Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton leaves a meeting in Trump Tower in December 2016. Bolton's appointment to replace H.R. McMaster as national security adviser -- on the heels of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's replacement with Mike Pompeo -- raises the threat of U.S. military action against North Korea and Iran alike.
The door to the White House had not yet shut in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's wake when a mustachioed war hawk came in to take over another seat in President Donald Trump's Cabinet late last week. In replacing national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will join the newly designated secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to craft U.S. foreign policy as the world waits on edge for the White House's next moves. Analyzing personality to predict policy is a limited endeavor. But the concentration of hawks and the winnowing of pragmatists in the White House have the effect of bending constraints and raising tolerance to risk on high-stakes issues. As a result, we must lay any baseline, constraint-laden forecast we make against the personalities charged with making fateful political decisions.
