Hawk politicians like Bolton are just
"Failure to bring Trump on their ideological path"
Instead of becoming an anti-Trump comrade of the Democratic Party
Bolton: How Trump is "making trouble"
China News Weekly Reporter/Cao Ran
Published on 2020.6.29 total issue 953 "China News Weekly"
On June 23, local time, the new book "House of Events: A Memoir of the White House", former US National Security Assistant Bolton, was put on sale.
Bolton wrote this book half a year ago. However, US President Trump reacted violently. The Bolton's "former boss" extended the review of the book through administrative and judicial procedures on the grounds of leaking state secrets, and even applied to the Federal District Court for a publication ban. Trump also denounced Bolton as "crazy dog" on social media, and called the book "a collection full of lies and fabricated stories."
US Secretary of State Pompeo, one of the parties in the book, issued a statement on the occasion of the publication of the new book, acknowledging that he had not read the entire book, but asserting that it was a "complete lie." Like Trump's continuous attacks on social media, Pompeo did not provide evidence.
The senior diplomats Paul Doug and De Thomas, who have served the US government for several sessions, confirmed the authenticity of the contents of Bolton's book to China News Weekly. "This is obvious. Trump's own words and deeds almost proved everything." Bao Doug said. Bolton's old colleague De Thomas believes that "House of Incidents" is a summary of the failure of the Washington hawks and Trump "combination" represented by Bolton.
According to the Brookings Institution statistics, since Trump took office, the turnover rate of senior White House officials has reached 65%, the highest proportion in American history. Among them, the three national security assistants, a secretary of state and a secretary of defense who have left the office all turned against the president. Facing Bolton's new book, the Trump team's response was particularly intense. Some US media believe that because the election has begun to sprint, Bolton's breaking news may affect Trump's votes. Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University, pointed out that the content of the book may help to impeach Trump again.
The failure of hawkish professionalism
In addition to oil tycoon Tillerson and right-wing media man Bannon, Bolton and former US President’s Assistant National Security Matt McMaster, Defense Secretary Mattis, etc. have rebelled with Trump’s diplomatic and security affairs after leaving office. Senior officials have common characteristics: they were once classified as "radical hawks" in Washington, and belong to a minority in the political spectrum, but they have held senior positions in the government for a long time and worked with conservative and liberal elites.
"Although I don't support the way Bolton handles government affairs, he is a serious and capable professional." De Thomas recalled to China News Weekly that Bolton has always been "work organized and knowledgeable to complete his duties." ". When President Bush Jr. came to power in 2001, De Thomas, who later became Assistant Secretary of State for Nuclear Proliferation in the United States Department of State, worked under the then Deputy Secretary of State Bolton.
Bolton, whose ability is recognized by his colleagues, has served as an assistant secretary of state, deputy secretary of state, and representative to the United Nations in various governments. At the same time, he is also known for frequently accusing the United Nations and other multilateral agencies of "insignificance" and criticizing the US diplomatic community for "not thinking about the interests of the United States." He is also known as a "radical nationalist among national security officials" in Washington.
Unlike ordinary conservative diplomats, Bolton has few friends in the State Department because "he does not have conflicts with liberal diplomats, but contradicts all professional officials of the State Department who oppose the opposition." De Thomas said: "I I believe he is proud of this incompatibility." In the 2016 presidential election, this group was completely separated from other conservative elites.
After Trump's victory, most conservative diplomats and senior international security officials, like their liberal colleagues, stood opposite the president. President Bush’s National Security Assistant Rice publicly stated that the current president did not trust the "diplomatic veteran." As Tillerson, a diplomatic "newbie", became the first secretary of state in the Trump administration, he quickly brought the president's "distrust" to the State Council. He cut the State Council’s budget by a third, involving 2,000 diplomatic posts, and nearly a hundred senior diplomats left within a few months.
"Hawks" like Bolton saw opportunities in Trump's distrust of traditional diplomacy. Trump's dislike of the multilateral mechanism and respect for "America First" seem to fit the "radical hawks" proposition. In De Thomas's view, Bolton "may think he and Trump are ideologically compatible, and he can lead Trump to his agenda."
At the time, Trump was in desperate need of hiring. After the conservative elite left, a large number of key positions in the US government were unavailable. Thus, a mutually exploitable relationship was established between Trump and the hawkish diplomatic elite.
In March 2018, Bolton became Trump's assistant to national security affairs and had his own office in the West Wing of the White House for the first time. When De Thomas criticized "our government knows too little about North Korea," Trump followed Bolton's suggestion and proposed to North Korea a "complete, verifiable, and irreversible" denuclearization plan.
At the second "Golden Meeting" in February 2019, North Korea had come up with its own bottom line plan: to close the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon in exchange for partial lifting of sanctions against North Korea. But the Trump administration asked North Korea to close another undeclared nuclear facility. The negotiations broke down immediately. Information later disclosed by the American media showed that Bolton's "credit" was among them.
However, this kind of "mutual utilization" eventually turned into "turning one's eyes against one another." On September 10, 2019, Trump declared that he fired Bolton, and Bolton said he had resigned the previous night.
On the surface, the reason for Bolton's departure is because he can't keep up with Trump's policy changes. He insisted on taking the toughest policy toward North Korea, trying to prevent the president from meeting with North Korea’s top leader, Kim Jong-un, and gradually disagreeing with Trump’s ideas. He was named by North Korean official media as an obstacle to North Korea-U.S. dialogue and was eventually expelled from the White House.
But this is not the real reason why he and Trump "break up". Bao Doug, the vice president of the Carnegie Peace Foundation, pointed out to China News Weekly that while serving as an assistant to national security affairs, Bolton has in fact been "keeping a low profile" on Asian affairs, paying more attention to Trump and almost completely unaware of it. Iran, Venezuela and Russia.
"Bolton seemed to have disrupted the talks between Trump and Kim Jong-un, but that's all. Many areas in his career that he loved "deeply loved" did not get his attention," said Baudougue. "I suspect he is choosing Be careful when you aim to avoid unnecessary fights with Trump."
De Thomas mentioned a deeper contradiction. "The key is that Trump is not guided by ideology like Boltons, but by narrow personal self-esteem and self-interest." He analyzed China News Weekly.
This is exactly what Bolton is trying to present in his new book: Trump is an ignorant, self-willed, self-contained national leader. He did not know that Britain possessed nuclear weapons, called Finland a part of Russia, and thought that invasion of Venezuela would be "a very interesting thing". These weird opinions are flooded with weekly White House diplomatic and security affairs seminars.
De Thomas pointed out that the breaking news in Bolton’s new book mainly reflected that “the negative image formed by Trump’s behavior in public is actually worse when closed,” and the major foreign affairs decision-making process without the participation of experts makes “to Trang The worst worries of eccentric policies become reality."
Bolton's final accusation against Trump was the president's betrayal of the "hawkish" ideology. On the issues of refusing bilateral and multilateral arms control agreements, and withdrawing from international organizations, Trump and the hawks share the same views and are happy to let Bolton speak in front of the stage. But when he faced "my friend Kim Jong Un" or "my friend Putin", the hawkish warning was forgotten.
Bolton believes that Trump "cannot separate interpersonal and international relations." Out of personal appreciation of Putin, he disgusted the hawkish claims on sanctions against Russia. When communicating with Russia, he called Bolton and others "bureaucrats." He even confessed to Bolton, who was bent on destroying North Korea's nuclear weapons, that he met Kim Jong-un "just for public relations" and did not care whether a denuclearization agreement could be reached.
"Finally, Bolton understood the truth that many senior officials in the White House understood: In the Trump era, policy had no consistency, predictability or knowledge reserves, only instinct, desire and irrational decision-making," De Thomas said. In this way, Bolton seems more and more outdated. In the final months of his term, he was not even invited to participate in the White House’s diplomatic and national security conference.
On the other hand, Trump's non-professional diplomacy has achieved some "achievements." He praised his "historical breakthrough" in the North Korean nuclear issue that has not been resolved by successive US governments. But De Thomas pointed out that this does not mean that Trump’s diplomacy that rejects professionalism has really gained something, but that “foreign governments that have witnessed this kind of behavior have not opposed it and used it for their own short-term interests.”
In this context, Trump is becoming more and more confident, and professionals such as Bolton, McMaster, and Matisse have left, "because there is no room for their professionalism."
De Thomas believes that this reflects the current tragedy of US diplomatic decision-making: even a nationalist elite like Bolton, who holds a high position in the national security affairs assistant, ultimately cannot because his professionalism does not match Trump's free will. Has a lasting impact on this president who has no diplomatic experience. US diplomacy may gradually fall into the chaos of "no policy, no strategy".
Not an anti-Trump comrade of the Democratic Party
While Trump slammed Bolton's new book, Democrats, led by Speaker of the House of Representatives Pelosi, also accused Bolton of believing that Bolton would not tell the truth when he impeached Trump in the US Congress in February this year. It's "for money, not justice."
In December 2019, the Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives passed two resolutions accusing Trump of acting as president and aid chip to request the Ukrainian president to investigate the potential Democratic candidate for Biden, "for public benefit" and to eliminate personal campaign opponents. , Constitutes an impeachment charge of “abuse of authority” and “obstruction of Congress”. Three months later, the Republican-majority Senate rejected the impeachment case.
At the time, Trump instructed executive agencies and officials not to comply with the subpoenas of the House Impeachment Investigation Committee. All government departments refused to provide the necessary documents and official records to the House of Representatives, and many involved persons did not participate in the inquiry. The White House also wrote to the House of Representatives, refusing to cooperate with all impeachment hearings. The Trump team therefore argued that Democrats lacked evidence.
Bolton is one of the absent. He had not participated in the White House's decision-making on Ukrainian affairs and did not appear in the House of Representatives, saying he would only testify when requested by the Senate. After Bolton's new book was released, Ryan Goodman, a former US Department of Defense legal adviser and law professor at New York University, pointed out that the book just proved the last charge of impeachment and was enough to subvert the previous defense of the Trump team.
In the impeachment investigation at the beginning of the year, Republicans in both chambers argued that all the evidence accusing Trump of using the presidency to request Ukraine to investigate Biden is “indirect” or vague. Bolton gave a direct and clear evidence in the book: Trump said to Bolton in August 2019, "He does not approve of any assistance to Ukraine unless they hand over all investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden. "
In addition, Bolton also criticized Democrats for being trapped in the Ukrainian topic when impeaching Trump, and did not investigate Trump’s other similar diplomatic moves of “bundling personal interests with national interests”. He even prepared "new ammunition" for the next impeachment, recalling in detail Trump's intervention in the US government's investigation of a Turkish bank's association with Iran to please Turkish President Erdogan.
In December 2018, Trump directly told Erdogan that he believed that the bank related to the Turkish president did not violate U.S. sanctions on Iran and said he would "take good care of everything." In response to the judicial investigation launched by the US government, he said that the prosecutor who presided over the investigation was "not my person, but Obama's." He will replace the prosecutor to resolve the matter.
Ryan Goodman pointed out that if Bolton’s description is true, this behavior obviously constitutes a “president’s abuse of power” as defined in the Constitution.
But the reality is that it is difficult for Democrats to start a second impeachment against Trump based on this. Although the leader of the Senate Democratic Party, Shu, assumes that Bolton should have evidence in support of the content mentioned in his book, Bolton has never stated that he is willing to testify in the Democratic House of Representatives. He is well-known for his loyalty to the Republican Party in Washington and has only served the Republican government so far.
In addition to Bolton, former Defense Secretary Mattis recently wrote in the Atlantic Monthly article denounced Trump for splitting the country and mocking the Constitution, asserting that "Trump is the first president I have seen in my life that does not attempt to unite the American people." Meanwhile, Trump's niece Mary will publish a memoir about "family nightmares" and Trump's "suspicious taxes" next month.
Will these circumstances affect the election? Bartlett, a political commentator of the New Republic and a political scientist at Georgetown University, has specialized in studying the problems of the opposition in the Republican Party. He is also a former conservative who has turned. In an interview with China News Weekly, he pointed out that this time the Democrats might be disappointed again.
"The key is that there are very few voters in the Republican Party who oppose Trump." According to a survey data shared by Bartlett, anti-Trump Republican elites such as Bolton and Matisse can only get about 10% in the party. support. "It can be said that they have failed, the sign is: they failed to launch a competitive party candidate to challenge Trump's 2020 Republican primaries."
Perhaps even more pessimistic for Democrats, some observers believe that 10% of anti-Trump Republican voters will not turn into Biden supporters. Reporter John Gans, who has been in contact with Bolton for 15 years, recently wrote in the New York Times that Bolton’s resistance to the impeachment of Trump by the Democratic Party shows that “he dreamed of becoming the Republican Party’s future, not the resistance or the darling of the Democratic Party.”
De Thomas also emphasized to "China News Weekly" that hawkish politicians such as Bolton are only "failed to bring Trump on their ideological path", rather than becoming an anti-Trump comrade of the Democratic Party, whose ideology " It is consistent."
"China News Weekly" No. 23, 2020
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