Bolton has recently called for war with both Iran and North Korea.
By
Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vo
President
Donald Trump finally jettisoned National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on
Thursday afternoon. His replacement is John Bolton, the former ambassador to the
United Nations in the Bush administration — and one of the most radically
hawkish voices in American foreign policy.
Bolton
has said the United States should declare war on both North Korea and Iran. He
was credibly accused of manipulating US intelligence on weapons of mass
destruction prior to the Iraq war and of abusive treatment of his subordinates.
He once “joked” about knocking 10 stories off the UN building in New York. That
means his new appointment to be the most important national security official in
the White House has significant — and frightening — implications for Trump’s
approach to the world.
Bolton’s
new job was announced on Thursday evening, when the president tweeted that
McMaster planned to resign and Bolton would replace him. “I am pleased to
announce that, effective 4/9/18, [John Bolton] will be my new National Security
Advisor,” the president wrote.
Bolton
had been rumored to be the frontrunner for the job for months, but that doesn’t
make the pick any less jarring. His track record in government, connections to
anti-Muslim groups, and stated views in op-eds and public speeches all suggest
that he will push Trump to take extremely dangerous positions on issues like
North Korea, Iran, and ISIS.
“I
operate on the assumption that John Bolton should be kept as far away from the
levers of foreign policy as possible,” says Christopher Preble, the vice
president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato
Institute. “I think I would rest easy if he was dog catcher in Stone Mountain,
Georgia. But maybe not.”
Bolton’s
elevation illustrates the degree to which the president is influenced by the
conservative infotainment sphere, most notably Fox News — where he has long been
an on-air fixture. Bolton was, prior to this appointment, a marginal figure in
Washington foreign policy circles since his departure from the Bush
administration. But he got himself one of the top jobs in the country because of
his savvy work in the world of conservative media and advocacy groups.
As
a result, American foreign policy may be soon be shaped by someone who seems to
truly believe that war is the answer to the world’s most pressing
problems.
John
Bolton’s early career shows why he’s a dangerous choice for national security
adviser
Bolton
is, somewhat ironically, a quintessential creature of the Washington
swamp.
After
graduating Yale Law School in 1974, where he had become friends with future
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, he went into private practice in
Washington. He made a name for himself working in conservative politics,
becoming vice president of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute and
serving in midlevel roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush
administrations.
But
it wasn’t until the George W. Bush administration that Bolton rose to greater
prominence. In May 2001, Bush appointed him to be undersecretary of state for
arms control, basically the top diplomat focusing on weapons of mass
destruction. This position became fairly important in the runup to the Iraq War,
as the Bush administration’s case against Saddam Hussein focused on his alleged
nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
Bolton
took the hardest of possible lines. He forcefully argued that Iraq had WMDs —
“we are confident that Saddam Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction,”
as he put in one 2002 speech. After Bush’s 2002 State of the Union speech
connecting North Korea, Iraq, and Iran as an “axis of evil,” Bolton insisted
that this wasn’t just rhetoric — that there was ‘’a hard connection between
these regimes — an ‘axis’ along which flow dangerous weapons and dangerous
technology.’’
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