John Bolton's Contribution to 'America First'
As Bolton's blockbuster book blasts Trump, he may want to consider how he contributed to the president's populist assault on the U.S.-led international system.
āA disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war.ā This is how President Trump recently described former National Security Advisor John Bolton, whose book The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir has managed to snatch headlines amid the worst civil unrest in the United States in decades, a pandemic that has left more than 120,000 Americans dead, and an economic crisis worse than anything since the Great Depression.
And no wonder: Even after years of desensitization to Trump, the book contains a series of claims that still manage to shock and horrify: Trump promised to ātake careā of an investigation into a Turkish state-owned bank that was suspected of evading sanctions on Iran. He made a similar promise to the Chinese telecom firm ZTE, and pleaded with Chinese president Xi Jinping to buy American agricultural products in a quest to help him win reelection. He told Xi that the two-term presidential limit should be lifted for him (Trump, not Xi), and expressed his approval for the concentration camps in which more than a million Uighurs are being detained and āre-educated.ā
But as Trump launches his predictable volley of insults and accusations at Bolton (his M.O. for any former administration official who speaks out against him), itās important to take a look at how heās going after a man he hand-picked to advise him on national security. Trumpās most aggressive criticism of Bolton has focused on his hawkishness: Beyond arguing that Bolton āonly wanted to go to war,ā Trump lambasted him for suggesting that the United States should consider a military response to North Korea. āWhen Wacko John Bolton went on Deface the Nation and so stupidly said that he looked at the āLibyan Modelā for North Korea,ā Trump taunted, āall hell broke out.ā This concern about bellicose language is extraordinary coming from a president who threatened North Korea with āfire and fury like the world has never seen,ā but it raises a question: Why did Trump hire Bolton in the first place?
Boltonās hawkishness couldnāt have come as a surprise to Trump. As Dexter Filkins notes in a May 2019 profile of Bolton for the New Yorker, āTrump admired Boltonās Fox appearances ā he has praised him as a ātough cookie.āā When Filkins asked about the potential for disagreement with Trump, Bolton assured him, āThe President knows where I stand on all the issues, because he watched me on Fox News.ā
Trump was explicitly aware of Boltonās attitude toward military interventionism ā a former senior administration official told Filkins that Trump was wary of āhis interventionist mind-set. āTrump had big reservations,ā the official said. āJohn wants to bomb everyone.āā Yet despite Trumpās āmaximum pressureā campaign against Iran and support for increased defense spending, he has also attempted to wind down the United Statesā āendless warsā through the Taliban peace deal, the disastrous decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, and other policies that would be anathema to Bolton.
It wasnāt Boltonās attitude toward interventionism that Trump admired ā the rationale behind selecting him as national security advisor is best summarized by the noxious slogan Trump uses to describe his foreign policy: America First. As Filkins put it in his profile of Bolton: āTrumpās foreign policy, to the extent that he has one, tends toward isolationism, while Boltonās is expansive but heavily unilateral, spurning allies when necessary. At times, though, unilateralism can sound a lot like America First.ā
In Boltonās view, many international institutions and agreements are ploys to constrain or harm the United Statesāa zero-sum attitude that Trump shares. In fact, many of the points Bolton made during the Obama years were almost perfect prefigurations of Trumpās policies today.
Bolton is hostile to multilateral institutions and agreements because he believes they are undemocratic encroachments on American sovereignty. For example, in a 2011 article that accused the Obama administration of using international institutions as a way to circumvent domestic political constraints, Bolton argued that ālimiting Americaās military options and capabilities through international agreements and organizations is a high priority for the Obama administration.ā In the piece, Bolton condemned everything from arms control treaties to the UN to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Bolton observed that the Obama administration had been āhard at work since Inauguration Day negotiating with Russia to significantly reduce both Americaās nuclear weapons and delivery systems,ā and he was critical of Obama-era arms control agreements such as New START. Now the Trump administration has announced that it will pull the U.S. out of the Open Skies Treaty (which allows countries to track military movements and installations with reconnaissance flights) after exiting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty last year. New START will expire in February 2021, and while the Russian government says itās willing to renew the treaty for five years without preconditions, the Trump administration is considering whether instead to push for a new treaty that would incorporate China. The chances of a successful replacement are slim.
Bolton described the ICC as a āgiant opportunity to second-guess the United States and the actions we take in self-defense.ā Earlier this month, Trump issued an executive order which declares that the ICC is threatening to āinfringe upon the sovereignty of the United Statesā after authorizing an investigation of possible war crimes in Afghanistan. The order states that this constitutes a ānational emergencyā and announces the imposition of sanctions on ICC officials who are responsible for investigating U.S. personnelāan unprecedented attack on the court.
āUnder our Constitution,ā Bolton argued in 2011, āwe are fully capable of deciding how and when to use military force, how our warriors should conduct themselves, and how to deal with those who violate our standards.ā But just a few months ago, President Trump granted full pardons to a pair of Army officers who had been charged with war crimesāone of whom, 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, was serving a 19-year sentence for ordering his soldiers to fire on three men in Afghanistan. Trump also promoted a Navy SEAL who was acquitted on the charge of murdering a prisoner of war but convicted of posing with the manās corpse. Bolton argued that the United States didnāt need and didnāt deserve international supervision. Trump interpreted the freedom from supervision as carte blanche for lawlessness.
Bolton said, āWe do not need international human rights experts, prosecutors, or courts to satisfy our own high standards for American behavior.ā But he makes it clear that observing high standards of behavior isnāt his dominant concernāwhat he cares most about is protecting American āsovereignty.ā āMany senior administration officials,ā he wrote in 2011, āhave demonstrated their sympathy for using international āhuman rightsā norms on the conduct of war to constrain the United States.ā When Bolton hears talk of protecting human rights with multilateral laws, norms, and institutions, he hears a veiled threat to the United States.
Trump hears the same thing, which is why he constantly insists that trade agreements, alliances, and international organizations are actually mechanisms for attacking the United States. Trump obsessively emphasizes what he regards as the pitfalls of international cooperation while ignoring the overwhelming benefits, and this has drastic implications for the policies he pursues.
Trump argues that āOur allies take advantage of us far greater than our enemies.ā He regards the United Statesā role in NATO and its economic relationships with European and East Asian allies as āridiculously unfairā and decries the āmassive amounts of money spent on protecting other countriesā while āwe get nothing but Trade Deficits and Losses.ā To Trump, NATOās record of maintaining stability and security in Europe since World War II is tantamount to getting ānothingā for āmassive amounts of money spent.ā His rhetoric suggests that he would prefer the alliance worked as a protection racket in which the U.S. is paid for its security services (in fact, host countries already fund a wide range of projects and initiatives such as housing and other facilities for American troops, tax abatements, etc.).
Trump described the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a ārape of our country.ā Instead of seeing TPP as one of the few effective checks on Chinaās economic rise and an opportunity to guide trade policy for 40 percent of the world economy, he regarded it as another ploy to hobble the United States.
He also claimed that the Paris Climate Accord ādisadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.ā Trump didnāt see the Accord as an international effort to address an urgent crisisāhe saw it as a āmassive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.ā
The words āsovereignā and āsovereigntyā appear dozens of times in the Trump administrationās National Security Strategy. It promises to defend āAmericaās sovereignty without apology.ā It explains that international engagement ādoes not mean the United States should abandon its rights and duties as a sovereign state.ā When the U.S. participates in multilateral organizations and initiatives, āwe must protect American sovereignty.ā The United States āwill not cede sovereignty to those that claim authority over American citizens and are in conflict with our constitutional framework.ā Although the National Security Strategy was written under Boltonās predecessor, H. R. McMaster, this is the language Bolton uses as well, presenting a wide range of international institutions as infringements on American democracy and law.
Trump and Bolton donāt just regard multilateralism as wrongheadedāthey believe itās part of a conscious plot to undermine American democracy and limit American power. During the speech announcing his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, Trump outlined an international conspiracy to sabotage the United States: āThe same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and, in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance. You see whatās happeningā¦ at what point do they start laughing at us as a country?ā
Bolton accused Obama administration officials of trying to bypass the American political system by āretreatingā to international organizations and āhoping they and their international leftist allies can win there what they failed to win at home.ā But no international agreement or institution will function if countries arenāt willing to make concessions and apply rules and norms to themselves as well as others.
Perhaps itās too much to expect Trump to understand that NATO, the European Union (which he labeled a āfoeā), and the United Nations are institutions that the United States helped build not only for the benefit of other countries, but for our own as well. Together, these bodies have helped to avert war and stabilize the world for the past three-quarters of a century. It was in the context of this stability that the United States defeated communism, became a global hyperpower, and experienced unprecedented economic growth. Canāt Trump and Bolton agree that at least some of these results were good, and perhaps even worth the price of slightly limited autonomy?
Now that his feud with the president is dominating the headlines and selling piles of books, Bolton says Trumpās foreign policy is built around a single variable: what will get him reelected. While itās true that Trumpās cynicism is a force of nature, Bolton may want to reflect on his own role in perpetuating the insular and paranoid ideas that have animated the presidentās populist assault on the international system that the United States has built over the past 70 years.
