Two newly appointed members of President Donald Trump’s national security team are set to clash over their conflicting personal goals, Politico reports.
Although Trump chose two well-known hawks to replace former secretary of state Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, "The real divide in the Trump administration is not between hawks and doves… [but] between litigators and planners.”
National security adviser John Bolton is a litigator. He wrote two articles in the past six months that, according to the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Wright, illustrate that his viewpoint on foreign policy comes from a legal perspective. The first, published by National Review, advised Trump on the legal strategy for pulling the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran. The second, "The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First," was released by The Wall Street Journal. Both show Bolton’s background as a lawyer, but neither offers a foreign policy strategy for how to deal with Iran after ending the deal, or for attacking North Korea.
"Trump’s new national security adviser sees the world through the prism of his battles with multilateralists and liberals in the field of international law," Wright notes.
Newly installed secretary of state Mike Pompeo, on the other hand, is a planner, and according to Wright he might be more concerned with his own political future than helping the Trump administration accomplish its goals.
"At 54, Pompeo is widely rumored to harbor ambitions of becoming president himself," Wright notes. "And, therein may lie the key to understanding how he will perform as secretary of state. For Bolton, this is his last and best chance to achieve his ideological goal of demonstrating that the United States is free of legal and institutional constraints. For Pompeo it is a means to a bright political future. He doesn’t see his term in Foggy Bottom as a chapter in the tumultuous times of Trump but as a chapter in the story of his own ascent."
Bolton’s primary goal is to ensure the U.S. remains independent and free to act on the world stage, and he sees any government that would limit America’s freedom of action as an enemy.
"Bolton’s overarching goal is how to achieve tactical victories over his enemies in these fights," Wright continues. "The harsh truth is that most of these battles are insignificant relative to the bigger geopolitical dramas unfolding in the world: how Europe will be organized after the Cold War, how to handle the rise of China, the struggle between Iran and Sunni Arab states in the Middle East — all questions that are alien to Bolton the lawyer."
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