(The New York Times) — “A president who is under political siege and faces at least two extremely sensitive situations in the world has picked the hawkish team that is most likely to turn those into conflicts,” said David Rothkopf, who has written two histories of the National Security Council.
WASHINGTON — When President Trump suddenly announced two weeks ago that he would meet the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, John R. Bolton suggested a pithy strategy for how the meeting should proceed.
It should “be a fairly brief session where Trump says: ‘Tell me you have begun total denuclearization, because we’re not going to have protracted negotiations. You can tell me right now or we’ll start thinking of something else,’” Mr. Bolton, the hard-line former diplomat, said on a radio program the next day.
He made no secret of what the “something else” should be: a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, which he wrote last month would be a “perfectly legitimate” response to what he views as an imminent threat.
Click to continue reading. By DAVID E. SANGER – Mar 22, 2018