John Bolton says U.S. putting troops on the ground in Taiwan ‘makes sense’

Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton discusses the reported leak of classified Pentagon papers and the need to reaffirm our support for Taiwan. Bolton comments that after the week of China carrying out military excersies around the Taiwan Strait, that the U.S., “in the short term, there's simply no question, we've got to put more weapons systems in that [Taiwan] needs, we need to do more training of their troops. I think putting Americans on the ground would make sense and other allies Japan, Australia, I think we've got to consider home-porting some American naval vessels there. We also need to think long term to embed Taiwan and collective self defense organizations with Japan, South Korea, Australia and others. And I must say, we've got to do a better job of keeping the European allies. French president Macron, just returning from China essentially threw Taiwan under the bus saying, ‘well, we don't want Europe to be led around and get involved in the American problem.’” Bolton comments that he believes this is “the kind of behavior that really causes so much harm to our effort to deter China, it's really an incalculable and just completely unacceptable statement by one of our NATO allies.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .