As a candidate, President Trump leveled the harshest criticism of the Iraq War by any Republican whose last name wasn’t Paul. Yet on Thursday, he tapped John Bolton, a member of the dwindling class of unrepentant Iraq War supporters, as national security adviser. At first glance, this may seem like an odd and contradictory match, but upon closer inspection one can see a common national security thread between the two men.
It’s true that looking at it one way, the Bolton appointment could be seen as a clear break from Trump’s “America First” non-interventionist campaign rhetoric. Indeed, my Washington Examiner colleague W. James Antle III, makes that case, arguing “John Bolton is proof that Trump has abandoned his best campaign promise.” He highlights Trump’s criticisms of the Iraq War and other military interventions, arguing, “One of the most valuable things about Trump’s challenge to Washington’s governing class and the bipartisan political elites was his willingness to break from these obvious failures, even when perpetrated by Republicans.”
Though there is certainly truth to this, I also think it’s important not to view Trump’s statements in a vacuum. While he made many non-interventionist statements, he also promoted the idea that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was a “pussy” for equivocating about water boarding and boasted that he would “bomb the shit” out of Islamic State.
On the surface, it would seem contradictory for Trump to sound like Ron Paul one day and Lindsey Graham the next, yet crowds cheered him either way. Whereas Trump’s apparent incoherence has alarmed foreign policy professionals, it was a better match for a Republican electorate that has competing impulses on foreign policy rather than one overarching vision.
In the years after the Sept. 11 attacks and during the height of the Iraq War, Republicans were generally unified in supporting the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But as the War on Terror’s failures (or at least limitations) became apparent to a larger share of Republicans, that became fractured. Republicans, on the one hand, became disillusioned with the idea of endless wars and of making democracy promotion a central facet of American foreign policy. But at the same time, they still wanted a leader who they saw as tough in defending America and its values on the world stage. They saw former President Barack Obama as weak and ineffective, somebody who apologized for America, tried to suck up to our enemies and bash our allies.
During his own presidential campaign, Cruz tried to weave these competing impulses into some sort of coherent national security vision. At a time when a lot of analysts were dividing Republicans into isolationists and neoconservatives, Cruz tried to add a “a third point on the triangle” — that aimed to project strength without engaging in national building projects. As Cruz worked to formulate and articulate this vision in intellectual terms (and differentiate himself with Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on one end and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on the other) Trump swooped in and basically spouted out rhetoric that appealed to both sentiments.
This is where Bolton comes in. Though often described as a “neocon” by lazy writers, that doesn’t apply to him either in the traditional sense of the word or the more modern usage. That is, Bolton was never a liberal convert to conservatism, but somebody who volunteered on Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign as a teenager; went on to study under conservative legal giant Robert Bork at Yale Law School (where Bolton also helped guide a fellow student named Clarence Thomas down his path to conservatism); and has been involved in movement conservatism ever since.
Further, even during the Iraq War debate, Bolton was never on board with democracy promotion, instead viewing it through the prism of non-proliferation. Though this made little difference during the Bush era (when every supporter of the war was tagged with the “neocon” label), the rift became more apparent during the Obama era, when Bolton broke with neoconservatives who had hopes about the Arab spring and were eager to strike Syria.
In 2013, Bolton explained to me, “Neoconservatives thought the Arab Spring would move the region in a positive direction, whereas the more (national) interest-oriented conservatives believed it might not work out because the conditions weren’t right and because the abstract emphasis on democracy doesn’t necessarily comport with the actual circumstances around the world.”
At a time when prominent neoconservatives were portraying opponents of a Syria strike as isolationists, Bolton also emphasized that, “I think there are neoisolationists in the Republican Party, but I don’t think that’s a good description for everybody who opposes the use of military force in Syria.”
So, if we were to draw a Venn Diagram of Trump and Bolton, we’d find that while they have different ways of expressing things and may not always come to the same conclusions, they do share a central belief that, generally speaking, the U.S. should project strength and promote American interests abroad, but should do so for the sake of national interest and not allow sentimentality to cloud our judgment.
Though there are clear areas of overlap between Bolton and Trump, obviously, in practice the areas of differences (the regions outside our theoretical Venn Diagram) create the most uncertainty about what a Bolton appointment could mean. Whatever their overlap, in the end, Trump was an early opponent of the Iraq War and Bolton still defends the decision to invade. So what does that mean in terms of potential military action with Iran or North Korea?
The flash consensus seems to be that either A) Bolton’s bellicose rhetoric against the two countries makes military conflict a lot more likely or B) Bolton didn’t actually believe his rhetoric, and was just playing the role of a Fox News personality.
I’d like to suggest a third possibility: that Bolton believes what he’s written and said about the threats of Iran and North Korea, but that he’s also savvy enough to understand that as national security adviser, he’d be playing a different role. His role won’t merely be to advocate his own position, but to lay out various options, with the pros and cons of each. There’s every reason to believe he would be able to perform such a role.
For decades before he became known to Fox News viewers, Bolton was a very successful lawyer. One of the key roles of a lawyer is to present clients with various legal options, and to sometimes advocate positions that you may not totally agree with.
In the past, Bolton has shown that even though he may fight for his own positions, he also understands the implications of agreeing to serve an administration. In his book, Surrender is Not an Option, Bolton writes about a time when he was so frustrated with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s concessions on Iran. What was described as a policy of carrots and sticks he believed was, in reality, all carrots. So when they went to dinner to discuss the administration’s policy, he writes, “for my appetizer, I ordered carrot soup.”
Yet snark aside, once the decision was made, Bolton agreed to call conservative commentators who would be most likely to criticize the move to explain it, and wrote, “In press interviews that day, particularly a live appearance on Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox News, I gritted my teeth to try and defend Rice’s announcement without hopelessly compromising myself.”
Now, one interpretation of that story is, “Oh great, that’s all we need is another sycophant who will defend indefensible Trump actions.” But the portrayal of Bolton as a yes man would be at odds with a portrayal of him as somebody who will run roughshod over Trump, convincing him to go to war against his own instincts.
Back in 2007, I reported from an event featuring Bolton: “He described the possibility of attacking Iranian nuclear facilities as a ‘last resort’ that was ‘highly risky’ and undesirable. One of the risks of military action would be that we would destroy all of the known facilities, while they still maintain facilities we don’t know about. Thus, we’d incur all of the political and other fall out, while still leaving their nuclear program intact.” Though he did indicate at the time that the last resort could be close, for the purposes of assessing how he may operate in the NSA role, it’s important to recognize that it isn’t as if he’s oblivious to the potential risks of military interventions, and it’s hard to see him shielding Trump from considering those risks. It’s more likely that he’d present Trump with the costs and benefits of a given intervention along with other options, and even if he personally believes the benefits outweigh the potential cots, the decision will ultimately be up to Trump.
