John Bolton thinks America is past “peak Trump”

To understand what Mr Trump’s return to the White House means for American power, The Economist sat down with John Bolton

In the second episode of Inside Geopolitics, David Rennie, The Economist’s geopolitics editor, talks to John Bolton. Subscribers can watch it on our app and on the Insider hub.

Bolton, formerly a close adviser to the US President, has now turned into a critic.(AFP)

Donald trump’s second term has rattled America’s allies. Even more than during his first four years, when the president’s transactional, strongman style made foreign leaders uneasy, “Trump II” has left many with a sense of dread. They worry that America is retreating into maga-infused isolationism for good.

To understand what Mr Trump’s return to the White House means for American power, The Economist sat down with John Bolton, who was one of his national security advisers during his first term. A self-described “Reagan Republican”, Mr Bolton has become one of the president’s fiercest critics. (In October federal prosecutors indicted him for mishandling classified documents; he pleaded not guilty. Mr Bolton would not discuss the case, but made clear he wouldn’t be silenced by it.) Mr Bolton thinks that Mr Trump’s foreign-policy revolution is already burning out. “We may have passed peak Trump,” he says. That doesn’t mean the turbulence of his America-first experiment is over yet, though.

As The Economist met Mr Bolton in Washington, dc, reports circulated suggesting America could try to force Ukraine to accept a bad peace deal with Russia, which would include concessions on territory as well as restrictions on the size of its army. Such a deal appeals to Mr Trump, Mr Bolton reckons, because the president tends to view foreign affairs through his personal relationships. “He has long thought he and Vladimir Putin were friends.” But it would be a disaster for Ukraine. “If Ukraine is forced into this, it will not bring lasting peace,” he says. “It will give Russia a breather, and in due course, we’ll see the third invasion of Ukraine.”

Still, Mr Bolton seems to think the president will probably not really force through such a deal. Mr Trump has filled the White House with yes-men and cowed Republicans in Congress. But if Mr Trump tried to push through “a real sell-out of Ukraine, which this peace plan could amount to, [that would] provoke a lot of opposition on Capitol Hill”. Out-and-out Russia sympathisers, Mr Bolton insists, are still “a very small part of the party”.

One reason Mr Bolton thinks that a “snapback to basically a Reagan approach” is possible is that the president’s pretensions to grand strategy, for all their Trumpian branding, have little coherence. Some reckon that Mr Trump believes in a world of spheres of influence, whereby big powers dominate their respective neighbourhoods—America gets to be the hegemon in the western hemisphere, Russia in Europe, China in Asia and so on.

Mr Bolton differs. “Trump doesn’t think at that level,” he says. His flip-flopping between cosying up to Russia and succouring Ukraine this year has been one example of this. Another, says Mr Bolton, is Venezuela. “If he really believed in spheres of influence, [Nicolás Maduro, the country’s leader] would have been gone long ago.” Mr Trump seems to have no plan for his naval build-up in the Caribbean. “It’s the cart before the horse,” says Mr Bolton. “Trump himself doesn’t know what he wants to do.”

What if Mr Trump’s successor can give more ideological coherence to an America-first foreign policy? J.D. Vance, the vice-president, has criticised America’s entanglements in the Middle East, lambasting its attempts to play global policeman, and suggested that it should pursue closer ties with Russia. But Mr Bolton pours scorn on the idea that Mr Vance would be more consistent. “Vance is plastic,” he says, pointing to how the vice-president has shifted his position on Mr Trump and Trumpism over the past decade. And besides, the contest to win the Republican nomination in 2028 will be “hotly contested”.

A return to more conventional Republican foreign policy, Mr Bolton believes, could be on the cards. “The worst thing that our foreign friends could do,” he says, “is assume that the us will behave like Trump forever”. Leaders such as Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor who said that Europe should seek “independence” from Mr Trump’s America, are being too hasty. “And until I see another alternative that people in free societies should find acceptable”, Mr Bolton says, “I’d still bet on America.”