John Bolton

„The Room where it Happened“

VERÖFFENTLICHT 28. JUNI 2020

John Bolton - The man tempered by Donald Trump

I just read John Bolton‘s book „The Room where it Happened“.

A great Ego meets the greatest EGO the world has ever seen. John Bolton reports in his book that during the period of internal discussions over Iran Trump was asked by a reporter, “Are you satisfied with the advice you received from John Bolton?” –

Trump answered, “Yeah, John is very good. John is a—he has strong views on things, but that’s okay. I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing, isn’t it? Nobody thought that was going to happen. I’m the one that tempers him. But that’s okay. I have different sides. I mean, I have John Bolton, and I have other people that are a little more dovish than him. And ultimately, I make the decisions:“

After reading the book I sometimes felt: How good that the stable genius Donald Trump tempered John Boltons destructive policies at least at some occasions. However, President Trump and John Bolton have a lot in common. No wonder the president made him his National Security advisor.

Bolton describes Trump as a kind of a child-king who has to be managed carefully by those who surround him. He criticizes those fired before he came in as the „axis of adults“. Their open resistance against Trump‘s most obvious gaffes only made the child more stubborn and uncalculable. Bolton‘s approach is subtle psychotherapy. Make the child-king believe that he is in charge! Bolton is a loyal executer of a lot of presidential decisions he believes are utterly wrong. But all in vain: In the end he resigned – minutes before Trump fired him.

Trump hates multilateralism – John Bolton too. He is determined to destroy the international system that prevailed for the last decades. He believes that this is realism.

A special obsession of John Bolton was to destroy the 2015 deal with Iran on stopping the development of nuclear weapons by giving Iran economic concessions and security guarantees. He knew that Trump wanted to cancel the deal. Now Bolton had the chance to push the issue and he did so successfully. To come to terms with the Mullahs seemed a dangerous illusion to him. The only way to overcome the security risks was regime change in Iran.

Bolton describes how President Trump rather behaves like a child, jumping from one topic to the other, taking up and throwing away his toys, repeating some sentences in a mechanical way, being unable to concentrate, sticking stubbornly to some prejudices. For elderly people some call it gently the „second childhood“, the medical term being „dementia“. Reading John Bolton‘s book one can only ask why nobody stops the horror show, that America is ruled by a demential genius.

Two points are present throughout the book: One is, that the president wants to get out of all committments worldwide, saying: „Why are we there, get out of this, stop that“. Trump left the Kurds alone who fought and died to fight ISIS, he wanted to leave Syria and he left, he gives Afghanistan to the Taliban, Africa has to be left to itself, Germany is „punished“ by troup withdrawals, South Korea must stop military maneuvres with US forces to please the North Korean dictator. Bolton himself is asking: who will be next to be left in the cold – possibly Taiwan?

The other point is that Donald Trump is unable to make a difference between private feelings and political responsibility. Trump believes he and only he personally is a deal maker and the world is waiting for him to make his deals.

He initiated the talks with Kim Jong Un from North Korea, he nearly invited the Taliban leaders to Camp David (only stopped by a terrorist incident against Americans in Kabul just before that). He believes that Putin or Xi Jinping like him and wait for him to be taught lessons by how to behave properly. He hates Merkel – he hates the EU, he loves dictators, even Maduro in Venezuela impresses him – and not the weakling Guaido. The Donald Trump in Bolton‘s book has a bizarre world view and is living in phantasy-land. It is unbelievable that such a president is still in office and possibly standing for re-election.

When the book came out most comments dealt with Bolton‘s description of the Trump White House. But the book is also about John Bolton himself. A warmonger who has to be tempered by a tweeting president is quite a bizarre person himself.

Did Bolton have illusions about Donald Trump when he accepted a job in his administration? Obviously not. „I entered the existing chaos“ he says. He was politically near to the president and therefore thought that he was entitled to get a job in government, but only a job „with an inbox“, a senior power position.

Secretary of State would be acceptable – but the „clowns“ in Congress would probably not accept Bolton, so he became head of the NSC. Bolton‘s views were compatible with the far right views of those who made Trump their running horse. People like Steve Bannon and the whole bunch of Fox News manipulators held views similar to Bolton‘s world view and believed that Trump‘s presidency would give them the power they strived for.

Trump‘s collaborators could be divided into two categories: one are the people who believed in his policy, who supported his ideology – I think this may be a minority. The other category are those who have their own agenda and know the very limited intellectual capacity of Donald Trump. They believed from the beginning that they could easily manipulate Trump. The real rulers would be the Machiavellis behind the Prince.

John Bolton belongs to the category of manipulators – and he believed he could be more successful than the others. The book shows that Bolton felt intellectually superior over the president – but he knew to dissimulate this showing himself the most loyal servant, executing even the most stupid orders if he could not stop them.

However, Donald Trump became ever more independent of his advisors and of reality. Agency infights are nothing new in the American political system. But it has never been so futile with a president who lives in his own world ruling by tweets. Bolton certainly tried to be a National Security Advisor – but his main skill had to be Trump‘s psychotherapist.

The book exposes the political views of John Bolton, his disdain for multilateralism and his belief in power. He wants to be a realist. But in fact he is an obsessive paranoid. The school of realism is always in danger to produce self-fulfilling prophecies. The realists in the US held Russias enmity for given even when under President Jelzin relations were much better. Realists believe that competition with a rising economic power like China must automatically lead to China being a strategic enemy. By declaring somebody an enemy you leave little choice to the other side to prepare its defence and become an enemy even if this was not the intention.

Bolton is blind for any realism that does not see the enemy behind each curtain, he is blind for win-win-situations. In his Hobbesian world nobody can escape the fight of all against all. Bolton‘s anthropology is utterly pessimist. For him the zero-sum-game is the only game in the room. He is unable to build up trust, he is a social coward who avoids the risk of trusting anybody. Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick spoke of making China a stakeholder in the international system. Bolton does not see that self-fulfilling prophecies can make America and China enemies.

John Bolton detests multilateralism – and recommends withdrawal from many UN organisations instead of trying to reform them. So he worked for the withdrawal of the US from the UN Human Rights Council and the UNRWA:

The G7 meetings do not find any sympathy with John Bolton. After the meeting in Canada he spoke of „the ruins of Charlevoix.“ and further on „The G7 meetings and similar international gatherings had a rhyme and reason at one point in history, and at times do good work, but in many respects, they have simply become selflicking ice-cream cones. They’re there because they’re there.

For Trump and Bolton the WTO has lost its worth. John Bolton sees himself as a free trader, but he supports Trump when the president destroys the international Trade system. He knows about the extremely primitive view of Trump about what trade means: „Trump approached trade and trade deficits as if reading a corporate balance sheet: trade deficits meant we were losing, and trade surpluses meant we were winning. Tariffs would reduce imports and increase government revenues, which was better than the opposite.“

During the Cold War the US always supported European integration even if some conflictive topics like agricultural protectionism came up. The Trump administration made another shift of paradigm. It contemplates the EU as an enemy that has to be destroyed.: „ Trump’s real target was the EU. As usual, he trotted out that old stand-by, “The EU is worse than China, only smaller.” –

This attitude was also reflected in the support given by Trump and Bolton for Brexit. John Bolton shared with Donald Trump the hate for the European Union. It was no wonder that they saw Brexit as being in the interest of the United States: „Brexit was an existential issue for the UK, but it was also critically important to the US. “

The EU should have no illusions: there is an enemy in the White House who wants to destroy the Union – and the EU should urgently build up it‘s defence against this unexpected enemy. If the American ally breaks away, the EU should at least avoid having too many enemies at once. If America fails, Europe may have to look elsewhere. Russia is not friendly towards the EU, but China‘s attitude towards the EU is much more positive than Trump‘s position.

Trump once said that NATO is obsolete. His advisors had to work hard to keep him from repeating this – but he means it! The only conclusion from Bolton‘s book is that Trump is a security risk for America and for the world. Many in Europe – and myself – hope that the nightmare may be over after the presidential elections in autumn 2020. But if Trump wins or steals the election and stays on, the USA may not only let their allies down – it may become an outright enemy. The announced sanctions over the „North Stream“ project are a first sign of such a U-turn. Therefore Europe must build up it‘s self-defence – including cyber-war and the French nuclear force – even if this costs much more than the famous 2% of GDP for defence.

President Trump is very anti-German and especially anti-Merkel. Bolton speculates if this could have to do with an overcompensation of having a German grandfather. Whatever it is, this attitude is reflected in a stereotyped list of sentences he always repeats. He riffs against Germany‘s trade surplus, against not paying the 2% it „owes“ to him (since he seems to „own“ NATO), stating falsely that Germany does not help Ukraine (and Zelensky being stupid enough to agree).

Chancellor Merkel wants to keep relations intact to win time until Trump is gone. But as long as Trump is around she cannot rely on the American president – and relations are still worsening. She hoped that the friends in Congress linked to the transatlantic community would be helpful – but they seem to be caught in the internal polarization and do very little.

There is a lot of talk that a different administration, a Biden administration would also be critical of Germany and Europe. That underestimates how much damage Trump has inflicted to the relationship. The normal differences may be back with Biden as president – but I would not expect this brute enmity as it comes from Trump. In case of a reelection of Trump this may lead to a far sharper distancing between Europe and the US than we may now imagine.

John Bolton was in favour of playing hardball with the regime in North Korea – he believed that the US was approaching a binary choice: war or reunification of the peninsula. And he explicitly did not exclude war: „I explained why and how a preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs would work; how we could use massive conventional bombs against Pyongyang’s artillery north of the DMZ, which threatened Seoul, thereby reducing casualties dramatically. … Trump asked, “What do you think the chances of war are with North Korea? Fifty-fifty?” I said I thought it all depended on China, but probably fifty-fifty. ”

But then came the Kim-Jong-U-turn: „I heard Kim Jong Un had invited Trump to meet, and he had accepted. I was beyond speechless, appalled at this foolish mistake.“ However, John Bolton did not resign. He expected and hoped that this policy would fail. But he just executed the will of the president trying to sabotage the worst mistakes.

The obsession of Bolton about Iran is so obvious that it asks for an explanation which he does not give to us. I suppose that it was a trauma for him to see the United States and President Carter humiliated by the Iranians when the US Embassy in Teheran had been occupied. This was a barbarian act that less than a century earlier, when the diplomatic compound in Peking was occupied by Chinese rebels, inevitably led to a military expedition. Bolton believes that the Iranian regime only understands the language of force.

The Iranian Mullahs did very little to deserve any trust. But a well-controlled agreement has been the best to reach under the circumstances. Bolton has no sense for subtle policies. His policy is: hit them until you get regime change. The Iraq war showed that the results of such a policy have little to do with the goals at the start of the conflict. The Americans got rid of Saddam Hussein – a very good result – and then got chaos, ISIS, and a government under manifest influence from Teheran – not really an impressive result. Bolton does not think in long term, he does not analyse what must be achieved at the end of a process, but stays on the surface and believes that this is realism – while it is illusionism.

The E3+3-agreement with Iran was a chance for getting a better situation – a chance, not a guarantee – Bolton recommends to give away the chance and bet on regime chance that may never come. Trump agrees to give away the chance and bets on nothing but isolationism.

I met John Bolton only once in my lifetime – he came to see me in 2006 in my Berlin office to talk about Iran. He wanted the German government to take measures against the Iranian Bank Melli. In his view the bank was financing terrorism. I am not an fan of the Iranian regime and I am convinced that fighting terrorism will only be successful if the financial base of terrorism is dried up. So in principle John Bolton pushed an open door on that topic. The problem was that he did not see that as a legal problem but as a form of waging war – the „war on terror“. Our judges did not see it that way. They needed proofs, not just John Bolton‘s opinion.

I asked him to come over with proofs that could be used for legal proceedings – he was not helpful on that. Later Germany found a way to stop some illegal activities of Bank Melli. Bolton believed in bullying, not in common problem solving. He neglected that there is no extraterritorial extension of the American way of justice.

Bolton was very polemical against German trade with Iran although implementing UN sanctions had already led to a substantial reduction of that trade – damaging German companies. But he had no appropriate answer when I told him that we stick to the sanctions but were not amused about American companies taking over some of the German trade going around the sanctions trading through Abu Dhabi or Doha.

It was not clear if Ambassador John Bolton had any mandate to talk to me about Iran. As Ambassador to the United Nations he was a member of the Bush government, but relations to Germany should be handled by the US Ambassador in Berlin. I knew from earlier experience that American diplomacy sometimes became disturbed by freelancing officials. It is interesting that Bolton complains in his book that the US-Ambassdor to the EU in Brussels squeezed himself into Ukraine policy – a similar behaviour to his own.

The chapter on Ukraine is certainly closely linked to the substance of the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. What is really stunning is how far Trump sticks to some plot stories from his lawyer Rudy Giuliani – letting down Ukraine in its deepest crisis. Once he even said, that a Russia-friendly Ukrainian president would be the best solution – even Bolton is appaled by that.

I did not go far into the details of specific policies of the Trump administration and Bolton‘s participation in that policies. I keep this for another blog.

The book is worth reading – like horror stories are worth reading. Bolton is more intelligent than Donald Trump – but that is no great achievement. Both are destructive forces in a world that can only keep order in a multilateral system where the rule of law is more important than the rule of brute force. Sometimes Trump had to temper the warmonger Bolton, sometimes Bolton had to be the headshrinker psychotherapist for Trump – but they stuck together in selfmade desaster.

Children and fools speak truth – Donald Trump and John Bolton both have a point, but...

This is the second part of my reflections.  But now I take a different outlook: I will systematically look for positive points where Donald Trump as well as his short-lived alter-ego John Bolton were possibly right to argue for policy change. It is a pity this exercise could never be done with both because Trump is unable to argue, and Bolton is unwilling to argue.

It is clear that John Bolton detests multilateralism. – and recommends withdrawal from many UN organisations instead of trying to reform them. However, it is true that many UN organisations were unwilling or unable to reform. The Security Council reflects the situation after World War II and totally neglects the Great Powers of today and tomorrow. Many UN organisations are inefficient and corrupt. The principle of one state – one vote leads to a total lack of representativity of the General Assembly producing a bunch of useless and feckless resolutions.

Not all multilateralism is benign. Bolton worked for the withdrawal of the US from the UN Human Rights Council. I think he had a point here. The Human Rights Council of the UN with countries like Katar and Venezuela on the board, looking back to a Saudi chairman some years ago, is just a mess. I cannot take such a body for serious – even if some colleagues take it for a kind of pedagogic institution to bring dictators nearer to respect human rights.

Many UN institutions, including UNESCO made a sport out of using the non-representative voting power to pass resolutions condemning Israel and the United States in an unfair way, dealing with minor problems in Western democracies to avoid addressing severe problems in non-western non-democracies. It was foreseeable that at one point the US had enough of that hypocrisy.

Bolton also pleaded to defund UNRWA: „I also advocated defunding the UN Relief and Works Agency, ostensibly designed to aid Palestinian refugees but that over decades had become, effectively, an arm of the Palestine apparat rather than the UN“

UNWRA has played an important role after the creation of the State of Israel and the war that folowed in 1948, when many Palestinians had lost their homes. But it had never been thought to care for refugees forever and discharge the neighbouring Arab countries from all responsibility to integrate the refugees into their societies. It is important that the UN system brings the world together, but it is sometimes necessary to stop the abuse of the system. Bolton has a point that UNRWA should be reformed – but defunding may only have adverse consequences for the lives of millions and would be irresponsible.

The G7 meetings do not find any sympathy with John Bolton. „The G7 meetings and similar international gatherings had a rhyme and reason at one point in history, and at times do good work, but in many respects, they have simply become selflicking ice-cream cones. They’re there because they’re there.

Once again John Bolton has a point. The G7 meetings have become a huge public relations affair. The „press mob“ (that‘s John Bolton‘s wording) plays a bigger role than the content of the meeting. As a professional diplomat Bolton knows the flaws of his colleagues. The usual haggling about communiqués that are worked out for the paper basket is quite an inefficient way to agree on common problem solving.

The very informal and discrete meetings at the beginning of the world economic summits what later became the G7, were more fruitful. However the G7 cannot be more than it‘s members want it to be. The G7 is dead if the members do no longer believe that it is useful. It should be made smaller, more efficient with less publicity. If Trump is reelected it may be better to continue under a different name with a different format without the USA and leave the issues were a broader participation is needed to the G20.

Bolton said: „The Europeans loved playing games with these communiqués, forcing the US into the unpleasant choice of either compromising on core policy principles or appearing “isolated” from the others. For most professional diplomats, being isolated is worse than death“

I agree with him. In EU-negotiations to be isolated IS deadly. Europeans are used to formulate texts that force unpleasant choices on member states that do not follow the majority or fear to be left isolated. But this style only works for countries bound together by shared sovereignty and a shared legal system as the EU provides.

This is counter-productive if applied to sovereign nation states like the USA, Russia, India or China. You may haggle as long as you want, in the end the text of a communiqué is not legally binding and there is no peer pressure to comply. Everybody tries to include a sentence into the communiqué to prove their influence, everybody knows that compliance is not to be expected. No government accepts to be nailed down by a text that it does not like. John Bolton is right: „It is a waste of time“.

When the Europeans successfully had nailed down President Trump on a text which he definitely did not like, „Trump had fired off two tweets withdrawing support for the G7 communiqué, which was unprecedented.“- but at some point it should not be unexpected.

For Trump and Bolton the WTO has lost its worth. „I agreed with Trump that many international agreements reflected not true “free trade” but managed trade and were far from advantageous to the US. I particularly agreed that China had gamed the system. It pursued mercantilist policies in the supposedly free-trade World Trade Organization (WTO), all the while stealing US intellectual property and who has no idea what trade really is engaging in forced technology transfers that robbed us of incalculable capital and commerce over decades.“

John Bolton has a point: The Chinese trade policy is very robust and it is true that stealing intellectual property or forcing companies to damaging technology transfers has been widely used.

However, engaging China to integrate into the international system and step by step increase compliance with the WTO rules, is the better way. China already suffers intellectual property theft itself from neighbouring emerging economies. So the dynamics speak for a growing interest of China in a rule based system. Bolton believes in tearing up agreements like the WTO rules if China „games the system“ (as many others do!). Donald Trump had to temper the zealot Bolton because the president wants to negotiate an agreement with China, although he has quite a primitive concept of what trade means.

The WTO is the place to denounce those who game the system. Unfair practises need not be tolerated. We will never have an efficient environmental and climate protection if under whatever pretext some free riders undermine the agreements. We cannot keep up our social protection if free trade is used to undercut our prices by paying hunger salaries.

Bolton rightly castigates „the rampant hypocrisy of international trade talks, where free trade was invariably good for everyone else but not for favored domestic sectors, particularly farmers in places like France and Japan, not to mention the US and Canada.“- Bolton put the finger in the wound, but his conclusion is not to reform but to destroy the international trade system. He does not understand that a deficient system is better than complete anarchy.

President Trump surprised the world when he first threatened North Korea with total destruction and then invited Chairman Kim Jong Un to meet him. John Bolton was in favour of playing hardball with the regime in North Korea and explicitly did not exclude war.

Even if this is very unpleasant, a great power must think about a military solution. The widespread politically correct talk of „there is no military solution“ is a cheap excuse for those who do definitely not have that option. So I do not criticise Bolton for refuting that conjecture. The point against him is, that he does not give peace a chance, that he creates enmities where they could be overcome.

Trump often asked Bolton „Why are we there, why do we help our enemies, why don‘t we leave?“ These questions are absolutely legitimate. And they have to be answered. John Bolton‘s answers are not always convincing and Trump has difficulties even to understand the answers. But Trump has a point: in the Arab world you often hear people calling for the Americans to intervene, reproaching inaction for example in Syria – and if the USA intervenes, condemn the Americans for imperialism. That does not go together.

The history of American interventions is not a success story – the „liberal interventionism“ prevailing for some years had often unintended consequences. I fully understand that President Trump does not want to be identified with the ongoing military operations. The problem is only that he acts absolutely irrational without any knowledge and no overview over consequences. So as is the saying he throws the baby with the bath – in fact he throws a lot of babies with the bath. Instead of playing a better role in world security politics Trump‘s choice is to play no role.

The policy on Russia is a very special case. Trump fears that the manipulations of his election coming from Russian sources may come up again and again. He stopped criticising Putin, nobody forgets the scene in Helsinki where he put his own intelligence services on the same footing with the word of Putin. He mostly preferred to support Russia in the conflict with Ukraine – even withholding weapons to further private interests of Rudy Giuliani and damage Joe Biden. At the same time he tells them that Merkel does nothing (which is not true).

He could have a point , when he says that stopping Ukraine on its way into NATO at the 2008 Bukarest summit because of the resistance especially of France and Germany was a source of the following events including the occupation of Crimea. I say he could have, because it is worthwhile to analyse this conjecture more closely. I think the opposite is true: that talking up Ukraine‘s accession to NATO at a time when the majority of Ukrainians did not want it, when NATO members including the US were unwilling to defend Ukraine (and Georgia) in a war with Russia, this wa definitely an invitation to Russia to intervene to stop that accession.

Accepting Ukraine as a NATO member without a hundred percent will to defend it like the own country would have put into doubt all other committments of NATO especially in the Baltic states. If Russia would have tested NATO with Ukraine as a member, the ambivalent response would have destroyed NATO‘s credibility – if Russia would test it in the Baltics, NATO would really invoke Artikel 5 and react very vigorously and united with military forces – it would be better for Russia not to test that! Bolton does not see this difference.

Do Trump and Bolton have a point in asking NATO member states for more „contributions“ (as Bolton points out this is the wrong nomenclatura, since it is about the national defence budgets)?

Yes they do: if the decision in Cardiff speaks of 2% of GDP this means 2% and not 1,2% and if it speaks of 2024 this does not mean 2030. If member states believe this is the wrong decision they should not have made it, or should formally cancel it.

But the whole narrative of Trump about NATO and especially Germany is so bizarre that this makes the point they really have worthless. If they believe that the EU and Germany are enemies – and treat them like this – it is not logic that they ask for more defence budget for Germany and other EU countries. Why should their enemy increase armament and readiness. The other way round it is true: if the American committment for NATO does not hold, Germany and Europe must indeed increase the defence budget in their own interest and to a share of GPD even more than 2%.

The better way would be to work together in NATO to make defence budgets more efficient – by more cooperation, more standardization of weapons and doctrines, by common projects for modernization. Both Europe and the US (and Canada) have always profited from pooling efforts – with the Trump style of politics this may only be possible with all others except the USA (and possibly exept Turkey).

Trump regularly riffs over the North Stream pipeline. The German excuse that this is just a non-political business affair is hypocritic. Sure it is about politics. But other European countries have been especially hypocritical about it: Up to now Russian gas was reliable and had a fair price. Russia depends as well from the income from gas as Germany does from using the gas for industry. There is interdependence not dependence – and that is politically healthy. To talk about German dependence from Russia is nonsense. Germany was a driving force behind sanctions against Russia after the Crimea annexation. At the same time the rising share of renewables for German electricity production makes gas less important in the future.

Ukraine and Poland certainly want income from the transit of gas from Russia (which means: the more Russia wins from gas exports, the more they share for transit duties) – This is pure business. The PiS government in Warsaw has given up the excellent relations their predecessor had with Germany. Nonwithstanding that troubled relationship Germany had offered Poland a reverse flow connection that would give Poland much more security for gas deliveries. We are EU partners and should keep solidarity by sharing the gas not by stopping it flow.

Trump has announced sanctions against North Stream II. To act in such a way against an allied country is just unacceptable. It is also stupid, to bully Germany to break off their dialogue with Russia while Trump is talking to his much admired friend Putin. Even during the cold war the lines of communication with the former Soviet Union were kept open. When Trump talks to the Taliban and to Kim-Jong-Un this is legitimate. When Germany keeps relations with Russia and China this is no less legitimate. Security is important but the best security policy is securing peace. As Willy Brandt told us: „Peace is not everything, but everything becomes nothing without peace!“

Bolton believes in an inevitable conflict between China and the USA. It is one of the typical „realism“-traps which by self-fulfilling prophecies may end up in real war. But doesn‘t he have a point? If China only would build up a military force proportional to its share of the world population (you could call that „adequate“) this would be a severe threat for the rest of the world especially for China‘s neighbours. Its behaviour in the South China Sea and threats towards Taiwan, the repressive internal regime also extended to Hongkong, discrediting the one nation – two systems – approach, and the transition to another one-man-dictatorship of Xi Jinping as lifetime president are alarm signals.

However, China insists that it does not want a conflictive relationship. Why not just test that instead of deepening the rift. But Bolton does not understand that. He tells everybody that China is an enemy – the logical consequence for any Chinese government is to take this declaration for serious and step up defence spending and armament and to fence of spheres of influence as a preventive measure.

The big error of many American analysts has been that they believed to have „won“ the cold war by being tough – especially during the Reagan administration. This is just wrong. The Soviet Union had changed internally. The system could compete if it were only a military competition – it could not compete with the West on values, on efficiency of the economy, it could not guarantee its people a good life. The German and European dialogue with the Soviet Union reached out to many people who saw that the West was not a military danger but far superior in delivering prosperity. So the systemic superiority brought down communism – not military superiority.

America as a country that gets more unequal, that cancels Obama-care, that has no social system comparable to European welfare states is ideologically as uncompetitive as was the Soviet Union. The former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once called the Soviet Union „Upper Volta with missiles“. The United States still has a much better quality of life as the Soviet Union could ever dream of, but it is falling back on collective goods – it becomes an „Upper Class with missiles“. But Trump has a point here: the social care state may lead to economic inefficiencies. The USA is more dynamic in innovation and creativity than many European countries. However if this is only „for the few – not the many“ this will not be sustainable.

On Afghanistan, Syria and Iran John Bolton and Donald Trump often disagreed but in different degree in the three cases. Bolton shared Trump‘s view that US troups should leave Afghanistan, but he thought that a contingent for counterinsurgency warfare should stay. Trump was not really convinced. Here I share the view of Bolton: A Taliban regime would feel victorious and take up a sharp anti-western stance. It could soon become a safe haven for terrorists again.

It is not wrong to give the Kabul regime a chance to consolidate. From the start it was wrong to believe that the West had the mission to reform Afghanistan and build a modern nation. My preference would have been in 2001/2002 to intervene for a short and massive campaign, and then only leave counterinsurgency troups there and leave the rest to the Afghans. This did not happen and illusions about a kind of a humanitarian mission came up. So now it is better to keep some special forces but no combat units in the field.

Donald Trump wants to leave Syria. He believes that fighting ISIS was helping his enemies in Damaskus and Teheran – he did not grasp that ISIS was a huge threat to Europe and America if it became a hub for international terrorism. Trump could not understand that for such an enemy you sometimes need strange bedfellows as allies. Bolton was right to convince Trump to keep at least some troups in Syria and the neighbouring regions of Iraq.

But hecertainly had a point when he asked Arab nations to take up the main burden. The Saudis are really rich and could do more . Instead they supported the Al-Nusra front – near to Al-Qaida. Trump has a point when he thinks that throwing the Iranians out of Syria could be left to the Russians.

The point where Trump tempered Bolton most was on Iran. Bolton was very upset that his plan to answer to Iranian attacks on tankers in the street of Hormuz with cruise missiles on Iranian military installations in Iran itself, was thwarted by the president. Here Trump had a point. Bolton wanted war or at least an escalation of using force. Trump did not want war in the gulf.

Tearing up the E3+3-treaty with Iran was something that both Trump and Bolton had fought for together. Bolton believes that the Iranian regime only understands the language of force. I agree with him that at the time of the occupation of the American Embassy in Teheran this was possibly the case. But John Bolton thinks that his language of force is understood universally. The institution of active martyrdom – fighting and dying to get direct access to paradise – even more the apocalyptic beliefs (also widespread in the US) may completely neutralize his language of power. Donald Trump was right to temper Bolton here – like in Vietnam the power of ideas can only be overcome with other methods – for example waiting that the idea discredits itself by inefficiency or contradictions, for example showing that different ideas are more successful.

Do they have a point? Yes they do: it is true that Iran was cheating for a long time and had little credibility. Therefore controls must have been stricter. It is true that Iran is developing mid range missiles that could even reach Europe. It is true that Iran is threatening Israel and supporting terrorism. So there could be an argument saying that the treaty must be enlarged and include appropriate behaviour in all these fields. But this is a weak argument. Wanting all you get nothing of it and are left only with the war option. If you want Iran not to continue its nuclear weapons program you must separate the issue from the other points to come to an agreement on the most important part and that is to stop the Iranian bomb. Trump and Bolton both never understood subtle diplomacy, their black-and-white thinking does not allow nuances.

Instead of a conclusion: the policies of Trump and Bolton have reasons that lie in weaknesses of the opposite positions. Their points are not stupid, but must be discussed. Politics is a trial and error process. They have points in their favour, but they are unable to find constructive corrections and instead embark on destructive „solutions“.