I have been following what John Bolton has been saying,
especially on Iran, for the last 25 years, through the days he was President George W. Bush's Ambassador
to the UN and President Trump's National Security Advisor. Bolton is sharp, superbly informed, was never inconsistent and
has integrity. So I have no problem in deciding who is telling the truth.
Below is the list of articles from this blog on both Bolton
and Trump:
Posts on John Bolton
Thursday,
September 12, 2019
Monday, May 6, 2019
Wednesday,
October 11, 2017
Tuesday,
November 15, 2016
Sunday, July
26, 2015
Thursday,
March 26, 2015
Friday,
September 28, 2012
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Posts on Donald Trump
Monday,
February 3, 2020
Friday,
January 31, 2020
Friday, August
23, 2019
Saturday,
April 27, 2019
Tuesday, May
8, 2018
Friday,
October 13, 2017
Tuesday,
September 19, 2017
Monday,
January 30, 2017
Sunday,
December 18, 2016
Thursday,
November 17, 2016
Sunday,
September 4, 2016
Tuesday, March
15, 2016
Saturday,
March 12, 2016
Sunday, March
6, 2016
Saturday,
January 23, 2016
By John Bolton
June 17, 2020 2:46 pm ET
U.S. strategy toward the People’s Republic of China has
rested for more than four decades on two basic propositions. The first is that
the Chinese economy would be changed irreversibly by the rising prosperity
caused by market-oriented policies, greater foreign investment, ever-deeper
interconnections with global markets and broader acceptance of international
economic norms. Bringing China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 was
the apotheosis of this assessment.
The second proposition is that, as China’s national
wealth increased, so too, inevitably, would its political openness. As China
became more democratic, it would avoid competition for regional or global
hegemony, and the risk of international conflict—hot or cold—would recede.
Both propositions were fundamentally incorrect. After
joining the WTO, China did exactly the opposite of what was predicted. China
gamed the organization, pursuing a mercantilist policy in a supposedly
free-trade body. China stole intellectual property, forced technology transfers
from foreign businesses and continued managing its economy in authoritarian
ways.
Politically, China moved away from democracy, not toward
it. In Xi Jinping, China now has its most powerful leader and its most
centralized government since Mao Zedong. Ethnic and religious persecution on a
massive scale continues. Meanwhile, China has created a formidable offensive
cyberwarfare program, built a blue-water navy for the first time in 500 years,
increased its arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and more.
I saw these developments as a threat to U.S. strategic
interests and to our friends and allies. The Obama administration basically sat
back and watched it happen.
President Donald Trump in some respects embodies the
growing U.S. concern about China. He appreciates the key truth that
politico-military power rests on a strong economy. Trump frequently says that
stopping China’s unfair economic growth at America’s expense is the best way to
defeat China militarily, which is fundamentally correct.
But the real question is what Trump does about China’s
threat. His advisers are badly fractured intellectually. The administration has
“panda huggers” like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; confirmed free-traders
like National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow; and China hawks like
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, lead trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer and
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
After I became Trump’s national security adviser in April
2018, I had the most futile role of all: I wanted to fit China trade policy
into a broader strategic framework. We had a good slogan, calling for a “free
and open Indo-Pacific” region. But a bumper sticker is not a strategy, and we
struggled to avoid being sucked into the black hole of U.S.-China trade issues.
Trade matters were handled from day one in a completely
chaotic way. Trump’s favorite way to proceed was to get small armies of people
together, either in the Oval Office or the Roosevelt Room, to argue out these
complex, controversial issues. Over and over again, the same issues. Without
resolution, or even worse, one outcome one day and a contrary outcome a few
days later. The whole thing made my head hurt.
With the November 2018 midterm elections looming, there
was little progress on the China trade front. Attention turned to the coming
Buenos Aires G-20 summit the following month, when Xi and Trump could meet
personally. Trump saw this as the meeting of his dreams, with the two big guys
getting together, leaving the Europeans aside, cutting the big deal.
What could go wrong? Plenty, in Lighthizer’s view. He was
very worried about how much Trump would give away once untethered.
In Buenos Aires on Dec. 1, at dinner, Xi began by telling
Trump how wonderful he was, laying it on thick. Xi read steadily through note
cards, doubtless all of it hashed out arduously in advance. Trump ad-libbed,
with no one on the U.S. side knowing what he would say from one minute to the
next.
One highlight came when Xi said he wanted to work with
Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the
two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him. Xi said
the U.S. had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from
Trump, who nodded approvingly.
Xi finally shifted to substance, describing China’s
positions: The U.S. would roll back Trump’s existing tariffs, and both parties
would refrain from competitive currency manipulation and agree not to engage in
cyber thievery (how thoughtful). The U.S. should eliminate Trump’s tariffs, Xi
said, or at least agree to forgo new ones. “People expect this,” said Xi, and I
feared at that moment that Trump would simply say yes to everything Xi had laid
out.
Trump came close, unilaterally offering that U.S. tariffs
would remain at 10% rather than rise to 25%, as he had previously threatened.
In exchange, Trump asked merely for some increases in Chinese farm-product
purchases, to help with the crucial farm-state vote. If that could be agreed,
all the U.S. tariffs would be reduced. It was breathtaking.
Trump asked Lighthizer if he had left anything out, and
Lighthizer did what he could to get the conversation back onto the plane of
reality, focusing on the structural issues and ripping apart the Chinese
proposal. Trump closed by saying Lighthizer would be in charge of the
deal-making, and Jared Kushner would also be involved, at which point all the
Chinese perked up and smiled.
The decisive play came in May 2019, when the Chinese
reneged on several key elements of the emerging agreement, including all the
structural issues. For me, this was proof that China simply wasn’t serious.
Trump spoke with Xi by phone on June 18, just over a week
ahead of the year’s G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, where they would next meet.
Trump began by telling Xi he missed him and then said that the most popular
thing he had ever been involved with was making a trade deal with China, which
would be a big plus for him politically.
In their meeting in Osaka on June 29, Xi told Trump that
the U.S.-China relationship was the most important in the world. He said that
some (unnamed) American political figures were making erroneous judgments by
calling for a new cold war with China.
Whether Xi meant to finger the Democrats or some of us
sitting on the U.S. side of the table, I don’t know, but Trump immediately
assumed that Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was
great hostility to China among the Democrats. Trump then, stunningly, turned
the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s
economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the
importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in
the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s
prepublication review process has decided otherwise.
Trump then raised the trade negotiations’ collapse the
previous month, urging China to return to the positions it had retracted and
conclude the most exciting, largest deal ever. He proposed that for the
remaining $350 billion of trade imbalances (by Trump’s arithmetic), the U.S.
would not impose tariffs, but he again returned to importuning Xi to buy as
many American farm products as China could.
Xi agreed that we should restart the trade talks,
welcoming Trump’s concession that there would be no new tariffs and agreeing
that the two negotiating teams should resume discussions on farm products on a
priority basis. “You’re the greatest Chinese leader in 300 years!” exulted
Trump, amending that a few minutes later to “the greatest leader in Chinese
history.”
Subsequent negotiations after I resigned did lead to an
interim “deal” announced in December 2019, but there was less to it than met
the eye.
Trump’s conversations with Xi reflected not only the
incoherence in his trade policy but also the confluence in Trump’s mind of his
own political interests and U.S. national interests. Trump commingled the
personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole
field of national security. I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump
decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election
calculations.
Take Trump’s handling of the threats posed by the Chinese
telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE. Ross and others repeatedly pushed to
strictly enforce U.S. regulations and criminal laws against fraudulent conduct,
including both firms’ flouting of U.S. sanctions against Iran and other rogue
states. The most important goal for Chinese “companies” like Huawei and ZTE is
to infiltrate telecommunications and information-technology systems, notably
5G, and subject them to Chinese control (though both companies, of course,
dispute the U.S. characterization of their activities).
Trump, by contrast, saw this not as a policy issue to be
resolved but as an opportunity to make personal gestures to Xi. In 2018, for
example, he reversed penalties that Ross and the Commerce Department had
imposed on ZTE. In 2019, he offered to reverse criminal prosecution against
Huawei if it would help in the trade deal—which, of course, was primarily about
getting Trump re-elected in 2020.
These and innumerable other similar conversations with
Trump formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the
very legitimacy of the presidency. Had Democratic impeachment advocates not
been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time
to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign
policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different.
As the trade talks went on, Hong Kong’s dissatisfaction
over China’s bullying had been growing. An extradition bill provided the spark,
and by early June 2019, massive protests were under way in Hong Kong.
I first heard Trump react on June 12, upon hearing that
some 1.5 million people had been at Sunday’s demonstrations. “That’s a big
deal,” he said. But he immediately added, “I don’t want to get involved,” and,
“We have human-rights problems too.”
I hoped Trump would see these Hong Kong developments as
giving him leverage over China. I should have known better. That same month, on
the 30th anniversary of China’s massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in
Tiananmen Square, Trump refused to issue a White House statement. “That was 15
years ago,” he said, inaccurately. “Who cares about it? I’m trying to make a
deal. I don’t want anything.” And that was that.
Beijing’s repression of its Uighur citizens also
proceeded apace. Trump asked me at the 2018 White House Christmas dinner why we
were considering sanctioning China over its treatment of the Uighurs, a largely
Muslim people who live primarily in China’s northwest Xinjiang Province.
At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June
2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was
basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our
interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which
Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security
Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said
something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.
Trump was particularly dyspeptic about Taiwan, having
listened to Wall Street financiers who had gotten rich off mainland China
investments. One of Trump’s favorite comparisons was to point to the tip of one
of his Sharpies and say, “This is Taiwan,” then point to the historic Resolute
desk in the Oval Office and say, “This is China.” So much for American
commitments and obligations to another democratic ally.
More thunder out of China came in 2020 with the
coronavirus pandemic. China withheld, fabricated and distorted information
about the disease; suppressed dissent from physicians and others; hindered
efforts by the World Health Organization and others to get accurate
information; and engaged in active disinformation campaigns, trying to argue
that the new coronavirus did not originate in China.
There was plenty to criticize in Trump’s response,
starting with the administration’s early, relentless assertion that the disease
was “contained” and would have little or no economic effect. Trump’s reflex to
try to talk his way out of anything, even a public-health crisis, only undercut
his and the nation’s credibility, with his statements looking more like
political damage control than responsible public-health advice.
Other criticisms of the administration, however, were
frivolous. One such complaint targeted part of the general streamlining of NSC
staffing I conducted in my first months at the White House. To reduce
duplication and overlap and enhance coordination and efficiency, it made good
management sense to shift the responsibilities of the NSC directorate dealing
with global health and biodefense into the directorate dealing with biological,
chemical and nuclear weapons. Bioweapon attacks and pandemics can have much in
common, and the medical and public-health expertise required to deal with both threats
goes hand in hand. Most of the personnel working in the prior global health
directorate simply moved to the combined directorate and continued doing
exactly what they were doing before.
At most, the internal NSC structure was the quiver of a
butterfly’s wings in the tsunami of Trump’s chaos. Despite the indifference at
the top of the White House, the cognizant NSC staffers did their duty in the
pandemic, raising options like shutdowns and social distancing far before Trump
did so in March. The NSC biosecurity team functioned exactly as it was supposed
to. It was the chair behind the Resolute desk that was empty.
In today’s pre-2020 election climate, Trump has made a
sharp turn to anti-China rhetoric. Frustrated in his search for the big China
trade deal, and mortally afraid of the negative political effects of the
coronavirus pandemic on his re-election prospects, Trump has now decided to
blame China, with ample justification. Whether his actions will match his words
remains to be seen. His administration has signaled that Beijing’s suppression
of dissent in Hong Kong will have consequences, but no actual consequences have
yet been imposed.
Most important of all, will Trump’s current China pose
last beyond election day? The Trump presidency is not grounded in philosophy,
grand strategy or policy. It is grounded in Trump. That is something to think
about for those, especially China realists, who believe they know what he will
do in a second term.
—Mr. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., served
as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. This essay is
adapted from his forthcoming book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House
Memoir,” which Simon & Schuster will publish on June 23.
