The Bolton-Pompeo Package

Columnist Paul R. Pillar likes neither Mr. Bolton nor President Trump. However former assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netayahu, Caroline Glick, calls the Bolton appointment "brilliant"

The National Interest

Pompeo

"The Senate is about to have an opportunity to weigh in on another highly important foreign policy position, that of secretary of state, for which President Trump has nominated Mike Pompeo.  Senators ought to consider that nomination in tandem with the appointment of Bolton as national security adviser, even though the Senate formally has a role with only one of those appointments and not with the other.  Senators should consider the two as a package deal.  They should not vote to confirm Pompeo if they are uncomfortable with either part of the package.

"The main reason to approach the Pompeo nomination this way is that the nation currently has a president who, sad to say, needs restraint.  He will need restraint all the more during the coming months as troubles of his own making increase the chance that he will lash out in destructive ways. The copious commentary during the fifteen months of the Trump presidency about having “adults in the room” to restrain the worst urges of an inexperienced and impulsive president speaks to an important truth. " . . .

Caroline Glick: Bolton’s appointment is a brilliant America first move

Bolton

. . . "While it is true that Bolton is from Washington – or Baltimore, to be precise – and although it is true that he held senior foreign policy positions in both Bush administrations, he has always been a thorn in the side of the establishment rather than a member of that establishment.

"For the better part of three decades, Bolton has bravely held positions that fly in the face of the establishment’s innate preference for appeasement. He was a vocal critic, for example, of then-President Bill Clinton’s disastrous nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

"The 1994 “Agreed Framework” that Clinton concluded with Pyongyang was touted as a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis with North Korea. In exchange for shuttering – but not destroying — its nuclear installations, North Korea received light water reactors from the U.S. and massive economic relief. As Bolton warned it would, North Korea pocketed the concessions and gifts and continued to develop its nuclear weapons. In other words, far from preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, the Agreed Framework preserved the North Korean nuclear program and enabled the regime to develop it effectively with U.S. assistance.

"For his warnings, Bolton has been reviled as a “warmonger” and a “superhawk” by the foreign policy elite, which has gone out if its way to undercut him." . . .