Angry Hardliner Josh Bolton Replaces HR McMaster
Washington Post, 22 March 2018, Trump names former ambassador John Bolton as his new national security adviser
Extract: President Trump said Thursday that he was naming former ambassador John Bolton, a Fox News commentator and conservative firebrand, as his new national security adviser, replacing Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.
The president announced the news in a tweet, saying that Bolton would take the job starting April 9, making him Trump’s third national security adviser in the first 14 months of his presidency.
Trump and McMaster never clicked on a personal basis and often seemed at odds on matters of policy related to Iran and North Korea.
The appointment of Bolton, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation, could lead to dramatic changes in the administration’s approach to crises around the world.
His appointment is certain to scramble the White House’s preparations for a proposed summit by the end of May between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Bolton is a fierce North Korea hawk who, in his prolific writings and television commentary, has said that preemptive war would likely be the only way to stop North Korea from obtaining the capability to attack the United States with a nuclear missile.
Bolton has touted “the legal case for striking North Korea first” in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. He described Trump’s strategy towards North Korea as “diplomatic shock and awe” and suggested that the encounter between the two leaders would be short and largely devoid of traditional diplomacy.
Bolton has been even more hawkish than Trump on Iran, pushing for the president to withdraw from the nuclear agreement that the United States and five other world powers reached with Tehran during the Obama administration.
McMaster’s departure and Bolton’s ascension will come about one month before a deadline for Trump to decide whether the United States will remain a party to the deal.
Bolton’s critics have highlighte a brusque and sometimes belittling manner with colleagues and underlings and his many put-downs of the United Nations itself. During his brief run at the U.N., Bolton was often at odds with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She told colleagues that Bolton undermined her and went behind her back to Cheney, his old friend and patron.
McMaster’s struggles with Trump were often personal. When the president would receive his morning schedule and see that he was expected to spend 30 minutes or longer with McMaster outside of his intelligence briefing, Trump would complain and ask aides to cut it back, according to two people familiar with the matter, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
McMaster is credited with improving morale and bringing order to the National Security Council following the forced departure of his predecessor, Michael Flynn, early last year. But at the NSC, McMaster often struggled to steer the foreign policy debate. He lacked the backing of Trump and had a tense relationship with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Efforts to push Mattis to produce military options that Trump had requested for Iran and North Korea often went unanswered from the Pentagon.
One big question going forward is how Bolton will work with Mattis, who has often tried to restrain Trump’s more impulsive and unconventional instincts on foreign policy matters.
Trump often praised Bolton’s commentary and defense of the president on Fox News even as he expressed skepticism about the pundit’s mustache. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
Reuters, 22 March 2018, ‘Human scum and bloodsucker’: Bolton’s White House appointment fans worries over hawkish record in Asia
Extract: Once rejected by North Korea as “human scum,” U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest pick for national security adviser has called for regime change in North Korea, prompting worries in Asia ahead of a historic summit between Washington and Pyongyang.
“This is worrisome news,” said Kim Hack-yong, conservative lawmaker and head of the national defense committee of South Korea’s parliament. “North Korea and the United States need to have dialogue but this only fuels worries over whether the talks will ever happen.”
“Our stance is that if a new road opens, we have to go that path,” a senior Blue House official told reporters. “Bolton has much knowledge on the issues regarding the Korean peninsula and most of all, we know him to be one of the U.S. president’s aides who is trusted.”
He said Chung Eui-yong, South Korea’s National Security Office head, had not yet spoken with Bolton and that Chung’s reaction to McMaster’s dismissal was “not bad”.
“I think this session between [President Trump and Kim Jong-un] could well be a fairly brief session where Trump says, ‘Tell me you have begun total denuclearization, because we’re not going to have protracted negotiations. You can tell me right now or we’ll start thinking of something else’”, he told Washington’s WMAL radio station.
Pyongyang had no immediate comment about Bolton, whosecriticism of then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Pyongyang’s human rights record in 2003 spurred state media to call him “human scum and bloodsucker.”
Bolton’s appointment will further diminish hope for China and the United States to see eye-to-eye on security issues, according to Shi Yinhong, an expert on China-U.S. relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
“What security cooperation with China can there be? Nuclear weapons, North Korea, Taiwan, South China Sea, cyberspace … Where is there hope for cooperation?” Shi said.
Tokyo expressed hopes communication with Washington would go on as normal, with one Japanese government official saying he was “very optimistic” Japan would be able to get along with Bolton as he has many friends inside the Japanese government.
Narushige Michishita, a professor at Tokyo’s Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, said “The problem is that he doesn’t have any flexibility. That’s a negative concern that I have.” For more, please see the hyperlink below:
Atlantic, 23 March 2018, What Trump’s Choice of Bolton Reveals
The president is surrounding himself with familiar faces from his favorite cable-news network—but may not find in them what he seeks
Extract: Remember “bring in the grown-ups”? They have have all now been carried off, with the sole exception of Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
Instead, Trump is staffing his administration and his legal team with familiar personalities from his preferred cable-news channel—much like an imperious child demanding that his crib be stuffed with his TV-cartoon favorites.
Trump claimed to have opposed the Iraq war. That may or may not have been true in 2003, but since 2006, Trump has repeatedly insisted that the United States would be better off today had Saddam Hussein remained in charge of Iraq. “He was a horrible guy, but it was a lot better than it is right now.”
Bolton, by contrast, has pressed for pre-emptive military action against both Iranand North Korea. Where Trump disdains allies and submits to Putin, Bolton has the opposite instincts. On Steve Bannon’s radio show in the summer of 2016, Bolton rejected Trump’s admiration of Putin and denigration of the NATO alliance.
It now seems clear that what Trump rejected in Bush’s foreign policy was not the use of force, but the application of force in service to democratic ideals. That has been the teaching of John Bolton for decades. It’s not a paradox that the two men have now come together.
The task of making sense of the [Trump Aministration’s and White House’s] chaos now falls to Bolton, a man of strong and certain opinions, but not one adept at winning friends, convincing doubters, soothing opponents, cajoling foreign leaders, or governing bureaucracy. The leaks of embarrassing information will gush into streams; the departures of experienced staff will accelerate; and Bolton’s TV presence—which Trump enjoyed so long as he retained the power to hit “pause” in mid-sentence—will only exasperate this fitful president when it arrives in real life and 3-D, bearing tasks, responsibilities, and unwelcome news. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/what-trumps-choice-of-bolton-reveals/556352/
Time, 23 March 2018, Trump’s New National Security Advisor Could Upend U.S. Foreign Policy
Extract: Fears abound in Washington that Trump is filling his Cabinet with like-minded people who will echo the President’s most pessimistic views back to him. Bolton is an unabashed hawk likely to embrace the president’s “America First” agenda that has at times undercut many of country’s longstanding global alliances. His views align with like newly nominated Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who still is awaiting Congressional confirmation after last week’s dismissal of Rex Tillerson.
Bolton, a Yale-educated Baltimore native and former senior State Department official, spent more than two decades in and out of government, but rose to prominence as a lawyer representing President George W. Bush during the Florida recount in 2000. That sign of loyalty ultimately led to a nearly two-year stint U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
But Bolton has never been one to quietly follow orders. In 1994, he declared that if the 39-floor U.N. headquarters in New York City “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
Bolton has continued to reiterate his distaste for diplomacy with North Korea. In January, he said that talking with them was a “waste of time.” Most recently, he wrote an p-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First.”
Bolton has also repeatedly questioned the multilateral deal signed during the Obama Administration under which Iran suspended its nuclear program. Trump promised to decertify it in May unless changes aren’t made.
“Taking hardline stances in op-ed pages is all good and well, but reality begins to set in once you’re briefed on military plans,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former intelligence official at the Pentagon now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“Bolton is very hard line, but he is smart and thoughtful — not impulsive,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. “I am worried, but there is some hope.” For more, please see the hyperlink below:
http://time.com/5212124/john-bolton-donald-trump-pentagon/
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