Stevenson’s army, September 11
John Bolton is out. The consensus of major reporting is that, despite numerous disagreements between the adviser and the president, the impetus for his firing was the suspicion of self-serving leaks about the Afghanistan talks.
Several questions come to mind: Does this mean that Trump will run as the peace candidate? Will America be spared major conflict until after the 2020 elections? That’s my guess. Will Bolton’s successor revive the moribund interagency process? [Even if the president doesn’t want it — “I consulted myself” — the rest of the government does.] Will Bolton’s acolytes already placed throughout the government as a kind of neocon deep state be empowered or fired? Will this really make a difference in American foreign policy? {Dubious. It’s still Trump’s whims] Will congressional Republicans with Boltonesque views rise up or mute their views? [I bet they continue to be what Jim Fallows calls Vichy Republicans.]
Could you guess that Israel has elections next week? Netanyahu promises annexations of most of the West Bank settlements, says his views were “coordinated” with the Trump administration.
On this anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Amy Zegart, who wrote a scathing study of the bureaucratic failures of the US government, says even more reforms are needed in the intelligence community.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
RSS - Posts
