Thread by @DataRepublican

🚨💣 THREAD: John Bolton: The Man Who Never Saw a War He Didn’t Like 💣🚨

John Bolton got his start as Reagan's assistant administrator of USAID -- a time when USAID was dramatically re-transformed from Nixon-era "New Directions" third-world assistance to being contingent on "Democracy & Governance" Cold War goals.

This thread unpacks:
1️⃣ His obsession with staying in wars forever
2️⃣ How his NGO & think-tank gigs kept him flush with hawkish donors
3️⃣ His time in the Trump administration and why his home got searched

As always, patience as I pull this together. 🧵

In his most infamous video where he was handed a grenade trophy, he says:
"I was in charge of policy and budget at USAID during the Reagan administration, when we undertook a major effort to fix it. And I'm going to show you my farewell present from AID. You can see it’s a hand grenade. And it says on it: ‘John R. Bolton, Truest Reaganaut, AID 1983. This is a style of government."

I assume that to mean that Bolton "invented" D&G. Democracy and Governance emerged as a new USAID category in the 1980s as a way of countering Soviet funding in Latin America, particularly El Salvador -- but did not end after the Cold War. "Democracy assistance" spawned to a montrosity

USSR's fall came from a mix of overspending to counter SDI, over-reliance on oil for hard currency (which had collapsed when Saudi loosened price controls in 1985), and over-reliance on hard currency to import food. But "democracy assistance" nonetheless grew into a huge industry *after* the Soviet Union fell.

Bolton didn't talk about USAID in terms of delivering aid or fostering development. He talks about it as a training ground for bureaucratic warfare: "You have to judge what you want, where the opposition to it is going to be, where the support for it will be. You mobilize the support and overcome the opposition."

Bolton's actual foreign policy stance is a weird, and IMO, disturbing one. Reagan's interventionism was rooted in a genuine belief that people would reject Communism.

Bolton's own interventionism was extremely hardline and cynical. He saw the United States *as* the United Nations in and of itself -- the iron fist of the world.

He rejected US joining in the ICC -- he was distrustful of supranational institutions.

In a Project for the New American Century letter, he was a signatory which urged intervention in Iraq without a clear end goal (like democracy).

This defines his foreign policy: yes, he was for intervention. No, he wasn't for actual democracy building.

In fact, he said "I don’t believe in nation building. I think the United States is, in itself, still engaged in building its own nation. And for us, it’s an eternal project. I don’t believe in social engineering."

At the same time, he blamed Iraq and Afghanistan on withdrawing too early. He also said that withdrawing from NATO would be catastrophic.

He pushed for the "Libya model" for North Korea which eventually led to the overthrow of Gaddafi and the disastrous civil war which resulted in a third of the population displaced.

What this adds up to is:

Bolton's foreign policy position is for the US to get in wars and wage wars forever with no end or goal in sight.

To be honest, he is one of the most disturbing policies I've met. The one-world liberal democratic institution held by Soros and others is at least a *vision.* Bolton continuously advocates for quick intervention without any clear path to "safety."

The man just loves to wage war as far as I can tell.

Bolton is (was?) a senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has traditionally drafted policy documents for Republican administrations. Like nearly all thinktanks, they're pro-intervention, pushing Trump to intervene more and more.

Numerous sources report Bolton was the chairman of a NGO called Gatestone Institute from 2013 to 2018. Gatestone Institute is all over the outlets for being virulently anti-Muslim and pro-bellicose-Israel. You can check out their X account @GatestoneInst and decide for yourself -- they seem to be a mix of interventionism and America-First.

Bolton gave a speech to the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), where he declared that JINSA has the answers.

JINSA advocates for a mutual defense pact between Israel and the US. In short, it advocates that whenever a country attacks Israel, the US must engage in its defense.

@GatestoneInst Bolton took a hardline stance against Iran. True to his warmonger stance, he loved it when President Trump struck Iran, but believed that the ceasefire was a mistake.

@GatestoneInst He was quite excited about regime change in Iran.

Remember, this is a guy who doesn't believe democracy can be built in the Middle East.

The only constant he supports is whatever gets into the US into more war and keeps the US in war.

@GatestoneInst My guess is that the Trump administration initially loved him for his hardline U.S. sovereignty stance -- on paper. But fired him when they found out that in practice, it meant waging war everywhere.

@GatestoneInst Trump said if he'd listened to Bolton, he would've been in "World War Six." 😂

And evidently, Bolton's love for war had nothing to do with national security, for his book contained "highly classified information." Which almost certainly ties to today's FBI raid.

In the book, one of the most infamous parts Bolton wrote was about President Donald Trump's campaign to pressure Ukraine on Hunter Biden, calling it a "drug deal." Allegedly, Trump wanted Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden's dealings and made US assistance contingent on that. This became the basis of Trump's first impeachment.

Bolton's tenure was defined by constant clashes, and his grievance is obvious: he didn't get to unleash the wars he wanted. He retaliated by spilling classified national security secrets for profit.

Few officials in modern times have pushed harder for more death abroad; Bolton may go down as one of the deadliest men never to have his finger on the trigger.

We will all be safer for it when he is in jail. And ironically, that's exactly what Bolton would have advocated.

Thread end.

I've been trying to wrap my head around John Bolton's mindset.

Neocons at least have a story about spreading freedom.
Globalists at least have a story about building supranational democracy.
MAGA populists at least have a story about pulling back and fixing home.

The best I can tell is from this excerpt where he blamed Putin's invasion of Ukraine on America's failure to project a credible military threat.

To him, the act of being ready to engage in war in and of itself is a deterrent against even bigger wars. But what's concerning is that he's had a home in four administrations. Who else in Washington shares this worldview?