administration should prove to U.N. members that its goal of reform isn’t merely rhetorical. Washington’s most important weapon will be its wallet—decisions about how much it financially contributes, or doesn’t contribute, to the U.N. Current spending is out of control. In 2022, the most recent year for which we have accurate data, the U.S. contributed more than $18 billion, accounting for roughly one-third of total U.N. funding. As the Heritage Foundation reported, “the U.S. provided more funding to the U.N. system than 185 other U.N. member states combined.” That year we forked over 8.5 times the amount that China, the second-largest donor, contributed.

Funding for U.N. components falls into two categories: mandatory “assessed” contributions and voluntary contributions. Assessments are calculated by opaque “capacity-to-pay” formulas, which have historically made America the largest contributor. After decades of negotiation and congressional legislation, U.S. assessments are currently capped at 22% for most contributions and 25% for peacekeeping operations. On a one-nation-one-vote basis, bodies like the General Assembly decide agency budgets, and members then pay their percentage shares.

Assessments, therefore, amount to international taxation of America by other U.N. members. A majority of member governments tells us what we owe, on pain of losing our vote in U.N. governing bodies if we don’t pay up. That alone is sufficient reason to reject the concept of assessments, since it is not our votes in these bodies that matter. The only vote that does matter is our Security Council vote (and veto), our main shield against one-nation-one-vote majorities U.N.-system-wide. Our permanent seat in the Council and its vote are written into the U.N. Charter, and we can veto changes to the Charter. The potential negative consequences of ending assessed contributions, then, are essentially nil.

U.N. bureaucrats, U.S. officials and nongovernmental organizations assert without evidence that America gets enormous credit for its contributions to the U.N. and warn that America’s influence would diminish worldwide if those contributions were significantly reduced or eliminated. These assertions are false. Special-interest advocates simply take our current level of funding for granted, complain that it’s inadequate and demand more. It’s time they get their comeuppance.

The U.N. Charter doesn’t require assessed contributions. The Charter says merely that the organization’s expenses shall be “apportioned by the General Assembly,” but requires no specific approach. The Assembly could make contributions entirely voluntary, as is the case already with some U.N. agencies and programs. The Trump administration simply needs to resolve against the U.N. system’s longstanding reliance on assessments until the totally voluntary approach prevails and other members acquiesce.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Rubio and Ms. Stefanik should announce that the U.S. no longer accepts the concept of assessed contributions. Henceforth, we will pay only voluntary contributions, which we will decide by evaluating the performance of each U.N. agency and program. We may zero out some programs; we may voluntarily fund others at or near our current assessed level; and we may even increase funding for others. But we will decide. And every other U.N. member will have the same prerogative.

This approach rests on the revolutionary assumption that we fund the U.N. based on its performance, paying only for what we want and insisting that we get what we pay for. U.N. agencies that are funded entirely by voluntary donations, such as the World Food Program, generally tend to outperform those funded by assessments. Because they have to prove their worth annually, they have an incentive to sustain and even boost their performance. If voluntarily-funded programs fail or falter, we should reduce their funding accordingly. Ultimately, some agencies will prove unreformable, and America should simply withdraw from them. The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization immediately comes to mind, as it did for President Ronald Reagan, who withdrew the U.S. from UNESCO in 1984. The country later rejoined in 2003 under Mr. Bush, although Mr. Trump withdrew in his turn, and Joe Biden rejoined. Doubtless, Mr. Trump will withdraw again—and rightly so—during his second term.

Using America’s money as an existential threat will rock the U.N. system. While many other reforms are possible, they won’t match the power of unilaterally controlling our contributions. Besides, we need a much larger defense budget; reducing contributions to the U.N. is a good start to find the necessary funding.

First Published in the Wall Street Journal on December 26th here

The President’s constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” requires evenhanded action in the national rather than his personal interest, a distinction Donald Trump does not grasp.  His often-stated intention to seek retribution against opponents, if implemented, facially contravenes the Take Care clause.

Too many of Mr. Trump’s personnel selections evidence his assiduous search for personal fealty from subordinates, not loyalty to the Constitution and its Take Care clause.  Stocking his administration with lickspittles will benefit him, but not America.  Kash Patel’s nomination as FBI Director squarely fits this pattern.

Congressman Devin Nunes pushed Mr. Patel for the National Security Council staff after Republicans lost control of the House in 2018.  Notwithstanding Mr. Patel’s utter lack of policy credential, the President ultimately ordered him hired.  NSC staff has long been divided into Directorates responsible for different policy areas.  Charlie Kupperman, my Deputy, and I placed Mr. Patel in the International Organizations (IO) Directorate, which had a vacancy.

Approximately five months later, an opening arose in the Counter Terrorism (CT) Directorate.  The pressure resumed, and so Mr. Patel moved laterally.  In neither case was he in charge of a directorate during my tenure as National Security Advisor, or thereafter, as he contends in his memoir, and has repeatedly stated elsewhere.  He reported to Senior Directors in both cases, and had defined responsibilities.  His puffery was characteristic of the resumé inflation we had detected earlier when he was first pressed upon us.  He proved less interested in his assigned duties than in worming his way into Mr. Trump’s presence, which evidenced he was duplicitous, manipulative, and conspiratorial, as the following examples demonstrate.

Fiona Hill, NSC Senior Director for Europe, later testified to Congress during the impeachment hearings that Mr. Patel, at that time assigned to the IO Directorate, participated in a May, 2019, Oval Office meeting on Ukraine, and that he had engaged in various other Ukraine-related activities(https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2019/11/FionaHill-compressed.pdf).  Whatever he did on Ukraine while an NSC staffer was unrestrained freelancing.  He denies any communication with Mr. Trump on Ukraine(https://www.axios.com/2019/11/09/national-security-council-staffer-denies-secret-ukraine-conversations-trump).

In August, when I was overseas, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kupperman and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to the Oval Office, finding Mr. Patel already there, to discuss making him an administration enforcer of presidential loyalty.  Messrs. Cipollone and Kupperman strongly objected to any such vigilante role, whether in the NSC or the Counsel’s office, and the issue disappeared.  I resigned shortly thereafter.

In October, 2020, during a hostage-rescue mission, as former Defense Secretary Mark Esper memoir described, Mr. Patel, then in the CT directorate, misinformed other officials that a key airspace-transit clearance had been granted.  In fact, the clearance had not been obtained, thus threatening the operation’s success.  Mr. Esper writes that his team “suspected Patel made the approval story up,” but was not certain.  Typically, Mr. Patel’s version of this episode in his memoir denies any error, but, ironically, boasts of his acting beyond the authority of NSC staffers.  Then-Secretary of State Pompeo also knew the day’s details, including the clearance problem.  He has not spoken publicly about the incident.  He should.

Last week, Olivia Troye, Vice President Pence’s former counter-terrorism advisor, elaborated on these concerns, tagging Mr. Patel with “making things up on operations” and lying about intelligence(https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14158977/trump-fbi-kash-patel-legal-threat-msnbc-olivia-troye.html).  His lawyers responded by threatening to sue her for defamation, writing that “[a]t no point did Mr. Patel ever lie about national intelligence, place Navy Seals at risk, or misinform the Vice president.”  Of course, what Mr. Esper and Ms. Troye are accusing Mr. Patel of lying about is the airspace-transit clearance, the lack of which would have made transit by US forces though the airspace of the country in question an act of war.

These are but a few of many cases that touch directly on Mr. Patel’s character, or lack thereof, and his consistent approach of placing obedience to Mr. Trump above other, higher, considerations, like loyalty to the Constitution.  His conduct in Mr. Trump’s first term and thereafter shows clearly that his mantra as FBI Director would be Lavrenty Beria’s reported comment to Joseph Stalin, “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/03/patel-deep-state-trump-retribution/).” These are precisely the character flaws, repeatedly displayed, which disqualify him for any senior law-enforcement or national-security role.

Mr. Patel has made numerous statements, many of which he has tried to walk back once they came to wider public attention.  He has, for example, frequently called for investigations of journalists(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/kash-patel-said-come-journalists-now-hangs-fbi-candidacy-rcna182661).  He has been accused of seeking to declassify sensitive information for political or personal reasons rather than for legitimate national-security reasons(https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/06/kash-patel-trump-fbi-director/).  Tellingly, during Mr. Trump’s first term, both Attorney General Bill Barr and CIA Director Gina Haspell(https://www.axios.com/2021/01/16/kash-patel-cia-gina-haspel), respectively, threatened to resign if Mr. Patel were forced upon them as their deputy.

Mr. Trump argues he was unfairly, even illegally, targeted by partisan Biden prosecutors.  His opponents believe this is false.  The dispute is irresolvable in this brief article.  What is true, is that if illegitimate partisan prosecutions were launched, those responsible should be held accountable in a reasoned, professional manner, not in a counter-witchhunt.

The worst response is for Mr. Trump to engage in precisely the prosecutorial conduct he  so roundly condemns.  Simply making the threats politicizes and degrades the legal process and people’s faith in even-handed law enforcement.  A President possessed of civic virtue would not launch retribution against opponents, and he would certainly not appoint an FBI Director who saw himself solely as the President’s liege man.  That kind of President would never consider Mr. Patel.  If Mr. Trump is determined, wrongly, to remove Chris Wray, there are previous examples to follow that have restored faith in a battered Justice Department and FBI.  In 1975, President Ford selected University of Chicago Law Dean Edward Levi as Attorney General, and in 1978, President Carter named Judge William Webster, a Republican, to be FBI Director.

Mr. Patel is no Ed Levi or Bill Webster.  To resolve disagreements over his integrity and fitness, a full-field FBI investigation, as prior nominees have undergone, is clearly warranted.  With more facts available and less rhetoric, the result will be clear.  I regret I did not fully discern Mr. Patel’s threat immediately.  I might have, to borrow Winston Churchill’s phrase, strangled his Trumpian-servility in its cradle.  But we are now all fairly warned.  Senators will not be able to escape history’s judgment if they vote to confirm him.

–

During 1985-89, Mr. Bolton was Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legislative Affairs and then of the Civil Division at the Justice Department.  He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened.”

This article was first published in WSJ on December 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.