The Bolt(on) Cutter

I'd applaud the President's dismissal of National Security Advisor Bolton more enthusiastically if I weren't still questioning his hiring of the man in the first place. To be honest, I think I know what Trump was thinking. Having a notorious neocon hawk like Bolton on his team was no doubt meant to signal to hostile powers that neocon options like regime change were still on the table in the Trump administration. It should have been clear to Trump early, however, that Bolton was unlikely to see his preferred course of action merely as one option among many. The problem with Bolton was that he didn't represent simply one option for action but a worldview most likely radically different from Donald Trump's. While Trump seems to see competition among nations as inevitable, especially in the economic realm, he seems less inclined to see relations between the U.S. and any other country, with the possible exception of Iran, as inherently or existentially adversarial. The President most likely doesn't see regime change as the ideal goal in his dealings with any other nation. He's probably too convinced of his own ability to make deals with anyone to think it necessary to replace anyone. His acceptance of competition as the norm and his willingness to criticize allies close him off from the idealistic neocon vision of harmony (and free trade?) among democracies. Meanwhile, while he may have hoped that hiring Bolton might frighten hostile governments, Trump probably realizes by now that his counterparts around the world don't scare so easily. Bolton more likely inspires loathing rather than fear among foreign leaders and diplomats. If anyone in the White House inspires anything like fear abroad, it's most likely Trump himself on the Nixonian "madman" principle. And then the fear is not so much that he might change a country's government, but that he might destroy that country outright in a fit of pique. He probably inspires less fear by now than he thinks he does -- among foreign leaders, at least, -- but he's still more suited to the "bad cop" role in his own foreign policy than Bolton ever could have been.