Antagonizing China and appointing John Bolton, a notorious hawk, to lead national security bodes ill for May’s planned summit with Kim Jong-un.
If President Donald Trump wants to resolve the nuclear standoff with North Korea by diplomatic means, he sure has a funny way of showing it.
If the upcoming meeting between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un actually results in a deal to denuclearize the isolated rogue state and restore it as a member of the international community in relatively good standing, it will be perhaps the greatest diplomatic breakthrough in American diplomacy since the end of the Cold War. For all his many shortcomings, Trump would deserve praise for this, in a Nixon-in-China sort of way.
Unfortunately, since agreeing to meet with Kim earlier this month ( likely without realizing what he was agreeing to), Trump has steadily undermined this goal with every foreign policy-related word and deed. Hopes were already dim for such a breakthrough, but his two headline decisions announced on Thursday — $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports and the appointment of John Bolton as his new national security adviser — may have been the final nails in its coffin.
To start with the obvious, Bolton’s reputation as a neoconservative war hawk precedes him. An architect and unrepentant champion of the Iraq War, Bolton consistently prefers the use of force as the primary means of solving America’s problems around the world. In Bolton’s dictionary, cooperation, international law, and multilateralism are all dirty words. Hardly anyone who has carried the title of “diplomat” shares his utter contempt for diplomacy as a means of solving problems in the world.
From his last government perch in the George W. Bush administration, as ambassador to the United Nations (an institution he openly despises), Bolton could damage little beyond what remained of the United States’ reputation and international standing. As national security adviser to Trump, however, Bolton may be substantially more dangerous, as he is likely to encourage rather than temper Trump’s worst impulses.
Bolton is due to take office April 9, meaning he will have plenty of time at the president’s side to shape his thoughts and actions before the two consequential diplomatic events coming up in May: the meeting with Kim and Trump’s next opportunity to tear up the nuclear agreement with Iran. Bolton, of course, is a longstanding advocate of war with Iran, so the odds that Trump decides to pull out of that deal are even slimmer than they already were.
