John Bolton Is Misunderstood
The actual track record of Trump’s next national-security adviser offers cause for cautious optimism.
Over the past few days, many have tried to distill John Bolton’s worldview, to get a sense of how he might shape the foreign policy of the Trump administration as he takes up the post of national-security adviser. His have paid particularly close attention to his bellicose statements about North Korea, arguably the country’s most pressing security challenge, and his forceful critiques of the Iran deal, which has been on the verge of unraveling for months. They’ve drawn the conclusion that Bolton has an unslakeable appetite for armed intervention that will lead the country to ruin. Yet although Bolton is often described as a rigid ideologue, he sees himself as a ruthless pragmatist who is more than willing to use
