„Putin certainly sees Trump as an easy mark“

In his guest commentary for Atlantik-Brücke, John Bolton, former national security advisor to Donald Trump, talks about Trump’s relationship with Putin and the threat his disdain for NATO poses to Europe – and urges us not to give up on the transatlantic alliance just yet.

Judging a US president’s first hundred days began with Franklin Roosevelt.  For Donald Trump, however, certainly on national-security issues, comparison to Napoleon’s hundred-days campaign may be more apt, ending as it did in disaster for both the emperor and France.

Trump’s indifference to Ukraine and his conciliatory approach toward Russia are only one of several shocks to trans-Atlantic relations.  Disdain for NATO and the ever-present specter of US withdrawal, or even substantial disengagement, like renouncing the supreme European command, are also dangerous.  Combined with Trump’s chaotic, incoherent, economically illiterate trade decisions, there is reason to despair.

The good news, such as it is: Trump is not pursuing a grand strategy, or even “policy” as we normally understand that word.  He sees everything transactionally, through the prism of personal ties, and how he benefits from them, politically or economically.  If he and Vladimir Putin have good rapport, he believes America and Russia have good state-to-state relations.  This is not unique to Putin.  Trump said about North Korea’s Kim Jung Un: “We fell in love.”

Putin certainly sees Trump as an easy mark, not a friend, manipulating him on Ukraine, for example, by agreeing that Trump was correct to say that the Ukraine war would not have happened had he been president.  Putin then released a US hostage, followed by Belarus also doing so, always a winner with Trump.  Moscow has just recently exchanged yet another US citizen, even as Russia has been slow-rolling cease-fire negotiations.  This is not about a Trump strategy, but about his susceptibility to flattery and exploitation.

Trump is an aberration in American politics, someone entirely absorbed with himself.  That he has been elected twice says more about his opponents’ weaknesses than voter devotion to Trump personally, or his actions as president.  His public support is dropping and will drop significantly more if his newly launched trade wars cause an economic downtown.  Republicans in Congress are finally beginning to distance themselves from Trump and will steer further away as the 2026 elections approach.  Democrats, by contrast, still have not regained a pulse since last November’s election.

The answer is not to panic or do things that give Trump further excuses to quit Europe.  During the Cold War, Soviet leaders sought to split the Atlantic alliance.  Their failure to do so contributed significantly to Moscow’s defeat. This is not the time for us to do to ourselves what the Kremlin could not.