John Bolton has advocated for war with Iran and North Korea. He loathes the United Nations, disdains international law and still thinks the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was the right idea. He’s a China skeptic and a Russia hawk who, as one former colleague from the Bush administration put it to me the other day, never met a military option he didn’t like.
And he’s confrontational in person too. Bolton, President Trump’s choice to replace the national security adviser he unceremoniously dumped on Thursday, is already criticizing the staff he stands to inherit, publicly vowing to bulldoze any bureaucratic “munchkins” who stand in his or the president’s way. Bolton is, in short, a most unusual figure in American foreign policy: personally belligerent and professionally bellicose, and soon to be the closest adviser to an inexperienced president on how to handle all the world’s many challenges.
So how alarmed should we be?
Given America's reversion to economic nationalism, I find Bolton much better suited for foreign diplomacy.
ReplyDelete'Diplomacy' and 'Bolton' are words not belonging in the same sentence.
ReplyDeleteExactly/
ReplyDeleteThe days of America being everyone's good buddy and helping them out of jams are over. Get used to it. We're rude. We're crude. And we're not going to apologize for it.
And does this mean we'll see a reduction in the number of Hollycrap patronising "Captain America has saved the world again" movies? That would be progress indeed!
DeleteNo, from now on we let your half of the world blow up.
Delete"We're rude. We're crude."
ReplyDeleteWho am I to stand in the way of progress, eh? ;-)