Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Donald Trump
What John Bolton's exit reveals about Donald Trump's foreign policy priorities

What John Bolton’s exit reveals about Donald Trump’s foreign policy priorities

The Conversation 09/12/2019

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

By Steven Hurst | –

Everyone who works in the Trump White House eventually outstays their welcome and John Bolton was no different. In a series of tweets on September 10, Donald Trump announced he’d fired his national security advisor – although Bolton insisted he’d offered his own resignation the day before.

The immediate catalyst for Trump’s action appears to have been Bolton’s opposition to peace talks with the Taliban and a plan to bring its leadership to Camp David for a summit. The failure of those talks seemed to vindicate Bolton and humiliate Trump. Doubtless, this was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as Trump was concerned.

There’s a great danger in trying to read too much logic into Trump’s actions. To assume that Trump fired Bolton because of some long-term or deep-rooted philosophical disagreement about US foreign policy, as opposed to a whim, risks imposing a rationality on events where no such thing may exist. Nevertheless, it’s possible to identify some substantive reasons for this parting of the ways.

On the face of things, Bolton was a pretty good fit for the Trump administration. There was an extensive overlap between his fundamental views and some of Trump’s positions. They share a contempt for multilateralism, international organisations – particularly the United Nations, to which Bolton was former US ambassador – and international law, along with a disdain for the European Union and many of the US’s traditional allies.

They also appear to have in common a belief in the importance and utility of military force. Yet in practice their apparently shared hawkishness was only skin deep. It is this, primarily, which was the cause of the eventual parting of the ways.

Opposing strategies

Throughout his career, Bolton consistently believed in the utility of military force as a tool to proactively reorder the world in America’s interest. In the run up to the Iraq War he repeatedly insisted that war was the only recourse that would serve to achieve America’s goals. No alternative – not sanctions, not diplomacy – would halt Saddam Hussein’s march to nuclear weapons.

Despite the less than optimal outcome of that war, he could nevertheless be found – a decade later – making exactly the same arguments about Iran. Before taking up his position in the Trump administration, he also advocated pre-emptively bombing North Korea.

Bolton is like a workman who only owns a hammer, with the result that every foreign policy problem is treated as a nail.

Trump can hardly be classified as a peace-monger. He has significantly increased the US defence budget, withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, increased drone strikes and failed to end any of the wars that the US was involved in on his accession to office. But his hawkishness is nevertheless of a different kind to Bolton’s.

Trump has often been described as a “Jacksonian” in his approach to foreign policy. One of the characteristics of the Jacksonian mindset – named after the 19th-century US president Andrew Jackson – is that it believes strongly in the utility of force, but only in the face of immediate threats to US national security. If faced with a direct threat, Jacksonians will respond with all means at their disposal, but they are instinctively sceptical of the idea that the US needs to overthrow regimes on the other side of the world in order to protect US national security.

Trump’s labelling of the Iraq War as “stupid” and his desire to withdraw the US from the Afghan and Syrian conflicts, albeit unfulfilled, reflect his Jacksonian instincts. There is a clear difference here to Bolton’s casual willingness to resort to force to reshape the world. Despite his bellicosity and hostility toward Iran, for example, Trump is clearly deeply reluctant to be dragged into a war with the Islamic Republic.

Searching for the ‘big deal’

In addition, Trump is obsessed with the “big deal” – the dramatic, rabbit out of the hat diplomatic achievement that will demonstrate beyond any doubt that he is the master negotiator and the man who can do what no other president could. As a result, his hawkishness has been consistently intertwined with lurches into diplomacy as he seeks to achieve his diplomatic masterstroke.

His administration launched efforts with North Korea and the Taliban, and Trump indicated he would also be prepared to talk to Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani. In each instance, Bolton has opposed and criticised the initiative – to Trump’s no doubt growing irritation.

Finally – and in no way disconnected from Trump’s instinct to avoid foreign wars and to secure a grand diplomatic achievement – he has an election to win in 2020. In this context, a new war in the Middle East, or elsewhere, would be an enormous political risk. Bolton’s departure largely negates that risk and with Trump’s strategy of “maximum pressure” on Iran showing no sign of success, it opens up the possibility of renewed engagement with Tehran as the president continues to seek a major diplomatic achievement before his re-election campaign.

Ultimately, therefore, Bolton was just too hawkish for Trump to tolerate. His persistent campaigning for military action and opposition to Trump’s diplomatic initiatives wore down the president’s willingness to tolerate him, with the Taliban episode simply being the last straw.The Conversation

Steven Hurst, Reader in Politics, Manchester Metropolitan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

———

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

AlJazeera English: “John Bolton ousted | Inside Story”

Filed Under: Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Republican Party

About the Author

The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit media outlet that works with academic experts in their fields to publish short, clear essays on hot topics.

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Are Cyberattacks and Iran's Port Explosion the First Salvo in Disrupting U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks?
  • Even as it Strikes Deals with Trump, the Gulf Embraces Chinese Tech Giants
  • Removing Syria Sanctions is a Win for the People, Whatever Trump's Motives
  • Donald Trump's Feverish Lust for Green Energy Resources isn't about the Climate
  • Can we Even Remember it? How America was Disappeared before our Eyes

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved