With the 2024 White House race expected to be decided by razor-thin margins in the battleground states, John Bolton, the US National Security Adviser (NSA) to former President Donald Trump, has expressed his doubts over the leadership skills of Democratic Party’s presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris, if she manages to pull through and defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the November 5 presidential elections.
“Well, she has very little experience in national security. I mean she has sat through three and a half years of National Security Council meetings as Vice President but not made an effort that I’m aware of, to become an expert in any particular field of national security. The inevitable stories about what happens in internal Biden administration decision-making don’t reveal her having a consistent view. People say she asks questions like a prosecutor would, but doesn’t necessarily reveal her thinking,” Bolton told IANS in an exclusive interview ahead of next month’s crucial US elections.
Acknowledging that the US presidential race is “as close as one can imagine it to be”, Bolton, who served as Trump’s NSA from April 2018 to September 2019, stated that even if Harris manages to triumph, she is likely to adopt the Biden administration’s foreign policy for a long time.
“I think the most likely prediction you can make is that if she (Harris) were to win her first year, maybe the first year and a half would look a lot like the Biden administration foreign policy because she doesn’t know anything else.
“Now, at some point, her new team of advisors, events in the outside world would move that policy in a way we can’t foresee. But another year and a half of the Biden administration policy, I think, would be very problematic for the United States, which is not to say I think Trump would be better. I think he’s so erratic, so unpredictable that friends and allies would be worried about him, and our adversaries would welcome the chance to take advantage of him,” Bolton told IANS.
The former US Ambassador to the United Nations, however, believed that Harris holds a “very, very small advantage” over Trump in the ongoing election campaign with all polls within the margin of error and many people still undecided. The final result, he admitted, will be in favour of the candidate who is most effective at turning his or her supporters out.
“Because of the Electoral College system, it really depends on a relatively small number of states and there’s intense campaigning there. The House and the Senate are both up for grabs as well. So it’s, as I say, it’s about as close an election at every level that I’ve seen. And, this is the kind of campaign where what we call the ‘October surprise’ can have a big impact. We’ve got a hurricane heading toward Florida. We’ve got a war in the Middle East, a war in Ukraine. So there’s, there’s a lot going on in the rest of the world, but it’s also possible this will be decided in the last week when, people break even, the small number of undecided voters break one way or the other,” said Bolton.
Many analysts in the United States also believe that the ongoing turmoil all over the world could somehow work in favour of Trump and eventually boost his chances, an assertion that the 75-year-old security expert endorses.
“I think there’s something to it in the sense that if the world looks to be in turmoil – in Europe because of Ukraine, in the Middle East, the Chinese threat to Taiwan or in the South China Sea, the turmoil in Africa and nuclear proliferation – it is concerning and that can be used against the Biden administration, obviously of which Vice President Harris is a part, for not being able to exercise adequate leadership to protect American interests and those of its allies,” maintains Bolton.
“On the other hand, Trump can’t really offer his own way forward. He simply says that ‘well, if I had been president, the Russians wouldn’t have attacked Ukraine’ and the Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel or China wouldn’t attack Taiwan. That those are assertions that are neither provable nor disprovable. So it doesn’t, I think, give people confidence that Trump would do any better. But, by and large, if the world remains calm, that would be better for the incumbent party candidate,” he added.