The Trump administration will be the poorer without the realpolitik of John Bolton
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
John Bolton is invariably described as a hawk — even an arch or uberhawk — but he actually resembles another bird: the wise owl. Bolton, who this week left the White House after 15 months as Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, is the finest foreign policy thinker in Washington.
For the President to lose Bolton is not unlike the Kaiser losing Bismarck — a blunder immortalised by Sir John Tenniel in his cartoon “Dropping the pilot.” It is not only in his bushy moustache that Bolton resembles the Iron Chancellor. He shares Bismarck’s belief in realpolitik and, if necessary, the use of force to defend the American national interest. He takes the ancient, now highly unfashionable, view that those who want peace must prepare for war.
Bolton’s readiness to put America first ought to have been music to Trump’s ears. It was, indeed, the reason why he initially impressed a Commander-in-Chief who loves to boast of military power, but has no idea how to deploy it in peacetime to enhance US prestige. However good his instinct for disrupting domestic politics, on the international stage Trump has proved to be about as effective as one would expect from an untutored tycoon. The art of diplomacy in the nuclear age is not the same as the art of the deal in the New York property market.
Bolton did his best to change all that. By the time he came on the scene, it was too late to rescue the President from some of his most egregious mistakes. The much-vaunted attempt to bribe Kim Jong-Un to give up his nuclear weapons by lifting sanctions was never going to succeed, but Trump ignored Bolton’s advice by meeting the dictator in the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea. This was a huge boost for Kim’s prestige; he has demonstrated his gratitude by defiantly continuing to test his missiles. While this hastily improvised encounter was taking place, Bolton was banished to Outer Mongolia.
It was the same story with Afghanistan. Bolton managed to stop Trump from handing victory to the Taliban by inviting them to Camp David, along with the Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, to sign a “peace treaty”. Like most of Trump’s deals, this document would have given the terrorists everything they wanted, in return for mere promises. The meeting was cancelled after the Taliban showed their contempt by killing yet another American. But Trump had invested too much prestige in this misguided policy and he did not like to admit that Bolton had been right to derail it.
This, only the latest of many disputes, seems to have precipitated the row that led Bolton to offer his resignation. Before this could be formally submitted and accepted, Trump tweeted that he had fired Bolton, just to add insult to injury. The President is now onto his fourth National Security Adviser — an unenviable record for a first term.
Bolton, though, leaves with his head held high. He stuck to his principles during his brief tenure. On the need to contain China, his judgement prevailed; it is a great pity that he will not be at Trump’s side if Xi Jinping crushes Hong Kong. Bolton had less success in convincing Trump to squeeze Russia — though Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states were not sacrificed. Even so, Vladimir Putin will raises a glass of Crimean champagne at the news of Bolton’s departure.
In the Middle East, Bolton’s diplomacy has had to accommodate the whims of his mercurial master. He was the leading critic of the Iran deal, which Trump was persuaded to abandon only because it had been negotiated by Obama. Sanctions against the Islamic Republic have been tightened and Israel has kept up its undeclared war of attrition against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Syria. But at the G7 summit in Biarritz, Trump suddenly started fraternising with the enemy, telling the Iranian Foreign Minister Java Zarif that he would like to meet President Rouhani at the UN in New York later this month. That meeting now looks less likely, but Trump’s gesture politics have put at risk the fruits of Bolton’s careful diplomacy.
Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, began by working well with Bolton, but then sided with the President against him. Pompeo has managed to blame Bolton, who is much better known to the public, for every foreign policy setback, from the failure to oust the Maduro regime in Venezuela to the failure to bring the Europeans on side over Iran. But the Secretary of State is actually in charge of US diplomacy. As Margaret Thatcher said, advisers advise and ministers decide. Now Pompeo will have to take full responsibility.
Just because he has left office does not mean that John Bolton has left the stage as a public intellectual. The United States will continue to benefit from his wisdom. But the ship of state has lost its pilot. This captain badly needs one — especially when he is steering it onto the rocks.
