Tom LUONGO

John Bolton is out as Donald Trump’s second National Security Director.  That’s an unqualified good thing as we pass the eighteenth anniversary of 9/11.

But Bolton is only one out of half a dozen very problematic neoconservative/evangelical voices in Trump’s cabinet, though the most obviously insane.

Bolton’s missteps this year are legion and legendary.  From the failed coup in Venezuela I like to call the Bay of Fat Pigs to scuttling denuclearization talks with North Korea to helping maneuver Trump into a potential shooting war with Iran, Bolton’s fall from grace is emblematic of the inflexibility of neoconservative thinking.

And the irony here is that Bolton was fired just one day before the anniversary of 9/11, a day that can easily be seen as the day the growing cancer within U.S. foreign policy, neoconservatism, got its wings.

Trump finally seeing Bolton for the massive liability he was in achieving any of his ambitious foreign policy goals should be seen as their apotheosis.  This is Peak Neocon folks.

They got everything they wanted, a pro-Israeli President with a deep-seated need to be liked who valued trust and loyalty over competence.  Trump inherited a geopolitical landscape they’d engineered under Obama for their big win in the Middle East.  All they needed to do was manipulate a volatile and image-obsessed Trump into a moment he couldn’t return from.

That moment came when Iran shot down a U.S. Global Hawk stealth drone violating their airspace alongside a manned P-8 Poseidon.  Trump, smartly, didn’t take the bait and I said then he had a window of opportunity to put paid his peace bona fides by firing one of his inner staff who’d pushed him to that limit.

I give Trump a lot of credit here for not falling into the trap set for him. He now has to begin removing those responsible for this quagmire and I’m sure that will be on the docket when he meets with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping next week at the G-20.

It starts with John Bolton and it ends with Mike Pompeo.

And if he doesn’t replace them in the next six to eight weeks then we know Trump isn’t serious about keeping us out of war. He’s just interested in doing so until he gets re-elected.

He took a little longer than that but it’s clear Trump is not happy with the state of his foreign policy.  Firing Bolton was an excellent start. But it’s not enough, not even close.

The problem, as I see it, is that while Trump’s desire for peace in these hot spots is real, he is incapable of seeing the path to achieving it because he doesn’t care about the details.

And it’s the details that always undo the Neocons’ plans for humanity.  They apply the same tired trope, “squeeze them until the pipe squeak,” as Bolton put it, and if it doesn’t work, squeeze harder.

These folks are Trotskyites at heart, willing to do anything to bring about their revolution. Homeless after World War II, they found a home within the Republican Party starting with Bill Buckley and the National Review crowd in the 1950’s and slowly taking it over.

They have suffused both major parties with their dreams global domination by stoking American exceptionalism run rampant in the post WWII generations to intervene anywhere a wrong could be righted.

It’s pure insanity, if not inherently racist, and it needs to end.

My worry here is that Trump only did this to shore up his position with those who elected him for his foreign policy promises, none of which he has kept and nearly all of them he has broken, either willfully or through his passivity.

So, he needs to build on this down payment and get back to the table with North Korea, actually get Iran to sit at the table and tell the rabid anti-Russian political hoi polloi to just shut up and sit down.

His appeasement of the Neocons began with his bombing of the Al-Shairat airbase in April 2017 in response to the chemical weapons ‘attack’ in Khan Sheikoun.  Isn’t is ironic that just over two years later the re-taking of that town in Syria was the launching point for sweeping changes in the geopolitical chessboard?

Trump wants to be seen as the strong and competent archetype. That’s the mantle he wants to take on as president.  But he’s not doing that at all, he’s projected the aura of a mercurial and inconsistent bully with no clear strategy who refuses to keep his word.

How much of that comes from his staff, like Bolton, undermining him is irrelevant.  As the leader, as the CEO, you are responsible for everything that happens under your command.  Period.

Lead or get out of the way.

Since the Global Hawk incident Trump has gone from one foreign policy embarrassment to another.  Chinese Premier Xi Jinping openly said he cannot believe anything Trump says.  President Erdogan of Turkey recently came out and said he cannot keep silent anymore about how many weapons the U.S. shipped to the Kurdish SDF.  According to Erdogan that number is an astounding 30,000 truckloads.

This is not what we voted for and it isn’t the path to peace in the Middle East.

There are lots of signs that Trump is ready to reverse course on most of his pressure programs and is angling to cut deals.  He’s rumored to be meeting with Iranian President Rouhani on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.   His opening up about how Bolton’s presence angered North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and killed hopes for talks in Hanoi in February was refreshing honesty.

It is, sadly, what passes for diplomacy in his administration.

With the emergence of French President Emmanuel Macron leading rapprochement with Russia, after very successful 2+2 talks recently, Trump’s passive-aggression towards our policy in Ukraine is finally opening the door to improving relations with Russia.

And, of course, there is the climbing down off the mountains by both China and the U.S. over trade and tariffs.  Finally, Trump might have been convinced that destroying global trade to accommodate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by plunging the world into a global financial crisis wasn’t going to get him onto Mount Rushmore.

Firing Bolton may have been a wake-up call to the rest of the neocons in his administration, tow the line or leave.  Pompeo, in particular, has to be reined in as spokesman for Trump with foreign powers.  His behavior to this point has been appalling, walking into places like Beirut and issuing threats like some out-of-touch monarch while availing himself liberally of the buffet table.

The early returns aren’t good.  We see more shenanigans with Venezuela on the horizon.  The U.S. is preparing sanctions on Rosneft and invoking a Cold War treaty to funnel money to pretender Juan Guido.

So, while I hope things improve, I’m not sanguine, in the near term.  Trump has a lot of work to do and he doesn’t look like the guy capable of doing it.  Having occasional bursts of outrage which culminate in him making grand gestures is not the same as having a plan and an agenda.

Like Xi, Trump has squandered the trust and goodwill of many who voted for him in 2016, and we simply don’t trust him anymore.  He’s got to do a lot more than just fire one mustached crazy person who he is responsible for hiring in the first place.

Leaders accept responsibility.  They accept their mistakes and chart a new course.  Everyone on the other side of the ledger wants Trump to do the right thing but to this point he has mostly done the opposite.   Personnel is policy.  And until Trump begins appointing people to key positions that are 1) competent and 2) have a soul the edicts coming from Imperial D.C. will continue.

And the world will adjust to the rapid decline.

Tom LUONGO

Tom Luongo is an independent political and economic analyst based in North Florida, USA

Bolton Gone: Improved Peace Prospects?

The departure of John Bolton as US National Security Adviser is a good step towards decreasing international tensions by the Trump administration. But a lot more is needed from President Donald Trump to indicate a serious pivot to normalizing relations with Russia, Iran and others.

When Trump gave Bolton his marching orders earlier this week, the president said he “strongly disagreed” with his erstwhile security adviser over a range of foreign policy issues. Trump had also expressed frustration with Bolton’s incorrigible militarist tendencies.

There is no doubt Bolton was an odious figure in the White House cabinet. One of our SCF authors, Martin Sieff, wrote this excoriating commentary on Bolton’s nefarious record of warmongering dating as far back as the launching of US wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, when the mustachioed maverick served then as a chief neocon ideologue in the GW Bush administration.

One wonders why Trump brought such a war hawk into his administration when he appointed Bolton as NSA in April 2018. Perhaps, as another of our writers, Robert Bridge, surmised in a separate commentary this week, Trump was using hardliner Bolton as a foil to deflect opponents from within the Washington establishment who have been trying to undermine the president as “soft on foreign enemies”. A ruse by Trump of keeping “your enemies close”, it is averred.

Bolton certainly did his best to hamper Trump’s seeming attempts at scaling back US foreign military interventions. He opposed the plan to withdraw American troops from Syria. The reckless Bolton also wound up a policy of aggression and regime change against Venezuela, which Trump has latterly seemed to grow wary of as a futile debacle.

In regard to Russia, Bolton carried heaps of Cold War baggage which made Trump’s declared intentions of normalizing relations with Moscow more difficult.

The shameless warmonger Bolton openly advocated for regime change in Iran, which seemed to contradict Trump’s oft-stated position of not seeking regime change in Tehran, despite the president’s own animosity towards Iran.

The former NSA also opposed any attempt by Trump to engage in detente with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Reportedly, it was Bolton who derailed the incipient efforts at opening up dialogue with Pyongyang.

It is also thought that Bolton used his influence to impede Trump’s recent bid to host Taliban leaders at Camp David earlier this month which was aimed at trust-building for a proposed peace deal to withdraw US troops from that country after nearly 18 years of disastrous war.

That said, however, President Trump has not shown himself to be exactly a dovish figure. He has overseen countless sanctions being imposed on Russia, the abandoning of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, and ongoing military support for the anti-Russia regime in Kiev.

Too, it was Trump who ordered the US collapse of the 2015 international nuclear accord with Iran in May 2018 and the re-imposition of harsh sanctions on Tehran. So, it would be misplaced to paint Bolton as the sole malign actor in the White House. Trump is personally responsible for aggravating tensions with Iran, as well as with Russia, Venezuela and others.

Nevertheless, it is to be welcomed that an inveterate war hawk like Bolton no longer has the president’s ear. Perhaps Trump can be freer to act on his instincts as a pragmatic deal-maker. One thing that the president deserves credit for is his unconventional style of engaging with nations and leaders who are designated as foes of America.

Russia this week gave a reserved response to the sacking of Bolton. The Kremlin said it would make assessments of a positive change in US policy based on actions, not mere announcements, such as the firing of Bolton. Time will tell.

It seems significant that immediately after Bolton was relieved of his post, Trump hinted to reporters that he was considering lifting sanctions off Iran if such a move persuaded Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to hold a face-to-face meeting with Trump at the United Nations general assembly in New York later this month.

Iran has repeatedly stated categorically that there will be no talks with Trump unless his administration revokes sanctions and returns to abiding by the nuclear accord. If there is a serious pivot to normal diplomacy by the White House, then what Trump does about sanctions on Iran will be a litmus test.

The same can be said about US sanctions on Russia. If Trump is earnest about a genuine reset in bilateral relations, then he must get rid of the raft of sanctions that Washington has piled on Moscow since the 2014 Ukraine crisis amid the many spurious allegations leveled against Russia.

Bolton banished is but a small step towards a more diplomatically engaged US administration. But it would be unwise to expect the departure of this one figure as being a portent for progress and a more peaceful policy emerging in Washington.

The Washington establishment, the deep state and the bipartisan War Party, with its entrenched Cold War ideology, seems to have an endemic sway over policy which may thwart Trump’s efforts to direct a less belligerent US.

To illustrate the twisted nature of the US establishment, one only had to read the way sections of the American corporate-controlled media lamented the departure of Bolton. The New York Times, which is a dutiful conduit for deep state intelligence and the foreign policy establishment, actually bemoaned the ouster of Bolton, calling him a “voice of restraint”.

The NY Times commented, with approval, on how Bolton “objected to attempts to pursue diplomatic avenues with players considered American enemies. And he angered Trump with a last-minute battle against a peace agreement with the Taliban… whether it was inviting the Taliban to Camp David or cooperating with Russia, he [Bolton] was the national security adviser who said no.”

In another piece this week, the NY Times commented, again approvingly of Bolton: “Mr Bolton strongly opposed detente with Iran, and his unceremonious ouster has reignited concerns among some Republicans [and Democrats] in Congress about the White House’s declining projection of American military power around the world.”

Can you believe it? The so-called US “newspaper of record” is somehow valorizing an out-and-out warmonger in the form of Bolton, and appears to be advocating “projection of American military power around the world”. The latter phrase being but an Orwellian euphemism for imperialism and war.

The sobering conclusion is that Bolton’s departure hardly heralds a new beginning of diplomacy and engagement by Trump, if we assume to give this president the benefit of doubt for good intentions. Bolton may be gone, but there are formidable political forces in the US establishment which will work to ensure Trump’s room for maneuver remains heavily compressed. The Cold War ideology is so ingrained in Washington, it is much bigger than just one man, whether that is the vile personage of Bolton or the more flexible Trump.

The Fall of John Bolton: Exercising Power with the Grace of a Cockroach

Martin SIEFF

John Bolton was only national security adviser of the United States for less than18 months but it felt as if he had been there forever. And we are not – alas – done with him yet.

The first thing to be said about Bolton’s fall is that it was entirely consistent with his lifelong pattern. He went reluctantly and departed with all the grace of a cockroach. He showed no loyalty or even courtesy to the president who raised him from being an aged, deserved has-been to briefly being one of the most powerful men on the planet. He could never be graceful or grateful, never be a gentleman. He could never simply shut up.

John Bolton was never a genius: Though like all his neoconservative friends he imagined himself to be. It was always the childish fantasy of a creepy little psychopath who never grew up, always a lie.

For decades, the cockroaches and spiders in the most obscure recesses of all the conservative, libertarian and liberal-progressive think tanks sprinkled across Washington like smallpox scabs spoke with awe of Bolton’s brilliant brain, his remorseless work ethic and his capacious memory. They were only exposing their own even greater mediocrity.

For Bolton always lacked any form of judgment, wisdom, discernment or restraint. He had a simplistic rigid mind that never learned any anything good that was new and never forget everything that was old and vile.

As recently as July, he was lauded at a farcical so-called “national conservative” conference outside Washington as a champion of restraint and peace in foreign policy. Josef Goebbels could not have come up with a more outrageous and ludicrous lie. It was like congratulating Jeffrey Epstein on his chastity and respect for virgins.

Bolton was lauded by unending generations of neocon whores in the American media for his breadth of vision as if he actually understood the world. In fact the only thing he ever understood – and knew how to play – was the media and think tank gossip games inside the Washington Beltway.

John Bolton claimed to defend the national security of the United States: Another lie. As usual in the Infernal Groves of the National Capital, everything is the opposite of what it is presented as being. In fact, he worked endlessly to put his country at unprecedented risk.

To the very end, he sought to keep American soldiers dying in their thousands in an unending war in Afghanistan that he worked so hard with his neocon soulmates to unleash under their brainless puppet George W. Bush. Indeed, it seems to have been his efforts to (at least initially successfully) derail promising peace talks in Qatar between the Trump administration and the Taliban that finally led his longsuffering president to pull the plug on him.

John Bolton was never elected to and for anything. Even he seemed to realize that he inspired as much human trust as a cobra. But shameless, fawning flattery he could do and it won him diplomatic and policymaking entrees to one Republican administration after another.

Every one of his policies failed, cost untold hundreds of billions of dollars or took hundreds of thousands of lives. It never seemed to matter. He could count on the indulgent hosts and producers of Fox News to wheel him out endlessly, again and again to trot out the same tired old lies masquerading as wisdom and truth.

No one was ever allowed to call him out on it on national television to his face. He would never allow it. Like so many armchair warriors, he had been a draft dodger and was always a bully and a coward.

President Trump, to his genuine credit was a real sportsman and athlete. He played golf well. All his life he has revered sporting champions and war heroes. That may be sneered at childish, but it is vastly preferable to the fraudulent intellectual arrogance of the neocons none of whom have ever seen a shot fired in anger or even a gun pointed in their direction by a stranger with a scowl on his face.

Bolton liked to think of himself as a massive, manly Champion of Freedom: Instead he was always Igor, the hunchback dwarf who capers bizarrely beside Dr. Frankenstein or Dracula, the real men of power eager to bask in their reflected might.

But as Igor, he was always there: His spells of real power and influence spanned a massive three and a half decades. As early as the first Reagan administration from 1981 to 1985, he was already unleashing civil war, massacres and even genocide on the women and children of Central America. It was, really all that he was ever good at.

Bolton was also a central figure in the destruction of Iraq in 2003. He cheered on the attempt to destroy Syria in 2011. He solemnly and thoughtfully endorsed the destruction of genuine democratic and constitutional government in Ukraine in the Maidan coup of 2011. When it came to unleashing the Dogs of War, he was relentless and remorseless to the end.

Nor should we celebrate prematurely that we have seen the last of him yet: A future President Mike Pence or Nikki Haley is perfectly capable of making John Bolton secretary of defense, secretary of state or national security adviser for a second time.

And do not rule out him appearing magically reinvented as a figure of supposed wisdom and restraint at the side of a future President Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris. Compared to the fantastic, terrible and bizarre realities of Washington, Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” is a sober documentary.

John Bolton never saw a nuclear arms control treaty he did not hate. He was and is willfully blind to the dangers of Armageddon.

Perhaps the creators of “Team America: World Peace” were right in their prophetic insight, except the secret cockroach from Outer Space masquerading as a human being and seeking to destroy the human race is not the ruler of North Korea, but Bolton, the “great” neoconservative “thinker” and “statesman.”

Apply Occam’s razor – and that is the hypothesis which most elegantly and fully fits and explains the facts. Who but a cockroach could possibly want thermonuclear war? Who but a cockroach – and John Bolton?

Martin SIEFF

During his 24 years as a senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Times and United Press International, Martin Sieff reported from more than 70 nations and covered 12 wars. He has specialized in US and global economic issues.

‘Keep friends close, enemies closer’: Why Donald Trump works with bloodthirsty Neocons

Robert BRIDGE

[Note: This article was sent to press just prior to the news that Donald Trump had requested the resignation of his National Security Advisor, John Bolton. Since that decision does not alter the argument made in this article, it is being presented here in its original form].

Trump supporters suffered a collective convulsion when foreign policy hawks, like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams, were brought screeching into his administration. How could the US president be sincere about rolling back US military activities abroad, they asked, when the neocons had a hotline to his ear?

Yet here we are, almost three years later, and we’ve yet to witness Armageddon, although we do have a spectacular trade war raging with China. Mere mortals would view the cessation of US-driven hostilities as a positive development. For the US deep state, however, which depends upon military expansion and war for its very survival, it is an unspeakable disaster. In that sense, if Trump is really serious about draining the Swamp, abstaining from global aggression would be one of the most effective ways of achieving that goal.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

 · Sep 10, 2019

I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore....

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

....I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.

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Had Hillary Clinton squeaked out a victory in 2016, we’d all be handwringing once again, attempting to make sense of yet another killing field – this time in Syria – reminiscent of the former Secretary of State’s “We came, we saw, he died” psycho scenario that played out in both Iraq and Libya. The closest the Trump administration got to full-blown warfare came in April 2017 when it launched missiles at a Syrian air base purported to have been involved in a chemical attack on civilians. Since that moment, which made the carnivorous media cheerleaders giddy from the promise of bloodshed, it has been relatively quiet on the Western front. So quiet in fact that John Bolton is probably wondering why Trump chose him as his security advisor in the first place.

New Day

✔@NewDay

.@FareedZakaria on Syria strikes: "I think Donald Trump became President of the United States" last night

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Indeed, not only has Washington not invaded a foreign country since Trump entered the Oval Office, it looks like Bolton may be remembered as the White House National Security Advisor who was sent home without a head of some foreign leader to place above the fireplace. And certainly not for lack of trying.

The belligerent Bush-era hawk who once spoke out in favor of preemptive strikes against both Iran and North Korea, Bolton also failed, thus far, to drive Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro out of Caracas. In fact, Maduro has claimed, without providing any evidence, that Bolton was personally responsible for organizing an attempt on his life.

The setbacks for the hawks continues in Afghanistan, where Trump has expressed a willingness to cut a deal with the Taliban that will allow him to draw down US troops and declare a foreign policy victory ahead of 2020 elections. Yet conspicuously missing from those peace talks is John Bolton, who reportedly has been blacklisted for peace talks later this month.

According to a report in the Washington Post, quoting an anonymous source, “Bolton asked for a copy of the draft agreement the United States is trying to strike with the Taliban. But the U.S. envoy leading the negotiations, Zalmay Khalilzad, denied the request, saying Bolton could read the agreement in the presence of a senior official but not leave with it in hand…”

Most shocking of all, however, as far as the deep state is concerned, is Trump’s recent suggestion that he would be willing to sit down with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at UN headquarters later this month.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

I am pleased to announce that, effective 4/9/18, @AmbJohnBolton will be my new National Security Advisor. I am very thankful for the service of General H.R. McMaster who has done an outstanding job & will always remain my friend. There will be an official contact handover on 4/9.

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Trump made the comments after he was essentially ambushed during the G7summit in Biarritz, France last month. At the secret invitation of French President Immanuel Macron, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made a surprise visit to the meeting, to discuss possible ways of ending the standoff with Washington after the Trump administration pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal last year.

According to US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, US sanctions are an effort to reduce Tehran’s oil exports—which provide some 40 percent of its revenue—to “zero.” Washington’s allies, however, fear that crushing the Iranian economy will eventually force Tehran into some sort of response, potentially a violent one, thereby giving the US a possible pretext for war.

“Iran’s strategy at this time is reducing its commitments under the nuclear deal,” Mehdi Mahmoudi, an Iranian journalist based in Tehran, told The Media Line. “Indeed, this tactic is successful because the European Union is now trying to do more and more work to appease Iran.”

ايران وطن من . IRAN My Homeland@IranHomeland

Iran Gives Ultimatum, Threatens to Abandon Nuclear Deal (with AUDIO INTERVIEW) https://themedialine.org/top-stories/iran-gives-ultimatum-threatens-to-abandon-nuclear-deal/ … via @TheMediaLine

Iran Gives Ultimatum, Threatens to Abandon Nuclear Deal (with AUDIO INTERVIEW) - The Media Line

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has issued a stern warning to European powers, saying that Tehran would “in the coming days” further scale back its commitments to the 2015 nuclear agreement.

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4:39 PM - Sep 5, 2019

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Trump’s great gambit

In an effort to understand Trump and his balancing act between a government loaded with hawks, and a geopolitical chess game rigged to dynamite, there are at least three dynamics at play – ‘3D chess’ if you like.

First, Trump the relentless businessman, whose talents are to be found in the boardroom as opposed to the battlefield, understands the need for strong-arm tactics in order to get the best possible deal. This he hopes to accomplish by putting notorious Neocons like Bolton, Pompeo and Abrams on the government payroll. Their mere presence sends an unmistakable message to Trump’s opponents: Cut a deal with me or I will remove the leash from these warmongers, who will be only too happy to do the bidding of the deep state. Thus far the nerve-rattling strategy, despite the unfathomable risks involved, has worked like magic against North Korea.

Next, by keeping snarling Neocons on the payroll, Trump gives the deep state the ‘false security,’ as it were, that another regime change operation is just one false flag attack away. Despite the string of chemical attacks in Syria, and the attack on foreign vessels blamed on Tehran, thus far Trump has managed to avoid a full-blown military scenario in places like Syria and Iran. Of course all that could change in a millisecond, but for now a very tense ‘peace regime’ is in place.

Finally, by keeping some of the most prominent members of the deep state under his wing, Trump not only works towards his own self-preservation, but facilitates his campaign pledge to drain the swamp. The importance of a ruler keeping his enemies close was laid out millennia ago by Sun Tsu, the Chinese military strategist. The question at this time is whether Trump is sincere, or still up to the task, of carrying out his incredibly ambitious plan.

Considering the untold humiliations he has suffered since entering the White House, at the hands of a media that has been completely co-opted by the deep state, it seems doubtful Trump will forego his house-cleaning campaign. In that event, the likes of Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams and other Neocon officials will be less useful against foreign adversaries than they will be against battling the D.C. swamp creatures, even if they, the neocons – Trump’s eternal enemies that he has deemed to keep close as the sage Chinese strategist advised – are wholly unaware of the contributions they will make to the main event.

Robert BRIDGE

American writer and journalist.