Trump adds another hawk to team after firing national security head

PRESIDENT Donald Trump will replace national security adviser HR McMaster with John Bolton, the hawkish former US ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump tweeted last night that McMaster has done “an outstanding job & will always remain my friend.” He said Bolton, who has advocated using military force against Iran and North Korea and has taken a hard line against Russia, will take over April 9.

Bolton (69) has long been a polarizing figure in Washington foreign policy circles and becomes Trump’s third national security adviser in 14 months.

Trump has repeatedly clashed with McMaster, a respected three-star general, and talk that McMaster would soon leave the administration had picked up in recent weeks. His departure follows Trump’s dramatic ouster of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week.

It also comes after someone at the White House leaked that Trump was urged in briefing documents not to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin about his recent re-election win. Trump did it anyway.

McMaster was brought in after Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was dismissed.

Bolton joins a Trump national security team that with the planned replacement of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by CIA chief Mike Pompeo, is increasingly populated by figures who share Trump’s penchant for exercising US power unilaterally.

As the State Department’s top arms control official under President George W Bush, Bolton was a leading advocate of the 2003 Iraq invasion – which was based on bogus intelligence.