US urges UN Security Council to adjust sanctions on Syria
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United States urged the United Nations Security Council on Monday to adjust its sanctions on Syria to help the country's government prevail in what the acting U.S. ambassador described as "the fight against terrorism."
After 13 years of civil war, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December in a lightning offensive by insurgent forces led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Formerly known as the Nusra Front, HTS was al Qaeda's official wing in Syria until breaking ties in 2016. Since May 2014, the group has been on the United Nations Security Council's al Qaeda and Islamic State sanctions list and subjected to a global asset freeze and arms embargo.
A number of HTS members are also under U.N. sanctions - a travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo - including its leader, Ahmed Sharaa, who is now Syria's interim president.
The United States is working with Security Council members to review Syria-related sanctions, acting U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea said on Monday.
"The Syrian government has made a clear commitment to combat al Qaeda and ISIL (Islamic State), and both groups are equally clear that they oppose the new government and are threatening to destroy it. Council members should not take those threats lightly," she told a Security Council meeting on Syria.
"The Council can – and must – adjust its sanctions so the Syrian government can prevail in the fight against terrorism, while keeping the most dangerous and unrepentant actors designated," she said.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced a major U.S. policy shift in May when he said he would lift U.S. sanctions on Syria.
United Nations sanctions monitors have seen no "active ties" this year between al Qaeda and the Islamist group leading Syria's interim government, according to an unpublished U.N. report, a finding that could strengthen the U.S. push to ease some U.N. sanctions on Syria.
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How should American power be deployed in the world? Since the Cold War, America's role as a global leader has been up for debate. Host Garry Kasparov and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton dissect the state of the neoconservative geopolitical worldview. They consider what the latest iteration of the 'America First' foreign-policy rationale signals for democracy worldwide and analyze what it means that the new American right sometimes sounds like the old American left. The following is a transcript of the episode: Garry Kasparov: I would like to begin this episode with two quotes from American presidents. You might try to guess which presidents they are from. [ Music ] Kasparov: The first: 'Good leaders do not threaten to quit if things go wrong. They expect cooperation, of course, and they expect everyone to do his share, but they do not stop to measure sacrifices with a teaspoon while the fight is on. We cannot lead the forces of freedom from behind.' And the second presidential quote, 'We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.' The first, with the memorable line about not measuring sacrifice with a teaspoon while the fight is on, was spoken by my namesake, President Harry S Truman, in a 1951 address in Philadelphia at the dedication of the Chapel of the Four Chaplains. He had brought American troops into combat in Korea: a controversial decision to stand up to Communist aggression, only six years after the end of World War II. The second presidential quote, about nations being morally justified to use force, is more surprising. It was spoken on stage in Oslo, Norway, in 2009, during Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. 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My guest today, Ambassador John Bolton, would agree with both of those presidential quotes, although, like me, he did not find much else to agree on with Obama during his eight years in office! Bolton has strong opinions on American foreign policy and the use of force. At a time when the new American right sounds like the old American left, his thoughts are critical. [ Music ] Kasparov: John Bolton, you have had many distinctions and titles in your career, including ambassador to the United Nations, national security adviser, and many others. I will add one more. You are the only guest to join us in both seasons of this show. Thank you for doing it. John Bolton: Glad to be with you. Kasparov: And by the way, I see the chessboard in your office. Do you play chess? Bolton: I do. You know, that was given to me by Nikolai Patrushev, my opposite number— Kasparov: Ooof! (Laughs.) Bolton: —when he was the Russian national security adviser. And it is interestingly made out of Karelian wood from the Finnish territory. So, and it was checked out by the Secret Service before I accepted it. Kasparov: Do you think that the chess rules apply to this, you know, current geopolitics? Or it's more like a game of poker? Bolton: Well, I think I wouldn't argue with you about the rules of chess. I don't think people like Vladimir Putin care about the rules. When people talk about the rules-based international order, the prime malefactors didn't get the memo. They don't believe in it, and they don't act like it's there. And for us to believe that it's there, I think, handicaps our ability to defend ourselves. Kasparov: I want to talk with you about how American power should be deployed in the world, in service of democracies and against autocracies. But I want to start with what seems to be the ever-changing meaning of 'America First' as a foreign-policy rationale. How do you interpret that term based on what you're seeing in the second Trump administration? Bolton: Well, I think Trump himself has basically given us the answer on 'America First,' 'Make America great again'—whatever his slogans are. They are exactly what he says they are at any given moment. They don't reflect an overarching philosophy. They don't reflect, in this case, a clear national-security grand strategy. Trump doesn't even really do policy as we understand it. I don't think to this day that he really appreciates that the words America first were initially used in the run-up to World War II to be the slogan of the isolationists, those who did not want to be drawn into the European war. He doesn't see, he never saw the background of that, or the concerns about anti-Semitism that lurked in that 'America First' movement. And I think from Trump's point of view—because to him everything is transactional—it means he just makes the best deals in the world, and he doesn't necessarily distinguish among the terms of the deals he's making. It's the fact of making a deal that shows who's in charge. Kasparov: You said, and we all suspected, that Trump was not aware about the true meaning of 'America First,' because he's not a—no matter what he says—a good scholar of history. But assuming he knew that 'America First' meant isolationism back then in 1939, 1940, and a clear distinction of anti-Semitism, would he care? Bolton: I don't think he would care. And I think he views truth in a very relative way. People say Trump lies a lot. I actually don't think that's an accurate description. I don't think he cares much about what's true and what's not true. He says what he thinks he would like the world to be, and as it benefits him at any given time. And if pressed on that point about anti-Semitism in particular, I think he would just brush it away. Kasparov: So you've written that Trump's decisions are like an archipelago of dots that don't really line up, and that advisers in the first term, you included, would try to string good decisions together. Now, what about the second administration? What is happening now? Bolton: Well, you know, even just about six months in, I think you can see the difference in personnel selections pretty clearly. Certainly in the national-security space. In the first term, he had people who largely shared a Republican philosophy, a Reaganite approach to foreign policy. Obviously there were many disagreements on tactics, on priorities, on a whole variety of things, which is perfectly natural in any administration. And Trump, not knowing much about international affairs, could often buy one argument one day and another argument the next day. But eventually he got frustrated, I think, that his visceral instincts weren't necessarily automatically adopted by his advisers, who were trying to give him the best advice, trying to get to the optimal outcome. So to avoid the problems that he saw in the first term, in the second term, I think, he has consciously looked for people who act as yes-men and yes-women. They don't say, Well, have you considered these alternative options? Have you looked at these facts? He wants people who will listen to what he says and then go out and implement it. Now, in the first term, people said his advisers tried to constrain him, tried to really to make the decisions in his place. And I just think that's wrong. I think I can speak for many others: We were trying to make sure that he made the best decision possible, and giving our advice was part of our function. My title was national security adviser. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do, other than give advice, in that job. But in the second term, he wants not loyalty—I think loyalty is a good word; I think it conveys a valuable commodity—he wants fealty. He wants people who are gonna say Yes, sir, and do it really without thinking, in many cases without trying to improve or suggest modifications. I think that's—ironically, it's gonna be harmful to Trump. It's certainly gonna be harmful to America, but that approach ultimately will hurt Trump too. Kasparov: How so? Bolton: Well, if a president is making decisions in a very narrow focus without understanding the broader implications, the additional risks, the additional opportunities, he's gonna miss a lot of what the rest of the world will see. And then contingencies will arise that he simply won't be prepared for. So that even what was a reasonably good decision can go bad, because you don't take into account the second- and third-order consequences. And I hesitate to say this with Garry here, but in chess you have to think a couple moves ahead. Maybe some people think lots of moves ahead. Trump plays it one move at a time, and that is dangerous. Kasparov: Yeah, it's not a very rosy picture. So it seems that his Cabinet now, and all people who are supposed to give him advice, they are not going to contradict him. Bolton: You know I have to say, contrary to the first term, there haven't been so many leaks out of this White House in the early months. So I don't have confidence we really know how the decision making is going. But to the extent we do, my impression is that while there's a lot of discussion about the optics of how you present a particular decision—the kind of background politics, how it makes Trump look—in terms of strategic thinking by people who understand international affairs, there's not an awful lot of that. And indeed, even in some cases it might seem unusual, people who disagree get excluded. It appears Tulsi Gabbard—who opposed, from all we can tell, the strikes against Iran's nuclear-weapons program—was just cut out of the picture. And I have to say in the short term, I'm delighted by that. It probably contributed to the right decision. But what that means more basically is that Trump made a fundamental mistake appointing her, because you want people who will give their best advice, and it helps the president—should help the president—make a better-informed decision. Kasparov: You mentioned Tulsi Gabbard. What about other advisers? Who do you find the most worrisome? Bolton: Well, I think Secretary of Defense [Pete] Hegseth really is in over his head in this job. I think his comments in public about comments and criticisms that people made about the outcome of the bombing of the Iranian nuclear sites demonstrated that. It's fine to defend the president. That's what Cabinet members should do. If you get tired of defending the president, you should resign. But that's not your only job. Your job is also to explain and justify the conduct that you've ordered on behalf of the president. Not in a partisan way, but in a way that helps the American people understand. Leadership here is in large part education, and that's not what they're doing. They're doing a kind of attack partisan politics. Again, it makes Trump feel good in the short term, but in the longer term, he will not be well served by that kind of approach either. Kasparov: Now a strategic question: our allies in Europe. J. D. Vance went to Munich, the Munich Security Conference, back in February and chastised European democracies for many things—among them being afraid of the far right and suppressing democracies at home. What's your take? Bolton: Well, there are a lot of interesting things in that speech. No. 1, you know, Vance is really on the quasi-isolationist side of the political spectrum. And he, and people like him, have been very critical over the years of the neoconservatives for their constant emphasis on human rights and similar concerns. And yet at Munich, what he gave was a neoconservative speech. Although he was criticizing the Europeans for their democratic failures, I would've felt better if he had included Russia and China as part of his critical analysis. But he was doing exactly what he criticized the neoconservatives for doing. This is, I think, a measure of how really partisan these kinds of approaches are from a domestic American point of view. He's scoring—Vance there is scoring points against the neoconservatives, against liberal internationalists, against a variety of people that I'm not part of. So I didn't take it personally. But it was carrying on a domestic-U.S. political debate in an international forum. I think that Trump himself doesn't understand alliances. I'm not sure Vance understands them any better. In Trump's case, he looks at NATO, for example, and he sees it as the United States defending Europe: We don't get anything out of it, and they won't pay. Well, if I thought NATO worked that way, I probably wouldn't be very enthusiastic about it either. But the whole point of a collective-defense alliance is that the security of all the members is enhanced when they live up to their obligations. And I think NATO remains the most effective politico-military alliance in human history. There are members who are not pulling their fair share. That's right. I think Trump was right to criticize that. What's not right is to break the alliance up over it. And I think we are—notwithstanding the recent NATO summit where everybody smiled and seemed to be happy—I don't think we're past the danger point of Trump potentially withdrawing the U.S. from NATO in less happy times. Kasparov: Oh, that's interesting. So can he withdraw from NATO unilaterally without a vote in the Senate, Congressional approval, whatever—or is it just totally in the hands of the president? Bolton: It's my very firm view that the Constitution does entrust that authority solely to the president. In the case of NATO, ironically, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and some others passed legislation a few years ago that said the president could not withdraw from NATO without the consent of the Senate. I think that provision is unconstitutional. I don't think you can limit the president's authority. So if Trump decided to pull out, and he issued an executive order doing that, that might be challengeable in litigation, but it would take years to resolve. And in effect, Trump would have withdrawn by the time the case was decided by the Supreme Court. Kasparov: Do you think it's realistic, that he will go that far? Bolton: You know, I think he, as I say, he doesn't understand the alliance viscerally. He doesn't like it. He has said, and his advisers have said, things like, Well, we'll only defend NATO members that are meeting what used to be the 2 percent threshold: 2 percent of GDP spent on defense, now 3 and a half percent, 5 with infrastructure. Well, that's a statement that the NATO alliance is like a piece of Swiss cheese. You can't defend this country and then not defend the country next to it because it's not at 2 percent; it's just not viable militarily. But that kind of thinking has not left Trump's mind, and has not left the minds of his advisers. So I remain very worried, notwithstanding this recent NATO summit where things seem to go well. This is deep within Trump that he distrusts the alliance, thinks it's part of America getting a raw deal. Kasparov: But I think that all countries that might be in danger, countries that border Russia or are just in the vicinity of potential Russian aggression, they already are almost at 5 percent. They spend a bigger percentage of GDP than the United States on their defense. Does it mean that America will defend them? Bolton: Well, we certainly should, but I think this is an important question about Trump the man faced with a crisis situation like that. Let's say Russia invades the Baltics: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Not impossible; certainly something the Baltics fear very much. Now, we did not have any crisis nearly that dangerous in the first term. COVID was a crisis, but it was a health crisis played out over a long period of time. So what would Trump do if the Baltics were attacked by Russia? I don't know the answer to that question. And it's legitimate for the Eastern European countries in NATO in particular to be worried about, because Trump does not like decisions where he can't reverse himself the next day. And obviously a decision to comply with Article V and defend countries invaded by Russia would be a decision that would be irrevocable for a long time until the military struggle played itself out. Kasparov: So what do you expect to happen in Ukraine? Again, Ukraine is fighting this war, and many of us believe it's shielding the free world against Russian aggression. And Ukrainians and many Europeans, especially neighboring countries, they are disappointed, I would probably say shocked, by the Trump administration's policy in the region. Can Ukraine survive on its own, or basically can Europe provide enough for Ukraine? And how long will America take this neutral stand? Bolton: Well, I'm afraid the answer is the rest of Trump's presidency. I think it's gonna remain undecided. My guess is in the near term—which may be the remaining three and a half years of the administration—Trump is not gonna go back and make a major effort to seek a diplomatic solution. I think he was burned by the failure of Russia to show any conciliatory impulses at all when he tried in the last few months. And I think he sees it as a failure to live up to his campaign boast that he could solve the problem in 24 hours, which of course was never realistic. So the real issue is: Will he allow the continuation of U.S. military assistance at approximately the same levels—weapons, ammunition, and, to my mind, most important of all, military intelligence that's so critical to the Ukrainians on the battlefield? And to the question you've raised, can the Europeans make up the difference? I don't think they can on the intelligence. I just don't think they have the capability. It could be they can make it up in hardware. I would hope they could, but it just won't be the same if Trump really does cut off the aid. Kasparov: Now, about another crisis or another war, it's the Middle East. How do you rate Trump's actions there—attacking Iran, then offering the olive branch? And again, some say he did it in a desperate search for the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump's policy vis-à-vis Israel-Palestinians. Bolton: Right. Well, I think he's not gonna get the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to Ukraine, that's for sure. So he's looking for another opportunity. I find myself to a certain extent satisfied, but to a certain extent frustrated. I think it was the right thing to do to order American military attacks on some of the key Iranian nuclear-weapons facilities. There's been a huge and kind of intellectually arid debate about exactly how much damage was done by those attacks, which we don't know because we were not close enough to get a full assessment. But I think Trump cut off U.S. military action too soon. I don't think that there will ever be peace and stability in the Middle East while the regime of the ayatollahs remains in power. I'm not saying that requires extensive U.S. involvement. It certainly doesn't require boots on the ground. It could involve assistance to the Iranian people. [ Music ] Bolton: I think the question is: Will they have the courage to try to take advantage of the splits and tensions within the regime that I think are pretty obvious across the world now, and see if this is not the moment to rid themselves of the ayatollahs. Kasparov: We'll be right back. [ Break ] Kasparov: Let's move from the world of practicalities into the world of idealism. What could be an ideal world if we could have our wishes granted? So, how should American power be deployed in service of democracy? So what are the tools to use, and where to use them? Exporting democracy, military interventions, regime change? Bolton: Well, I think where American interests are at stake, there are a number of things we could do. I think regime change doesn't obviously have to involve American boots on the ground. There are all kinds of ways that regime change can take place. We tried that in the case of Venezuela in 2018 and 2019, that would've allowed the Venezuelan people to take control away from the [Nicolás] Maduro, really the Chavez-Maduro dictatorship. But we would've, at the same time, pushed the Russians, the Cubans, the Chinese, the Iranians out of positions in Venezuela, very advantageous to them. It didn't work, but it was worth the effort. If we had succeeded, I would've said basically to the people of Venezuela, Congratulations. It now belongs to you. You figure out what you're gonna do with it. I have never been a nation builder, in the sense that some people have been, but I don't shy away from regime change. In the case of Iraq, which is the case that people point to again and again, I give full credit to the people who tried to make the coalition provisional authority in Iraq work. I think they did it out of the best of motivations. But it's not what I would've done. In my perfect world, I would've given the Iraqi leaders—some in exile, some who had been in the country—a copy of the Federalist Papers and said, Good luck. Call us if you have any questions. We'll hold the ring around you. We'll protect you from Iranian and other external influences, but you need to do this yourself. And I think that's really how you nation build. You don't enhance people's political maturity by making decisions for them. Even if you can make better decisions than they can, you enhance political maturity by saying, You're gonna make the decisions, and you're gonna learn by your mistakes. It's not guaranteed for success, but I think that's a more solid way of nation building than for Americans to try and do it for them. Kasparov: But let me press on this issue. Because you mentioned Venezuela. I can add Belarus. In these countries, we clearly saw the opposition winning elections. Not hearsay. Winning elections, having physical proof of receiving, in both cases, 70 percent of votes. And both dictators—[Alexander] Lukashenko and Maduro—they stayed in power. They didn't care. They used force. Lukashenko, we understand he's too close to Russia. Putin was there. The opposition stood no chance. But Venezuela is just next door. Recently we had these elections, and Maduro basically ignored it. He made the deal with the [Joe] Biden administration, so some kind of relief of sanctions, but promising free and fair elections. So he reneged on his promise. Should America intervene? Bolton: Well, look—back in 2018 and 2019, I think we were at the point where we should have been doing more. But you know, we didn't have many capabilities in the Western hemisphere, thanks to the Obama administration, that where we could have had opportunities through our intelligence community and others to help Juan Guaidó, the legitimate president of Venezuela. The days are long gone by when we really could have done very much, and I feel we didn't enforce the sanctions as strictly as we could have. We made a lot of mistakes there. The Biden administration didn't even try that. They thought they could make a deal with Maduro. It was a total mistake. I don't see how anybody could believe he would honor any commitment he made. I want to come back to Belarus, though, because I do think that that was a situation where it was very much in our interest to see if there was any way at all to persuade Lukashenko to pull away from Russia. So I went to Minsk in August of 2019, about two weeks before I resigned—I was the first senior American to visit Belarus in a long, long time—just to see the guy, and see if there were some hooks we could put in to bring him away, for his own safety's sake, but ultimately leading to popular government. I, as I say, I resigned two weeks later, so I didn't carry through on it. But it was a case to me that suggested we could have some influence there, and maybe, as in the case of Poland with solidarity, maybe there were ways to make that work. But we never tried, because Trump didn't really care about Belarus. Trump asked in his first term, Is Finland still part of Russia? So to him, Belarus, Ukraine: They all look Russian to him. And it's hard to get him to focus on things. Kasparov: We've talked now at length about Trump's view of the world, such as it is. Now I want to talk about the Bolton view. So my experience of growing up in the Soviet Union during the Cold War instilled in me a great deal of clarity about good and evil in the world of geopolitics. But there has been a terrible decline in American values after the Cold War, and a new lack of clarity about the American role in the world. So what has that meant for how you see America's place as the global leader? Bolton: Well, I think we're seeing today play out in the Trump administration and among many people who are supportive of him that this virus of isolationism—which isn't a coherent ideology itself, it's a knee-jerk reaction to the external world—can go through a long period of being irrelevant and then suddenly reappear. And I attribute this in part to a failure in both political parties, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, to develop political leaders who thought about what it would take from America to help in the wider world, create conditions of stability that would be beneficial to the U.S. here at home: that would allow our economy to flourish, that would allow our society to flourish. And so people at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, some were saying, It's the end of history. Others were saying, you know, We can have a peace dividend; we can cut our defense budgets; globalization will take care of everything; it's the economy, stupid. And we lost the post–World War II and Cold War generations of leaders, who spoke very plainly to the American people—whether it's Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, many, many more—to say, look, safety for America doesn't begin on the Atlantic and Pacific shores. Safety for America is having a broader place in the world, a forward defense posture with allies to guard against aggression and to try and deter aggression. And that means a robust, strong America that sees its economic and political and social issues really involved all over the world. Now, there's a cost to that. There's a defense budget that has to be paid. There are allies that have to be dealt with. There are risks that have to be taken. But to say we don't live in a perfect world, far from it, but the way to protect America is not to put our head in the sand—not to turn away from the rest of the world—but to deal with it in ways that are most favorable to us. And I think one of the things we're seeing today, 35 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is: We don't have much in the way of political leadership that can speak to the American people in these terms. The Americans have always risen to the challenge when their leaders are straight with them. And the idea that we can't, we don't need to worry about the rest of the world—it's not a threat, it doesn't concern us, it's not gonna affect us—is deeply uninformed. I don't call it naive. It's almost perverse, and yet that's what we're dealing with. If we could see political leaders emerge, most likely I think in the Republican Party, that can make that case to the American people, we could return to a Reaganite kind of foreign policy that that was successful in the Cold War and could be made applicable to the very different, but no less threatening, challenges we see around the world today. Kasparov: Going back to 1991, 1992. The Soviet Union is gone, and I think Americans expected some benefits from the victory, phenomenal victory in the Cold War. But eight years of [Bill] Clinton presidency brought no security. Prosperity yes, but security no. Because by the time Clinton left the office, al-Qaeda was ready to strike. Something went wrong, terribly wrong, in the '90s. So do you think that if [George H. W.] Bush 41 would've won the elections and stayed in the office, the Republican administration had a plan on how to redefine American leadership in the new world? Bolton: No. I mean, I think there was a lot of uncertainty all around the political spectrum. George H. W. Bush talked about a 'new world order.' Well, it wasn't much order before, and frankly there wasn't much order after. But what he was referring to was the collapse of the Soviet Union. What we didn't see, because we were too optimistic perhaps, was that Russia would return to authoritarianism. We thought, Well, now they've got the chance; everything will be fine. That obviously didn't work out. We didn't see the turmoil in the Arab world. We didn't see the radicalization, the effect of the 1979 revolution in Iran. And we also, in the 1990s, didn't see China, didn't see that it was a threat, that it would be a threat. You know, we heard Deng Xiaoping say to the Chinese, Hide and bide. Hide your capabilities; bide your time. We didn't realize what he was saying. So this illusion that the end of the Cold War meant the end of history—that conflict was no longer a threat to us—led us to make grave mistakes about Russia, about China, about the threat of Islamic terrorism. And we have suffered through all of those and are still suffering through them today. So it was a catastrophic series of mistakes, that there's a lot of blame to spread around here for sure, and [the] Clinton administration bears a full share of it. Whether George H. W. Bush would've done better? I don't know. I think so, because I think he understood the world a lot better than Bill Clinton did. Kasparov: But it still sounds very disturbing that the same people—okay, Clinton replaced Bush, but the apparatus was there, you know, the CIA, Pentagon, the so-called deep state. And the same people, the same agencies, the same institutions that were instrumental in defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War made such huge blunders. You said—missed Russia, missed China, missed Islamic terrorism, basically missed everything. Every threat that we are dealing with now has been totally missed in the '90s. What was that? It's just a kind of relaxation? We won. Let's go celebrate. You know, let's uncork champagne bottles. Bolton: Look, I think it was escapism, and I think it was the desire to think, Okay, so in the 20th century we've had three world wars. Two of them hot, one of them the Cold War. We're past all that. Now, that's what 'the end of history' means. And, it was a delusion. It was a detour from history. It really was. And we've paid the price. We're still paying the price, and one reason is we're not spending nearly what we should on defense. The 5 percent commitment that NATO made, we're not approaching. The Trump budget for the next fiscal year is only a small nominal increase over the current budget. It's not gonna do nearly enough. We're setting ourselves up for, I think, a very risky future if we don't change that. Kasparov: You just mentioned Trump's budget and its nominal increase in defense, but it's a huge increase in ICE. So do you think it's a bit dangerous? Yes? That this military force has been built in America and the control of the DOJ? And they already demonstrated very little respect for the Constitution. Could it be a potential tool for terror? Bolton: Actually, Trump has come very close to achieving the goal he expressed of closing the border. I mean, he had the border closed at the end of the first term, because deterrence works. If you think you're gonna walk through Mexico and get stopped at the Rio Grande, you're not gonna leave your city or town or village. That's been restored. His—what he wants now is the deportation of the illegals. And I think he's going to have a lot of trouble with that. But the immigration issue is, I think, part of the isolationist temptation that somehow the rest of the world is gonna corrupt us. I think with careful attention and screening of who comes in, we can minimize the risk of terrorists coming in, criminals, agents of foreign governments. Nothing's perfect, but I think we can do a pretty good job of it. I don't think that's what Trump wants to do. He wants the issue of the fight with California, for example. That's why he federalized the California National Guard and sent in the Marines. Ironically, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, wanted to fight too. It benefited both of them politically. It was just the country that was hurt. Kasparov: So do you think it's a real chance that Trump will do something totally unconstitutional in America to preserve his power, or just to secure the desired outcome of the next elections? Bolton: Well, I think he tried that in 2020, and he failed. The system was stressed, but it held. I think Trump is gonna do—he did a lot of damage in the first term; he will do more damage in the second term. Some of it might be irreparable. I think withdrawing from NATO would be irreparable, for example. But I have confidence in the Constitution and the institutions. This is not the late Roman Republic. We're not—I don't think we're in danger of succumbing. It does require more people to stand up and say, We don't accept the way Trump behaves. I'm disappointed more Republicans in the House and the Senate haven't done that. I don't think this is gonna be easy. But I do think, for example, the courts are holding up pretty well. I think their independence is critical to sustaining the Constitution. And I think as time goes on, Trump's influence will decline. Remember, he's not just a new president now, which he is. He's also a lame-duck president. And as people begin to appreciate that more and more, I think his influence will wane. Kasparov: So, anything to be optimistic about today? Just, you know, give us just some hope that with Trump in the office, with the rise of authoritarianism, with Iranian regimes surviving, and with terrorism not yet being defeated, what's the best-case scenario? Bolton: Well, I think realistically we've been through worse. I mean, it always seems you've got troubles unique to our time. But the U.S. has been through a lot worse than this, including an incredibly violent Civil War. And we came out on top. And I think one reason is that when you level with the American people—and it's gonna take the next president to do it—then we do rise to the occasion. I believe in American exceptionalism. And I think betting against America is always a dangerous thing to do. [ Music ] Bolton: So I think in the near term, we've just gotta grit our teeth, make sure we do the best we can to minimize the damage that Trump will cause, and try and get ready to meet the challenges we're gonna face. The threats from China, from the China-Russia axis, from the nuclear proliferation, the threat of terrorism. There are a lot of threats out there, and it's gonna take a lot of effort. But I believe in the United States. I think we will prevail. Kasparov: John, thank you very much for joining the show. And let's see, you know, if the future brings us more positive than negative news. Thank you. Bolton: I certainly hope so. Thanks for having me. Kasparov: This episode of Autocracy in America was produced by Arlene Arevalo and Natalie Brennan. Our editor is Dave Shaw. Original music and mix by Rob Smierciak. Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado. Special thanks to Polina Kasparova and Mig Greengard. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio. Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. Next time on Autocracy in America: George Friedman: It is a historical norm, that there is a king, that there is a ruler. So authoritarianism historically is far more the norm than liberal democracy. Liberal democracy opened the door to the idea that people with very different beliefs could live together. It is a great experiment, but it's a very difficult experiment. If you believe that the way you should live is a moral imperative, then it is very difficult to have a liberal democracy.
