Is John Bolton right?
Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser was adamant that the American way would survive the president’s second term
I had intended to write about Ukraine, but the dramatic news on Friday from the very heartland of Swamp Notes — namely the Maryland suburbs on the fringes of DC — forced a change of tack.
I don’t suppose John Bolton was especially surprised to learn the FBI had turned up on his doorstep in sleepy Bethesda. He gained acute insight into the mindset of Donald Trump when he was national security adviser in the US president’s first term. And with all the clarity and frenzy of a convert, in the seven months of Trump’s second term the veteran US hawk has been unflinching in his critique of his former boss.
However accustomed the world is to the nature and style of Trump 2.0, there is still something terribly depressing about the FBI’s search of Bolton’s home. It is possible of course that they are acting on hard evidence, but the raid bears all the hallmarks of petty, politicised revenge. I have worked in many countries where police regularly swooped on opponents or critics. But none were nations that had traditionally prided themselves as bulwarks of democracy.
As I read about the raid I found myself recalling my own encounters with Bolton over the years. I first interviewed him in London early in the second term of President George W Bush when he was one of the few officials to remain publicly a stalwart advocate for the by then controversial US-led invasion of Iraq, and he was also in favour of intensifying pressure on Iran. I also interviewed him at the United Nations, in 2006, when he was Bush’s UN ambassador.
In those years, the idea that this forceful — if not abrasive — believer in the use of American power would become one of the most outspoken and articulate critics of a Republican president would have been inconceivable. But that of course is what he has become.
Most recently I caught up with Bolton in June in Berlin where he was speaking at the FT Global Affairs and Business Council. I can see how he might have got under Trump’s skin . . .
When I asked him to explain the latest apparent Trump flip-flop he replied:
“For Donald Trump, talk is cheap. What he says in the morning may or not be what he says in the afternoon. He is just looser in words than most politicians because he has had a very successful career at never being called to account for them . . . ”
He was similarly dismissive when I asked about Trump’s relationship with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (We were speaking as Trump was seemingly havering over whether to bomb Iran.)
“Right now [Trump] sees Netanyahu as being at the head of the parade. That’s where Trump should be in Trump’s view of the world. He wants to be on the winning side because Donald Trump is always a winner . . . Trump is jealous of Netanyahu because of all the politicians in the world, the one better at getting headlines is Netanyahu.”
Part of the reason I imagine that his critiques sting the president is that Bolton is not a partisan hack. Rather he is a very experienced practitioner of foreign and national security policy — even if his old-style American imperialist views are out of touch with the current Republican zeitgeist. Indeed they are out of touch with the Democratic zeitgeist too, as he is absolutely a believer in assisting regime change in Tehran. But you don’t have to agree with him to appreciate that he is a deeply serious thinker on the world.
In June he dismissed the idea that there would be a rift between the president and his Maga base if America joined Israel in its campaign against Iran.
“The threats of Tucker Carlson and some of these other nutcases are hollow,” he said. “The Maga base will stay loyal . . . If Trump decides to use force the Republican support for the war will go to 75-80 per cent.”
He seems to have been broadly right on this. But as I watched a big TV screen in the FT office on Friday showing footage of police cars outside his house, I found myself thinking of his observations on the strength of the US system and government. He was adamant that the American constitution and way would survive Trump’s second term.
Trump, he said, was neither Sulla, Catiline, Pompey nor Caesar — barons of the late Roman republic who hastened its demise. I have long argued the same, namely that America will be shaken and damaged but not broken by Trump. And I still believe that.
But I am writing from the other side of the Atlantic. Brooke, seven months after Trump’s inauguration, how do you assess his impact so far on the American government and belief in fairness and justice?