RATTANSI: ...It's also seventy-six years to the day that UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill made his made his famous "Iron Curtain" speech to the USA in which he warned against the spread of soviet communism. Now, let's go straight to Washington D.C. to speak to the USA's former-UN ambassador and President Donald Trump's national security advisor, John Bolton, for this very special edition of "Going Underground." Ambassador, thanks so much for comming back on. So Joe Biden ended his "State of the Union" [speech] with the words, "Get him", in the style of previous uh officials against Osama bin Laden, perhaps. He's spending the weeekend at Camp David. If you were still national security , what would you be telling Joe Biden to do?
BOLTON: I'd be saying that until the Russian energy sector has effectively collapsed, Putin has no [dis]incentive to to give up his ongoing offensive in Ukraine, and, honestly, with oil prices what they are, even if Russia has to sell at a discount [?!], it's still making money off this war [incentive], and there's every reason to think he'll continue until he achieves whatever his objectives in Ukraine are. You know, the failure here is not that we're not imposing sanctions on Putin. The failure is, we failed to deter him, and the cost [disincentive] of that failure is now being borne by the Ukrainian people, and it will be borne by Russians and, by the way, it will be borne by Europeans and Americans, too, as the price of oil goes up. So being content with a long, dragged out process is not in our interest.
RATTANSI: So, from your point of view, this war is being financed [sic] in effect by Europeans buying Russian energy resources that supply forty per cent of the market?
BOLTON: Right. I mean, right now as the war is progress, oil and gas are still being transmitted [sic] through pipelines all across Europe, and Russia is being reimbursed [sic] for them despite sanctions that take some Russian banks out of the SWIFT system, two of the three top Russian banks are still receiving payments, because they're energy-related. The United States is still importing oil from Russia, really pretty incredible. In the meantime, the Russian military which has had its problems in Ukraine is grinding down opposition. K[ie][yy]v and Kharkiv and the Ukrainians have defended themselves heroically, but the correlation of forces [!], as we used to say in soviet days, is very against them, and time will not be on their side.
[...]
What we're concerned about in Europe is the security and safety of the United States. Since 1945, we believe that a secure Europe is in America's best interest, but, frankly, what goes on in Europe beyond that is really not something that most Americans care about, because they don't really care about these kinds of things in other parts of the world. We would like to be safe and secure, and that means making sure the Europeans don't lapse [!] into yet another [!] world war like the first two hot wars and much of the cold war fought in Europe as well.
[...]
RATTANSI: ... the United States has been funding Ukraine for, well, since 2014, since the coup. I mean, you can see that there are two sides being given on this story. One side is, Russia is trying to end the brutal puscht regime from 2014, financed by the United States [IMF] in the heart of Europe, so it can no longer kill people there, 14,000 dead.
BOLTON: Well, that's the hall of mirror's view of what happened in Ukraine in 2914, and, unfortunately, it's the Ukrainian people who are paying for that misperception.
RATTANSI: So what is the price that Biden name checked at the state of the union [speech]. He said, Putin must pay a price. What is that price that maybe Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinken want to charge Putin?
BOLTON: Well, I don't think they know.... I think what Putin is counting on, and he may be right, is whenever this ends ...he's counting on European memories to be short and for these sanctions to disappear. And based on the history we've seen, I'm not counting on European resolve to keep these sanctions in place.
[...]
RATTANSI: Back to what you were saying about sanctions: You do expect sanctions to lapse very swiftly? After a completion of military operations as seen from Moscow and a mission-accomplished statement from Putin in the Kremlin?
BOLTON: Look, my prediction...I don't think, Putin wants all of Ukraine under Russian control. I think he wants the eastern and southern parts of the country. He wants wants contol of the north coast of the Black Sea. I think, if he had his druthers, he'd set up a Vichy France kind of governement in the rest of Ukraine ...

RATTANSI: When you mention imperial power, then is it the case--and we've talked to Russians here and challenged them who [have] been so critical of US foreign policy in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan--that Russia is just doing what the United States did, supported by you? And there are parallels here of US interference in countries since 9/11?
BOLTON: Great. Let's take it one by one, but let's start a little earlier than 9/11. The US has invaded Iraq twice. The first time because Iraq invaded Kuwait, and in order to restore sovereight to Kuwait, we went into Iraq and basically destroyed its army. Now, in retrospect, we probably should have done more, but that's the kind of situation in which the US has historically fought--not because we want territory for ourselves, not because we seek economic advantage, but because one of our friends or allies has been invaded by somebody else. That's what's happening in Ukraine today. The difference between Russian actions and US is just about as clear as it could be. Your line of argument is like the old saying that here you've got an old lady near the path of a bus that's out of control ....

RATTANSI: I'm not sure I quite get the parallel of that one. Okay, but I mean, you know ...Dpes that mean that you would have supported this kind of military action or Singer missiles and so on being sent after the referendum --that obviously was not accepted by NATO nations--in Criemea, recognizing that Crimea was part of Russia?
BOLTON: Look, what we wanted to do in Crimea was work with the government of Ukraine which was not in a position to engage in any military activity in Crimea after it was annexed, but through, you know, diplomatic measures to get the Russians to reverse this something that we said in 1945 was never going to happen in Europe again, which is international borders being changed by by military force. Yet that's exactly what Russia did. It did it in Ukraine. It did it in Crimea, rather. It did it Donbass, and it's doing it again now.
[...]
RATTANSI: What about this phase, "peacekeepers": Can you understand, I mean, obviusly the UN secretary General says this is a violation of international law, something that has been raised with previous Russian actions. Can you se how Moscow would see it as "wait a minute! We sent peackeepers to proker peace in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. We ended the war in Syria. We sought a ceasefire in Georgia and sorted all that out and quieted down the Georgian war. Wherever we go, all we do is bring peace.
BOLTON: Yeah, it looks pretty ugly, when it happens though. That involved fragmenting Yugoslavia Georgia and splitting off two provinces to pretend they were independent coutries. It means a Russian a Russian troop presence in Korea Georgia and as well as Iraq Azerbaijan and Kurdistan Armenia that freeze the conflicts there like their Russian troops still in Moldova and the so-called Transnistria republic [Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic] which I'd love to see someday. It must be about ten feet wide....
[...]
RATTANSI:  How soon do you expect China to move on Taiwan as you so long predicted? I've got a statement here from China's foreign ministry spokesman Hua Chunyung: Tawain indeed is not Ukraine. Taiwan has always been an inseparable part ...
BOLTON: [SNICKER]
RATTANSI: of China's territory. This is an irrefutable ...
BOLTON: [LAUGHTER]
RATTANSI: ... historical and legal fact.
BOLTON: [ROLLING LAUGHTER] Well, it seems to me that's a pretty clear statement, they're [China? Taiwan? China and Taiwan?] getting ready. I think, they're watching the US and NATO's response in Ukraine very carefully. If it continues to prove as ineffective, tragically as it has been so far, I think China will draw the appropriate conclusions.
RATTANSI: Do you think, the US can pare China away from Russia? You must have noticed that some of the countries receiving lots of infrastructural investment [FDI] from China--Venezuela, Cuba--they abstained on the UN General Assembly [resolution]. I know, the UN General Assembly thing was um quite theatrical. The US has never respected the UN General Assembly resolutions in the past, but what did you make of some peculiar abstentions from countries you'd think would vote with Moscow?
BOLTON: I think, what it shows is, that in this on-top between Russia and China that Russia is very much the junior partner. This is the exact reverse of cold war days. I think, it's something Russia's leadership hasn't considered adequately. I've tried to explain that growing closer to China, growing further away from Europe and the United States inevitably means subjugation for Russia at some level at some point....
RATTANSI: Why couldn't they bring the United States closer to China? Would you surely help the American people?
BOLTON: I think, China has made it pretty clear they have hegemonic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. It's why they have managed to give life to the asian Quad--India, Japan, Australia, and the United States. It's why the countries of the Indo-Pacific very much want to see more evidence of a strong American presence in the region. It's why the Australians have asked for nuclear-powered submarines, and we've now created a mechanism along with the United Kingdom to do this. I think, people in Asia and the Indo-Pacific, generally, are waking up to China's aspirations, and they're going to take steps to prevent it from happening.
RATTANSI: What about the American people? Why is this a consistent theme--that it [China] must be about the Indo-Pacific? You know 40 million can't eat tonight in your country without food stamps. Why can't an alliance between Washington and Beijing be created out of the mess that is happening right now in the EU?
BOLTON: Because we're a free people and like being that way....

RATTANSI: And on the sanctions, finaly: Do you expect them to finish quickly? Or do you think that the Ukraine conflic spells the end of the dollar as an international currency because of the swiftness ...arguably, emphatically it's at the end of the dollar-based system as huge numbers of countries now sanctioned by the United States get closer and closer together to different ways of transferring money. Obviously, there are big cryptocurrency exchanges no on Wall Street and other methods which are not regulated by the Federal Reserve.
BOLTON: You know, I think, actually the dollar proving how important it is, how important it continues to be, and I don't see any huge demand to trade in Chinese yuan or Russian rubles. As far as cryptocurrency goes, look, if you want to buy black tulip bulbs, be my guest.

Give us a clue. Who is Rattansi, what channel?

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Bolton, in an interview with Post opinions editor at large Michael Duffy, said the former president came close to pulling the United States out of NATO in 2018, a claim he originally made in a memoir published in 2020. In his book, Bolton wrote that he had to convince Trump not to quit NATO in the middle of a 2018 summit.

On Friday, Bolton, who served as a top Trump adviser from 2018 to 2019, offered more details on their conversations that day, saying he "had my heart in my throat at that NATO meeting."

"I didn't know what the president would do," Bolton said. "He called me up to his seat seconds before he gave the speech. And I said, look, go right up to the line, but don't go over it. I sat back down. I had no idea what he'd do."
[...]
"In a second Trump term, I think he may well have withdrawn from NATO," Bolton said. "And I think [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was waiting for that."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday responded to Bolton's comments, saying they highlighted "another reason the American people are grateful -- the majority of the American people -- that President Biden has not taken a page out of his predecessor's playbook as it relates to global engagement and global leadership, because certainly we could be in a different place. I mean, there's no question that the strength and unity of NATO has been a powerful force in this moment," Psaki added.