唯一比约翰·博尔顿在唐纳德·特朗普的白宫担任国家安全顾问更不可思议的是，正如总统周日晚上所说，他从未告诉他的国家安全委员会顾问，他想把对乌克兰的援助与对乔和亨特·拜登的调查联系起来。如果博尔顿在他即将出版的回忆录中写道，总统确实告诉他——正如新闻报道所说——这几乎肯定是真的。
忘记博尔顿在一个消息不太灵通的新孤立主义者领导的政府中以细节为导向的外交政策鹰派的名声吧。现在重要的是博尔顿作为一个邪恶的官僚主义者的名副其实的名声——正如乔治·布什的幕僚长安德鲁·卡德所说的“官僚黑带”，他曾与当时的联合国大使博尔顿打过交道。
博尔顿是耶鲁培养的律师，他是一个一丝不苟的记录员，记录他参加的几乎每次会议的细节和印象。白宫消息人士称，总统律师鲁道夫·朱利安尼对乌克兰和拜登夫妇的“影子”外交政策感到震惊。博尔顿不像特朗普那样明显喜欢俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京，他认为这位俄罗斯领导人的最终目标是尽可能重组苏联。根据特朗普从朱利安尼那里获得的信息，暂停对乌克兰的援助会让这位前纽约市长成为博尔顿的攻击目标。“他想知道那里发生的一切，”一名未获授权公开发言的国家安全委员会消息人士说。
在政策或人事问题上成为博尔顿的焦点不是你想去的地方。在小布什政府期间，他打了一场激烈的官僚战争，以撤销美国国务院对朝鲜的政策——该政策植根于一项被称为“协议框架”的协议，旨在限制平壤的核武器计划，以换取能源援助。这是克林顿政府谈判达成的，在博尔顿2005年加入联合国时仍然有效。当时，美国情报部门已经提供信息称，平壤方面正在秘密发展铀基核武器。
国务院——以及当时由金大中总统领导的韩国温和政权——不想打破与朝鲜的现状。这激怒了博尔顿。他后来写道，这是困扰国务院的疾病的最终结果:“客户机炎”因此，他发动了战争，最终，从主管军备控制的副国务卿的位置上，设法扼杀了《框架协议》。“与[国务院官僚机构进行了长达数月的政策斗争，”他后来说，但最终他说服布什总统一劳永逸地结束了这笔交易。
对博尔顿的崇拜者来说，这只是对新事实的一个常识性决定。对他的批评者来说，他强硬的官僚内讧产生了深远的影响。几年后，在朝鲜发展并生产了几枚核武器之后，我问韩国政府在核问题上的核心人物春永宇，他对博尔顿有什么看法。“约翰·博尔顿，”他说，“是朝鲜今天拥有核武器的原因。”
阅读他对布什政府时期的描述，“投降不是一种选择”这是456页关于布什执政时期外交政策是如何制定的细节。博尔顿说:“我担心自己是否陷得太深了。”新闻周刊稍后。
现在特朗普的白宫很可能会深陷乌克兰政策的泥潭，而该政策成功地让特朗普遭到弹劾。博尔顿的回忆可能会迫使不情愿的共和党参议员传唤证人，推翻特朗普很容易被无罪释放的预期。总统在周末承认，他和博尔顿没有以最好的条件分手。一位前安理会同事说，与前核安全委员会主席交叉，“不是我想去的地方。”
WHY THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE IS RIGHT TO FEAR METICULOUS NOTE-TAKER JOHN BOLTON
The only thing more improbable than John Bolton's presence as National Security Adviser in Donald Trump's White House is the idea that, as the president asserted Sunday night, he never told his NSC adviser that he wanted to tie aid to Ukraine to investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden. If Bolton has written in his forthcoming memoir that the president did in fact tell him that—as press reports say—it's almost certainly true.
Forget Bolton's reputation as a detail-oriented foreign policy hawk in an administration headed by a not-very-well-informed neo-isolationist. What matters now is Bolton's well-earned reputation as a vicious bureaucratic infighter—a "bureaucratic black belt," as George H. W. Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card, who dealt with then-UN Ambassador Bolton, put it.
A Yale-trained lawyer, Bolton is a meticulous note-taker, recording the details and his impressions of virtually every meeting he attends. White House sources have said Bolton was alarmed by presidential lawyer Rudolph Giuliani's "shadow" foreign policy ventures regarding Ukraine and the Bidens. Bolton does not share Trump's apparent affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin and believes the Russian leader's ultimate goal is to reassemble as much of the Soviet Union as he can. A hold on aid to Ukraine, based on information Trump was getting from Giuliani, would have put the former New York mayor in Bolton's crosshairs. "He wanted to know everything that was going on there," says an NSC source not authorized to speak on the record.
Being in Bolton's crosshairs on a policy or personnel matter is not a place you want to be. During his time in the George W. Bush administration, he fought a bitter bureaucratic war to undo the State Department's policy on North Korea—which was rooted in an agreement known as the "Agreed Framework," intended to limit Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program in return for energy assistance. That had been negotiated by the Clinton administration, and was still in place when Bolton arrived at the U.N. in 2005. The U.S. intelligence community had by then produced information that Pyongyang was proceeding in secret to try to develop a uranium-based nuke.
The State Department—and the dovish regime in South Korea, then led by President Kim Dae Jung—didn't want to upset the status quo with the North. This infuriated Bolton. It was the ultimate, he would later write, in the disease that always afflicts the State Department: "clientitis." So he went to war and eventually, from his perch as Undersecretary of State for arms control, managed to kill the Agreed Framework. "It was a months-long policy struggle against the [State Department] bureaucracy," he later said, but ultimately he persuaded President Bush to end the deal once and for all.
To Bolton's admirers this was simply a commonsense decision in response to new facts. To his detractors, his tough bureaucratic infighting had profound consequences. A few years later, after the North had gone ahead and produced several nuclear weapons, I asked the South Korean government's point man on the nuclear issue, Chun Yung-woo, what he thought of Bolton. "John Bolton," he said, "is the reason North Korea has nuclear weapons today."
read his account of his time in the Bush administration, "Surrender is Not an Option." It is 456 pages of detail about how foreign policy got made during the tumultuous Bush years. "I had worried about whether I was getting too deep in the weeds," Bolton told Newsweek later.
Now the Trump White House will likely get taken deep in the weeds on the Ukraine policy that managed to get Trump impeached. Bolton's recollections could force reluctant GOP senators to call for witnesses, upending the expectation that Trump will be easily acquitted. The president conceded over the weekend that he and Bolton did not part on the best of terms. And being crosswise with the former NSC chief, says a former security council colleague, "is not a place I'd want to be."
