John Bolton says the “erratic” foreign policy decision-making of Donald Trump would surely lead to an exit from NATO in a potential second term, and blames the former president for the disastrous withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan that was finalized on Joe Biden’s watch.
Republicans have pointed to the September 2021 fall of Kabul and rapid collapse of the Afghan government as a blight on Biden, who had been in the White House for less than a year. But Bolton said Thursday on NewsNation that the incoming administration merely “implemented” the deal Trump negotiated with the Taliban.
“Donald Trump doesn’t really have a philosophy as we understand it in political terms – he doesn’t think in policy directions when he makes decisions,” the former Trump national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations said in his appearance on “The Hill on NewsNation” to talk about his recent opinion piece, “Erratic, Irrational and Unconstrained: What a Second Trump Term Would Mean for America’s Foreign Policy.”
NewsNation host Blake Burman, playing Republicans’ advocate, noted that the GOP would say Trump’s foreign policy track record speaks for itself: “No new wars. He left the Iran nuclear deal. Peace deals throughout the Middle East. The reworked trade deals. … When you look at the actual record, Republicans would say not bad, right?”
Bolton, who turned on Trump after his exit from the White House, wasn’t ready to give that credit to his former boss.
“Well, let’s let’s talk about ‘no new wars’ – he negotiated a deal with the Taliban that Biden later implemented. That was a disastrous mistake for america and for national security in the world,” Bolton said.
It’s true that Trump’s Taliban deal, negotiated in early 2020 without the participation of the Afghan government, called for a withdrawal. The Biden Administration decided three months after his inauguration to pull out by September and not leave a residual force, citing intelligence reports that a Taliban takeover would be considerably less swift than it turned out to be.
But Bolton brought more ammo than just Afghanistan:
“[Trump] did not put forward a really effective effort to squeeze the Iranians after he got out of the nuclear deal,” he continued. “He did not deal with the threat of terrorism from Iran effectively. He threatened the existence of NATO – and I think in a second Trump term would almost certainly withdraw from NATO.”
A bold prediction at a time when the United States is bankrolling Ukraine’s war against Russian invasion, especially after many U.S. leaders seem to be warming to the idea of a post-war induction for Ukraine. But Bolton wouldn’t put anything past the former president and current GOP front-runner.
“I mean, there’s a long list here and I think those who make these claims about what Trump did his first term don’t really understand how we got to the places we did, because many of the things they now give Trump credit for – he wanted to go in the opposite direction.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video above.
