Trump Fires John Bolton In Final Break After Months Of Policy Divisions
September 10, 201912:03 PM ET, by PHILIP EWING
Trump has fired national security adviser John Bolton, the lifelong proponent of American hard power, after months of division between the men over the direction of foreign and national security policy.
Trump announced the news on Tuesday in a post on Twitter.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore....
Bolton was Trump's third national security adviser and continued the pattern of departures by advisers who proved a bad fit for a White House led by the rare president with no prior experience with the military, national security or elected office.
Bolton's aggressive positions on Venezuela, North Korea and Afghanistan clashed with the comparative reluctance of his boss to entertain new confrontations and wind down some old ones.
Trump wanted to cut bait on the long-running war in Afghanistan, faulted the U.S. invasion of Iraq and rattled the foundations of America's security posture around the world, including its forward deployment of forces and system of alliances in Europe and Asia.
Bolton, meanwhile, communicated in old-school terms to leaders in Caracas, Pyongyang and Tehran, with threats about direct action by the U.S. military.
He displayed a legal pad that mused about sending the equivalent of an Army brigade to Venezuela's neighbor, Colombia.
During a chill in relations, Bolton couched the long-planned deployment of an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, as a quick response to ostensible threats by Iran to American forces in the Middle East.
U.S. commanders also sent other units, including B-52 bombers, in what they called a move to try to deter an Iranian attack.
And Bolton also was said to have been a crucial force in torpedoing an agreement between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, seeking broad concessions from Kim about his weapons of mass destruction.
Angry North Korean officials later called Bolton "dim-sighted."
The sum of positions like these and others was a national security adviser with a view about American strategic ways, means and goals at stark odds with that of the president.
Tensions eventually reached the point at which Bolton reportedly was excluded from meetings about the war in Afghanistan, an issue that might otherwise have obviously fallen into the purview of the national security adviser.
But internal allies of Trump, who had become a dove and wanted to reach a peace agreement that would permit the withdrawal of most or all American forces from Afghanistan, felt they couldn't trust Bolton not to blow up the process.
At one point, special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad would not agree to let Bolton take a draft copy of the Afghanistan agreement out of the conference room where they were meeting, The Washington Post reported.
These kinds of differences between Trump and Bolton eventually spun the two men too far apart.
Prolonged estrangement
Trump administration officials have been quoted for some time in press reports describing the unease with which the president began to see Bolton's moves.
Trump appeared to have been focused elsewhere, including on trade negotiations with China, and then dismayed when he checked back in with the issues in Bolton's portfolio.
Trump, who has mocked what he has called the wasted sacrifice and money involved with America's wars in the Middle East — especially since the United States hadn't taken any oil for itself or some other economic recompense — was not pleased to see news coverage about Bolton bringing the United States to the brink of a crisis with Iran.
Trump eventually admitted that, for as much as he said he liked Bolton, he was aware of his own need to rein him in.
"He has strong views on things but that's OK. I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing," Trump said May 9. "I'm the one that tempers him. That's okay. I have different sides. I have John Bolton and other people that are a little more dovish than him. I like John."
The mustache and the line
Bolton followed Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster — a widely respected but straight-laced strategist who never clicked with Trump personally — and retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was forced out of the administration early as part of the Russia imbroglio.
Bolton already was a well-known conservative apostle of intervention and regime change who had earlier served as ambassador to the United Nations in the administration of President George W. Bush.
He went on to became a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and served as a commentator in the press and on Fox News when McMaster's departure created the opening for him in early 2018.
Trump liked Bolton's TV appearances and sought his counsel unofficially before bringing him formally into the administration. It might have happened sooner but the president's hand was reportedly stayed for some time by Bolton's mustache.
Once Trump overcame his objections, the new national security adviser seized his new position at the top of the official national security decision-making apparatus, shaping the staff with his own appointees and leaning into shaping policy.
Gaps opened almost immediately between Bolton and Trump based on the president's freewheeling style that included making policy via Twitter or in impromptu remarks.
By the summer, Trump was saying that "we'll have to see" whether Washington would recognize the borders of Ukraine since Russia's invasion in Crimea and the eastern border.
Bolton was then asked whether the administration actually would concede the claims made by Russia based on its use of force?
The national security adviser, no fan of Moscow, sought to draw a distinction between Trump's musings and what might be produced by the National Security Council or the Defense Department.
"That's not the position of the United States," Bolton said.
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