John Bolton's Advice for Winston Peters

Winston Peters is in Washington DC today.

His best advice would be to not leave his hotel room at all.  To ring in sick. To bust out on room service.

His best advice is to not be noticed.

It's when you're noticed that Washington' Toddler-in Chief starts paying you attention. And that hasn't gone well for any (former) ally.

Nonetheless, as he already has meetings booked with the Trump Administration, Trump's former Secretary of State John Bolton has some advice for him that might be useful.

Perhaps one of you could pass it on.

I think people should understand that Trump is really an aberration in American political life.

Obviously he's president,  so it makes a a big difference. But he has no philosophy, he has no National Security Grand Strategy, he doesn't do policy as we conventionally understand that term. With him everything is transactional, episodic, ad hoc, annd seen through the prism of what benefits Donald Trump.

He has said many times he sees foreign policy as as being equivalent to the relations between the heads of two governments. So if he has a good relationship with Vladimir Putin he thinks the US has good relations with Russia.

Now, I'm not dismissing the role of personal relations in international affairs.  It obviously has a place. But that's not how Putin sees things. He has a pretty clear-eyed view of what he thinks Russia's national interest is, and he thinks he can manipulate Donald Trump. Trump thinks they're friends; Putin sees Trump as an easy mark. Trump just doesn't get it.

Now conversely, if Trump has bad relations with with a foreign head of state then he thinks the US has bad relations with the country. And unfortunately for Ukraine,  because of the famous 'perfect phone call' between Trump and Zelenskyy in the summer of 2019 that led to Trump's first impeachment, I think he he's never had a good relationship with Zelenskyy, notwithstanding Zelenskyy's extensive efforts to try and overcome it.

And I think that is part of what we've seen play out over the past several weeks.

So it is a fact that that Trump has basically reversed the US position, saying even before negotiations began there will not be a full restoration of sovereignty and territorial integrity no NATO membership, no NATO security guarantees, no US security guarantees — you know, these are all Kremlin positions.

The only unhappiness in Moscow these days is that they didn't ask for more. ...

I do think that the debacle in the Oval Office was a manifestation that Trump just doesn't like Zelenskyy, and now I think we're seeing an effort by Secretary of State Rubio and National Security adviser Waltz to try and bridge this over and get things back on an even keel.

Why Trump Misunderstands Putin & Ukraine
As I say, he thinks he's friends with Putin so your friends always tell you the truth, right. Just like he said in Helsinki that he
believed Putin and disagreed with American Intelligence on Russia's role in the 2016 election. Stunning to Americans that he would say that but you know do you trust your friends or do you trust the 'Deep State.' That's the Trump mentality.

I just think that it's important to to try and work with Trump on that understanding: that it's entirely personal. 

That he doesn't conceptualise foreign policy.

There's no strategy behind it.

His supporters say, you know, he plays this complex game of three-dimensional chess. No he doesn't. He plays regular chess one move at a time.

You know, there are theories that he was recruited by the Russians years ago. I don't see any evidence of it. I think his behaviour is explainable unfortunately in simpler ways. ... he operates on a day-to-day basis; there's no bigger picture; there's no hidden agenda. He just doesn't think that way.

When he ran the Trump Organisation in business, I was told he he would never set up a daily schedule. He'd come into the office every day and say, "Well what's going to happen today." Now, that may work in real estate in Manhattan; it doesn't work internationally.

But in many respects, Trump is still that same person.  ...

So in international Affairs other than his affinity for particular foreign leaders, he had no fixed points of reference.

And so, sure, he could adopt ideas, but changed them very shortly thereafter.

I said in my book that of the thousands of decisions that he made in his first term you you could take them all and put them together and they were like a big archipelago of dots out there. Now, you can try and connect the dots if you want to. Good luck. He can't connect the dots.

And, uh, understanding that I think obviously is important. 

Q: How should any of these foreign leaders, whether it's the Canadians, whether it's the Danish, how should should they be interpreting all that Trump is saying and doing, and what would you recommend they do in response?

Well I understand it's very frustrating to have to put up with this. All I can say is I saw it daily for 17 months. ...

But in Trump's world, he doesn't understand how to achieve the objective that he wants, and he may have some idea that it  would enhance his position in history if he could conquer Greenland [say], but it's it's not serious. 

It however shows an erratic, unsteady, and totally transactional presidency that has to unnerve our allies. And the best I can say is just grit your teeth. ...  so we don't do more damage than Trump himself is doing. ... 

From their perspective, they need to try and find ways to work with him. It's hard to predict who will be successful. 

It looks for example like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has so far pretty good relationship with Trump. I wouldn't necessarily have predicted that, but but it looks like it's off to a good start. Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, I think, has a good relationship. So does Victor Orban of Hungary — that's not a pattern we'd like to see repeated. But I think leaders are going to have to think about, uh, how to flatter Trump.

I mean I'm sorry to have to say that, but that's what gets to him.

So my recommendation [to Zelenskyy for example] would be to do what Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, did in the first term. Nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize — and do it quickly before somebody else thinks of it.