Former national security adviser John Bolton criticizes Trump’s foreign policy at Utah event

Former national security adviser John Bolton criticized President-elect Donald Trump, saying he does not have a serious approach to foreign policy during a Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce event on Thursday.
Bolton, who resigned from Trump’s administration in late 2019, said the dangerous state of world affairs requires the kind of vigorous policy debate that is alien to Trump’s style.
“The President-elect doesn’t really have a philosophy of national security,” said Bolton, who shared that he had cast a write-in vote for former Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday.
To “maintain the way of life that we have here at home,” Bolton continued, America’s commander in chief needs to be able to make careful decisions that take into account the string of consequences associated with presidential action.
“And that’s just not the way that Trump operates,” Bolton said. “He’s transactional, as they say, episodic, ad hoc and not a strategic player.”
Bolton was the keynote speaker at the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce’s fourth annual Growth and Prosperity Summit held at the Utah Valley University campus before a crowd of a few hundred business, government and nonprofit leaders.
The schedule also included remarks from Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and former Gov. Gary Herbert.
Bolton applied the same criticism to America’s governing and media class as a whole. Unlike during the Cold War, there is very little public debate about how to address the growing alliance between America’s enemies, which include world powers with nuclear weapons, Russia and China, and a nation pursuing nuclear capabilities, Iran.
“Who’s debating it? Who’s hearing about it on television? It’s just not happening,” Bolton said. “We need people to think more about what it takes to make America safe.”
To do this, Bolton, who is considered by many to be hawkish on national security, said the United States must have discussions about increasing military spending from its current 3% of gross domestic product, to the Reagan-era levels of around 5%.
After the Korean War, America continued spending 10-13% of GDP on military operations, Bolton said. And America needs to raise defense spending again by cutting “wasteful domestic expenditures.”
A strong American defense does not mean policing the world or provoking new wars, Bolton said. “It’s not a desire to engage in conflict. It’s precisely the desire to avoid conflict.”
The international order depends entirely on American power keeping the seas free, trade routes open and selfish actors contained, Bolton said. In the face of weakness, or incompetence, that order will quickly dissipate.
Nowhere is a clear strategy more needed than in Ukraine. Bolton believes the United States should act in line with its longtime official position in relation to Russia and Ukraine: a full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Supporting Ukrainian military forces with weapons is a smart use of American resources to protect American interests because it has devastated Russian military forces, according to Bolton.
Bolton rejects arguments coming from some of those on the populist right that the West provoked Russia into attacking Ukraine by expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, a defense agreement of mutual support between America and most European countries.
America and its allies did not intentionally grow NATO to threaten Russia, Bolton said. Instead, Russian neighbors, many of them formerly occupied by the Soviet Union, came “pounding” at NATO’s door. Why? Because “no adversary has ever sent troops across a NATO ally.”
Even if the United States is paying a disproportionate share for NATO defense compared to other member nations, it is well worth it for America’s national security, according to Bolton, who is a frequent critic of other international organizations, like the United Nations.
“We are better off with the NATO allies because it increases our aggregate strength,” Bolton said.
From Bolton’s perspective, the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas militants was not just a rogue act by Hamas. It was a proxy attack by the Middle East’s biggest sponsor of terrorism, Iran.
Bolton, who has in the past advocated for an aggressive approach to Iran, said this basic fact justifies Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear production facilities and America’s pursuit of total regime change in the Islamic Republic.
Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran bought into the delusion that the United States’ enemies abide by an international order outside of American force, Bolton said. Iran did not abide by the agreement and should have never been allowed to enrich Uranium, just as America’s Arab partners are prevented from doing, he said.
Supporting Israel in preemptive attacks against Iran, and its terrorist branches in Gaza and Lebanon, is imperative because the alternative could be the end of Israel, Bolton said.
“Israel faces the potential for nuclear holocaust; it’s a small country, six, eight, 10 nuclear weapons, there is no more Israel,” Bolton said.