Surrender Is Not an Option

He really is nuts a crazy hawk that never found a country or a war that. He would skip.

Bolton\’s book is a all ego trip, very little substance. If you want to know his personal travel schedules down to the second, and every micro detail of his every quest for more egotistic personal power, this is for you. If you want insight into conservative positions on national security issues, it\’s not.

This book was written in 2007 and has nothing to do with the current Ukraine issue. I returned the book for a credit.

Despots of the world respect only one thing: the iron fist. Bolton understands this and has lived his life as a patriot. Some on the conservative side label him a Neocon. He is not nor has he ever been. He was a rock-ribbed conservative even during his law school days. He is assailed for believing that there was WMD in Iraq and therefore favoring invasion. There was WMD!! It was shipped by truck to Damascus by KGB agents. (The containers have Russian markings on them. Saddam\’s scientists were not sophisticated enough to produce WMD.) He favors regime change in Iran. DUH. Those idiots hate us and will nuke us if they get the chance. He favors a hard stance against China. Well, in just the past few weeks we\’ve become aware of how great a threat China is to us. Bolton is brilliant. We should listen to him.

Awaiting John Bolton\’s new book on his short stint as Secretary of State in the Trump Administration. I thought it would be good to familiarize with his thought about his efforts in more conventional administrations. I have to wonder, given what he says in this book, if he has at all changed his mind about the proper role of career people in the State Department. Surrender is not an Option begins briefly with Bolton\’s introduction to politics as a 16-year-old volunteering for the Goldwater campaign in 1964. He never really says why he was so drawn to the Republicans, but other than alluding to his dislike for Democrats he doesn\’t much compare and contrast them. Obviously a smart man, Bolton got the right education (Yale law) and was at the perfect age to mount the first rung of the State Department ladder under Reagan continuing into the elder Bush (Bush 41) administration. Skipping over Clinton (he went back to law practice) and then again jumping into government with the election of Bush Jr (Bush 43) in 2000. Bolton seems to have earned each new rung on the ladder through good work for his superiors. He also seems drawn naturally to the neo-conservatives whose broad approach with foreign policy was to engage with the world for the purpose of shaping it to American interests. The first half of the book is about what he did at State from Reagan through the first Bush 43 administration. In the second half, he details his work as UN ambassador during Bush 43\’s second term, two plus years, from August 2005 (the Senate never would confirm him, his time spent as a Bush \”recess appointment\”) until the end of the year 2007. These were all years of constant crisis whether the Iran-Contra scandal, disintegration of the Soviet Union, North Korean or Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons, genocide in Sudan, or the mess in Somalia. He mostly skips past the disastrous (Bush 43) debacle of Iraq saying only (in his concluding chapter) that it was right to depose Saddam notwithstanding we mostly botched the aftermath. He is short here on details. In the book\’s first half, he is little critical of the State Department under Baker (Reagan and Bush 41), and even Powell (Bush 43) in his early days, but as his experience at State grows he finds much to dislike about the later Bush years. As UN ambassador he finds a lot to dislike about the UN, and understandably so having become mostly a debating society now and for many decades, something even the liberal \”high minded\” as he calls them, recognize. In both parts, he bemoans international diplomacy as too much carrot and concession and not enough stick. He says little in the first half about what the sticks might be though he does address this in his conclusions. He gets into specific recommendations in the second, UN-years half of the book, but here the tendency of others (including Bolton\’s superiors at State) to compromise over-much and give away the store (at least as far as American interests are concerned) before real negotiations begin is front and center. Bolton is ideologically far to my right, but his observations, \”process over substance\” and numerous problems with UN diplomatic ritual (not to mention outright failure and corruption in places) are accurate portraits of organizational dysfunction. Bolton does his best to represent U.S. interests as he sees them and at the same time be a loyal soldier of the Bush 43 State department. There certainly was enough nonsense going on in the UN to fill several books, and as the second Bush 43 term winds on he finds much to criticize about the Rice State Department as well. No one gets away unscathed here except Bolton himself. He would come across a statesman except he ruins the effect with incessant (almost every page) derogatory remarks targeting both individuals and various collectives. Time marches on, and much has happened since the end of 2007. Has Bolton learned anything? The international community is less stable than it was 13 years ago, much of this we might say due to American and international failure to take Bolton\’s advice. On the other hand, very much might just as easily be laid at the feet of an international community (including the U.S.) too willing to engage in stick-wielding at the wrong time and place. He tells us the job of the people at State is to implement the policies of the big boss, the elected president. Does he still believe this about the current boss? I am very much looking forward to his present thoughts.

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