John Bolton warns Trump’s MAGA could abandon Taiwan if China blockades rather than invades

Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton says Chinese President Xi Jinping is more likely to blockade Taiwan rather than invade it, and that the Republican Party’s isolationists prevailing in the Trump Administration could abandon the island as a result.

Warning of a five-year window of danger in which the Chinese President could move to take control of the democratically-ruled island, Ambassador Bolton said the China threat was “real” and increasing and “something to worry about.”

He said that the US President and his administration had no coherent policy for dealing with China and the Indo-Pacific as a whole.

And he disputed Donald Trump’s assurances that President Xi would not move on the island because of US military might. He advocated South Korea joining the Quad and said that both Seoul and Tokyo should be brought into an “AUKUS-like” arrangement to help strengthen deterrence.

I just don’t think Trump or his administration have a coherent strategy to deal with China or the Indo-Pacific as a whole.

On Monday, Mr Xi told President Trump that “Taiwan’s return to China is an integral part of the post-war international order.”

The phrasing is a significant sharpening of his language relating to Taiwan. He has said he wants the Chinese military to be ready to take over from 2027.

It is only the second known time that Xi has used this form of words in relation to Taiwan, the only other being an article published in Russian media in May that went largely unnoticed at the time.

“I don’t personally believe their chosen course is to invade the island, I think it’s too risky for them,” Ambassador Bolton said, speaking to the Latika Takes podcast for The Nightly.

“They want the full productivity of Taiwan. They want the chip manufacturing assets and everything else on that amazing island.

“So I think what China would aim to do is create a political crisis under some pretext, and then throw a blockade around Taiwan and see what the US, Japan, and others in the region do.

“That’s where the danger is, and that’s where the isolationist impulse in the administration come into play.

“If somebody says, but Taiwan is all the way across the Pacific, it’s a blockade. Why are we gonna fight to break through? I would worry that that isolationist argument could prevail.”

The timing of the Xi-Trump call came amid a new diplomatic row between China and Japan, after Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said any Chinese attack on democratically governed Taiwan could trigger a Japanese military response.

Trump did not mention that he spoke about Taiwan in his post on Truth Social after China issued its readout of the call, first revealing that the two leaders had spoken.

While the US President has maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity, not stating what he would do in the event of a military takeover of Taiwan by China, he has privately expressed views questioning why the US would use its military resources to defend the Taiwanese, which Ambassador Bolton recounted in his memoir.

Last month, while sitting alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the White House Cabinet Room, Mr Trump said that while Taiwan was the “apple of his (Xi’s) eye” the Chinese leader would not seize the island because the United States “had the best of everything” when it came to military strength.

“I think we’ll be just fine with China. China doesn’t want to do that. Now that doesn’t mean it’s not the apple of his eye, because probably it is, but I don’t see anything happening,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Trump has frequently praised what he says is his great relationship with Mr Xi and has gone so far as to refer to their recent meeting in South Korea on the sidelines of APEC as a meeting of the G2, placing China as an equal to the United States.

President Trump said he had accepted an offer to visit Beijing next April and offered Mr Xi a state visit to the United States later next year in return.

Ambassador Bolton said Mr Trump’s belief in his personal dominance in his relationship with Mr Xi was misguided.

“Trump is badly off course if he thinks that personal relations alone are gonna protect Taiwan. And I think we should be worried about Taiwan. I think the difficulties inside China itself, actually enhance the danger for Taiwan,” he said.

“It’s not gonna be solved even if Trump reaches the biggest trade deal in history with China. Taiwan is a neuralgic issue for them, and I don’t think our administration currently knows exactly what to do to deal with it.

“We’ll see how things progress, but at the moment, I just don’t think Trump or his administration have a coherent strategy to deal with China or the Indo-Pacific as a whole.”

Mr Trump’s comments during his White House meeting with Mr Albanese were prompted by a question about whether AUKUS, the program for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the United States and United Kingdom, were to deter China over Taiwan.

Ambassador Bolton said that Japan and Korea should be drawn into AUKUS-like arrangements to create stronger deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and backed absorbing South Korea into the Quad to give them a “larger role in some kind of collective self-defence structures.”

He said Australia, the Philippines, India, Japan and South Korea needed to work together to navigate around Mr Trump’s incoherent foreign policy, which he said was based on dollars and cents and Trump’s own interests, rather than any philosophical outlook.

He also backed President Trump’s suggestion that the US could sell South Korea its nuclear-powered submarines, a capability only extended to Australia and the UK.

“There are times when you have to look at what the threat environment is and we’re not talking about nuclear weapons here,” he said.

But Professor Michael Green, the CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney said in the event of an attack on Taiwan, the US would feel enormous pressure to respond under the obligations of the Taiwan Act of 1979 that states such a scenario would represent a grave threat to the US and Western Pacific.

“So even if President Trump does not feel a particular attachment to Taiwan, the American people in polls and the US Congress and likely the majority of any Trump cabinet would feel a very strong attachment to security of the Western Pacific, meaning Japan, Australia, the Philippines — three treaty allies where there is a security guarantee — and overall US interests in preventing hegemonic coercion of the Indo-Pacific,” Professor Green said.

“Trump is mercurial and unsentimental and ready to cut deals with authoritarian leaders but he is not an autonomous actor even if he is commander-in-chief.

“He could do significant near-term damage to Taiwan and Japan if he hews to Xi’s demands on Taiwan at their summit next year but it would not be an enduring US foreign policy position.”

He supported a greater defence integration between Australia and Japan and South Korea but said it was wishful thinking to believe that the US would give its nuclear propulsion secrets to anyone else in the near future, pointing to the huge difficulties in obtaining Congressional support that was eventually given on the basis that it was only for Australia.

“Maybe some day but not anytime soon. It would be a very, very heavy political lift and Trump does not have the acumen or political capital with Congress to see it through.”

Ambassador Bolton served as one of Mr Trump’s four national security advisers before falling out bitterly with the US President whose administration is now pursuing him in the courts related to the publication of his memoir detailing his time in the White House, The Room Where It Happened.

Asked why he was not choosing silence, as many traditional Republicans have been during the second Trump term, Mr Bolton said he saw no other alternative.

“I do think Trump is running a retribution presidency, but I have no intention of letting him silence me,” he said.