TOKYO — President Trump’s decision to make John Bolton his new national security adviser sent alarm bells ringing in Asia and the Middle East on Friday, as the prospect that a hawk who advocates military action against North Korea and Iran would have the president’s ear put American allies on edge.
Bolton for years has espoused bringing about regime change in Pyongyang and Tehran, through force if necessary. And H.R. McMaster, the outgoing national security adviser, was no dove, repeatedly talking about military options for making North Korea give up its nuclear program.
But Bolton’s move into the president’s inner circle comes at a particularly sensitive time in the world’s dealings with North Korea. The South Korean president is preparing to hold a summit with Kim Jong Un at the end of April, and Trump plans to follow suit in May.
“By tapping Bolton, who has called for preemptive strikes against North Korea, Trump is sending a message to the regime, telling them that they should come out to talks in order to avoid such drastic military backlash,” said Kim Sung-han, a former South Korean vice foreign minister who is now dean of Korea University’s Graduate School of International Studies.
His appointment also comes at a critical juncture on Iran, just a month ahead of a key deadline for Iran’s nuclear deal. The Trump administration has said it will not sign a new sanctions waiver for Iran by May 12 unless changes are made to the agreement on grounds that Tehran has not lived up to the “spirit” of the deal. Bolton has been a long-time critic of the deal.
The appointment of Bolton, who has adopted a tough stance toward both Iran and the Palestinians, was widely welcomed by members of Israel’s right-wing government. Education Minister Naftali Bennett called Bolton an “extraordinary security expert, experienced diplomat and a stalwart friend of Israel.”
But even in Israel, his return stirred concern.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lobbied for the United States to “fix or nix” the Iran nuclear deal, some Israeli security officials have warned against a complete collapse of the deal — a prospect that may be more likely with Bolton as national security adviser. They argue that a flawed agreement is better than none at all. Bolton has said that the deal was a “strategic mistake” and should be “abrogated.”
Meanwhile, Israel is likely to be at the sharp-end of any conflict with Iran, something Bolton has repeatedly floated.
Writing in the New York Times in 2015, Bolton suggested that Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, while the United States simultaneously provided support for Iran’s opposition in order to bring about “regime change.”
“There are two views on Bolton among the Israeli security establishment,” said Ofer Zalzberg, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “There is a concern that he’s primarily an ideologue and there’s a risk to stability, and others who say he has decades of experience.”
For the Palestinians, meanwhile, there was no split in opinion as the Trump administration prepares to unveil a peace plan they already expect to be inherently biased. The appointment of Bolton, who has argued that the Palestinians do not have a right to self-determination, “adds insult to injury,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee.
Bolton has advocated a hard line against North Korea since he served as undersecretary of state for arms control and ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration.
At that time, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency regularly denounced Bolton, calling him “human scum and a bloodsucker” and “a beastly man bereft of reason” who suffers from a “psychopathological condition.”
[ H.R. McMaster is out as national security adviser, to be replaced by John Bolton ]
But in his role as a commentator on Fox News, Trump’s favorite network, he has had a pedestal to espouse his views.
“There’s an all-purpose joke here,” Bolton said this month when asked about North Korea’s conciliatory moves toward South Korea and, by extension, the United States. “Question: How do you know that the North Korean regime is lying? Answer: Their lips are moving.”
In a column in the Wall Street Journal at the end of February, Bolton wrote that the United States should not wait until it’s too late to launch action against North Korea. “It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first,” he wrote.
In previous columns, he wrote that the United States should go ahead with a strike even if its allies in the region do not agree.
“The U.S. should obviously seek South Korea’s agreement (and Japan’s) before using force, but no foreign government, even a close ally, can veto an action to protect Americans from Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons,” he wrote in August 2017, after North Korea had tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Many analysts think that Kim’s regime would respond to a military strike on North Korea by unleashing the conventional artillery it has sitting near the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas. That artillery has all of the greater Seoul region, home to 25 million South Koreans, within range.
Japan has also been increasingly worried about becoming collateral damage, as North Korea last year fired several missiles over Japanese territory and threatened to strike American military bases in Japan.
[ Kim Jong Un wants to be seen as Donald Trump’s equal. ]
“North Korea has the ability to inflict real pain on South Korea if we strike North Korea,” said Robert Kelly, an American who teaches international relations at Pusan National University in South Korea. “A strike could also easily slide into a tit-for-tat spiral which culminates in a serious conflict.”
There is also a significant deal of nervousness in Seoul that Bolton, who is set to take over as national security adviser on April 9, could try to scupper the diplomatic effort now underway.
“I met Bolton several times in informal settings during the Roh administration,” Kim Sung-han of Korea University said, referring to the South Korean progressive who was president for most of the years while George W. Bush was in office.
“He used to complain how Roh and his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, prioritized inter-Korean engagement over South Korea’s relationship with the U.S.,” he recalled, referring to President Roh Moo-hyun. He added that the administration of President Moon Jae-in would have to tread very carefully when communicating with Bolton.
“They will have to demonstrate to Bolton that the current administration’s approach to these issues is different from that of their predecessors,” he said.
The proposed summit between Kim and Trump is more tentative, with no date or location yet set, and no clear indication that the North’s nuclear program will even be on the agenda.
By selecting Bolton, Trump could be trying to walk into the talks with a “formidable stance,” said Park Hyeong-jung, a senior research fellow at Korea Institute for National Unification, which deals with inter-Korean relations.
“The two sides [the United States and North Korea] are picking their cards on the eve of the big talks,” he said. “The U.S. wants to boost its position so Trump decided to tap Bolton, a person who talks big.”
[ Europeans look for a way to preserve nuclear deal while punishing Iran and satisfying Trump ]
Bolton’s presence could also encourage Trump to take an even more confrontational stance against the regime.
“Trump is reorganizing his entourage so that he walks into the North Korean talks with people who share his views,” Park said.
There are also risks if the talks lead nowhere, because critics of engagement will use that as an opportunity to say that diplomacy has failed.
“I am particularly worried that if the Trump-Kim summit fails, Bolton will take that as proof that we must hit North Korea,” said Kelly.
Some South Korean newspapers saw signs that the Trump administration is preparing for military action in case diplomacy failed.
“The Moon administration is creating a different atmosphere than that of the U.S. government,” the Munhwa Ilbo said in an editorial Friday afternoon. “The U.S.’s concern about South Korea could be the motive behind these recent moves,” it said.
The U.S. military, which will hold joint annual drills with South Korea from April 1, will also stage a civilian evacuation drill next month, practicing getting Americans out of South Korea The “Focused Passage” exercise will take place from April 16 to 20, during the huge military exercises, Stars and Stripes reported. About 250,000 American civilians live in South Korea.
“The [South Korean] government should ramp up its coordination with the U.S.,” the paper said.
Bolton joins an administration that Palestinians complain is already stacked with officials whose views chime with the right wing of Israeli politics, including U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
“This completes the circle of extremist hard-line Zionists in the U.S. administration,” said Ashrawi.
“This is unprecedented, this lethal combination of hard-liners, Israel-firsters, who are in charge of decision making in the U.S.”
Bolton, a vocal advocate of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, has suggested a “three-state solution” in which the occupied West Bank is handed over to Jordan, and Gaza to the Egyptians.
“These territories have no particular history either of national identity or of economic interdependence,” he wrote in a 2014 op-ed in the Washington Times. “The only logic underlying the demand for a Palestinian state is the political imperative of Israel’s opponents to weaken and encircle the Jewish state.”
Morris reported from Jerusalem. Min Joo Kim in Seoul and Ruth Eglash in Jersualem contributed to this report.
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