Former national security adviser John Bolton warned Monday that President Donald Trump‘s Ukraine policy remains “transactional, ad hoc and episodic,” driven by personal impulses rather than a coherent strategy — even as the White House prepares an aggressive new weapons package for Kyiv.
On Monday, Trump said the U.S. would send weapons to Ukraine through NATO, with European allies paying for and distributing them. He also threatened to impose steep secondary tariffs — penalties on countries that continue doing business with Russia — if a ceasefire isn’t reached soon.
“We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days,” Trump told reporters. “It’s very simple, and they’ll be at 100 percent.”
Speaking to Newsweek, Bolton said Trump “doesn’t even really do policy in the way most of us understand that term. It’s all transactional, episodic, ad hoc, and it’s about how he is seen,” adding that Trump governs “day to day” without a long-term vision.
Bolton — famously fired by Trump in September 2019 after a series of high-profile clashes over foreign policy — argued that such reversals only underscore the administration’s lack of strategy.
Trump, he said, views international relations entirely through the prism of his personal relationships with foreign leaders. If he considers himself friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin, then, in his mind, U.S.-Russia relations are fine. Trump appears to have cooled on Putin more recently, appearing frustrated that their phone calls are “beautiful” and then Moscow immediately launches new barrages on Ukraine as soon as they hang up.
The shift on Ukraine marks a dramatic reversal for Trump, who had previously resisted arming Kyiv beyond defensive weapons and at times even blamed Ukraine for starting the conflict. According to reports, he believed his personal relationship with Putin would allow him to broker peace quickly.
But after months of stalled talks and ongoing Russian attacks, Trump grew frustrated, telling reporters that “we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin” and complaining that the Russian leader “talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening.”
Bolton observed that Trump appeared increasingly irritated that Putin wasn’t playing along with his scenario for resolving the conflict, suggesting that Trump now sees his latest arms announcement as a way to pressure Putin back to the table — not as a genuine show of support for Ukraine.
“He believes he needs to do something to kind of pull Putin back closer to him,” Bolton said, particularly after Putin ignored Trump’s preferred narrative of quick negotiations and instead escalated the war.
The frustration deepened earlier this month, when a phone call with Putin was followed within hours by a massive Russian missile and drone barrage on Ukrainian cities — leaving Trump, as The New York Times put it, “embarrassed and appearing like a paper tiger.”
Iran, Regime Change, and the Nobel Prize
Bolton also addressed Trump’s record on Iran, calling his 2025 decision to join Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites “the right thing to do at that moment — better late than never.” But he warned the operation fell short of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program entirely and argued it should have continued until the threat was fully eliminated.
Only regime change in Tehran, he added, is likely to bring a real end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Bolton — a well-known hawk who frequently clashed with Trump during his first term, particularly over the president’s reluctance to confront adversaries like Russia and North Korea — drew a sharp distinction between Trump’s motivations and U.S. strategic goals. He said Trump backed the Israeli strikes because he thought they were likely to succeed and wanted to share in the credit, not because he believed in the broader strategic rationale.
“Even a stopped clock can be right twice a day,” Bolton said, calling Trump’s decision to join the Israeli operation another example of stumbling into the correct policy for self-serving reasons rather than out of careful planning.
He also criticized the ceasefire imposed after the strikes as premature, leaving much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact.
“I think the cease-fire they basically forced on Israel and Iran was premature, precisely because what America’s strategic objectives should have been — the complete elimination of the program — had not been achieved, notwithstanding what he said, because he thought it made him look good,” Bolton said.
On Trump’s well-documented desire for a Nobel Peace Prize, Bolton said the ambition has clouded his decision-making. He recalled hearing Trump mention it repeatedly during his first term, insisting Barack Obama didn’t deserve the one he received — and that if Obama could win, so should he.
That ambition, Bolton suggested, has likely been dashed by Trump’s current posture on Ukraine.
“We now see him maybe zagging now, having zigged on Ukraine before — meeting today with the Secretary General of NATO, talking about supplying not only more air defense weapons but, according to the press, offensive weapons that could target Moscow,” Bolton noted.
“From that point of view, it doesn’t look like there’s much chance to strike a deal between Ukraine and Russia — and therefore no Nobel Peace Prize to be won there.”
Bolton remains skeptical that Trump’s recent turn against Putin and embrace of Ukrainian and Israeli military operations signals any genuine change of heart. To him, it’s yet another example of Trump governing by impulse.
“Each day is a new day. That’s just how he does things.”
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