Charging ahead with the dramatic remaking of his White House, U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he would replace national security adviser H.R. McMaster with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk entering a White House facing key decisions on Iran and North Korea.
After weeks of speculation about McMaster's future, Trump and the respected three-star general put a positive face on the departure, making no reference to the growing public friction between them. Trump tweeted Thursday that McMaster had done "an outstanding job & will always remain my friend." He said Bolton will take over April 9 as his third national security adviser in just over a year.
The national security shakeup comes as the president is increasingly shedding advisers who once eased the Republican establishment's concerns about the foreign policy and political novice in the White House. McMaster is the sixth close adviser or aide to announce a departure in a turbulent six weeks, joining ally Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was unceremoniously fired last week.
The White House has said the president is seeking to put new foreign policy leaders in place ahead of a not-yet-scheduled meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Bolton is likely to add a hard-line influence to those talks, as well as deliberations over whether to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.
Bolton, 69, is a Fox News analyst who contemplated a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
The news of Bolton's appointment followed a meeting he had with Trump in the Oval Office. Even Bolton was caught by surprise. "I didn't really expect an announcement this afternoon, but it's obviously a great honor," he told Fox News after the announcement. "I'm still getting used to it."
He said he looks "forward to working with President Trump and his leadership team" to "make our country safer at home and stronger abroad."
Some members of Congress immediately questioned his selection for the critical position in the White House.
"This is not a wise choice. Mr. Bolton does not have the temperament or judgement to be an effective national security adviser," Democratic Senator Jack Reed said in a statement.
Dizzying array of issues
Bolton tweeted on Jan. 11 that time was running out on stopping North Korea's nuclear weapons program. He said: "We've got to look at the very unattractive choice of using military force to deny them that capability."
At a time when Trump has threatened to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, unless Europe agrees to change it, Bolton has tweeted that the deal "needs to be abrogated."
He has also called for "effective countermeasures to the cyber war that Russia is engaging."
In Seoul, conservative lawmaker Kim Hack-yong expressed concern about Bolton's appointment in advance of a planned summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
"This is worrisome news. North Korea and the United States need to have dialogue, but this only fuels worries over whether the talks will ever happen," Kim said. "If Bolton takes office and talks with North Korea go haywire and yield bad results, I don't know what we'll do then."
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, who advises the White House on Iran policy, said Bolton would support abrogating the Iran nuclear deal if Britain, France and Germany fail to meet Trump's demand for new limits on Tehran's program by mid-May.
"My long-standing support for a fix for the Iran deal may have just died an untimely death," said Dubowitz, who backs preserving the deal by closing what he argues are fatal loopholes in the pact.
Bolton has applauded Trump's plan to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, advocated keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba open, and proposed increasing pressure on China by boosting U.S. support to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province.
Bolton is possibly more hawkish on Russia than his new boss, Trump.
While dismissing allegations that Trump's campaign colluded with the Kremlin, Bolton has been outspoken about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced new nuclear weapons on March 1, Bolton responded with trademark bellicosity.
"There needs to be a strategic response to Russia's new nuclear missiles to show our allies in Europe that we will not let #Russia push the U.S. or its allies around," he wrote.
'Strong signal'
Bolton said in the Fox News interview that his past statements on various issues were behind him and he would be an honest broker ensuring the president sees all the options available to him.
"The important thing is what the president says and the advice I give him," he said.
Still, analysts said Bolton's views would be influential.
"Bolton has long been an advocate for pre-emptive military action against North Korea, and his appointment as National Security Adviser is a strong signal that President Trump remains open to these options," said Abraham Denmark, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia under former President Barack Obama.
"We should also expect an even more confrontational approach to China – a trade war may just be the beginning of a broader geopolitical competition," he said.
Bonnie Glaser, Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said: "Bolton has long supported regime change in North Korea and closer ties with Taiwan. Fasten your seat belts."
As the State Department's top arms control official under Bush, Bolton was a leading advocate of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The White House said Thursday that McMaster's exit had been under discussion for some time and stressed it was not due to any one incident, including this week's leak about Trump's recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
McMaster had briefed Trump before the Putin call – and his team drafted all-caps instructions telling Trump not to congratulate the Russian leader on his re-election victory. Trump did it anyway.
An internal investigation into the leak is underway, said a White House official who – like others interviewed about the announcement and the White House shakeup – demanded anonymity to discuss internal matters.
In a statement released by the White House, McMaster said he would be requesting retirement from the U.S. Army effective this summer, adding that afterward he "will leave public service."
McMaster had told confidants he would leave the post if at any point he lost credibility on the international stage, according to three White House officials. The feverish speculation about an impending exit sped up the decision for him to depart, the officials said, in part because McMaster believed foreign partners were beginning to doubt his influence.
Chief of Staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had been pushing Trump to get rid of McMaster and had been escalating their campaign in recent weeks. It had appeared McMaster's departure was imminent last week – but White House officials insisted the speculation was false.
"Just spoke to @POTUS and Gen. H.R. McMaster – contrary to reports they have a good working relationship and there are no changes at the NSC," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted late last Thursday night.
McMaster never developed a personal rapport with Trump, who chafed at his long-winded briefing style, according to a White House official and a person close to the president. His influence in high-level decision-making had waned in recent months, as Trump has increasingly relied on the direct counsel of Kelly and Mattis.
Yet officials said the president still has genuine respect for McMaster. He had been under consideration for a fourth star, and White House officials hoped it would provide a graceful exit from the West Wing for the long-time soldier. No suitable postings had been identified, leaving McMaster – long an iconoclast among the top brass – with no choice but retirement.
Tension between Trump and McMaster had grown increasingly public. Last month, Trump took issue with McMaster's characterization of Russian meddling in the 2016 election after the national security adviser told the Munich Security Summit that interference was beyond dispute.
"General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems," Trump tweeted Feb. 17, alluding to frequent GOP allegations of impropriety by Democrats and Hillary Clinton.
Tillerson's exit also forecast trouble for McMaster, who had aligned himself with the embattled secretary of state in seeking to soften some of Trump's most dramatic foreign policy impulses.
McMaster told The New York Times last year that Trump's unorthodox approach "has moved a lot of us out of our comfort zone, me included."
The military strategist, who joined the administration in February 2017, had struggled to navigate a tumultuous White House. Last summer, he was the target of a far-right attack campaign, as conservative groups and a website tied to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon targeted him as insufficiently supportive of Israel and not tough enough on Iran.
McMaster was brought in after Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was dismissed after less than a month in office. White House officials said he was ousted because he did not tell top advisers, including Vice President Mike Pence, about the full extent of his contacts with Russian officials.
