This is a book that Vera found in our Williams Court lending library, where she volunteers. I knew by the fact that John Bolton worked for Donald Trump that I would disagree with many of his assertions, but it is occasionally worthwhile to read such views anyway in an effort to understand them. I am not sure how much she knew about the Yale Law graduate and former National Security Council Advisor from April 2018 to September, 1019.
Never doubting his self-importance, he claims to have frequently “explained” Israel, North Korea, Iran, and Libya, to Donald Trump, and trashed everything Obama had accomplished, all in the first thirty pages or so, while waiting for over a year for any formal appointment to the new administration in 2017, feeling that anything starting with Deputy was beneath him. One really needs to read or at lest scan though this book to appreciate the enormity of his arrogance and pomposity. One example of his importance (in his eyes): “Since my days in George W. Bush’s administration, I had wanted to extricate the United States from the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces)Treaty. This may seem like a tall order, but I had been there before. I knew what to do.”
When he finally is appointed National Security Advisor, which does not require senate confirmation, much of his work with world leaders, and advice to Trump, seems as though it should have been done by the State Department, lead by Jeff Sessions, which is conspicuously absent, or by the Department of Homeland Security, which is barely mentioned. State does figure prominently once Mike Pompeo took over in late 2018. The author never mentions that he had failed to get senate confirmation as Delegate to the United Nations after prolonged debate in the Senate and has never been elected or confirmed in any position. By about page 150, when Trump has ignored his advice on multiple occasions, it is clear that the relationship is cooling, but lasts much longer.
Neither Trump nor the author address the issue of how the nations of NATO spend their defence budgets, while both insist on spending more as a per cent of the GDP. Perhaps that helps to explain the pervasive waste that is rampant in defence, e.g. leaving billions of dollars of equipment behind for The Taliban.
Critical of Steve Mnunchin, Treasury Secretary, and less so of Mike Pompeo, chair of the CIA, and then Secretary of State, at least initially, he became very critical of both China and Trump in dealing with the early days of the Covid pandemic, while naturally praising the NSC’s response, although it was longer under his direct control. The crisis of a direct attack on Iran which the author backed, missed only by hours, appalled him.
After reading this book, it is tempting to become very cynical about all political treaties, alliances, deals and agreements as fleeting working papers, to be discarded whenever one party no longer finds them useful.
Trump’s erratic behavior, often contradicting himself, his short attention span and his obsession with his media image is increasingly on display as this book progresses. But his alley cat sexual behaviour, which should have disqualified him from any public office is never mentioned.
I have to admit that I learned a lot about the complexity of U.S. foreign relations, and the author makes many compelling arguments for extremely conservative policies. One needs to carefully consider alternative arguments but they are there if you look for them.
Climatic warming is, to my way of thinking, the single most urgent threat to the longterm continuing existence of Homo sapiens on earth, but there is no mention of it at all, except to trash the Paris Climate Agreement as meaningless in a single short paragraph, because Obama approved it.
Trump’s erratic behavior, often contradicting himself, his short attention span and his obsession with his media image is increasingly on display as this book progresses. But his alley cat sexual behaviour, which should have disqualified him from any public office is never mentioned.
Like a novel with too many characters to keep track of, there are hundreds of people discussed in this book, each with their own, often secret agendas, and many with egos the size of Alberta, including he author.
1.5/10
The Passionate Reader 