The Wall Street Journal - 11.09.2019

A6| Wednesday, September 11, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.**

turn.

But Mr. Trump has opted for

dialogue over conflict. For in-

stance, he shelved plans, sup-

ported by Mr. Bolton, for a re-

taliatory strike after Iran shot

down a U.S. drone in June.

Asked about his differences

with his then-national security

adviser on Iran, Mr. Trump told

reporters: “I temper John—

which is pretty amazing.”

Iran’s government spokes-

man, Ali Rabiei, applauded Mr.

Bolton’s departure in a post on

Twitter. “Months ago, #John-

Bolton had promised that #Iran

would not be there in 3

months; we are still standing &

he is gone. With the ousting of

its biggest proponent of war &

economic terrorism, the White

House will have fewer obstacles

to understanding the realities

of Iran.”

Mr. Pompeo said Tuesday

that Mr. Trump would meet

with the Iranian president.

“The president has made very

clear he is prepared to meet

with no preconditions,” he said.

Mr. Trump has engaged in

trade battles around the world,

but opted to maintain a mea-

sured response on protests in

Hong Kong so not to disrupt

his trade talks with China, even

as Republican lawmakers of-

fered public support for the

demonstrators.

Despite pressure from Mr.

Bolton and others, including

many Republicans in Congress,

Mr. Trump continues to tread

softly on the question of sanc-

tions against Turkey after An-

kara’s recent decision to buy a

Russian air-defense system, a

move that prompted Washing-

ton to withhold sales of Lock-

heed Martin Corp.’s advanced

F-35 stealth jet fighters to the

country.

Mr. Bolton’s outspoken advo-

cacy for tougher action against

Venezuela and Cuba was a

source of great tension within

the administration. Mr. Trump

has become increasingly frus-

trated that his gamble on re-

Disagreement over Afghan peace talks led President Trump to oust John Bolton as national security adviser, ending a rocky relationship.

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

CAPITAL JOURNAL

By Gerald F. Seib

gime change in Caracas

through economic pressure

isn’t paying off.

Mr. Trump has drawn criti-

cism for rushing into interna-

tional negotiations without

careful preparation. While Mr.

Bolton’s departure opens the

door to talks with Iran, it could

worry key U.S. allies in the

Middle East, including Persian

Gulf nations and Israel, who be-

lieved that the Obama-era of

greater accommodation with

Iran was over, said Danielle

Pletka, of the American Enter-

prise Institute.

“The bottom line is it means

uncertainty,” Ms. Pletka said of

Mr. Bolton’s exit. “Uncertainty

in foreign policy, just like in

economics, is not a good thing.”

With the departure of Mr.

Bolton, the Trump administra-

tion also is losing one of its

more experienced policy mak-

ers. Mr. Bolton’s deputy will fill

the job until Mr. Trump ap-

points a new full-time adviser.

The vacancy at the National

Security Council, which Mr.

Bolton headed, occurs as Mr.

Trump is trying to find some-

one to lead the Office of the Di-

rector of National Intelligence,

which has been vacant since

Dan Coats resigned in July.

Similarly, the Department of

Homeland Security has had an

acting director since the resig-

nation of Kirstjen Nielsen in

April.

At the Defense Department,

Secretary Mark Esper started

work in his post after his Sen-

ate confirmation in July,

months after the resignation of

former Secretary Jim Mattis

over differences with Mr.

Trump.

Mr. Pompeo, a key Trump

ally, has been in place since

2018, and before that was direc-

tor of the Central Intelligence

Agency. However, he has been

mentioned as a possible candi-

date for the Senate from Kan-

sas, and key lawmakers were

unable to predict whether Mr.

Bolton’s departure would have

an effect on his calculations.

“I would guess on the

Pompeo side of the equation is

that his role in the administra-

tion, or his influence, becomes

more important,” said Sen.

Jerry Moran (R., Kan.). “If

you’re looking for stability you

wouldn’t want, in this case, an-

other cabinet member to de-

part.”

Messrs. Bolton and Pompeo

were expected to repair a long

-dormant interagency process

of decision-making and policy

formulation within the execu-

tive branch that was plagued

by a lack of coordination. But

the process has continued to

lead to diverging public state-

ments between the White

House and agencies, such as

when Mr. Trump said talks with

the Taliban were dead after Mr.

Pompeo said he hoped they re-

sume.

Mr. Bolton opposed the ad-

ministration’s opening to the

Taliban.

—Alex Leary

and Courtney McBride

contributed to this article.

The formalities and disci-
pline of diplomacy were a
tough fit for Mr. Trump from
the start. He ran for office as a
Republican but has few appar-
ent ties to the party’s tradition-
ally conservative philosophy on
foreign-policy matters. He often
cites his flexibility as a way to
reassure people that some of
his more unconventional and
controversial proposals are
subject to change.
Mr. Trump has said he shuns
the need for consensus, hailing
opposing views among his top
advisers as an asset. As one of
the last independent foreign
policy voices in the administra-
tion, Mr. Bolton conveyed an
unapologetic, ultra-hawkish but
experienced view that fre-
quently contradicted Mr.
Trump’s boisterous but anti-
militaristic approach to foreign
policy matters.
Mr. Bolton joined the admin-
istration in April 2018, a point
at which some of the adminis-
tration’s more moderate figures
were already gone. With Mr.
Bolton and Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo, a fellow hawk,
Mr. Trump’s foreign policy was
expected to take a dramatic

ContinuedfromPageOne

Path

For Talks

Is Cleared

official said. “But when the

president makes his decision, he

expects us to go out and do our

jobs. Bolton didn’t do that.”

Mr. Bolton’s departure leaves

a hole in the administration’s

national security lineup as the

U.S. faces a host of challenges

from containing Iran to ending

the war in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo, who also clashed with

Mr. Bolton but is now the most

experienced foreign-policy voice

in the administration, has been

considering a bid for a U.S. Sen-

ate seat in Kansas. The post of

director of national intelligence

is vacant.

Mr. Bolton’s resignation

caught many top White House

aides off guard on Tuesday, but

it shocked almost no one. Long

known for his pugilistic style,

Mr. Bolton added to his reputa-

tion in 18 months in the Trump

White House by battling with

the multiple chiefs of staff, the

secretary of state and first lady

Melania Trump.

Mr. Pompeo smiled widely in

the White House briefing room

on Tuesday. “There were many

times that Ambassador Bolton

and I disagreed, that is to be

sure,” Mr. Pompeo said.

Tensions between Mr. Bolton

and Mr. Pompeo had grown

worse in recent weeks, accord-

ing to the person familiar with

the matter. Meanwhile, Rob

Blair, a senior White House offi-

cial who has been a national se-

curity adviser for acting chief of

staff Mick Mulvaney, has had a

more prominent role.

Mr. Trump privately dis-

cussed as possible successors

Brian Hook, the envoy to Iran;

retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a

national security adviser to Vice

President Mike Pence; and Rick

Waddell, a former deputy na-

tional security adviser, said a

person familiar with the conver-

sation. Others discussed by

those close to Mr. Trump in-

cluded Mr. Blair.

A predawn riser and a speed

reader, known to consume hun-

dreds of pages of intelligence

reports on a daily basis, Mr.

Bolton was often well-equipped

to debate colleagues on sensi-

tive policy matters that at times

turned into shouting matches,

according to senior administra-

tion officials.

Mr. Bolton, for instance, en-

gaged in a heated argument

with Mr. Mulvaney during Mr.

Trump’s trip to London earlier

this year over Iranian policy,

these people said. Mr. Mulvaney

accused Mr. Bolton of trying to

start a war and veering from

Mr. Trump’s preferred path, the

people said.

Mr. Bolton also expressed lit-

tle desire to help the president

strike deals with many of the

U.S.’s enemies. He has long op-

posed personal diplomacy with

North Korea, an approach that

has yet to result in tangible re-

sults toward the Trump admin-

istration’s stated goal of nuclear

disarmament.

Mr. Bolton, 70 years old, took

over as national security ad-

viser on April 9, 2018.

He scored key policy victo-

ries during his tenure, such as

overseeing Mr. Trump’s with-

drawal from the 2015 interna-

tional nuclear deal with Iran. He

also pushed through a decision

to withdraw the U.S. from the

U.N. Human Rights Council.

In Congress, Mr. Bolton’s

ouster spurred strong reactions.

“I’m very, very unhappy to hear

that he’s leaving,” said Sen. Mitt

Romney (R., Utah). “His experi-

ence in foreign policy, his point

of view, wasn’t the same as ev-

eryone else in the room. That’s

why you wanted him there.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who

has a long history of opposing

U.S. military intervention over-

seas, said: “The chances for war

world-wide go down exponen-

tially with him out of the White

House.”

Democrats said the depar-

ture showed the problems with

Mr. Trump’s management style.

“Today’s action by the president

is just the latest example of his

government-by-chaos approach

and his rudderless national se-

curity policy,” said Sen. Chuck

Schumer of New York, the

chamber’s Democratic leader.

—Lindsay Wise,

Natalie Andrews

and Siobhan Hughes

contributed to this article.

had enough.
“I informed John Bolton last
night that his services are no
longer needed at the White
House,” Mr. Trump wrote on
Twitter Tuesday morning. “I
disagreed strongly with many of
his suggestions, as did others in
the Administration, and there-
fore I asked John for his resig-
nation, which was given to me
this morning.”
In his own Twitter message,
Mr. Bolton offered a different
account of his departure, writ-
ing: “I offered to resign last
night and President Trump said,
‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’ ”
Mr. Bolton’s offer to resign
came during a dispute with the
Republican president about Af-
ghanistan on Monday, accord-
ing to a person familiar with
the matter. Early Tuesday, Mr.
Bolton sent a letter of resigna-
tion to the White House, this
person said.
Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter
he would name a new national
security adviser next week.
Charles Kupperman, the deputy
national security adviser, has
been named Mr. Bolton’s tempo-
rary successor, a White House
spokeswoman said.
Mr. Bolton’s departure
showed the limits of Mr.
Trump’s appetite for confronta-
tion within the West Wing,
where he highly values loyalty
among his aides and has little
time for intransigence once he
has identified a path forward.
“The president wants people
who give him different view-
points,” a senior White House

ContinuedfromPageOne

Disputes

Lead to

Dismissal

U.S. NEWS

Bolton’s Exit Shows GOP Foreign-Policy Shift

parture roils the Trump na-

tional security team again.

More important, though,

the Bolton exit represents

something far broader: It un-

derscores a significant turn

in Republican national secu-

rity philosophy, as least as

Mr. Trump envisions it.

M

r. Bolton is a long-

standing figure in a

hawkish wing of the

Republican Party that was

prominent, and sometimes

dominant, in the party’s na-

tional security thinking from

Ronald Reagan’s presidency

until Mr. Trump arrived on

the scene.

Today, such thinkers, in-

cluding Mr. Bolton, are skep-

tical of Russian intentions,

doubtful that North Korea

will shed its nuclear weap-

ons, and undaunted by the

idea of a military confronta-

tion with Iran. They are

champions of staying the

course in Iraq and Afghani-

stan, sites of long-term troop

deployments started under a

previous Republican presi-

dent, George W. Bush.

Mr. Trump doesn’t really

share those views. He has

long been scornful of the

war in Iraq and eager to get

American troops out. The

president is so anxious to

improve relations with Rus-

sia that he proposed, just

two weeks ago, allowing

Moscow back into the club of

top industrialized nations.

He seems convinced that his

friendship with North Ko-

rean dictator Kim Jong Un is

built on an understanding

that Pyongyang is willing to

scrap its nuclear program.

The president was on the

verge of striking at Iranian

targets this summer, a plan

that Mr. Bolton and others in

the administration advo-

cated, before pulling back.

And most recently, Mr.

Trump has pursued a deal

with the Taliban that would

allow for a withdrawal of

American troops from Af-

ghanistan, bringing him into

conflict with Mr. Bolton, who

favored neither the deal nor

a complete withdrawal.

These aren’t just disagree-

ments on a few, random is-

sues but rather represent a

significant philosophical de-

bate within the president’s

party. Whether Mr. Trump

has settled that debate for

the long run, or merely tilted

the balance to his side tem-

porarily, is an open question.

T

here always have been

differences of views

among Republicans on

such issues, of course, but

rarely in recent decades have

they been so stark. When

Mr. Reagan was running for

president in 1980, he pulled

into the party a group of

leading neoconservative for-

eign-policy thinkers, such as

former United Nations Am-

bassador Jeane Kirkpatrick,

who previously identified as

hawkish Democrats. They fa-

vored a confrontational

stance toward the Soviet

Union and an activist global

role in defending American

interests and values.

Those figures fell away

from the Democrats because

of what they saw as Presi-

dent Jimmy Carter’s insuffi-

ciently hard-line policies to-

ward Moscow. They fit nicely

into the GOP because of its

staunchly anti-Communist

views.

Mr. Bolton, who served in

the Reagan administration,

has in the past rejected the

neoconservative label. Still,

he is a kind of philosophical

descendant of that school.

While the Cold War was un-

der way and Republicans

could unite in opposition to

the obvious Soviet enemy,

differences in emphasis were

easier to paper over.

Today, the Soviet Union is

gone, and the glue that held

conservative foreign-policy

thinkers together has gone

with it. When Mr. Trump ran

for president in 2016, he

gave loud voice to what had

previously been a distinctly

minority view in the party:

that the U.S. had been too

eager to serve as a police-

man and hired army around

the world. Others in the

party, notably Sen. Rand

Paul of Kentucky, had been

saying similar things, but

not with the same volume

and impact Mr. Trump

brought to the task.

Mr. Bolton was well aware

of a philosophical gap with

Mr. Trump before taking the

job as national security ad-

viser. Indeed, shortly before

taking the post, he wrote an

opinion piece for this news-

paper laying out the case for

a pre-emptive strike against

North Korea. Soon thereaf-

ter, Mr. Trump was meeting

with North Korea’s Mr. Kim

and expressing confidence

that he would eliminate his

nuclear program.

As a result, the Trump-

Bolton alignment was never

entirely comfortable, and in

some ways it’s surprising it

lasted almost a year and a

half. Mr. Bolton handled the

contradictions by telling all

who would listen that he un-

derstood he was the national

security adviser, not the na-

tional security decider—a

balancing act that worked

until this week.

Longtime Republican
thinking on national security,
which embraces American
intervention abroad and is
comfortable with military ac-
tion, just col-
lided with
Trumpian
thinking,
which is dubi-
ous of inter-
vention and
skeptical of foreign wars.
Not surprisingly, Trum-
pian thinking has prevailed.
In a nutshell, that is the
story of the abrupt depar-
ture of John Bolton as Presi-
dent Trump’s national secu-
rity adviser Tuesday.
Obviously, Mr. Bolton’s de-

Administration’s

Rotating Cast

About two-thirds of Presi-

dent Trump’s original top aides

have left their posts or been

removed since he took office,

according to White House per-

sonnel data. The departing and

current aides include:

CHIEFS OF STAFF

uReince Priebus

uJohn Kelly

uCurrent: Mick Mulvaney

(acting)

COMMUNICATIONS

DIRECTORS

uSean Spicer

uMichael Dubke

uAnthony Scaramucci

uHope Hicks

uBill Shine

uCurrent: Stephanie Grisham

NATIONAL SECURITY

ADVISERS

uMichael Flynn

uH.R. McMaster

uJohn Bolton

uCurrent: Charles Kupperman

(acting)

LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS

DIRECTORS

uMarc Short

uShahira Knight

uCurrent: Eric Ueland

PRESS SECRETARIES

uSean Spicer

uSarah Sanders

uCurrent: Stephanie Grisham

SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE

uJim Mattis

uCurrent: Mark Esper

SECRETARIES OF

HOMELAND SECURITY

uJohn Kelly

uKirstjen Nielsen

uCurrent: Kevin McAleenan

(acting)

SECRETARIES OF STATE

uRex Tillerson

uCurrent: Mike Pompeo

ATTORNEYS GENERAL

uJeff Sessions

uCurrent: William Barr

DIRECTORS OF CENTRAL

INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

uMike Pompeo

uCurrent: Gina Haspel