President Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser has issued a stark warning about America’s future in the global order.
John Bolton, who has become one of Trump’s fiercest political foes and was the target of an FBI raid last month, warned Monday that the U.S. was staring down a hardening alliance of authoritarian powers in an op-ed in the Australian Financial Review.
“This century’s main threat to America and its partners is the rapidly emerging axis between China and Russia, and their associated outriders like North Korea, Iran, and Belarus,” wrote Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019.
Bolton also added India to the bloc of powers, noting the deteriorating relationship between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is reportedly ignoring the president’s calls over his decision to impose devastating tariffs on the country.
Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping flaunted their bromance at a summit over the weekend by holding hands and standing in a closed circle.
The geopolitical flirting apparently rankled Trump, who typed out a fuming anti-India Truth Social rant on Monday.
Bolton, 76, wrote that “Modi is a particularly significant catch for Xi, a leader now shunned by the Trump administration.”
He argued that China’s military parade marking the 80th anniversary of World War II’s end, with Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in attendance, is meant to project its “diplomatic and political clout.”
Slamming former Australian premiers Daniel Andrews and Bob Carr for accepting invitations from Beijing, he wrote, “We have seen enough such exercises over the past century to understand that more is at stake here than just watching a parade.”
Bolton, who previously served as ambassador to the United Nations under then-President George W. Bush, argued, “The entire event is intended to rewrite history and advance and normalise both the Chinese Communist Party’s official history and to presage the future.”
Bolton has regularly torched Trump’s foreign policy, dismantling the president’s “utterly incoherent Ukraine strategy” in a Washington Examiner op-ed just a few days after the FBI raided his home. The raid reportedly stemmed from a national security probe into classified records.
