Former U.S. Security Adviser John Bolton:

John Bolton, 77, has worked for every Republican president since Ronald Reagan. During Donald Trump’s first term, he served as national security adviser before leaving after 17 months amid disputes. Authorities suspect him of having illegally passed on classified documents. In August, the FBI carried out a raid at his home. Shortly thereafter, prosecutors filed charges. The case is ongoing.

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 52/2025 (December 18th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL.

DER SPIEGEL: U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine by Christmas. How realistic is that?

Bolton: It’s just another Trump deadline. An effort to push forward. Ukraine and its European allies have already made a number of concessions. I think that’s a mistake. It is creating the possibility that there will be a deal that won’t restrain the Russians two or three years from now when they do invasion number three. That’s the strategic point Trump, his special envoy Steve Wittkoff and Jared Kushner don’t get. They want a deal. They don’t really care what the terms of the deal are, but they want it in time for the Nobel Peace Prize committee’s January 31st deadline for nominations.

John Bolton, 76, has worked for all Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan. In the first administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, he was National Security Advisor, before disagreements with the president led to his departure. Bolton is considered a foreign policy hawk and a supporter of military intervention.

DER SPIEGEL: Witkoff and Kushner were in Berlin this week for talks. Do you see progress?

Bolton: I see Ukrainian concessions. There’s the idea that they’ll hold elections in the new year. Then – this is not so much a concession as a recognition of reality – the ceasefire line along the existing front on the battlefield. But giving up NATO membership in exchange for strong security guarantees is a big mistake. Trump is unreliable on Article 5 in NATO (eds. note: the provision that an attack on one alliance member is to be seen as an attack on the alliance in its entirety), so why trust him for security guarantees in a non-NATO context? That is the illusion of security. Because there are not going to be any American troops in Ukraine after this. Their presence would be the tripwire that guarantees American involvement.

DER SPIEGEL: Is it acceptable for Ukraine to give up territory?

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Bolton: All we’re talking about now is the ceasefire. But once Russia gets control of 20 percent of Ukraine, I’m not sure they’re ever going to go back. Zelenskyy understands that, and probably most Europeans do too. I don’t think Trump understands or cares about it. I’ve thought for a long time that the Russians were the ones that would benefit from a ceasefire line along the actual battlefield line. Putin would get time to rebuild his economy, rebuild his army, refurbish the Black Sea fleet – one third of which is now on the floor of the Black Sea. The Russians have been pursuing the conflict contrary to their own best interest. They believe the war of attrition will grind Ukraine down.

DER SPIEGEL: Would Putin even accept a deal that doesn’t include a complete Ukrainian capitulation?

Bolton: I think he would, because there’s a point at which he pushes Trump too far. He’s come close to that several times this year. I think Putin thought he could push him as far as he wanted to, but that didn’t work because Trump doesn’t want to be made a fool of. So there may be a point, if he gets enough concessions, he will accept it and take advantage of the ceasefire.

DER SPIEGEL: What is your explanation for Trump’s closeness to Putin?

Bolton: He likes strong figures and admires them, sort of envies them, whether it’s Putin, Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or Kim Jong Un. The Russians long ago identified Trump as what Lenin once called a "useful idiot.” Putin has used his KGB training: Identify your target’s weaknesses and then exploit them. You keep seeing it demonstrated after every call with Putin and after the summit in Alaska: Trump veers back toward the Russian position.

U.S. President Donald Trump with National Security Adviser John Bolton in the White House in 2019.

DER SPIEGEL: You don’t believe that Putin is in possession of compromising material about Trump?

Bolton: You can’t rule anything out, but I haven’t frankly seen any evidence of it. I’ve seen a lot of speculation, but in terms of actual evidence, I think there’s plenty of evidence that Trump has no strategic theory, no philosophy, doesn’t do policy. That’s exactly the kind of person the Russians can manipulate. It’s one deal after another. In this case, Russia gives up nothing.

DER SPIEGEL: The White House recently published a new security strategy portraying Europe as America’s real adversary, and not Russia or China.

Bolton: I doubt Trump has read that document. He just doesn’t think in those kinds of terms. It really looks as though it were written for a JD Vance administration. It gives more coherence to what has happened in the past year than exists in fact. It is backward strategically. I mean, I’ve been a pretty staunch critic of the European Union for a long time. But it’s still allied to the United States.

DER SPIEGEL: The document even discusses a purported "civilizational erasure” in Europe. The paper makes it sound as though the U.S. is interested in intervening to install new governments in Europe of the same stripe as the Trump administration.

Bolton: I really don’t think there’s much stomach for that in the MAGA movement. I don’t see that kind of rhetoric actually leading to anything. Europeans just have to grit their teeth and say: We’re going to get past this like a lot of Trump rhetoric.

DER SPIEGEL: The MAGA movement dominates the Republican party. Would it not be negligent for Europe to view this as a temporary phenomenon?

Bolton: There are people who agree with what Trump is doing, there’s no doubt about it. But we have passed peak Trump. We’re now on the downward slope. Republicans in Congress are very worried about what is going to happen in the midterm elections in November 2026. You can see the MAGA movement fragmenting. You can see revolt within the party – the Indiana Republican Party, for example, refusing to redistrict. There comes a point in any president’s second term where people understand he’s now a lame duck.

Bolton: Don’t draw conclusions that are going to be very hard to reverse, particularly if there’s a deal on Ukraine. Support for Ukraine is really very strong in Congress and there’s a lot of concern about these negotiations. There are still three years to go, I acknowledge that, but if you just say it’s hopeless, we can’t do anything about it, you’re essentially giving the Russians and the Chinese what they want, something the Soviet Union tried very hard to get during the Cold War: to break the North Atlantic alliance. And it makes it harder for supporters of Ukraine in the U.S. to speak up. The situation on the battlefield isn’t hopeless. The Russian performance on the battlefield, while they are still slowly advancing, is continuing to come at an extraordinary cost to them, in human and materiel terms. It’s far from clear that the advantage on the battlefield will give them the breakthrough they expect. It’s about trying to mitigate the damage.

Bolton: I think Zelenskyy’s strategy of trying to negotiate a little bit with Trump makes sense. Try and drag it out and see if you can pin failure here on Putin, though I don’t think Trump is yet ready to buy that his friend Vlad is the one who’s the real problem. But it’s worth trying – push it past Christmas – and in the meantime, beginning to think about what else we can do to strengthen Ukraine militarily. We ought to acknowledge that both the Biden administration and European members of NATO allowed this to happen because of nearly three years of not giving Ukraine what it needed to win because of this constant fear of a wider war, which was never going to happen. Mistakes were made before Trump took office, but that doesn’t mean that we have to give up the basic principle that this kind of unprovoked aggression on the continent of Europe cannot be accepted.

DER SPIEGEL: Can the loss of trust between Europe and the U.S. be repaired?

Bolton: The question is how bad the split is going to get over the next three years. If Europe basically says it’s hopeless, these people have lost their minds, then it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The worst thing to do would be to give Trump an excuse to leave NATO. Then, we’d really have a problem.

DER SPIEGEL: The next U.S. president could be JD Vance.

Bolton: In American history, sitting vice presidents have become president only three times. Trump voters – it’s like a cult of personality. They’ll vote for Trump, they just won’t vote for anybody else. They think he fights for them. That is what motivates him, and frankly, that’s what makes him dangerous. It’s like in George Orwell: He can switch his positions, and his supporters will back him as though he hadn’t just contradicted himself. There isn’t anybody else like Trump who can provoke that kind of response in people.

DER SPIEGEL: Is Trump’s unconventional style sometimes helpful? One could point to the fact that he at least forced Europe to take defense more seriously.

Bolton: Good luck is all I can say. Trying to recreate NATO without the United States is not going to work. Trying to do it within the European Union is not going to work. The Russians and the Chinese know that. If Trump is in the process of destroying America’s alliances, they’re going to do everything they can to encourage him.

DER SPIEGEL: What’s the smartest strategy for dealing with Trump?

Bolton: The foreign leader that did best with Trump in the first term was Shinzō Abe of Japan. His approach was to talk to Trump all the time. Go and visit with him. Play golf with him. Don’t ask for anything until the point when you really need something. Boris Johnson also handled it very well. I think Mark Rutte is doing a good job handling him as NATO secretary general, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb is apparently doing very well with him.

DER SPIEGEL: Friedrich Merz talks to him a lot too, but it doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect.

Bolton: When Merz talked about European independence at the beginning of Trump’s second term, that wasn’t good. Trump’s reaction is: fine, be independent. That gives the Russians what they want.

Bolton: Yes. And he used independence again within the past few weeks. If you think the end of the world is coming, I understand that reaction. But it's not.

DER SPIEGEL: In October, an investigation was launched against you for the mishandling of classified documents during your tenure as Trump’s national security adviser. How are you dealing with this situation?

Bolton: I wrote in the foreword to my book back in 2020: If Trump were reelected, it would be a retribution presidency, and I think we’ve seen a lot of that. In my case, it started on Inauguration Day when he cancelled the Secret Service protection that Biden had given me because of the Iranian assassination efforts. I’m certainly not the only person in his sights. I think the Democrats have also been guilty of what they call "lawfare.” It’s wrong whichever side does it. But Trump is carrying it out to such an extreme that it is provoking a backlash.

DER SPIEGEL: The case against you began during the Biden administration.

Bolton: That’s not accurate actually. Trump initiated the case in 2020 when he tried to stop publication of my book. It ended during the Biden administration. Now, Trump is essentially picking up where we left off in 2020. It’s frustrating. I’d love to talk about the case, but it’s just not appropriate. But it’s entirely attributable to Trump’s view about what happens when people say that they disagree with him.

DER SPIEGEL: So your handling of classified material was always correct?

Bolton: No, you can't be intimidated. If that happens, Trump wins without a fight.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Bolton, thank you for this interview.