Former Trump administration national-security adviser John Bolton dismissed the notion that President Trump deterred Russian president Vladimir Putin from behaving aggressively toward Ukraine while he was in office, arguing that the Trump administration was tough on Russia in spite of the president, not because of him.
Newsmax host Rob Schmidt pressed Bolton during a Tuesday appearance to respond to the argument that Putin would not have invaded under a second Trump administration. Schmidt claimed that the Trump administration held NATO members financially accountable for collective security, sanctioned Nord Stream 2 and oligarchs in Putin’s circle, sold anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, and expelled Russian officers, among other measures. The anchor cited a 2019 piece from the Brookings Institution, a left-of-center public-policy think tank, noting that Trump took 52 policy actions against Putin, challenging the argument that the former president was too sympathetic to the quasi-authoritarian.
Bolton refuted at least one of Schmidt’s points. “He didn’t sanction Nord Stream 2. We didn’t sanction Nord Stream 2. We should have, we should have brought the project to an end. We did impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs and several others because of their sales of S-400 anti-aircraft systems to other countries,” Bolton said.
As for the other penalties that the administration imposed on Russia, Bolton alleged that Trump often resisted those measures and demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the region.
“But in almost every case, the sanctions were imposed with Trump complaining about it and saying we were being too hard. The fact is he barely knew where Ukraine was. He once asked John Kelly, his second chief of staff, if Finland were a part of Russia. It’s just not accurate to say that Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians,” he added.
John Bolton pushes back on Newsmax host: "[Trump] barely knew where Ukraine was…It's just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians" pic.twitter.com/ICRmmeJ8C3
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 1, 2022
The majority of Americans believe something about Trump’s leadership intimidated Putin into rolling back his territorial aspirations.
In a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released Friday, 62 percent of those polled believed Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president. Similarly, 59 percent said they believe Putin proceeded with provocation because he saw weakness in Biden.
Bolton did not leave the Trump administration on good terms after the former president ousted him from his post as national-security adviser, although Bolton claimed he had offered to resign. The pair feuded fiercely over the direction of U.S. foreign policy. A hawk and a believer in hard power, Bolton often diverged from Trump’s isolationist positions by which he wanted to prevent new international engagements and end some existing ones.
Once he had returned to private life, Bolton authored a White House tell-all book, The Room Where It Happened, which included unsavory details about Trump’s foreign-policy conduct and was scheduled to launch before the 2020 election. In one example in the memoir, relating to the current Ukraine–Russia crisis, Bolton claimed that Trump told him military aid to Ukraine would be conditional on its pledge to probe alleged corruption by Joe and Hunter Biden.
The DOJ sued Bolton, claiming he had failed to gain written consent to publish the book to ensure no state secrets were leaked. Last June, the DOJ dropped the lawsuit.
Source: National Review
