The Room Where It Happened, Chapters 5-7

Chapters 5-7 largely deal with Russia, though also detail the end of Gen. Mattis' tenure as Secretary of Defense. It has taken me a bit to get this down, due to the 4th of July and also the fact that every time I pick up this book and look at the title, I usually just go "I'd rather just go down and watch Hamilton again."

Quick Hits: John Bolton discusses negotiations with Russia & Putin, keying in on his evaluation of the dangers inherent in putting a master manipulator in Putin and a naïve egotist in Trump together. This comes out in the well-published Helsinki press conference snafu. He also covers the spiral of the disastrous lack of clear thinking about Syria (and Afghanistan) that also leads Mattis' demise in the administration.

Leading up to the summit in Helsinki (the location settled on despite, as Bolton highlights, Trump's severe lack of geographical and historical knowledge), Bolton discusses the president's NATO issues; in brief, you would not be surprised that Bolton is a big proponent of increased member spending (including the US), but that Trump's lack of focus served as a major derailment to any sort of real diplomacy.  He gets started with a bit of snark directed towards the president's knee-jerk hatred of anything related to Obama: "Trump was correct on the burden-sharing point, as Obama had been, a convergence of views that might have shaken Trump's confidence in this own had he paid attention to it" (Bolton 134). Bolton argues that while a normal president would have likely made inroads through frank, logical argumentation, "it was not Trump's directness but the veiled hostility to the alliance itself that unnerved other NATO members and his own advisors" (135). It is darkly humorous to read Bolton talking about trying to steer Trump clear of monumental disasters (here, withdrawing from NATO) by planning out ways with other senior officials to placate his ego (in this case, drawing Trump's attention to the Kavanaugh confirmation).

What I have found particularly interesting in the book so far is the contrast Bolton presents between other world leaders and Trump. He sets up the sections in which Trump meets (and gets completely snowed by) the ruthless dictatorial strongmen like Putin, Kim, and Erdogan by describing the preparatory meetings with experienced leaders from countries actually aligned with traditional American ideals. This was evident earlier in the sections on North Korea, where Bolton details talks with leaders from Japan and Singapore; it is echoed here again as Bolton mentions Finland's President Niinisto's advice for Trump before meeting with Putin (153).  This section we also get introduced to Fiona Hill, who you may recall from testimony during the impeachment of President Trump. Chapter 5 ends with Bolton and other senior officials scrambling to deal with Trump's comments to the press at the end of the Helsinki meetings - you know, the one that went a bit like this: 

My people came to me-Dan Coats came to me and some others-they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin' he just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server. But I have-I have confidence in both parties...So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. (156-157)

Chapter 6 focuses primarily on another one of Bolton's pet projects: getting out of the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty. Feeling out there are probably mixed on this topic and Bolton's motivations, but he does at least lay out his thinking and justification for it. Of course, the negotiations on this and related issues are constantly by, in Bolton's view, conflicts with cabinet members (namely Mattis and Mnuchin), the unprincipled irritant that is Sen. Paul, and Trump's own weakness when it comes to leaders not closely allied with America:

In addition to objecting to sanctions, Trump stopped an anodyne statement criticizing Russia on the tenth anniversary of its invasion of Georgia...typical of Trump, who in June 2019 also blocked a draft statement on the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacres...a reflection of his difficulty in separating personal from official relations. I'm not aware of any case where Russia or China refrained from criticizing the United States for fear of irritating our sensitive leaders. Trump's inconsistent views and decisions on Russia made all our work complicated... (181) 

Finally, chapter 7  gets into the situations in Syria (again) and Afghanistan. Here Bolton expresses concern about Trump again siding with a brutal totalitarian (this time, Turkey's Erdogan) over both allied forces (the Kurds) and even his own administration. The president frequently demonstrates his lack of knowledge of how his own government runs and acts at cross-purposes to the intelligence community, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Justice Department (keep in mind that this comes before the days of his best buddy Burr being at the helm of Justice). While the senior advisors prevented immediate disasters in policy notes that after he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dunford were gone, Trump finally had his way in withdrawing from Syria; Bolton does not mince words with his evaluation here: "The result of Trump's decision was a complete debacle for US policy and for our credibility worldwide. Whether I could have averted this result, as happened nine months before, I do not know, but the strongly negative bipartisan political reaction Trump received was entirely predictable and entirely justified" (212).