Trump is deluded if he thinks his meeting with Putin is cause for celebration

Posted on August 12, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

Friday’s Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is not shaping up well for Ukraine. Every indication is that Trump believes he and his (once again) good friend Putin will conjure some land swaps and bring peace.

Of course, the land in question will be bits and pieces of Ukraine’s territory, not Russia’s, with Moscow probably ending this war controlling 20 per cent of Ukraine. If anyone needed proof that Trump acts in international affairs not like a strategist but like a free electron, this past week settles the matter.

Before the Alaska summit even begins, Putin has scored a major propaganda victory. An international pariah, leading a rogue state guilty of unprovoked aggression against its neighbour, is landing on American soil for pictures standing next to the president of the United States.

Trump has tariffed the entire world for the privilege of doing business in America, but asked and received exactly nothing from Putin. Inviting him to Alaska is not quite as offensive as inviting the Taliban to Camp David in 2019 to discuss the Afghanistan war, but it comes close. Most ironically, Alaska is former Russian America, purchased (thank God) by Washington in 1867, which some Russian ideologues wish to reclaim.

Putin almost certainly concluded from Trump’s recent pro-Ukrainian behaviour, such as allowing Patriot air-defence systems to be transferred indirectly to Kyiv, that he had pushed his “friendship” with Trump too far. With the August 8 deadline to have a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire looming, Putin was doubtless considering how to repair the damage and reel Trump back into line when Trump’s envoy-for-everything Steve Witkoff sought a Moscow meeting. We don’t know when Putin decided to propose a US-Russia summit, but that idea was certainly conveyed to Witkoff to bring back to Trump.

As before, Putin clearly hopes to work his KGB training on Trump, making the president his unwitting tool. Perhaps, Putin reasoned, he might even avoid pain for missing the August 8 deadline. He knew the lure of being the centre of massive press attention is a fatal attraction for Trump, who was almost instantaneously ready for a summit. Indeed, just before announcing that August 15 was the time and Alaska the place, Trump said he wished the summit could have been earlier.

Putin not only got his meeting, but TACO (“Trump always chickens out”) worked again; August 8 came and went with no new tariffs or sanctions imposed on Moscow, or China, the largest purchaser of Russian oil and gas. Only India was left in the lurch, facing a doubling of its Trump tariff rate to 50 per cent for purchasing Russian hydrocarbons.

The Alaska summit recalls Helsinki in 2018, when Trump sided with Putin’s denial of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, contrary to what America’s intelligence community concluded. Putin is doubtless looking for something analogous. Moscow has already achieved another success by ensuring that no pesky Europeans, especially Ukrainians, would be invited to Alaska, reminiscent of the Trump-Zelensky meeting at Pope Benedict’s funeral, where Trump all but pushed French President Macron out of the picture. While Trump simply enjoys getting more attention, the one-on-one format provides exactly the kind of playing field Putin needs.

Moreover, the Alaska meeting afforded Russia a first-mover advantage, which it seized immediately. Within 48 hours of Witkoff’s Moscow trip, the two sides built on earlier outlines of what Russia would deem an acceptable solution. Press reports indicated that Russia’s terms, which seemed acceptable to Trump, resembled vice presidential candidate J D Vance’s proposal in September, 2024: Russia would essentially keep Ukrainian lands it had conquered; an undefined peacekeeping force would police the current front lines; and Ukraine would be barred from joining Nato. As observers noted, Vance’s plan looked like Russia’s.

Seemingly, therefore, Trump and Putin are preparing to present Zelensky with a fait accompli after meeting in Alaska. Trump said on Friday that Zelensky would have to remove Ukraine’s constitutional prohibitions against ceding territory to another country, which is exactly what Trump is expecting to come. Thus, even before the summit, Putin exploited his first-mover advantage by bringing Trump back to his side.

With this disturbing prospect now explicit, Zelensky, in his first public response to news of the Alaska summit, rejected any surrender of Ukrainian lands. Zelensky’s response is fully justified and hardly surprising, but it plays into Putin’s hands: Russia, he will say, took the lead in seeking peace, and Ukraine is the obstructionist. While we are not yet back to the disastrous February 28 Oval Office encounter between Zelensky and Trump, Putin would obviously like to reprise Trump telling Zelensky “you don’t have the cards right now”.

As of today, Putin again has diplomatic momentum, and Zelensky is on the defensive. Time for the UK and Europe’s other Ukraine supporters to step in before it’s too late.

This article was first published in the Daily Telegraph on August 11, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

The far north has become NATO’s soft underbelly

Posted on August 12, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

ALTHOUGH LONG a factor in American strategic thinking, the Arctic now receives far more attention in Washington than in decades. Several forces are at play: increased use of Arctic maritime passages for military and commercial purposes; Russia’s historical focus on its northern territories, now magnified by its aggression against Ukraine; and, most salient geopolitically, China’s undisguised aim to be an Arctic power, using the developing Beijing-Moscow axis. America and its allies have yet to cope adequately with these challenges.

In the second world war, Greenland was critical to North Atlantic convoy routes, hosting significant American deployments. The Pentagon clearly understood the Arctic’s cold-war role, building the “DEW [distant-early-warning] Line” across Alaska, Canada and Greenland to detect nuclear-equipped Soviet bombers or ballistic missiles heading to the continental United States. Responding to the Sputnik satellite, in 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower sent the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, under the Arctic ice cap from the Bering Strait to the Atlantic, in the first submerged transit of the North Pole.

Unfortunately, cold-war victory led to geostrategic complacency, not just in Washington, but across NATO and bilateral American alliances with the likes of Japan and South Korea. This complacency is disappearing as the race for Arctic hegemony picks up, but the West has much to do, and quickly, to counter the rising threats from China and Russia.

The prize is potentially vast. Opportunities to exploit the fabled Northwest Passage across Canada, or its counterpart across Russia’s northern coast, are enormous. Greater access to Far North natural-resource deposits, both at sea and ashore, are also generating a lot of attention.

Updating the jocular insight of General Hastings Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general, is a good starting point for the West’s Arctic grand strategy: “Keep the Chinese out, the Americans in, and the Russians down.” The alliance’s soft underbelly is now probably the Far North, not the Mediterranean. NATO has four front-line Arctic Ocean littoral states (Norway, Denmark, Canada and America) facing off with Russia, although the full mix of Arctic players and threats is far more extensive.

President Donald Trump remains sceptical of NATO and, indeed, the very concept of collective-defence alliances. Nonetheless, America is a front-line Arctic power, as Alaska’s congressional delegation relentlessly reminds Mr Trump, and the region’s importance to his presidency’s legacy should be obvious.

Unfortunately, American military resources are currently wholly inadequate to the task, with insufficient Navy and Coast Guard vessels worldwide, let alone those required for Arctic (and Antarctic) operations, such as specialised icebreakers. NATO’s admission of Finland in 2023 and Sweden in 2024 helped plug some of the gaps in the alliance’s Arctic naval capabilities.

William Seward, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, looks ever more prescient. Had he not led the United States to purchase Alaska from Russia in 1867, and Russia had remained a North American power, the cold war might never have ended. He also tried to purchase Greenland from Denmark in 1868. Had he succeeded, today’s circumstances might have been easier.

Mr. Trump did not discover Greenland in 2019—when he first mooted buying it—but he has seriously complicated addressing how the huge island and its tiny population can once again be fully integrated into NATO defences. The 1951 US-Danish Defence of Greenland treaty is a workable basis for guarding against the thrusting Chinese and Russians, while allowing Greenland’s political status to evolve. America had as many as 17 military facilities there during the cold war, and today’s focus hopefully precludes China and Russia from acting covertly against NATO’s security interests.

Norway’s Svalbard islands graphically embody the alliance’s dilemmas. John Longyear, an American businessman, initially exploited their coal deposits in the early 20th century (more evidence of how ahistorical today’s American isolationists are). However, allowable under the 1925 treaty confirming Norwegian sovereignty, Svalbard also features Russian mining operations about 30 miles from its major habitation, appropriately named Longyearbyen.

A European intelligence official said recently that “Svalbard has to be near the top of a list of where Russia might try something.” This is not fantasy. China poses an analogous threat to Taiwanese islands like Kinmen and Matsu, just off the mainland, which it could readily seize without invading Taiwan outright. These are inviting targets, testing allied resolve in the Far East and the Far North. Can Svalbard’s treaty-based demilitarisation be preserved? As I discovered during my own visit there in April, the islands provide NATO’s adversaries excellent locations for naval or air bases.

Among NATO’s Arctic Ocean members, Canada is the hole in the doughnut. Persistent Canadian underspending on defence during Justin Trudeau’s several governments remains uncorrected. Helpfully, however, relations between America’s and Canada’s armed forces are otherwise quite good, including through long-term development of national missile defences for both countries. It is Canada’s politicians who have failed.

Moreover, disagreements between Canada and America over whether various aspects of the Northwest Passage are international waterways or Canadian territorial waters must also be resolved. One approach would be to agree that passage by NATO-member warships would be freely permitted in fulfilling their alliance obligations.

These are merely preliminary considerations. Formidable issues remain, including the need for massive increase in NATO defence expenditures, not just for the Arctic but worldwide. Cold-war victory didn’t “end history” in the Arctic any more than anywhere else. And, critically, isolationism can play no part in strategising about a region so close and vital to American national-security interests. Time to pick up the pace.

This article was first published in the Economist on August 11, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

What Next in Syria and Lebanon?

Posted on August 1, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

Last Thursday, America’s ambassador to Turkey was saying that sought “de-escalation and dialogue(https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syrian-israeli-officials-discuss-de-escalation-paris-meeting-us-envoy-says-2025-07-24/)” in Syria’s ongoing conflict. On Friday, US special forces struck(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/us/politics/us-raid-syria-isis.html) deep into Syria, near Aleppo, killing a senior ISIS leader. This vivid contrast exemplifies just how complicated Syria’s future is, and how high the regional and global stakes are. And, since Israel sees its northern border with Lebanon and Syria as a continuous frontier requiring integrated defenses, threats in Lebanon are hardly separate from threats in Syria or Iran’s broader malevolent role across the Middle East.

The Assad dictatorship’s collapse in December 24, combined with earlier heavy losses suffered by Hezbollah and Hamas, and underlined by the Israeli-US attacks on Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, have fundamentally changed what the Soviets once called “the correlation of forces” in the region. The dramatic reversals of fortune for Iran and its allies after the striking failure of their anti-Israel “ring of fire” strategy mean that serious threats no longer emanate from Tehran alone.

Today’s problems stem from the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and its diplomatic progeny carving up the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman governance structures were hardly ideal, but France and the United Kingdom were pursuing their own interests by converting Arab lands south of the newly created Turkey into League of Nations mandates. France further divided its mandate, Syria, into separate states: Greater Lebanon, Jabal al-Druze, Aleppo, Damascus and the Alawite state. After Assad’s fall, no one any longer expects Syria to annex Lebanon, but the harder question is how to manage relations between the Alawites, Druze, and various Christians with the new HTS government. Moreover, in Lebanon, the role of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, remains very much undecided, certainly in Tehran’s view.

While Iran is no longer a significant actor in Syria, Recep Erdogan’s Turkey has become increasingly assertive since the Arab Spring erupted and seriously threatened the Assad regime. During the post-Arab Spring civil war in Syria, Erdogan supported several rebel groups, hoping to install a Moslem Brotherhood regime in Damascus. He wanted a Syrian leader Ankara could control, not one under Tehran’s direction.

While Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“HTS”), formerly known as the Nusrah Front, an offshoot of al Qaeda, was not Erdogan’s first choice, it was better than nothing. He and Abu Mohammad al-Jolani seized their chance in late 2024, ousting Assad remarkably quickly. The moment was opportune since Russia and Iran, essential earlier in protecting Assad against the Arab Spring, were preoccupied, respectively, in the Ukraine and Middle East wars. HTS could not have overthrown Assad’s regime without Turkish support. But, while reducing Russia’s influence and effectively eliminating Iran’s entirely is all to the good, there is no agreement about what an HTS regime portends. Will it do Erdogan’s bidding? Will it return entirely to its terrorist roots? We simply do not know. Watching foreign terrorist fighters allied with HTS transition into Syria’s army(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/world/middleeast/syria-foreign-fighters.html) is not necessarily comforting. One point is certain: the last thing anyone needs is an Ottoman Empire 2.0, much less turning Syria into “Afghanistan on the Mediterranean.”

Erdogan’s recent truce with Turkey’s Kurdish rebels seems positive, but his motive may be primarily a desperate need for domestic support against increasingly united opposition from ethnic Turkish voters(https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2025/03/26/turkeys-kurdish-peace-talks-a-genuine-effort-or-erdogans-power-play/). Kurds in northeastern Syria, especially Mazloum Abdi’s Syrian Democratic Forces, have been uneasily negotiating with the HTS regime. Erdogan’s hostility toward the SDF, and the presence of US miliary personnel east of the Euphrates River, has undeniably kept Turkey’s miliary from entering and seizing Syria’s northeast.

Accordingly, before overly obsessing on the conflict in southern Syria, in which Israel has intervened to protect Druze and Christian populations, it is critical first to know more about the HTS regime in Damascus. As I earlier explained in these pages, the now-renamed Ahmed al Sharaa and his HTS government(https://www.boltonpac.com/2025/05/what-is-required-of-sharia-to-obtain-full-american-recognition) have many tests to pass. These include fully opening the Assad regime’s files on foreign hostages and its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. Additionally, revealing all of Assad’s dealings with Hezbollah and Iran would provide interesting reading.

Instead, while seeking information about Assad’s chemical- and biological-weapons efforts(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/world/europe/syria-sanctions-trump.html) and missing American citizens(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/world/middleeast/israel-syria-border-us-barrack.html), the White House seems more interested in pursuing Turkish and HTS priorities rather than US interests(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/us/politics/trump-syria-sanctions.html). Ambassador Thomas Barrack, for example, criticized Israel for striking Syria’s military headquarters in Damascus(https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-netanyahu-adviser-expected-to-meet-syrian-foreign-minister-in-paris/). Were Barrack’s comments his own, or were they were authorized by Washington, which might be expected when criticizing a US ally?

Moreover, Barrack is publicly making excuses for al-Sharaa’s reluctance to open full diplomatic relations with Israel. It is not generally a US ambassador’s job to justify another country’s actions; indeed, this is the essence of “clientitis,” an institutional disease at the State Department, often referred to more disparagingly as “going native.” Ambassador Barrack should be warned about the symptoms he is displaying. He and the White House still have much to learn.

This article was first published in the Independent Arabia on July 29, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Starmer’s turn against Israel will prolong war

Posted on May 26, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

Removing the ayatollahs in Iran is the only route to securing longterm peace in Gaza

Israel is now grappling with possibly the last phases of eliminating the Hamas terrorist threat. Instead of support from a unified West determined to extirpate terrorism, however, Jerusalem is under attack for attempting exactly that. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “horrified” by Israel’s recent “escalation”. Foreign Secretary David Lammy condemned the “dark new phase in this conflict,” suspended trade negotiations with Israel, and said it should agree to a cease-fire to free remaining hostages, as if that were Jerusalem’s only legitimate objective.

Last week, a gunman in Washington brutally murdered two Israeli embassy employees, chanting “free, free Palestine” while being arrested. Thereafter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Starmer and others were “on the wrong side” of justice, humanity and history. Starmer has not responded. Before he does, he should at least check the history.

Immediately after Hamas’s barbaric October 7, 2023, invasion, Netanyahu declared that Israel would seek Hamas’s political and military destruction. This was an entirely legitimate exercise of UN Charter Article 51, which affirms “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense.”

Jerusalem was not limited to a “proportional” response, something comparable to the Hamas terrorist attack, any more than America was limited to a “proportional” response to Pearl Harbor. States are entitled not merely to repel threats, but to destroy them, as the allies did to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Moreover, clear from the outset and becoming clearer by the day as new information emerges, Hamas’s attack was part of Iran’s “ring of fire strategy” against Israel, a strategy implemented by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Just to remind, “Quds” is an Arabic term for Jerusalem, celebrated on Ramadan’s last day by Palestinians as “Quds Day.” Implementing its “ring” strategy, Tehran created or fostered a chain of terrorist groups: Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Shia militias in Iraq. Bashar al-Assad’s Syria was a key ally.

The anti-Israel strategy unfolded across the Middle East immediately after October 7. From the beginning, Israel saw Gaza as part of a wider war, not merely a discrete conflict. Now far more evident than at the outset, however, is the war’s economic dimension, a critical factor long before October 7.

Iran and other regional states, groups and individuals provided billions of dollars, directly and through international agencies like UNRWA, ostensibly for humanitarian aid. Tragically, however, as we now know, Hamas diverted much of these “humanitarian” resources to build Gaza’s underground fortress of tunnel networks; armed itself to the hilt (including with missile arsenals capable of menacing all Israel); and effectively mobilised most Gazans to serve as human shields for that fortress. If Hamas kept adequate records that can be recovered, the story will embarrass those who enabled this massive fraud, particularly in the West.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem is pursuing its post-October 7 goals, which must include eliminating all potential assets, in cash or in kind, Hamas can use to retain control over Gaza’s population. Working through UNRWA over decades, Hamas seized control over the distribution of virtually all humanitarian supplies entering Gaza. Credible reports (and Hamas records, if recovered) demonstrate how the terrorists rewarded their cadres at the expense of others, using control over the internal distribution of supplies in Gaza to cement their political control.

This pattern is nothing new. After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein used the UN’s “Oil for Food” programme to gain control over Iraq’s population. As originally conceived, an intrusive UN presence would use Iraq’s oil revenues for humanitarian aid to its people, thus ensuring the non-political delivery of assistance to the truly needy, while also demonstrating to Iraqis that Saddam had effectively lost control of his country. He repeatedly rejected this model, until the Clinton administration conceded that his regime would disburse Oil-for-Food aid. That mistake helped Saddam reinforce his authoritarian grip, repress Kurds and other dissidents, and again threaten his neighbours,

Hamas has thus simply been following Saddam’s plan. Israel, by contrast, has followed principles Herbert Hoover first articulated in World War I when he organised relief programs in Europe, starting in Belgium. Hoover ordered that no aid would go to combatants, and that his volunteers would distribute the aid, or at least rigorously monitor delivery to prevent diversion to combatants.

Hamas scorned Hoover’s principles, and continues to do so. Comments by Starmer, Lammy and others ignore both the reality in Gaza today and Hoover’s wise admonitions about ensuring that relief goes to those who actually need it, not those who use the aid to oppress them.

Israel has a plan to aid Gazans, backed by Washington but opposed by the UN. Instead of criticising Israel, Starmer should support and help perfect Jerusalem’s plan and thereby properly deliver humanitarian assistance.

The only way Gazans can ever be free is to eliminate the curse of Hamas. And because Gaza is part of Iran’s larger war against Israel and the West, that will happen only when Iranians are free of the ayatollahs. That should be our common goal.

This article was first published in The Daily Telegraph on May 26, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Will Trump Blow Up the National Security Council?

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

President Trump is reportedly considering(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/rubio-working-major-changes-national-security-council-rcna206658) major alterations to the National Security Advisor’s role and the National Security Council staff. One administration source said(https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/14/politics/rubio-national-security-council-overhaul) the “NSC as we know it is done.” The potential changes center apparently on reducing the staff and its responsibility for developing and coordinating policy formulation, particularly long-range policy, and making it an implementer of Mr. Trump’s directives.

If executed, such changes will affect not merely the staff, but the NSC process itself. Ignoring history’s lessons, reflecting instead Mr. Trump’s aversion to coherent strategy and policy, the proposals would seriously harm both the administration’s already haphazard decision-making process and the president’s ability to manage the enormous foreign-policy, defense, intelligence, and homeland-security bureaucracies. The ultimately critical factor in presidential national-security strategy is judgment, but a properly functioning NSC staff can help provide the necessary information and options foundational to the sound exercise of judgment.

The 1947 National Security Act established the NSC to help presidents get their arms around the new and enlarged departments and agencies required to cope with a complex, menacing international environment, the likes of which we had never before experienced. Because presidents differ in their work habits, the NSC structure was intended to be flexible, varying in size and shape over time. But through often painful lessons in recent decades, until Trump 47, a broad consensus formed over an optimal approach.

Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to pay real attention to NSC staffing, which he structured along lines comparable to his military experience. John Kennedy rebelled against what he saw as excessive rigidity, at least until the Bay of Pigs, the discouraging and intimidating 1961 Vienna summit with Nikita Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis convinced him that structure wasn’t so bad after all.

The personalized National Security Advisor roles of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brezinski in the Nixon/Ford and Carter administration respectively have received enormous attention, but, in between, Brent Scowcroft was building the current NSC model. Scowcroft would perfect the model under George H.W. Bush, confronting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the Soviet Union’s collapse, and the start of the post-Cold War era.

Scowcroft devised a system to coordinate and control the flow of decision-making, topped by Cabinet-level NSC meetings chaired by the President; “principals” meetings, also cabinet-level, led by National Security Advisors; “deputies” meetings attended by deputy- and undersecretary-level officials; down to meetings of assistant and even deputy assistant secretaries. Some describe this five-tiered edifice as too bureaucratic, but Bush 41 and others proved it could move as fast and comprehensively as exigent circumstances warranted.

The plan embodied the principal of subsidiarity, with decisions made at the lowest level achievable, with only the most important issues occupying the attention of the president and his top advisors. This system’s substantive outcome was providing the ultimate decision makers with all the pertinent data, the full range of available options, the pros and cons of each, and forward thinking about implementation, counter-moves by adversaries and allies, and possible US responses.

To Scowcroft also goes considerable credit for repairing the NSC after the Iran-Contra crisis, its worst mistake, during which NSC staff became operational. Since then, almost all agree the NSC should coordinate, and implementing departments and agencies should implement. Not all have adhered perfectly to this maxim.

Importantly, the size of the NSC staff is solely a dependent variable. Size follows mission. Setting a staff level before deciding its tasks is backwards. Moreover, comparing current staff levels to prior administrations is inapposite for several reasons. In bygone days, only “professionals,” not “administrative” staff, were counted; Situation Room staffers were sometimes included in NSC numbers, sometimes not; and, pre-9/11, there were almost no “homeland security” staff anywhere in the White House.

On the president personally, Scowcroft ‘s model bestowed one key advantage: creating interagency staff contacts reaching into deep bureaucratic depths gave far greater insight into potential agency agendas and disagreements before they rose to higher levels, thereby reducing the risks of bureaucratic obfuscation and delay. Similarly, presidents today have significantly enhanced capabilities to monitor how their decisions are implemented down below in the operating agencies. A dramatically constrained NSC staff would simply not have such abilities.

Everyone knows presidents make the ultimate decisions. But will they make the best-informed decisions, in widely varying contexts, or will they merely follow their own neuron flashes? The animus now directed at Scowcroft’s system largely emanates from fear of the bureaucracy (“deep state”’ to Trump acolytes). The real question is whether top decision-makers will run the bureaucracy or whether the bureaucracy runs them. If the highest levels fail to drive lower levels, the fault lies more with inadequate top officials who lack knowledge, experience, and resolve.

The NSC system has its faults, but turning its staff into liege-men and -women will not benefit America, or even Donald Trump.

This article was first published in Wall Street Journal on May 19, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

What Trump Really Intends

Posted on April 6, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

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.

This article was first published in the Daily Telegraph on April 7, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

After the Oval Office Debacle

Posted on March 3, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

Vladimir Putin was the only winner in last week’s Oval Office grudge match between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump harmed US national security by ignoring our profound, long-standing interest in European stability, which we learned through the 20th Century’s two hot world wars and one Cold War. Ensuring our enemies do not control the European landmass, and having extensive trans-Atlantic economic, political, cultural and familial relations are palpably important to our way of life. All this is at risk. Trump has not merely gone neutral in the Russo-Ukraine war, he is objectively on Moscow’s side.

Likely now to be abandoned by Washington, its largest single source of military and economic aid, Kyiv’s problems are even worse. Ukraine still faces the implacable Russian enemy, whose leadership is determined to recreate the Czars’ empire, especially by absorbing “little Russia” as they patronizingly call it. The Europeans, for all their bluster, are woefully inadequate substitutes, especially if Washington moves even further into Russia’s camp, perhaps lifting economic sanctions and seeking investments in Russian mineral resources.

The instant analysis of Friday’s debacle, pitting Trump supporters against Zelensky supporters, largely turned on questions of etiquette. This is seriously wrong. What is at stake is not an Emily Post-style assessment of who blew up the meeting, who was rude or disrespectful, or judging “where the meeting went wrong.” Almost certainly, everything the three principals said with the press watching, they would have said while meeting privately after the Oval Office photo opportunity. The issue is US national security, not whose behavior was more juvenile.

Trump argued that Zelensky was not serious about peace, and that his comments made it harder to persuade Putin to come to the negotiating table. But Putin is hardly a snowflake, wounded by unkind Zelensky remarks. In fact, Putin is one of the most cold-blooded leaders in today’s world. He knows exactly what he wants. Even though his logic, especially regarding the value of human life, does not correspond to ours, he has relentlessly pursued his objective of restoring “greater Russia.” Ukrainians object to this outcome not because they have bad manners but because they insist on freedom and independence (should be familiar words for Americans) from foreign oppressors.

Indeed, it is precisely Washington’s massive shift toward Moscow that moving legitimate discussions between Kyiv and Moscow into the future. As Trump hands the Kremlin one concession after another, Russia’s incentive to negotiate diminishes. Why seek compromise through negotiations when obtaining precisely what they want by direct US intervention?

Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev wrote prior to the Oval Office disaster, “if you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the U.S. president, I would have laughed out loud(https://nypost.com/2025/02/20/world-news/russia-praises-trump-after-he-ripped-ukraines-zelensky/).” He was referring not just to Trump calling Zelensky a “dictator” but to abandoning US and NATO positions that Ukraine must reobtain full sovereignty and territorial integrity; that Ukraine could ultimately join NATO; and that America or NATO itself would give Kyiv security guarantees under a comprehensive peace deal. Such retreats clearly evidence that Trump is now siding with Moscow rather than Kyiv and America’s own security.

Trump’s insistence that he wants “peace,” while carefully phrased for its political benefits, is in fact the most dangerous outcome of the Oval Office meeting. Peace can always be obtained by surrender. “Peace at any price” is always on offer. Russia’s unprovoked aggression put Ukraine at risk, not its desire to join NATO. That has been America’s official position since at least 2008 under George W. Bush. Russia did not strike against Ukraine until 2014, and then waited eight years to attack again in 2022. By adopting the Kremlin’s view that Ukraine and NATO precipitated the war, Trump is repeating Russian propaganda. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called this notion “Orwellian”: “you might as well say that the swimmers were responsible for attacking the shark in Jaws or the United States were responsible for attacking Japan at Pearl Harbor( https://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/uk-politics/boris-johnson-on-trumps-ukraine-comments/).”

Whether Ukraine and America can find a way back from the precipice remains to be seen. The real threat for the United States, however, is that we now have a President who can’t tell our friends from our enemies.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on March 3, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Ignore Trump’s Gaza distraction. Focus on Iran

Posted on February 5, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Donald Trump, the first post-inaugural White House visit by a foreign leader, could shape the Middle East for generations. Pre-meeting speculation centered on how the leaders would handle the Hamas-Israel war.

Stunningly, Trump’s comments just before and then after his meeting with Netanyahu focused on the U.S. taking control of the Gaza Strip while Gaza’s residents are resettled elsewhere in the Middle East. There is little point in commenting seriously on this “idea,” which appears to be entirely Trump’s own.

The most important strategic issue in the real Middle East remains Iran’s existential threat to Israel. Tehran’s ayatollahs can only be delighted if the Trump administration expends any time and effort at all on the Gaza idea rather than addressing their nuclear weapons program. Restoring the “maximum pressure” campaign from Trump’s first term is a sound decision, but still only the beginning of an effective strategy.

Since Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Israel, with U.S. assistance, has dealt Iran and its “ring of fire” strategy major blows. Hamas and Hezbollah have been decimated but not destroyed. Iran’s ballistic missile production facilities and its sophisticated, Russian-supplied, S-300 air-defense systems have been all but eliminated. Syria’s Iran-friendly Assad regime has fallen, and its S-300 systems and other military assets have been destroyed. Unfortunately, the Houthis in Yemen, West Bank terrorists, and Iranian-controlled Shia militias in Iraq are only wounded, and not severely.

The job is unfinished, but enormous progress has been made to diminish Iran’s overall threat, especially its terrorist surrogates. The existential danger remains: Its nuclear program is essentially intact, with only one location, the Parchin weaponization facility, attacked. Looking ahead, the central issue remains how to destroy Tehran’s nuclear weapons efforts, which threaten not only Israel but also constitute a major proliferation threat to America and the world.

Eliminating this menace is Netanyahu’s real top priority, but it should not be solely Jerusalem’s responsibility. The United States is the only country that can stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (chemical and biological as well as nuclear). For America and Israel, there has never been a better time to do just that, using carefully targeted force against Iran’s nuclear arms facilities.

Accordingly, Israeli-American objectives should be victory against both Iran’s nuclear and terrorist threats. In World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill explained to his countrymen why this was the only acceptable outcome: “victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

The real debate is between those advocating victory and those advocating the Obama-Biden approach: endless negotiations on an elusive deal to return Iran’s government to civilized behavior. There are certainly legitimate questions about the timing of striking Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Most important is reducing Iran’s capacity to retaliate against Israel, friendly Gulf Arab states, and deployed U.S. forces in the region. In Lebanon, Hezbollah likely retains tens of thousands of Iranian-supplied missiles, and Iran itself still has significant numbers of missiles and drones. The clock is running. Tehran is racing to repair the production facilities Israel leveled in October 2024 to replenish its missile stockpiles.

Another mutual priority is achieving Israel’s objective of eliminating the political and military capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, as Netanyahu stressed yesterday. Although Israel has enjoyed remarkable success in Gaza and Lebanon, the recent Gaza hostage releases were staged to portray Hamas as a viable fighting force, with considerable support among Gaza’s civilians. Yet under former President Joe Biden’s ceasefire deal, which Trump’s pre-inaugural pressure on Netanyahu ironically brought to fruition, Israeli negotiations with Hamas over Gaza’s future are due to start. Yet this is precisely what Netanyahu wanted to avoid and why Biden failed for seven months to close the deal. Just because it is now Trump’s deal does not improve it substantively.

Hamas can have no part in any future Gaza, whatever it looks like, nor can Hezbollah have any future in Lebanon. Only by removing these cancers can Gazans and Lebanese have any prospect of normality. And so long as the ayatollahs rule in Tehran, they will do their best to rearm their terrorist proxies, even under “maximum pressure” against Iran.

Following their summit, Netanyahu and Trump must demonstrate the resolve to persevere, as Churchill said, however long and hard the road may be. Watch what happens on Iran.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on February 5, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump and the Middle East

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

History in the Middle East is moving very fast these days. The long-overdue fall of Syria’s Assad regime is only the latest evidence, and Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration will accelerate the pace. The central question is whether the principal players seize opportunities now open for lasting regional peace and security before they quickly close. Of course, there are massive, daunting uncertainties, but leaders should remember the Roman saying, “fortune favors the bold.”

Surprisingly, one of the major uncertainties could be Trump. In his first term, he was viewed as automatically pro-Israel, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over disputed territory in the Golan Heights. It would be wrong for several reasons, however, to assume reflexively that this pattern will recur during his second term.

For example, Trump’s private view of Netanyahu is far more negative than generally perceived, exemplified by Trump’s anger when Netanyahu congratulated Biden on winning the 2020 presidential election(https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-jerusalem-israel-middle-east-iran-nuclear-d141ca03a5e38bfb60b37f94a38ecda8). To most of the world, this was hardly noteworthy, but Trump’s fixation never to be perceived as a loser forced him to argue that the Democrats stole the election, which mythology Netanyahu violated. Even before that, Trump said in an interview that he thought the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas wanted peace more than Netanyahu(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq1seiWI8ro), which hardly expresses confidence in the Israeli leader. Moreover, Netanyahu is an expert politician, far more astute than Trump, which undoubtedly also inflames Trump’s vanity.

Moreover, Trump’s obsession to seek a deal on anything and everything, even with Iran’s ayatollahs, may come to dominate his Middle East actions. As I previously recounted in The Room Where It Happened, Trump came remarkably close to meeting Iran’s then-Foreign Minister, Javid Zarif, at the August, 2019, G-7 summit in Biarritz, France. French President Emmanuel Macron suggested such an encounter to Trump immediately upon his arrival in Biarritz, and he was initially inclined to agree. Conferring in Trump’s hotel room with Jared Kushner and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvanery, I urged against meeting with Zarif. Trump ultimately did not see Zarif, but, as the Duke of Wellington said of Napolean’s defeat at Waterloo, it was “the nearest run thing you ever saw.”

Trump’s pre-Inauguration intervention in Joe Biden’s long effort to obtain a cease-fire/hostage-release deal between Hamas and Israel is also noteworthy. After seven months of failure, Trump’s pressure on Israel resulted in Netanyahu finally accepting Biden’s deal, or at least its first phase. Trump wanted to take credit for the hostage releases, hearkening back to the start of Ronald Reagan’s administration, when Iran returned US embassy officials taken hostage during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. On that level, Trump succeeded where Biden failed. But whether Trump understands Biden’s plan has other phases is far from certain, as are the prospects that even the first phase will conclude successfully, let alone those that follow.

Improbably, however, there have been signs, before and after Trump’s Inauguration, that he may believe that the Gaza war has actually ended. Steve Witkoff, his family friend and now a special Middle East envoy, has stresses that “phase two” of Biden’s deal, which involves further negotiation between Israel and Hamas, should begin promptly. This can hardly be what Israel expects. In addition, Witkoff’s Trumpian “zeal for the deal” mentality, and his inexperience, reflected in naïve public comments(https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-envoy-says-gaza-ceasefire-could-pave-way-mideast-normalization-deal-inflection-point), are factors that could militate against Israel in the immediate future. Impressed by Witkoff’s performance to date, Trump may have decided to give him a role in Iran matters, although that remains unclear(https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/trump-witkoff-iran-diplomacy-nuclear-deal). Nonetheless, both have said they favored diplomatic options to resolve Iran’s nuclear threat.

If true, this creates a dilemma for Netanyahu. Right now, Israel and America have the best opportunity ever to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapons and missile programs. Israel has already massively damaged Iran’s missile-production facilities(https://www.axios.com/2024/10/26/israel-strike-iran-missile-production) and at least one target involved in weaponizing highly enriched uranium(https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/iran-israel-destroyed-active-nuclear-weapons-research-facility), not to mention flattening Iran’s sophisticated, Russia-supplied, S-300 air defense systems(https://www.voanews.com/a/israel-s-attack-on-iran-has-left-tehran-offensively-and-defensively-weaker/7848701.html). Additional attacks in Syria after Assad’s overthrow have opened an air corridor allowing direct access from Israel to Iran. The path is clear.

Obstacles remain, notably Iran’s and Hezbollah’s remaining ballistic missiles, which would enable either retaliatory strikes against Israel, or even a pre-emptive strike to foreclose Netanyahu’s options. Israel, Jordan, and nearby Arab states must also worry about the current regime in Damascus, led by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“HTS”) terrorist group. Having shed his nom de guerre, and changed from combat fatigues to suits and ties, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is doing his best to convince outsiders that he now simply seeks responsible government in Syria. Whether this is true remains unclear, as do Turkish aspirations in Syria and across the region. The Biden administration(https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/24/us-syria-intelligence-hts-isis/) reportedly went so far as to share intelligence with HTS about ISIS, although whether Trump will continue this risky business is unknown.

What is inescapable is that while Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities have never been more vulnerable, Trump’s new administration seemed undecided on its future course. His first term may not be an accurate prediction of his second. There is no Trumpian grand strategy at work here since he does not do grand strategy. Instead, he is transactional, episodic, and ad hoc, often making decisions based on whatever the last person he consults with recommends. This may be the real future of America’s policy in the Middle East.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on January 28, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump risks hamstringing Marco Rubio

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Bolton PAC Staff

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.

This article was first published on January 8, 2025 for The Washington Examiner. Click here to read the original article.

Uncategorized