Former NSA John Bolton Claims Refusal to Send US Troops to Ukraine 'Big Mistake'

Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton raised eyebrows this week by telling a German publication that NATO and the US – under President Joe Biden – made a "big mistake" when they "repeatedly emphasised that there will be no intervention of any kind by Western troops in Ukraine".

Bolton was US ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, and served as national security adviser to former President Donald Trump.

He's returned to the public eye in the past few weeks with a range of hawkish TV appearances and an editorial in the New York Post branding what he called Biden's "decision to deny Ukraine fighter jets" as "indefensible".

His tenure as national security adviser was cut short in September 2019 when he was unceremoniously fired in a Twitter post in which Trump wrote that he'd "informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House".

Within months, Bolton was making appearances on political talk shows publicising his then-upcoming "tell-all" book in which he accused President Trump of wanting to "continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens".

The claim played a key role in the first of President Trump's two impeachments, because it appeared to validate some of the still-unproven allegations of impropriety surrounding weapons shipments which Democrats in Congress wanted the president to send to the Ukrainian regime.

Axios insisted at the time that Bolton's claims "appear to have swayed more GOP senators in recent days, with some signalling they're more likely to vote for witnesses than before".

President Trump's response was immediate. The then-president promptly took to Twitter to allege that Bolton "begged" him for a job and that "frankly", if he had "listened to [Bolton], we would be in World War Six by now".

"For a guy who couldn't get approved for the ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn't get approved for anything since, 'begged' me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying 'Don't do it, sir,' takes the job, mistakenly says 'Libyan Model' on T.V., and many more mistakes of judgement, gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?"

Bolton's longstanding antipathy towards perceived enemy governments wasn't limited to the Russian leadership. "The president was angered by Bolton's opposition" to President Trump's proposed Afghanistan peace deal, PBS wrote at the time of Bolton's dismissal, and it reportedly wasn't the first time the two men clashed over Bolton's apparent refusal to cooperate with the White House's geopolitical vision.

Bolton "had become a vocal internal critic of potential talks between Trump and leaders of Iran" they said, and in 2018 he "masterminded a quiet campaign inside the administration and with allies abroad to persuade Trump to keep US forces in Syria".

It wasn't just the Trump crowd – Bolton's reputation for bellicosity earned him the ire of anti-intervention conservatives and liberals alike.

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