The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, by JohnBolton. Simon and Schuster, 2020. 592 pages. $32.50, hardcover
2021; Wiley; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/mepo.12541
ISSN1475-4967
Autores Tópico(s)European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies
ResumoIn his tell-all account of his brief time serving as the national security adviser in the Trump White House, John Bolton describes, in more than 500 pages, many troubling aspects of the Trump presidency during that period, making the book a bestseller. That narrative, however, largely overshadows the very real policy mayhem of the Trump administration, policies that, in almost all cases, Bolton championed. Bolton's account is the story of America's reputational decline and outlier status in the international community under Trump. John Bolton was Donald Trump's third national security adviser (NSA), serving in that position from April 9, 2018, through September 10, 2019—as noted on the book's jacket, a period of just 453 days. In his book, however, Bolton frequently refers to instances in which he advised Trump on policy issues prior to becoming NSA and comments at length on Trump foreign policies that he long advocated and supported even prior to his appointment. Thus, the account that follows covers the breadth of Bolton's advocacy for, support of, and involvement in Trump's foreign-policy decisions, particularly those concerning the Middle East, the focus of this journal. Early in the book Bolton reminds the reader that he had served in three previous Republican administrations, those of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. And he notes that he was prepared to serve again, as “eight years of Barack Obama meant there was much to repair.” During the Trump transition he had offered his services as secretary of state; in his view, “State needed a cultural revolution to be an effective instrument of policy.” But this was not to be: Bolton repeatedly notes (with some apparent pride) that, such was his reputation, he could never be confirmed for a government position that required Senate approval (secretary of state does; NSA does not). Despite being known for his hawkish policy advocacy, Bolton has long been a poster child of Vietnam War dodging, a “hawk” who took steps to avoid combat during his draft-eligible years (though not steps as egregious as Trump's bone spurs). In The Room Where It Happened, Bolton reveals several other defining aspects of his character and mindset. One is hubris, reflected in his use of a prominent line from the theatrical hit “Hamilton” as his book's title. In the play, Alexander Hamilton uses “the room where it happens” to refer to being involved in decisions shaping the emerging new nation of the United States of America. Do not be misled; John Bolton is no Alexander Hamilton. A second insight into Bolton that is reiterated throughout his tome: his antipathy for the media. Almost every reference to the press includes gratuitous aspersions: “the press mob shambled in”; “success even the hostile media could not diminish”; “the tremendous dishonesty of the press”; “sadly for the press, nothing went wrong”; “a New York Times story, filled with even more than the usual quota of mistakes.” Of course, Trump, whose repeated description of the media as “the enemy of the people,” is in a league by himself in vilifying the press. Third, Bolton repeatedly displays his contempt for diplomacy. He cites more than a dozen international treaties and agreements that he is pleased the United States never joined or for which he successfully advocated US withdrawal. There is not one mention of a treaty Bolton supports or believes provides benefit to the United States or the international community. It is this mentality, widespread among neoconservatives such as Bolton, that has led to the US status as an outlier from what are largely universally accepted international agreements: Bolton saw the latter “as an important victory against global governance,” an apt reflection of his world view. His antipathy for multilateral diplomacy runs deep: “I urged that we withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council”; “I also advocated defunding the UN Relief Works Agency [sic]”; “Trump, for example, readily agreed to un-sign the Obama-era Arms Trade Treaty”; “When I resigned, consideration was under way regarding leaving Open Skies, and press reports indicated that these efforts, which I still fully support, were continuing.” US reputational decline as a result of such disparagement of international cooperation has been incalculable. Fourth, Bolton reveals himself to be a serial backstabber: he repeatedly excoriates his administration colleagues, most notably Secretary of Defense General James Mattis (“I soon realized Mattis was our biggest problem”), just as he does Trump. More broadly, in his narrative of his time as NSA, and of his views on and contribution to US foreign policy, Bolton paints a stark picture of himself: someone who is all-knowing, with absolute certainty that his views and assessments are accurate and that anyone who disagrees with him is uninformed, ignorant, or worse; someone who views toppling regimes and assassinating leaders of countries whose policies he opposes as normal, acceptable aspects of foreign policy; and someone who disdains an international order based on the rule of law. Bolton repeatedly combines a polemical presentation of his policy views with unsubstantiated criticism and inaccurate descriptions of policies with which he disagrees. In my view, there is much to be criticized about the US approach to the Middle East in recent decades, and all recent presidents deserve to be called out for their policy failures in the region. Most prominent among these are George W. Bush's failure to act against the al-Qaeda threat in August-September 2001 and his disastrous decision to invade Iraq in April 2003. Obama can rightly be faulted for his poor handling of US policy toward the Syrian civil war. And all modern presidents can be criticized for failing to put US interests ahead of those of Israel in response to Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. But Trump, and enablers such as Bolton, have wrought more damage to US goals and interests in the Middle East than all post-World War II presidents combined. “I warned Trump against wasting political capital in an elusive search to solve the Arab-Israeli dispute and strongly supported moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, thereby recognizing it as Israel's capital.” The above quote notwithstanding, Bolton does give lip service to the value to the United States of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In discussing the converging interests between the Arab Gulf states and Israel in prioritizing the effort to counter malign Iranian regional behavior and threats, Bolton notes, “This Iran consensus was also contemporaneously making possible a new push to resolve the Israel-Palestine dispute, which strategically could very much benefit America.” Over more than seven decades following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, 12 presidential administrations (six Republican, six Democratic) followed policies toward the Israeli-Palestinian dispute that, while always skewed somewhat in Israel's favor, did not cross any red lines protecting US values and interests. That changed with Trump. In The Room Where It Happened, Bolton asserts, without explanation, justification, or context, the correctness of Trump's reversal of many decades of bipartisan US policies, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, closing the Palestinian representation office in Washington, canceling funding for Palestinian refugees and humanitarian projects in the Palestinian territories, and recognizing Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, among others. These policy reversals were based entirely on Trump's personal political considerations. Neither US interests, nor principles or values—morality, fairness, justice—played any role. Trump's calculation was twofold: to secure the political and financial backing of US megadonors who support right-wing Israeli policies; and to secure the support of US Christian evangelicals who view the establishment of the State of Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and Israel's existence as part of an End Times narrative. In fact, Trump dealt with Israel-Palestine just as he did with every other issue: pursue policies of direct political benefit to himself, regardless of their harm to US interests; divide Americans into “us” vs. “them” camps; and have no qualms about betraying fundamental American principles or even adherence to the rule of law while doing so. During my several decades as a US diplomat in the Middle East, it was clear that the most devastating factor affecting the attitude of Arabs toward the United States has been the decades-long US support for—or at least acquiescence in—Israeli intransigency toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. This included Israel's settlement building and annexation, and its treatment of the Palestinians under its military occupation. Since the appearance of Bolton's book, we have seen the emergence of an agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) linking the pursuit of normal relations with Israel's forgoing unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank. I, like many, welcomed this diplomatic breakthrough. I believe it prevented the potential devastation that unilateral Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank would have wrought—politically, in terms of achieving an equitable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and, in humanitarian terms, by forestalling a deterioration in the security environment that unilateral Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank would trigger. However, it is important to understand the backstory here. The impetus for the UAE's offer of normalized relations with Israel was the Trump administration's announced willingness to violate the UN Charter and international law, something the Trump administration had already done in 2019 by formally recognizing Israeli annexation of Syria's Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. No country other than the United States recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; the UN Charter forbids the annexation of territory taken by force. In January 2020, the Trump administration unveiled an Arab-Israeli peace plan that countenanced US recognition of Israeli annexation of up to 30 percent of the West Bank. Thus, the Trump administration, for a second time, put itself on record in violation of the UN Charter and international law. Put simply, its brokering of the normalization agreement between Israel and the UAE was an act of extortion. And the pattern continued into the final months of the Trump administration with both Sudan and Morocco—holding Sudan hostage to being listed as a global sponsor of terrorism, and bribing Morocco by recognizing its sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara—in order to cajole these two nations into normalizing relations with Israel. “[T]he 2015 nuclear deal…was badly conceived, abominably negotiated and drafted, and entirely advantageous to Iran: unenforceable, unverifiable, and inadequate in duration and scope.” As with his assessment of Trump's policies on the Arab-Israeli dispute, Bolton's assertions concerning the Iran nuclear deal are unsupported and, in fact, divorced from reality. Even worse, on the first page of his Iran chapter, Bolton reveals his contempt for the very concept of state sovereignty—indeed, his ignorance (or perhaps rejection) of the Westphalian international order that came into existence in 1648. Bolton justifies the need to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran on the basis of several Iranian policies or behaviors, including “Iran's nuclear-weapons and ballistic missile programs,” its “role as the world's central banker for terrorism,” and its “aggressive conventional military presence across the Middle East.” Like most observers of the region, I would agree that all are objectionable. But only one is an existential threat, in particular to the broad international community, including to the United States: Iran's possible pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Fortunately for the region and the global community, that threat was checked by a painstakingly negotiated, multistate agreement with strong verification and enforcement mechanisms and ratified by the UN Security Council: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a.k.a. the Iran nuclear deal, signed in 2015. Bolton seems oblivious to this fact. Bolton's lengthy disparagement of Mattis in recounting the discussions and process that led to Trump's repudiation of the Iran nuclear deal is telling. During my time as the US ambassador in Oman, when Mattis was commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), I had the opportunity on several occasions to join him in discussions concerning Iran, together with senior Omani military officials—including Sandhurst graduate Sultan Qaboos—and with my fellow US ambassadors to the Gulf states in meetings at CENTCOM regional headquarters at the Al-Udeid Air Base in Doha, Qatar. It was clear to me that Mattis was a hardliner on Iran but reasoned and realistic in his judgment on policy options. Bolton borrows the well-known Marc Antony quote from “Julius Caesar”—“Cry ‘Havoc!’ and Let Slip the Dogs of War”—for the title of one of his book's chapters. It is Mattis, not Bolton, however, who actually understands what the quote means. As Bolton makes clear, Mattis counseled adherence to the nuclear deal as a means of keeping Iranian nuclear ambitions in check. Before abrogating the deal, there was, according to Bolton, some discussion within the Trump administration of trying to renegotiate a “better” deal. Bolton made his position clear: “I said our various policy priorities with Iran (nuclear, terrorism, conventional military aggression) could not be delinked, and we particularly could not separate Iran's nuclear program from all its other malign behavior. This was precisely Obama's mistake on the nuclear deal.” Bolton continues, “There would be no ‘new’ Iran deal and no ‘deterrence’ established as long as Iran's current regime remained.” In effect, per Bolton, either we forgo (or, in this case, repudiate) a deal to address Iran's nuclear program (and, effectively, accept a world in which Iran is free to pursue a nuclear weapon) or we take steps to trigger regime change in Iran, which would almost certainly entail military action and likely spark a regional war. Trump renounced US participation in and adherence to the JCPOA on May 8, 2018. The fact that a president abrogated a US commitment entered into by his predecessor, when all other parties to that agreement were abiding by its terms, has permanently damaged the credibility of the United States. Trump's decision set the stage for Iran to restart an existential threat to the United States and the global community: its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Bolton praises Trump's decision. He also expresses his support for the unilateral reimposition of US sanctions against Iran, including the use of US dominance in international banking to force the European cosignatories of the Iran nuclear deal (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the European Union) to abide by such unilateral US sanctions. The fact of the US bullying our closest allies with such an abuse of economic and financial-system dominance has caused a permanent setback in our ability to advance foreign-policy goals. Ultimately, it will also diminish US economic pre-eminence and undermine future US economic well-being and policy options. The international community—led by enraged US allies—will work to develop alternatives to the dollar as the world's reserve currency and to stand up alternative international banking and financial clearinghouse systems to preclude future US abuse of its primacy in these areas. (Significantly, as Bolton notes, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made precisely these points in arguing against Trump's use of unilateral US economic and financial sanctions against Iran.) Bolton also states his support for imposing sanctions on an arm of the Iranian government, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. By claiming that the United States has a right to sanction an element of the Iranian government because it disagrees with aspects of its policy, Bolton is signaling his acceptance of a world in which one government can sanction another because it does not like certain of its policies. One might note, however, that corresponding sanctions by other countries would not have as much effect as US sanctions have, because the countries imposing them are not in a position to inflict the same level of economic pain, at least at present. They do not hold the world's reserve currency; unlike the United States, they do not wield massive influence in—essentially control—global financial markets and banking. So Bolton is actually saying that, because the United States is the most powerful country in the world and has the most economic weight, through which it has a uniquely powerful ability to wield economic sanctions, the US government is permitted to use such a tool when it does not like certain policies of other governments. Bolton is effectively advocating what has been a longstanding neocon principle: might makes right, the law of the jungle. Later, in the context of discussing street protests in Venezuela, Bolton again reveals his ignorance concerning US actions toward Iran. He disparages the US response to demonstrations in Iran that took place during Obama's time in office: “We didn't want to replicate Obama in 2009, watching pro-democracy protests in Iran suppressed while the US did nothing.” A recurring neocon error is the belief that foreign publics welcome US involvement and intervention in order to effect changes those publics are seeking. At the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we constantly heard the mantra “We will be greeted as liberators.” We know how that turned out. In the case of the 2009 anti-government demonstrations in Iran, the protesters made it clear that they did not want any outsiders to affiliate themselves with or express support for their protests. They knew any indication of US support would be a surefire way to delegitimize them. Ironically, it took Russian President Vladimir Putin to explain the facts to Bolton: “If we declare war against [Iran] economically, it would consolidate support for the regime.” Reflecting his magical thinking, Bolton countered: “I explained why we didn't see it that way, and why strong sanctions would reduce support for the regime, which was already under enormous stress.” Putin was correct. As it happened, support by the Iranian people for improved relations with the United States—and public sentiment in Iran against the Iranian regime—peaked during the Obama administration; both declined precipitously under Trump. The Iranian people understood that Obama had sought better relations with the Iranian government, an approach that the Iranian people supported and pressured their government to reciprocate. It was a reasonable diplomatic effort by the Obama administration to use the prospect of ending Iran's pariah status and fostering public sentiment among Iranians in support of improved relations with the United States and the West to try to change objectionable aspects of Iranian regional behavior. To say, as Bolton does, that the United States gave Tehran billions of dollars through the nuclear deal to allow Iran to increase its malign regional behavior is typical of Bolton's dissembling (he quotes a Trump tweet about “the terrible 150 Billion Dollar deal made by John Kerry and the Obama Administration” and cites “the ‘cash on pallets’ delivered to Iran under Obama”). He fails to mention that the money was Iran's to begin with. He also ignores the strategy of using such funds to put pressure on the Iranian regime to improve the lives of the Iranian people (not to mention that the unfreezing of these assets was an aspect of successfully checking the Iranian nuclear threat). Unfortunately, to this point the Iranian regime has, through massive violence and repression, succeeded in channeling funds into its foreign adventures at the expense of the wellbeing of the Iranian people. And the Trump administration's policy of “maximum pressure” only increased the misery of Iranians. It did not bring about either regime change or a reduction in Iranian support for malign actors such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza, or the Houthis in Yemen. It did, however, have three effects detrimental to US interests. It prodded Iran to ramp up its nuclear-enrichment program; it united the Iranian people with their government in opposition to the United States; and it split America from its European allies in addressing the Iranian threat. Deeply troubling also was the January 3, 2020, drone strike that killed Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, a Trump administration action that took place after Bolton's time in government but one he had advocated for and welcomed. In his book, Bolton supports the idea of imposing sanctions on Soleimani but does not address the prospect of lethally targeting him. However, at the time of Soleimani's assassination, Bolton did comment that “it was long in the making.” Moreover, news reports stated that, following the Iranian downing of a US drone in June 2019—during Bolton's tenure as NSA—“top aides like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-national security adviser John Bolton pushed the president to take out the Iranian general in response.” The decision to assassinate Soleimani was problematic in many respects. The claimed justification for this destabilizing and provocative undertaking, that it amounted to “self-defense,” lacked credibility. But the damage and precedent went much deeper than that. Trump's decision to take such a reckless and inflammatory step was, as with all of Trump's decisions, based entirely on his perception that it would be to his political benefit. The fact that it violated international law and universally recognized norms, and that it set a precedent that would forever endanger all senior US military and other government officials around the world, was of no concern to him (nor, apparently, to Bolton). The use of a drone strike to kill a senior Iranian military officer—an official from a country with which the United States was not at war, who was traveling openly from a civilian airport into a nearby city—was essentially based on the fact that the United States objects to Iranian government policies that Soleimani was involved in implementing. Such reasoning opens a Pandora's box to a truly Hobbesian world. It effectively condones the targeted killing of any government official anywhere by any government that objects to the policies that official is implementing. Such actions and policies epitomize the mindset of political opportunists like Trump (and Bolton). They break longstanding international norms that underlie the rule of law, and expend American diplomatic capital and goodwill accumulated through decades of responsible US leadership, in order to pursue their own short-term goals, leaving the consequences to their successors, when they will be long gone from the seat of power. Trump said, “You know you and I agree on almost everything except Iraq,” and I replied, “Yes, but even there we agree that Obama's withdrawal of American forces in 2011 led us to the mess we have now.” In The Room Where It Happened, Bolton displays a penchant for rewriting history. In the above quote, the first part refers to the fact that Bolton was an acknowledged supporter of the Iraq War, while Trump has (falsely) claimed that he opposed it. The second part is revisionist history. It was George W. Bush and his enablers—most prominently neocons such as Bolton—and not Obama who “led us to the mess we have now.” I had the privilege to serve as the deputy assistant secretary for Iraq in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in the Department of State in 2008 and 2009, when the transition from the Bush to the Obama administration took place. The US approach to Iraq did not change during that time. Near the end of the Bush presidency, two important agreements were concluded by the United States and Iraq: a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and a Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA). Both were signed by US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on November 17, 2008, and both went into effect on January 1, 2009, just 20 days before Obama assumed the presidency. The SOFA established that all US combat forces would leave Iraq by December 31, 2011. The SFA ensured and codified US engagement with Iraq for the long term. To this day, the SFA—negotiated, signed and entered into force under the Bush administration (and into which the US-Iraqi SOFA was incorporated)—codifies the engagement and interaction between the US and Iraqi governments. At the time the SOFA between the United States and Iraq was concluded there was no doubt that then Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was operating under intense pressure from Iran, which wanted to see all foreign forces withdrawn from the territory of its potentially threatening Arab neighbor. But there was also strong pressure from the Iraqi people, especially the very influential Shia clergy, including the powerful and revered Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for US troops to leave the country. It was a decision by a sovereign Iraqi government that resulted in the departure of all US combat forces by the end of 2011. Bolton's other telling comment concerning Trump and Iraq involves Trump's oft-repeated sentiment that the United States should commandeer oil resources in countries into which it sends troops. In his discussion of the aftermath of an attack on several oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz on May 12, 2019, and the possible US response, Bolton states, “He [Trump] wanted the Gulf Arabs to pay the costs of whatever operations we were undertaking, riffing again that we should have taken Iraq's oil after invading in 2003.” As it happened, the most effective narrative promulgated by our adversaries concerning the US-led invasion of Iraq while I was heading the public diplomacy office at the US embassy in Baghdad in 2004 and 2005 was that the purpose of the invasion was, in fact, to steal Iraq's oil. “Trump's decision [to withdraw US troops from the Kurdish enclave in northeast Syria] was a complete debacle for US policy and for our credibility worldwide…. The strongly negative bipartisan political reaction Trump received was entirely predictable and entirely justified.” The one Middle East-related foreign-policy area in which Bolton seems to have operated in a manner that actually supported US national interests (in this case by opposing Trump) concerned US policy toward Turkey, Syria, ISIS, and the Kurds. In The Room Where It Happened, Bolton recounts the disastrous aftermath of the Trump phone call on December 14, 2018, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in which Erdoğan convinced a naive and gullible Trump to withdraw US forces from areas in Syria being held by the US military's primary partners in fighting ISIS—the Kurdish militia—and to turn those areas over to Turkish security forces. (Bolton does the reader a service here by quoting Erdoğan from 20 years earlier, when he was the mayor of Istanbul: “Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it to the stop you want, and then you get off.”) This greenlighting of Turkey's entrance into those areas for what would inevitably have been a massacre of the Kurdish fighters whom the United States had relied upon to drive ISIS out of its territorial holdings in northeast Syria was unconscionable. Here, Bolton criticizes Trump's “bromance with yet another authoritarian foreign leader,” and bases his argument for keeping US forces in Syria on the need both to continue the fight against ISIS and to check Iranian influence and behavior, with emphasis on the latter: “With most of the ISIS territorial caliphate gone (although the ISIS threat itself was far from eliminated), the big picture was stopping Iran.” In a narrative replete with gratuitous slander against Obama and several of his Trump administration colleagues, Bolton walks the reader through an explanation of the dynamics and interests at play in the Trump-Erdoğan dance on the US presence and policy in northeast Syria. His account makes it clear that Erdoğan thought he could manipulate Trump through flattery and false promises designed to assist him in getting to where he had wanted to go since he began his presidency: withdrawing all US troops from Syria, and as many US troops deployed overseas as possible. In this case, however, Bolton, Pompeo and others in the administration prevented Trump's impetuous urge from unraveling all that the United States and its allies had accomplished in countering ISIS. As those familiar with the subsequent course of this story are aware, Erdoğan's efforts to get Trump to withdraw and turn the liberated Kurdish area of northeast Syria over to Turkish forces continued until, in October 2019, Trump finally ordered the US troops to leave. The military did its best to protect US interests there by establishing capabilities in Iraq that could be used in northeast Syria if needed, but the damage was done. “During this period [following the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi], through tweets and statements, Trump supported the emerging Saudi version and never wavered from both the US-Saudi alliance generally or the massive arms sales already negotiated with the Kingdom.” As Bolton's account makes clear, Trump's “transactional” approach to US foreign policy was nowhere more evident than in his dealings with the Gulf states. From selecting Saudi Arabia as his first foreign destination as president, to his incessant hyping of Gulf-state arms purchases (many of which, particularly by Saudi Arabia, turned out to be ephemeral), to his equivocation on the Gulf rift (involving Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, on one side, and Qatar, on the other), apparently to help his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, extract Qatari financing to bail him out of a $1.8 billion Manhattan investment fiasco, Trump knew that the Gulf was where the money is. Bolton's narrative reveals that Trump never understood the broader value of the energy exports from the region to the global economy and to energy-market stability, considerations that make the United States one of the greatest beneficiaries of the free flow of energy exports from the Gulf. Rather, Trump myopically focused on “very high [oil] imports from the Middle East for China, South Korea, Japan, India, and Indonesia.” This led to his wondering, in Bolton's words: “Why didn't these importing countries do more, and why didn't they and Middle East oil producers pay more to safeguard their own oil shipments?” Repeatedly, Bolton notes that, as Trump considered US policy in the region, he was focused on “making the Gulf Arab states pay for whatever we decided to do.” It has been in the Middle East in general, and in the Gulf in particular, that Trump's abandonment of fundamental US values and principles has done the most damage. His signaling that the United States would ignore human-rights violations erased what had heretofore been red lines that placed guardrails around behavior by any country that wished to remain a US partner. As I know from my own decades as a US diplomat in the region, while the people of the Middle East have largely rejected US policies in the region (US support for Israel being the core grievance), prior to the Trump administration there was widespread admiration for the values the United States embodied as a nation, and appreciation for the constraining effect those values had on their own governments’ behavior. This restraining influence disappeared during the Trump administration, nowhere more evident than in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and the multiyear detentions of women activists in Saudi Arabia. No leadership of a US partner country in the region would have contemplated such actions under any prior US administration. Readers of The Room Where It Happened will certainly be entertained, while at the same time likely unsettled, by Bolton's narrative of Donald Trump and his presidency. The discerning reader will also learn of the actions and attitudes of a broad class of American ideologues who have undermined their country's principles and values, sullied its reputation, and enabled Trump and his acolytes to inflict harm of historic proportions on the United States. I am confident that patriotic Americans, those who truly believe in democracy and in the Enlightenment values that the Founding Fathers incorporated into our mores and institutions, will rescue the country from the Trumps and Boltons among us. I am pleased that these Americans have taken the first step toward doing so by electing Joe Biden president. Nonetheless, the fact that the American people put Trump in charge of the country will never be forgotten by our allies. They now know they will always have to hedge their relationships with the United States. They cannot be certain our country will always act on shared principles and interests or espouse and support the values that had defined our nation, something they had not had to do over the seven-plus post-World War II decades. While President Biden will seek to mitigate the damage, this harm to America's reputation and decline in its international standing will be the permanent legacy of Donald Trump and his enablers, such as John Bolton.
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