It rained most of the day yesterday here in Bozeman so while Jordan and her mom decided to binge watch the last season of Downton Abbey, I decided to grab some coffee and hibernate in my office to finish John Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened. It was quite a tour de force through his 17 months as Trump’s National Security Adviser.
Just to set some context – John Bolton is not a holdover from the Obama administration and certainly cannot be accused of being part of any ‘deep state’ that Trump likes to refer to. He is a card carrying, Conservative Republican who has served in three Republican administrations, both Bushes and Reagan. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and has worked in private practice as well as in government. He is known for his somewhat brash manner, hawkish views on foreign policy and someone who is unafraid to speak his mind.
I have never been a big John Bolton fan, primarily for his hawkish views on foreign policy and his willingness to advocate for regime changes (which, granted, are sometimes justified). That said, he is very knowledgeable about foreign policy, who all of the players are, and the intricacies of all of the ‘moving parts’. He is very well read, articulate and, I believe, sincerely cares about the long term well being of the United States. The mere fact that the Trump administration tried so hard to suppress the publication of this book, provided even more motivation for me to read it. And now that I’ve read it, it is pretty clear why the administration wanted to keep this under wraps.
The administration has repeatedly said that they wanted to delay the publication of the book due to the possible release of classified information. I had high level clearances throughout my career in the defense industry and routinely worked with classified information at all levels. There is nothing in Bolton’s book that struck me as coming anywhere close to information that should be classified. So, as far as I’m concerned, that whole argument from the White House is bullshit. The fact is, any foreign leader who has dealt with this administration already knows what dealing with Trump and his administration is like. So, the real reason to suppress publication of this book was to keep the American public from reading it!
It’s difficult to summarize a 500-page book in a couple of pages of text but I will try to provide some insights. Bolton discussed most of the major foreign policy issues that he was involved with during his time in the White House – North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, China, NATO and, of course, the Ukraine. It is hard to read any of these accounts without coming away with the words ‘chaotic’, ‘erratic’, ‘mercurial’, and ‘irrational’ stuck in your mind. It is very clear, that there is no long-term strategic plan that is guiding US foreign policy under Trump. Decisions are made based upon how they will play to his ‘base’, how they will play in the ‘press’, what kind of photo op something will provide. There is not even a well-defined, decision making process with well-defined roles and responsibilities. Trump often undercuts his own people at the last minute or makes decisions without informing all of the stakeholders involved. He does not listen to his advisors and shows up at meetings with foreign leaders completely unprepared.
Trump does not seem to grasp the concept of ‘long term strategy’. He views everything in short-term, monetary, transactional terms. “I win, you lose.” This might work in the New York real estate market but it is clearly not what is required when dealing with players on the global stage. The idea that he is the consummate deal maker is a myth he likes to propagate but when you look at what has gone on with the US foreign policy over the course of his administration there is absolutely nothing to support it. He has alienated virtually all of our allies and they have learned that he cannot be trusted. There is an article in the New York Times just this morning in which German officials are stating that relations between Germany and the US may be irreparably damaged.
Not only has Trump alienated our allies but our adversaries have learned how to ‘play’ Trump. Bolton discusses several instances where foreign leaders simply stroke his ego by telling him how great he is and then Trump’s staff wait with bated breath to see if Trump is going to give away the farm by falling into this trap. Every other leader shows up to these meetings with Trump prepared and Trump, in general, just wings it, based upon his ‘instincts’. The bottom line is that he scares the crap out of his staff because they never know from one minute to the next what will come out of his mouth (or his Twitter feed) or what he will commit to. Is this really any way to conduct foreign policy?
Even as distressing as the ongoing chaos is, the thing that I found the most disturbing in Bolton’s account of this time in the White House, was the consistent theme throughout the book that Trump cannot or will not separate his personal interests from the interests of the United States. Whether asking President Xi of China to buy more US farm products to help ensure his 2020 reelection, pushing for a Nobel Prize in his failed bid to de-nuclearize North Korea, or asking President Zelensky of the Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, there just seems to be no limits to what Trump will do to benefit Trump – laws, the US Constitution, and the strategic interests of the US be damned. I don’t know how anyone could read this book and not come away scared to death for the future of the United States if Trump gets re-elected.
In one of Bolton’s concluding paragraphs he states: “While liberals and Democrats focus on impeachment, conservatives and Republicans should worry about the removal of the political guardrail of Trump having to face reelection. As this memoir demonstrates, many of Trump’s national security decisions hinged more on political than on philosophical, strategy or foreign policy and defense rationales. More widely, faced with the coronavirus crisis, Trump said, ‘When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be.’ He threatened to adjourn Congress, wrongly citing a constitutional provision that has never been used. No conservative who has read the Constitution could be anything but astonished at these assertions.”
I stated in a letter to the editor of the Bozeman Chronicle that I wrote some time ago that if Trump is reelected and he no longer has to worry about future elections due to term limits (22nd Amendment to the Constitution), even his most ardent supporters may be shocked at what he is capable of. John Bolton just validated that statement and I stand by it today.
I need to get John Bolton’s book.