Van Susteren:“What did Secretary of State Pompeo, at about that time, what was he saying about the President to you? I mean, what was his general view of the President?”
Bolton:“Well, we had a lot of discussions about the President on many substantive issues, I'd say Iran, for example, was a good, a good case study of that. Substantively, Mike Pompeo and I saw things much the same way. I think the difference is that he was less willing to disagree with the President and to try and guide him in a different direction. Look, the President makes the decisions. There's no doubt about that. There's nobody in the White House or the administration who didn't understand that. The question is, do you simply acquiesce in a policy that you think is misguided, or do you continue to try and press the President to appreciate the broader significance of his decisions? Look, ultimately, if you're not having success and you're not able in good faith to defend the President publicly, then you should, then you should resign, which is ultimately what I did. But I thought Mike didn't like the policies, but wouldn't, wouldn't challenge him.”
Van Susteren: “Well he's come out very hard against you and your book, Secretary of State Pompeo has. I mean, he's basically said that you're making things up.”
Bolton: “Right. Well, I have a very clear recollection of these events. I did the best I could to put them down on paper. I think that Mike sees his political future and he has higher ambitions. I think he sees his future is tied to President Trump, and I feel sorry for him for that.”
Van Susteren: “Would you suggest he's for sale?”
Bolton: “No, but I think politicians make judgments like that. And I just think it's too bad from his own perspective.”
Van Susteren: “During the course of the summit or anytime, did you get any information about what happened to the college student, Otto Warmbier? I mean he went over there on some sort of tour years ago as a student, and I think he swiped a flag or something like that. And he was taken into custody, tried in North Korea, held for a long time, returned essentially dead, in a comatose state, and we never got any more information about what happened to that young man.”
Bolton: “And I'm not aware of any further information that's come out. This was an act of brutality, of just senseless violence, that I'm afraid shows a lot about the character of the North Korean regime, including some of the people who were involved in our nuclear negotiations, who are believed responsible for what happened to Otto Warmbier. So, I think when Americans look at the idea of sitting down with Kim Jong Un and exchanging love letters with him about how wonderful things are, think of Otto Warmbier and what really goes on inside North Korea.”
Van Susteren: “Which then brings me back to what do you do? You say just tighten the sanctions on North Korea? You would not take any military action against North Korea?”
Bolton: “I don't think that's appropriate. But I do think in South Korea, there are many people with a lot of excellent ideas of things they could do inside North Korea to destabilize the regime. I think when you're running a 25-million-person prison camp, which is what Kim Jong Un is doing, you make a lot of enemies. And I think there are probably ways to fracture the North Korean leadership. It would be helpful if we could get China involved in that, I think it's unlikely at the moment. But that regime is weaker than you think. When totalitarian regimes collapse, it's often remarkable how weak they turn out to be.”
Van Susteren: “It seems to me in your book that the President of South Korea was very much involved in trying to coordinate a summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un. So, it sounds like he wanted to talk.”
Bolton: “Well I think he wanted to be in the summit. I described in the book how he would have liked it to have been three-way discussions. You know, public opinion in South Korea is very divided too. There are the advocates of the so-called Sunshine policy approach, like President Moon Jae In. That's about 50% of the population. The other 50% holds views--I won't say they're exactly the same as mine but are much more hard line. So, they face the same debate, for them it's obviously much more important, as we do.”
Van Susteren: “One of the things President Trump has raised when he ran for President and he's even said since is, the U.S. has about 29,000 American troops in South Korea, an enormous expense to the American people, and he has made- he has mentioned about the cost of it. Would you advocate, or do you advocate with him any more, keeping it the same, or less American troops in South Korea?”
Bolton: “Well I think the number can vary. I mean there's no one fixed number that's right every given time. What we were trying to do during the Bush administration was move American forces back from the 38th parallel, to position them down around the southern tip of the peninsula so they would be less vulnerable at the opening of a North Korean attack, but would also be available for deployment around East Asia in response to aggression or belligerency by the Chinese. I think that's still a strategy to pursue. I think it's important for America to have troops and assets forward deployed in Asia, particularly as we see China's increased belligerence in a number of fields. It's why I think the U.S.-South Korean alliance remains very important today, and the U.S.-Japanese alliance. All of them, including NATO, have come under enormous strain during the Trump presidency, and I think that's very troubling.”
Van Susteren: “What's a bigger threat? Maybe this is not a fair question. What's the biggest threat to the United States, Iran's nuclear program or North Korea's nuclear program?”
Bolton: “Well, I think right at the moment you'd have to say North Korea's because it's much further advanced. But Iran, at least when oil prices internationally are at acceptable levels, is potentially a much wealthier country, a much larger country, and it's centered in in the world's most trouble-ridden region, the Middle East. So, Iran's not far behind in that sense. It's a technological matter of catching up. And we haven't, despite the pressure we've put on Iran, we haven't put enough on yet to get what I think is the only way their behavior is going to change, is to get regime change in Tehran. As the people, dissatisfied as they are in Iran, and they are very dissatisfied, are able to get a new government installed.”
Van Susteren: “Do you agree or disagree with the President's policies towards Iran?”
Bolton: “Well, I think I agree certainly as far as they've gone, they just haven't gone far enough. And as I lay out in the book, he is constantly on the verge of succumbing to the temptation to sit down with the Ayatollahs, just as he wanted to sit down with Kim Jong Un. It's tough to match the photo opportunities that the Singapore, and Hanoi, and DMZ summits gave to the President. And he'd have a great photo opportunity of him sitting across from the supreme leader of Iran. So great photo opportunities for the President, not a good idea for the United States.”
Van Susteren: “You know, lot of the book talks about your disagreements with the President, disagreements in policies, but I don't have a sense of what to the do is. With the exception of-- that he went to-- he had the summit with Kim Jong Un, and he has a photo op in it. I don't-- I'm not quite sure I agree that photo op has, you know, set the United States back. But I'll set that aside. But what has the President actually done that has, in your opinion, made him unfit for office? Because you've said he's unfit for office.”
Bolton: “Right well, I think the way he makes decisions is dangerous. I think when you're inconsistent, erratic, when you don't study the material, when you don't know about the facts, when your priorities change erratically, when you're giving mixed signals to friends and allies alike. What that does is embolden your adversaries, who think that he can be taken advantage of, and it chills your allies, who don't see the strength and stability that they expect from American leadership. Now, don't get me wrong…”
Van Susteren: “So he’s unpopular in the world?”
Bolton: “Well, I don't care whether he's popular or not …”
Van Susteren: “But I mean, what's he actually — I'm trying to think like what's been the actual effect? And what’s he actually done?”
Bolton: “Well, let's take the allies first. His inconsistent and erratic behavior has made them worried about the continuity of American leadership, and what it says to them is we better look out for ourselves, which in turn creates a cycle of weakening whether it's the NATO alliance, or the series of bilateral alliances we have in other parts of the world. Look, our allies also complain about strong American leadership, because they think we're trying to order them around, but what they really fear is American weakness. And I think they see in some of the President's policies a withdrawal, a kind of isolationism, but more than anything they fear inconsistency, unpredictability, and lack of willpower and persistence.
Van Susteren: “The President has been very critical of the NATO family because they haven't-- the NATO family has not met its commitments financially. Do you disagree with that?”
Bolton: “No. I strongly believe the NATO alliance should live up to the commitment its member countries made to have 2% of their GDP in defense spending. We didn't force them to do that, they took that on voluntarily. Trump's complaints really are no different than Obama's, in the sense that Obama in a famous interview called the other NATO allies deadbeats. The issue is whether you want to get those expenditures up to strengthen the NATO alliance, which I think should be the objective, or whether, as I lay out in the book in one particular example at a NATO summit, I think the President was close to withdrawing from NATO, and I very much fear if he does win a second term, he'll withdraw.”
Van Susteren:“But that's again, a do, meaning he hasn't done these things. I mean, he says things, and he tweets things and you know, that’s sometimes electrifying to people. But I'm trying to figure out what's he actually done except, you know, brought people up to the line and wondered what he's going to do?”
Bolton: “Well, I think his failure in North Korea has given them two more years to make progress toward deliverable nuclear weapons.”
Van Susteren: “Failure in not strengthening sanctions?”
Bolton: “Failure to do anything that puts more pressure on the regime so that they can't continue the nuclear weapons program. And let me let me come to a point, and I think this is important. You say, ‘Well he came close to it, but he didn't do it.”
Van Susteren:“Well I didn’t say close to it, ‘he says things’, is what's repeated.”
Bolton: “Right, but the pattern is frequently that he may not do it the first three or four times he says it, but he finally does do it. Let's take the example of withdrawal from Syria. I lay out in the book how at one point at the end of 2018, as he had said before, he said it again. That's why when Jim Mattis resigned, I stayed in, I didn't think it was a good idea. I finally persuaded him, or actually, I think it was Trump's visit to our troops in Iraq who he could hear from them, what we were doing in Syria that persuaded him. But ultimately the decision was made to keep American forces in northeast Syria. And that lasted until the spring of 2020, when he decided to pull them out again. This is the kind of activity…”
Van Susteren: “What’s been the impact of that?”
Bolton: “Well, I think what it does is strengthen the hand of Russia and Iran and Syria. Let me give you another example, is Afghanistan. Where he increased forces in the first year of the administration, gave Mattis and the military more leeway, then decided he wanted to pull out, decided he wanted to cease plans.”
Van Susteren: “Which sort of mirrored a little bit what the Obama administration did. They, you know, President Obama said we're getting out, then he adds more forces. I mean, so it mirrors that a little bit.”
Bolton: “Right, so we could be equally critical of the Obama and the Trump approach. Now we've got a, quote unquote, peace deal with the Taliban that's failing day by day.”
Van Susteren: “A lot of people are dying in Afghanistan right now.”
Bolton: “And the strength of the Taliban and other terrorist extremist groups continues to increase. We narrowly averted bringing the Taliban to Camp David, which I viewed almost as sacrilege and that was.”
Van Susteren: “Not a do, but I mean but a talk, but a say.”
Bolton: “Yea, it's only a matter of time. This herky jerky, back and forth, on and off kind of behavior, does undercut American security, whatever the ultimate action taken is because eventually people don't know what you think, and they can't rely on your word. And, you know there's a famous story from the Cuban Missile Crisis where Kennedy wants to explain to Charles de Gaulle why the Russian missiles are a threat in Cuba. And he sends former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to explain to de Gaulle what's there, and de Gaulle says, ‘If the President says that, I simply accept the word of the American President.’ There's not a leader in the world today that would say that about Donald Trump.”
Van Susteren: “Let me go back to Afghanistan. The President ran on getting out of Afghanistan and we've been there a long time, the United States has been there a long time. Do you oppose getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan?”
Bolton:“Well, we had a lot of discussions about the President on many substantive issues, I'd say Iran, for example, was a good, a good case study of that. Substantively, Mike Pompeo and I saw things much the same way. I think the difference is that he was less willing to disagree with the President and to try and guide him in a different direction. Look, the President makes the decisions. There's no doubt about that. There's nobody in the White House or the administration who didn't understand that. The question is, do you simply acquiesce in a policy that you think is misguided, or do you continue to try and press the President to appreciate the broader significance of his decisions? Look, ultimately, if you're not having success and you're not able in good faith to defend the President publicly, then you should, then you should resign, which is ultimately what I did. But I thought Mike didn't like the policies, but wouldn't, wouldn't challenge him.”
Van Susteren: “Well he's come out very hard against you and your book, Secretary of State Pompeo has. I mean, he's basically said that you're making things up.”
Bolton: “Right. Well, I have a very clear recollection of these events. I did the best I could to put them down on paper. I think that Mike sees his political future and he has higher ambitions. I think he sees his future is tied to President Trump, and I feel sorry for him for that.”
Van Susteren: “Would you suggest he's for sale?”
Bolton: “No, but I think politicians make judgments like that. And I just think it's too bad from his own perspective.”
Van Susteren: “During the course of the summit or anytime, did you get any information about what happened to the college student, Otto Warmbier? I mean he went over there on some sort of tour years ago as a student, and I think he swiped a flag or something like that. And he was taken into custody, tried in North Korea, held for a long time, returned essentially dead, in a comatose state, and we never got any more information about what happened to that young man.”
Bolton: “And I'm not aware of any further information that's come out. This was an act of brutality, of just senseless violence, that I'm afraid shows a lot about the character of the North Korean regime, including some of the people who were involved in our nuclear negotiations, who are believed responsible for what happened to Otto Warmbier. So, I think when Americans look at the idea of sitting down with Kim Jong Un and exchanging love letters with him about how wonderful things are, think of Otto Warmbier and what really goes on inside North Korea.”
Van Susteren: “Which then brings me back to what do you do? You say just tighten the sanctions on North Korea? You would not take any military action against North Korea?”
Bolton: “I don't think that's appropriate. But I do think in South Korea, there are many people with a lot of excellent ideas of things they could do inside North Korea to destabilize the regime. I think when you're running a 25-million-person prison camp, which is what Kim Jong Un is doing, you make a lot of enemies. And I think there are probably ways to fracture the North Korean leadership. It would be helpful if we could get China involved in that, I think it's unlikely at the moment. But that regime is weaker than you think. When totalitarian regimes collapse, it's often remarkable how weak they turn out to be.”
Van Susteren: “It seems to me in your book that the President of South Korea was very much involved in trying to coordinate a summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un. So, it sounds like he wanted to talk.”
Bolton: “Well I think he wanted to be in the summit. I described in the book how he would have liked it to have been three-way discussions. You know, public opinion in South Korea is very divided too. There are the advocates of the so-called Sunshine policy approach, like President Moon Jae In. That's about 50% of the population. The other 50% holds views--I won't say they're exactly the same as mine but are much more hard line. So, they face the same debate, for them it's obviously much more important, as we do.”
Van Susteren: “One of the things President Trump has raised when he ran for President and he's even said since is, the U.S. has about 29,000 American troops in South Korea, an enormous expense to the American people, and he has made- he has mentioned about the cost of it. Would you advocate, or do you advocate with him any more, keeping it the same, or less American troops in South Korea?”
Bolton: “Well I think the number can vary. I mean there's no one fixed number that's right every given time. What we were trying to do during the Bush administration was move American forces back from the 38th parallel, to position them down around the southern tip of the peninsula so they would be less vulnerable at the opening of a North Korean attack, but would also be available for deployment around East Asia in response to aggression or belligerency by the Chinese. I think that's still a strategy to pursue. I think it's important for America to have troops and assets forward deployed in Asia, particularly as we see China's increased belligerence in a number of fields. It's why I think the U.S.-South Korean alliance remains very important today, and the U.S.-Japanese alliance. All of them, including NATO, have come under enormous strain during the Trump presidency, and I think that's very troubling.”
Van Susteren: “What's a bigger threat? Maybe this is not a fair question. What's the biggest threat to the United States, Iran's nuclear program or North Korea's nuclear program?”
Bolton: “Well, I think right at the moment you'd have to say North Korea's because it's much further advanced. But Iran, at least when oil prices internationally are at acceptable levels, is potentially a much wealthier country, a much larger country, and it's centered in in the world's most trouble-ridden region, the Middle East. So, Iran's not far behind in that sense. It's a technological matter of catching up. And we haven't, despite the pressure we've put on Iran, we haven't put enough on yet to get what I think is the only way their behavior is going to change, is to get regime change in Tehran. As the people, dissatisfied as they are in Iran, and they are very dissatisfied, are able to get a new government installed.”
Van Susteren: “Do you agree or disagree with the President's policies towards Iran?”
Bolton: “Well, I think I agree certainly as far as they've gone, they just haven't gone far enough. And as I lay out in the book, he is constantly on the verge of succumbing to the temptation to sit down with the Ayatollahs, just as he wanted to sit down with Kim Jong Un. It's tough to match the photo opportunities that the Singapore, and Hanoi, and DMZ summits gave to the President. And he'd have a great photo opportunity of him sitting across from the supreme leader of Iran. So great photo opportunities for the President, not a good idea for the United States.”
Van Susteren: “You know, lot of the book talks about your disagreements with the President, disagreements in policies, but I don't have a sense of what to the do is. With the exception of-- that he went to-- he had the summit with Kim Jong Un, and he has a photo op in it. I don't-- I'm not quite sure I agree that photo op has, you know, set the United States back. But I'll set that aside. But what has the President actually done that has, in your opinion, made him unfit for office? Because you've said he's unfit for office.”
Bolton: “Right well, I think the way he makes decisions is dangerous. I think when you're inconsistent, erratic, when you don't study the material, when you don't know about the facts, when your priorities change erratically, when you're giving mixed signals to friends and allies alike. What that does is embolden your adversaries, who think that he can be taken advantage of, and it chills your allies, who don't see the strength and stability that they expect from American leadership. Now, don't get me wrong…”
Van Susteren: “So he’s unpopular in the world?”
Bolton: “Well, I don't care whether he's popular or not …”
Van Susteren: “But I mean, what's he actually — I'm trying to think like what's been the actual effect? And what’s he actually done?”
Bolton: “Well, let's take the allies first. His inconsistent and erratic behavior has made them worried about the continuity of American leadership, and what it says to them is we better look out for ourselves, which in turn creates a cycle of weakening whether it's the NATO alliance, or the series of bilateral alliances we have in other parts of the world. Look, our allies also complain about strong American leadership, because they think we're trying to order them around, but what they really fear is American weakness. And I think they see in some of the President's policies a withdrawal, a kind of isolationism, but more than anything they fear inconsistency, unpredictability, and lack of willpower and persistence.
Van Susteren: “The President has been very critical of the NATO family because they haven't-- the NATO family has not met its commitments financially. Do you disagree with that?”
Bolton: “No. I strongly believe the NATO alliance should live up to the commitment its member countries made to have 2% of their GDP in defense spending. We didn't force them to do that, they took that on voluntarily. Trump's complaints really are no different than Obama's, in the sense that Obama in a famous interview called the other NATO allies deadbeats. The issue is whether you want to get those expenditures up to strengthen the NATO alliance, which I think should be the objective, or whether, as I lay out in the book in one particular example at a NATO summit, I think the President was close to withdrawing from NATO, and I very much fear if he does win a second term, he'll withdraw.”
Van Susteren:“But that's again, a do, meaning he hasn't done these things. I mean, he says things, and he tweets things and you know, that’s sometimes electrifying to people. But I'm trying to figure out what's he actually done except, you know, brought people up to the line and wondered what he's going to do?”
Bolton: “Well, I think his failure in North Korea has given them two more years to make progress toward deliverable nuclear weapons.”
Van Susteren: “Failure in not strengthening sanctions?”
Bolton: “Failure to do anything that puts more pressure on the regime so that they can't continue the nuclear weapons program. And let me let me come to a point, and I think this is important. You say, ‘Well he came close to it, but he didn't do it.”
Van Susteren:“Well I didn’t say close to it, ‘he says things’, is what's repeated.”
Bolton: “Right, but the pattern is frequently that he may not do it the first three or four times he says it, but he finally does do it. Let's take the example of withdrawal from Syria. I lay out in the book how at one point at the end of 2018, as he had said before, he said it again. That's why when Jim Mattis resigned, I stayed in, I didn't think it was a good idea. I finally persuaded him, or actually, I think it was Trump's visit to our troops in Iraq who he could hear from them, what we were doing in Syria that persuaded him. But ultimately the decision was made to keep American forces in northeast Syria. And that lasted until the spring of 2020, when he decided to pull them out again. This is the kind of activity…”
Van Susteren: “What’s been the impact of that?”
Bolton: “Well, I think what it does is strengthen the hand of Russia and Iran and Syria. Let me give you another example, is Afghanistan. Where he increased forces in the first year of the administration, gave Mattis and the military more leeway, then decided he wanted to pull out, decided he wanted to cease plans.”
Van Susteren: “Which sort of mirrored a little bit what the Obama administration did. They, you know, President Obama said we're getting out, then he adds more forces. I mean, so it mirrors that a little bit.”
Bolton: “Right, so we could be equally critical of the Obama and the Trump approach. Now we've got a, quote unquote, peace deal with the Taliban that's failing day by day.”
Van Susteren: “A lot of people are dying in Afghanistan right now.”
Bolton: “And the strength of the Taliban and other terrorist extremist groups continues to increase. We narrowly averted bringing the Taliban to Camp David, which I viewed almost as sacrilege and that was.”
Van Susteren: “Not a do, but I mean but a talk, but a say.”
Bolton: “Yea, it's only a matter of time. This herky jerky, back and forth, on and off kind of behavior, does undercut American security, whatever the ultimate action taken is because eventually people don't know what you think, and they can't rely on your word. And, you know there's a famous story from the Cuban Missile Crisis where Kennedy wants to explain to Charles de Gaulle why the Russian missiles are a threat in Cuba. And he sends former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to explain to de Gaulle what's there, and de Gaulle says, ‘If the President says that, I simply accept the word of the American President.’ There's not a leader in the world today that would say that about Donald Trump.”
Van Susteren: “Let me go back to Afghanistan. The President ran on getting out of Afghanistan and we've been there a long time, the United States has been there a long time. Do you oppose getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会 更新情報
-
最新のアンケート
-
まだ何もありません
-
ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会のメンバーはこんなコミュニティにも参加しています
人気コミュニティランキング
- 1位
- パニック障害とうつ病
- 8448人
- 2位
- 一行で笑わせろ！
- 82529人
- 3位
- 写真を撮るのが好き
- 208285人