John Bolton for National Security Donald Trump must have warmed to his new adviser’s direct style.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-bolton-for-national-security-1521763579
President Trump has said he is at last assembling a Cabinet team to his liking, and late Thursday he announced that John Bolton will replace General H.R. McMaster as his National Security Adviser. It is a solid and experienced choice.
General McMaster, like others, reportedly had fallen out of favor with Mr. Trump. But there should be no doubt that General McMaster helped the President through a challenging first year, which included an array of problems inherited from the Obama Administration, not least the North Korean nuclear threat.
Mr. Bolton’s critics often accuse him of belligerence and reactive saber-rattling. He is indeed direct. No listener comes away from a conversation with John Bolton in doubt about where he stands. That must include Mr. Trump, who had Mr. Bolton under consideration to be his first Secretary of State last year and has discussed foreign issues often with him since.
The charge that Mr. Bolton can be an unguided missile misconstrues his ideas and experience. He served in the State Department during both Bush Presidencies. Under George W. Bush he created the multinational Proliferation Security Initiative in 2003, a useful effort explicitly designed to deter North Korea’s efforts to smuggle weapons materials.
Those wanting an understanding of John Bolton’s thinking on security issues should read the many essays he has written for these pages in recent years—most recently “The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First” on Feb. 28.
Mr. Bolton’s first job will be to prepare the President for an historic meeting with Kim Jong Un. We may assume Pyongyang knows now that bluffing the U.S. won’t work.
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