White House Trade Policy Advisor Peter Navarro outlines what many CTH readers are aware of. John Bolton begged for the job and enlisted Sean Hannity and Mark Levin to get advanced recommendations. That’s how he got in. However, as National Security Advisor John Bolton never understood the President Trump doctrine, using economics to achieve national security objectives. Underline it, highlight it, that’s the primary issue.
In this interview Navarro goes full wolverine on Bolton, and deservedly so. What Navarro outlines is the truthful reality. You can tell because it aligns at every level with what we watched every day while John Bolton was in the administration. God bless Navarro for truthfully calling the baby ugly. WATCH:
John Bolton felt unimportant in the world of geopolitics because President Trump relied on the economic team of Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary Ross, USTR Lighthizer and Trade Advisor Peter Navarro to achieve national security objectives.
Bolton was the knuckledragger at the end of the table, useful as leverage, where Trump could point to him and say lets make a deal to keep the warmongers like this guy out of the picture. Bolton’s biggest problem was with that Trump doctrine.
President Trump’s foreign policy doctrine is executed through the prism of using economics to achieve national security objectives.
This approach was so fundamentally foreign to Bolton that he couldn’t wrap his mind around how trade and economics could be used instead of dropping bombs.
Note Bolton’s own quote “I had the most futile role of all“.
He was futile because his DC neocon view to achieve national security through military is so far away from the successful strategic deployment of economics that he cannot fathom it.
Bolton had no way to open his mouth at the table because the economic team was speaking a foreign language.
The use of economics requires an entirely different set of skills. The strategic map is not looked at from the position of geographies; the map is viewed from the perspectives of wealth, currency exchanges, trade dynamics, tariffs, rules of commerce and other complex economic contracts that require a completely different frame of reference.
Planning successful outcomes on an economic front requires taking steps, gaming out the opponents financial goals, and taking actions that seem completely disconnected at the time they are happening – but come together much later on.
An example is U.S. energy development: a strong U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship to coordinate lower oil prices, liquefied natural gas to Poland and simultaneous sanctions against Venezuela. Collectively this type of strategic economic process hurts the affluence of Russia, Iran and China and inhibits their geopolitical influence.
Hurt their strategic affluence, diminish their strategic influence… That’s geopolitical warfare using economics. This type of economic leverage is foreign to the mind of John Bolton who prefers a military approach.
Notice how the strategic economic team are exactly the same as the day the administration began? The only member who changed in the first term was adding NEC Director Larry Kudlow to replace Gary Cohen after the China tariffs started.
The the economic team are achieving the desired results by following a plan Donald Trump thought about, formulated and expressed for decades. The group has remained consistent because they follow this economic strategy. Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary Ross, USTR Lightizer, Trade Advisor Navarro and NEC Chairman Kudlow are executing a well-defined plan, policy and strategy.
Bolton could never fathom how to be part of that economic strategy.
White House advisor Peter Navarro goes after John "book deal" Bolton, says Bolton had "no interest" in following the foreign policy of the Trump administration, only his own agenda. pic.twitter.com/INa1eEP53z
— MRCTV (@mrctv) June 18, 2020
Bolton is clueless, won’t last long…
