Bolton to be new US national security adviser
‘Brash, angry, and proudly impolitic’
WASHINGTON: Shortly after Ambassador John Bolton was sent to represent the United States at the UN, an institution he had long scorned as an anti-American citadel of corruption, he hosted President George W Bush for a visit.
“Are you having fun?” Mr Bush asked. “It’s a target-rich environment,” Mr Bolton replied.
Mr Bolton, who took control yesterday as President Donald Trump’s third national security adviser is tasked with Syria as his most immediate challenge, and talks with North Korea and the future of the Iranian nuclear deal not far behind. Mr Bolton loves a good challenge and he’s had many of them over his colourful career. Till date, he has tackled the United Nations, first and foremost, but also the International Criminal Court and the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, North Korea, Iran, China, Russia and The Palestinian authority.
And then there are “the Crusaders of Compromise,” as he terms the elite of the national security world; the diplomats he refers to as “the High Minded,” with the capital H and capital M; “the True Believers” of the arms control priesthood. And, of course, Republicans who succumb to such muddled thinking, like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and even Mr Bush.
But as Trump’s national security adviser, the targeter is now slated to become the facilitator, charged with mobilising the policy apparatus rather than simply taking aim at it. He will start by cleaning house. The first change came on Sunday night when National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton stepped down.
Combative, relentless and proudly impolitic, known for a bushy mustache that is the delight of cartoonists, Mr Bolton, the enfant terrible of the Bush administration, has a kindred spirit of the sorts in Mr Trump, a fellow practitioner of blowtorch politics. When Mr Bolton moves into Henry Kissinger’s old corner office in the West Wing, it will be a Trumpian marriage of man and moment.
And yet Kissinger mastered the office by mastering his relationship with a sometimes volatile boss. For Bolton, the new assignment may require a form of diplomacy that his previous roles did not, one that eluded his predecessor, Lt Gen HR McMaster, as well as Rex Tillerson, the recently ousted secretary of state.
Mr Bolton may amplify Trump’s most bellicose instincts, as critics fear, but the two differ in key areas and even admirers wonder what will happen then.
“How will he manage Trump?” asked Eric S Edelman, an undersecretary of defense under Bush who was often allied with Mr Bolton. “Trump may love to see John defending him on Fox News. But when John is going to be responsible for policies, he has very strong convictions on things, some of which won’t line up with the president’s”.
“John’s personality is also fairly explosive like the president’s,” he added. “I don’t know how that will work out. That will be John’s big challenge”.
Mr Bolton defines himself as an “Americanist” sworn to defend the interests of the United States. Too often, in his view, America has sacrificed its own sovereignty following the chimera of global governance.
“This is almost identical to President Trump’s theme of America First,” said Frederick Fleitz, a former intelligence officer who worked for Bolton. “Mr Bolton disagrees with many of the Washington elite, or even the international elite, who think globalism or multilateralism should be a priority over the security of the United States. That’s exactly where President Trump is”.
In the world of carrot-and-stick diplomacy, Mr Bolton is a stick man. “I don’t do carrots”, he said. Opponents call him a warmonger who never met a problem that did not have a military solution, and he remains a strong supporter of the invasion of Iraq and has made the case for strikes against North Korea and Iran to stop their nuclear programs.
Mr Bolton insists that he does not relish military action. While he declined to be interviewed for this story, his longtime senior adviser, Sarah Tinsley, quoted him as saying recently that he believes diplomacy works the vast majority of the time.
“My belief is diplomatic crises, 99 and 44/100ths of them can be resolved with public diplomacy,” Mr Bolton said, a reference to a 1980s soap commercial. “That’s my view. To those who say I’m going to start a war, that’s what I think”.
Some of Mr Bolton’s harshest critics are those who once worked with him. Some view his ascension to the right hand of an already mercurial president with deep alarm.
“This will be the scariest thing that’s happened to us in 50 years,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Powell when he was secretary of state. “[Mr] Bolton is several things, none of them good. He’s an absolutely brutal manager, treats people like dirt. The stories that have come out are accurate, but they don’t go far enough. And he’s also possessed of some views that are just revolting”.