McMaster’s out. Bolton’s in. Be very afraid.
As if the Trump presidency hasn’t created enough causes for concern, here’s the latest: A president who famously threatened to rain “fire and fury” down on North Korea has hired one of the nation’s most hawkish foreign policy experts as national security adviser.
Former United Nations ambassador John Bolton might very well reinforce Trump’s most hard-edged impulses, chief among them exiting the Iran nuclear deal, in which Tehran agreed to dismantle its nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Add to this equation the voice of Mike Pompeo, the hard-line CIA director recently nominated to replace the fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and the three-year-old Iran deal’s days appear to be numbered.
Withdrawing from the Iran deal would seriously undermine U.S. credibility. Why would North Korean leader Kim Jong Un give up his nuclear weapons in a negotiated agreement — as Iran did in 2015 — if an American president can come along later and arbitrarily tear it up?
So the world might soon face two heated, nuclear crises at the same time: one in Iran and another in Korea. Never fear. Bolton — whose belligerent policy ideas were too much even for a Republican-led Senate in 2005, which voted down his nomination as U.N. ambassador (he served temporarily as a recess appointment) — has already opined on what the United States should do about Iran and North Korea: attack.
It's ironic that Trump, a harsh critic of the 2003 Iraq War, would hire an architect and chief defender of the calamitous U.S.-led invasion, which killed hundreds of thousands, created a regional power vacuum that Iran rushed to fill, and spawned the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organization.
Bolton is smart, knowledgeable about world affairs, a skilled bureau- cratic infighter — and a big fan of military force. He advocated airstrikes against Iran nuclear sites in 2015: “The United States could do a thorough job of destruction.” And the same last month in outlining a legal justification for pre-emptively attacking North Korea: “It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to ... North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first.”
Estimates of the dead in South Korea should such a first strike spiral out of control have ranged as high as 300,000 in the first few days. Trump, in one of his frequent reversals, suddenly declared this month he would meet faceto-face with Kim. Bolton, whose appointment does not require Senate confirmation, has scoffed at North Korea engaging in honest negotiations. What happens if such talks fail?
Until recently, a triumvirate of White House national security leaders served as necessary guardrails for Trump’s bombast: Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis.
Now Tillerson and McMaster are heading for the door. “God help us if we lose Jim Mattis,” James Stavridis, the former NATO supreme allied commander, told MSNBC on Friday. It’s a frightening thought indeed.