FRANCE 24 spoke to John Bolton, a former national security adviser under Donald Trump. Bolton reacted to the ceasefire deal that’s been struck for Gaza, following a devastating 15-month war between Israel and Hamas. The deal was clinched through cooperation between the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump team, and after months of diplomatic activity under Biden’s leadership. “It’s kind of ironic that Trump is taking credit for putting Biden’s deal over the line,” Bolton commented.
Bolton also said that he did not think the Gaza ceasefire deal was a particularly good agreement: “I don’t think the deal itself is a very good deal; it looks a lot like what the Biden administration had been pushing for about the last seven months. I didn’t think it was good then, I don’t think it gets any better because Trump endorsed it”.
Bolton, who served as national security adviser under Donald Trump, resigned in 2019 and has since become a fierce critic of his former boss.
Trump, who takes office as US president again on January 20, has been front and centre in the media for several weeks, making a series of controversial statements. He has notably pushed the idea that he will take over Greenland from Denmark, reclaim the Panama Canal and absorb Canada into the United States. Trump said he did not rule out the option of using military force to take Greenland and the Panama Canal.
“That kind of approach can cause damage,” Bolton told FRANCE 24. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping in Beijing could say ‘we consider Taiwan central to our national security as well and I’m not going to rule out the use of force to take Taiwan”.
In Moscow, too, Russian President Vladimir Putin could argue that “Ukraine is critical to our security” as a justification for the 2022 full-scale invasion, Bolton continued.
Trump, who initially promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, now plans to end it in six months.
Trump ‘doesn’t care how the wars end’
The US president-elect “wants the Ukraine war off the table; he wants the war in the Middle East off the table, too,” Bolton explained.
However, “he doesn’t care how the wars end, so long as he doesn’t have to worry about them. And I think that that’s very bad news for Ukraine,” Bolton said. “I’m really quite worried about the direction that Trump will take.”
He continued: “JD Vance, the incoming vice president, said during the campaign that he thought the solution was a ceasefire in place in Ukraine, creating a demilitarised zone and then committing that Ukraine would not join NATO. That’s an outcome you could have written in the Kremlin.”
Asked about his biggest worry for Trump’s second term, Bolton said he believes “the issue that’s not receiving enough attention internationally is the question of tariffs“.
He explained: Trump “hopes to raise significant revenues from higher tariffs. And every indication is [that the] European Union, China, Canada, Mexico, which are our two biggest trading partners, will retaliate”.
It may be easier to get into a fully-fledged trade war than to get out of it, Bolton noted.
“The potential economic consequences “should be a lot more concerning to people than they seem to be,” he concluded.
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