Please refer to my previous posting (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180413). (Lily)
TAI: It’s also not clear that bringing in the ICC has made the Sudanese government more willing to allow UN forces in Darfur. The contrary seems more likely, as General Bashir and his associates now imagine the possibility of their being hauled up on international charges. But let’s move on to Florida 2000.
There is a lingering image from Florida 2000, even among some Republicans, that the GOP fought dirty, what with Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush on its side. It colored the run-up to the 2004 election, also a close call hinging on one state. The impression left in the American body politic ever since is that even presidential elections are smarmy and tainted with being illegitimate. Is that a fair impression?
John Bolton: Well, what was illegitimate in Florida was the Florida Supreme Court’s unwillingness to follow the course of Florida state law. That’s what required a lot of what happened in the Florida recount, and I would say that the Republicans were essentially the victims of that fact. Michael Novak of AEI told me, after the Florida Supreme Court decision that decided the election in favor of Bush, that he was worried at the time that the Democrats were going to wipe us out in the recount. He described, in an impression shared by Ben Wattenberg, that what was going on in Florida was the street-fighters versus the preppies, and that the preppies were going to lose. Obviously, Bush was successful, but it was not a pleasant business. I didn’t enjoy it.
TAI: After the inauguration, you ended up at what’s called “T” in the State Department (though no one seems to remember why it’s called that), as Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it?
John Bolton: Bob Joseph and I spent six years trying to get rid of the “arms control” part of the title, but—
TAI: Yeah, it eats up the stationery, doesn’t it? How did you end up in that job?
John Bolton: Well, Colin Powell called me a few days after he was announced as Secretary of State, and we talked about several different positions. Some people were interested in various slots at the State Department, and Powell had by that time made some decisions already, including to have Rich Armitage as his Deputy. We discussed other positions, but this was the one he offered me and, though I lacked a deep arms control background, I thought that, given the priority candidate Bush had put on withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, it would be an exciting place to be. So I was happy to accept.
TAI: How did you get along with Powell as time passed? I ask because, as you know, you’ve been accused of many things. In fact, you’ve been accused of more things than any person I know of, including the charge that you were really odd-man-out at the State Department. Some said that you were a cat’s paw of the Vice President, a mole in the State Department whom Powell didn’t really want but was more or less forced to take on. How do you respond to all this?
John Bolton: It’s the stuff of urban legend invented mainly by a credulous press, and one of the faults I would attribute to our media is that they don’t understand the playing out of policy differences. They can’t, or at any rate they don’t, seem to understand that person X can argue one view on a problem, person Y another and person Z yet another, but that they can still reconcile and come to a policy decision. In the minds of the media, everything becomes personality-driven. They even do it in Supreme Court appointments: Kennedy is the centrist, and Stevens is out here, and O’Connor is over there. Because of their own intellectual limitations, few journalists analyze issues at a conceptual level, so they’re left with a “who’s up, who’s down” kind of reporting. Because of their own intellectual limitations, few journalists analyze issues at a conceptual level, so they’re left with a “who’s up, who’s down” kind of reporting.
There were lots of disagreements inside the State Department, and inside the Administration. There always are, and that’s both good and normal. Personality does play a role, of course, because policy isn’t made by abstract forces but by actual people. But the notion that we have pro-such-and-such coalition meetings in one corner and anti-coalition meetings in another just doesn’t reflect the reality of how decisions get made in government.
TAI: But there were times when you’d make a speech—I particularly remember one case concerning North Korea where you were very tough on the Dear Leader—and mid-ranking State Department personnel would wonder out loud, “How did that happen? The Secretary’s office couldn’t have cleared that.” The reasoning was that your confrontational language conflicted with the President’s determination not to allow the North Koreans to spin us up, to extort us into headlines and seize control of our quality time. How do you parse such reasoning?
John Bolton: I know the speech you’re talking about. Well, both Powell and Rice read that speech before I gave it. Here’s the fact: I’m a very good bureaucrat.Here’s the fact: I’m a very good bureaucrat. Every speech I gave in every significant respect was cleared in advance. That doesn’t mean I got to say exactly what I wanted to say. There were a lot of changes. But everything was cleared by the bureaucracy. That is what makes some of my critics go truly wild, because they couldn’t get me on process fouls. I think in part that comes from earlier experiences in the bureaucracy—I knew how to make it work. I’m proud to say that I’m a good bureaucrat, because ultimately it was good protection for getting done what I think the President wanted done.
TAI: Of course there are always disagreements within and between the State and Defense Departments, within and between the intelligence community and the White House, and so on. But how would you “rank the rancor” within the Bush 43 first term to other administrations you’ve seen up close, including the Bush 43 second term?
John Bolton: How administrations get along internally clearly depends in part on the institutional differences you’ve mentioned, and in part it depends on the closeness of the cabinet secretary with the president. Bush 41 is probably closer in operation to the second term of Bush 43 from the State Department perspective, because Jim Baker was roughly as close to Bush 41 as Condoleezza Rice is to Bush 43. The difference, then, is in the first term of Bush 43, where Powell did not stand as close in that relationship as these other two secretaries did.
The different circumstances that different administrations face are also significant. For example, in the second Reagan term, questions of arms control with the Soviet Union were hugely divisive between State and Defense, whereas in Bush 43 there was no question that we were going to have a new strategic relationship with Russia. There were disagreements on specifics, but the broader debate had been overtaken by some fundamental high-level decisions. And, of course, 9/11 came along and had an impact, as well.
TAI: As I said, you’ve been accused of much. Just the other day I heard someone call you an “extremist”, and even some Republicans I know have called you a “right-wing nut” in my presence. You’ve been accused of being a leaker, of being brusque to the point of bullying, of being bombastic and indiscreet with language in diplomatic settings. I think you’ve been accused of just about everything except having sex with a feral cat—and I might need to check again on that one. And this was all before you even went up to New York.
I raise all this because my first boss in Washington for a brief time some 28 years ago was Richard Perle. At the time, Richard Perle had been given a nickname: The Prince of Darkness. Now, you’ve not yet got a nickname—
John Bolton: Yes, I always envied that…
TAI: Well, Richard seemed not to mind the nickname. In fact, he had a large newspaper clipping referring to him as the Prince of Darkness taped to the back of a door in the Russell Senate Office Building. To him, I think, the nickname meant, first of all, that he carried weight in important debates. More than that, I think he took it as a sign of honest disagreement over principles—at that time concerning what was and what wasn’t genuinely beneficial arms control policy. He was content to be in a minority position because he believed in the principles he espoused. So is that how you feel, too? All these accusations would bother anyone at some level, but is it worth it, in your view, because of the principles involved?
John Bolton: It would bother anybody at a personal level to be accused of not being polite, in effect, and I have been unfairly accused of that. But it certainly doesn’t bother me to the extent that it reflects the beliefs and arguments I advance. I can’t speak for my critics, of course, but I think their views reflect how I chose to perform in a bureaucracy like the State Department. Let me try to explain what I mean.
One thing the career Foreign Service is very good at is what they describe as “finding what direction the building is moving in.” Of course, the building itself doesn’t move, but we at the State Department refer to “the building” as the community within its walls. Take, for example, a Foreign Service officer who is thinking of taking position X on a certain issue. If he hears that the building is moving in the other direction, it’s rare that he or she would say, “I don’t care what direction the building is moving in, I’m taking position X and I’m going to articulate it and try to persuade others.”
Now, it’s a fact of life in a bureaucracy that higher authority gets to make decisions. You can only push so far until somebody above you makes the decision. In my case in T, “somebody else” meant only Secretary Powell, so I was in a very privileged position. When subordinates or others would advise me that “the building was moving” in a different direction, it never bothered me in the slightest.When subordinates or others would advise me that “the building was moving” in a different direction, it never bothered me in the slightest. When the Secretary made a decision, first Powell and then Rice, I followed it; whether I was T or at USUN, I always followed my instructions. What the building couldn’t understand was why I would continue to advocate a position when everybody knew it was not likely to prevail. In some cases, contrary to expectations, I did prevail; in many others I did not. But I never feared to lose because I felt it was important to make the arguments for the positions I believed in.
(To be continued.)
