In one sense, U.S. President Donald Trump and his latest pick for National Security Adviser, John Bolton, were made for each other. Mr. Trump, by his own confessions on Twitter, is an avid watcher of the right-wing Fox News channel.
Mr. Bolton, after becoming a marginalised figure in Washington circles post his departure from the George W. Bush administration, embraced Fox News and emerged as one of its most cherished commentators backing a hard line on foreign policy.
Seen in this context, Mr. Trump’s pick for replacing H.R. McMaster has been a long-time coming, even if it leaves several unanswered questions on whether the two men will agree on all policy areas.
U.S. interventions
Of concern — given the high-speed departure of a long string of senior White House officials in recent months — is the risk of paradigmatic dissonance between Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolton on aggressive U.S. interventionism abroad.
Serving as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control in 2001, Mr. Bolton, a Yale University lawyer by training, forcefully argued that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He also backed the theory fronted by the Bush administration that Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, comprised a fully-functioning “axis of evil”.
Mr. Trump, contrarily, in recent weeks, described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as “the single worst decision ever made”, and during the 2016 election campaign, had vowed that the U.S. would “stop racing to topple foreign regimes”.
A second area of possible disagreement between them is Russia, which is the subject of a federal investigation for interference in the 2016 election through covert online propaganda and fake news.
Mr. Trump is clearly on the defensive in this regard. However, Mr. Bolton described the alleged Russian interference as a “true act of war, and one Washington will never tolerate”.
Second coming
Nevertheless, it is conceivable that these two issues — of America getting mired in another tedious war overseas and of Washington making any sudden moves on the murky, unresolved question of Moscow’s clandestine activities — are not likely to pose any immediate wrinkles in what might turn out to be a fruitful second coming for Mr. Bolton.
It is conceivable that Mr. Trump has simply hired a blustering, moustache-twitching, pit bull, who could be relied upon to wave the U.S.’s stick in the face of any irksome foreign regime, whether Kim Jong-Un’s or that of the Iranian government, still clinging to the promise of the Obama-era nuclear agreement.
Combustible duo
Some analysts have voiced concern that Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolton could make for a “combustible combination” that Mr. Bolton might even prevail upon Mr. Trump’s “fungible” foreign policy views and convert him into a genuine warmonger.
Yet the opposite might be true as easily, that the President, focussed on his “America First” agenda on economic front, may simply use Mr. Bolton to bring North Korea to heel and put Iran on notice, yet also see through his more radical agenda of deprioritising institutions such as the U.S. State Department and the United Nations, both organisations that Mr. Bolton treated with great disdain in the past.
