John Bolton is no charmer. Unlike the
devious guile of a Henry Kissinger,
Bolton practises his bullying gunboat
diplomacy with a kind of dour self-right-
eousness, asserting the rights of the US to
have it their way no matter what anyone
else thinks or wants. He brooks no oppo-
sition or even reluctance and is prone to
giving corrective lectures to lesser minds.
He isn’t so much about spreading US-
style democratic values as imposing the
imperial will.
Bolton has long lurked on the extreme
flank of the Republican Party dedicated to
a highly militarized approach to running
the US Empire. He’s now 70 and has been
at it since the days when he shilled for
the presidential campaign of Barry Gold-
water back in 1964. He rejects the title of
a neoconservative as there is nothing‘neo’ about his old school American
nationalism. Like many of the US
political elite he is minted from that
seedbed of US power the Yale University
Law School, where one of his class-
mates and friends was the contro versial
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
With the Republicans in power he has
held down various foreign-policy posi-
tions, including having briefly been the
US Ambassador to the United Nations
under the Bush administration in an
unconfirmed recess appointment between
August 2005 and December 2006. This
appointment was particularly ironic
given Bolton’s militant opposition to any
form of multilateral check on US power,
especially the UN. He believes that the
UN should have only one permanent
member of the Security Council (the US)
and brought his usual take-no-prisoners
style to UN diplomacy with the usual
bull-in-a-china-shop results.
Previously the Bush administration
had placed Bolton in charge of ‘Arms
Control and International Security’
another unlikely appointment for a com-
mitted warmonger. He used the post to
undermine existing arms control agree-
ments and throw around wild (mostly
unsubstantiated) charges about weapons
of mass destruction. He was an eager sup-
porter of the invasion of Iraq and tried
to spread the ‘axis of evil’ net to Cuba,
Libya and Syria. His far-fetched claimsthat Cuba was developing a programme
of biological weaponry turned out to be
an embarrassment even for the Bush
administration. The happiest moment
of his political career came when the US
pulled out of the International Criminal
Court, exempting those (in the CIA or
the military) who committed crimes in
the defence of the US Empire from ever
being prosecuted.
Bolton is of the view that any govern-
ment annoying to the good ol’ US of A
should be subject to American-designed
regime change. His most recent targets
are the petro-regimes of Venezuela and
Iran. By making nice about Trump for
months on the Fox News channel he
wormed his way into the White House
inner circle, obviously hoping to lure the
Orange One into a war with one of these
miscreants to show America’s enemies
just who they were messing with. But
in doing so he has fallen into a position
where he is under the sway of the noto-
riously erratic president and his shift-
ing judgements. The problem is Trump
seems to be cosying up or at least trying
to make deals with just those countries
(North Korea being a prime example)
that Bolton has long targeted and vili-
fied. It could be that Bolton may end up
as yet another victim of the meat grinder
that has already chewed up dozens of
ambitions and reputations in the Trump
White House. OLOW CUNNING: He makes sure his often
fanatical views hold sway by bullying those
who stand in his way. The perpetually angry
Bolton has a reputation for going after junior
staff who dare disagree with him by trying to
ruin their reputations or have them demoted
or fired. A former State Department intelli-
gence chief described him as ‘a quintessential
kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy’.SENSE OF HUMOUR: Where it exists,
dry and tactical. For example, he joked that
‘the UN could easily lose 10 floors off its NY
headquarters building with no-one noticing’.Sources: The New York Times; openDemocracy;
Foreign Policy; The New Yorker; The Intercept;
Consortium News; Jacobin; The Atlantic; Slate.HALL OF
INFAMY
JOHN BOLTON
JOB: Foreign affairs adviser to
Donald Trump
REPUTATION: Uber-hawk committed to
regime change and shameless militarism72 NEW INTERNATIONALISTGA
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