Who is John Bolton, Trump's new National Security Adviser?

Last week, Trump fired three star General H.R. McMaster and appointed John Bolton and his new National Security Adviser, the third man to hold the role in the past 14 months.  The national security adviser job doesn’t require confirmation.

Why are those in-the-know so alarmed by this?  Let's briefly talk about Bolton.  

John Bolton, the incoming national security adviser, will have the ear of Trump at a perilously fraught moment in world affairs.

A notorious hawk who advocates the unilateral wielding of US might, Bolton is dismissive of international diplomacy, and has called for the bombing of both Iran and North Korea.

The good thing about John Bolton, President Trump’s new national security adviser, is that he says what he thinks.  The bad thing is what he thinks.

Many of us have known of Bolton for years, at a minimum dating back to Georgia W. Bush's regime.

He held senior positions in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, where he led successful US opposition to joining the international criminal court and made a strident attempt to block the introduction of stronger global controls on biological weapons.

He came to prominence as a household name under George W Bush, who appointed him to be the US ambassador to the UN in 2005, when the Iraq war was still blazing... he made little attempt to disguise his deep-seated contempt for the world body.

....he couldn’t get confirmed as United Nations ambassador in 2005, so Bush gave him a recess appointment, and he stayed in the job about a year.

Bolton will spread the gasoline to ignite a fire Trump would love to start.

There are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton is to lead the country into war. His selection is a decision that is as alarming as any Mr. Trump has made.

Bolton believes the United States can do what it wants without regard to international law, treaties or the political commitments of previous administrations.

Bolton is certain to accelerate American alienation from its allies and the rest of the world.  Congress... should speak out against it and reassert its responsibilities under the Constitution to authorize when the nation goes to war.

On North Korea:

Bolton, who will... join the White House on April 9th, has made clear his preference for how to deal with North Korea – bomb it. Last month he wrote an opinion column for the Wall Street Journal in which he made a legal case for a pre-emptive strike.  “It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first,” he wrote.

 On Iran:

The former ambassador... has made a similarly combative case for Iran.  He was scathing of President Obama’s attempt to deal with Iran’s nuclear program through negotiation, writing in the New York Times in 2015 that only bombing... would take out Iran’s uranium enrichment installations and prevent disaster.

He not only wants to abrogate the six-party deal that, since 2015, has significantly limited Iran’s nuclear program; he has called for bombing Iran instead. 

His past work speaks for itself and it is terrifying that this man now has incredible power.

Over a 30-year career in which he served three Republican presidents, including as United Nations ambassador and the State Department’s top arms control official, Mr. Bolton has largely disdained diplomacy and arms control in favor of military solutions.

No one worked harder to blow up the 1994 agreement under which North Korea’s plutonium program was frozen for nearly eight years in exchange for heavy fuel oil and other assistance.  The collapse of that agreement helped bring us to the crisis today, where North Korea is believed to have 20 or more nuclear weapons.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/22/who-is-john-bolton-trump-national-security-adviser

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/john-bolton-trump-national-security-adviser.html