New Worker Banner

The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain


Bye Bye Bolton

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump sacked his national security adviser, John Bolton, this week as “his services are no longer needed at the White House”. No one’s going to miss Bolton, least of all the Iranians who claim credit for the dismissal saying it was the result of their steadfast resistance to American economic warfare that led to the wretched old warmonger’s downfall.

Without going into details Trump simply said: “I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation,”.

Some say that Bolton’s blinkered Cold War stance, which nearly led to open war with Venezuela and undermined Trump’s efforts to reach a rapprochement with Democratic Korea, was at odds with Trump’s thinking. Others believe that the last straw was Bolton’s opposition to secret peace talks between American, Afghan government and Taliban officials at the presidential retreat of Camp David that were called off at the last minute following a Taliban bomb attack in Kabul that killed an American soldier and a dozen others last week.

Bolton was a die-hard member of the “Deep State” that represents the most reactionary and aggressive circles within the American ruling class. This Establishment operates inside the Democratic and Republican parties within the corridors of power as a “war party” that has openly clamoured for US hegemony since the end of the Cold War. They want to rule the world in the name of the “New World Order” or “globalisation” and they don’t care how much it costs or how many die in their drive to fulfil their American Dream.

Trump is something different. Trump represents American capitalist circles who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe, Afghanistan and south Korea so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s hegemony over south America.

The Democrat opposition portray him as some sort of mad, one-man band — a vulgar, corrupt racist unfit to hold public office. But he is so much more than that. The property tycoon turned president represents those who no longer want to pay for wars they cannot win — which has been virtually all of them since the Second World War. They too want American hegemony over the world but they believe it can be won through trade wars and unequal treaties which was the preferred form of US overseas expansion in the 19th century. This is what Trump means when he says he wants to “Make America Great Again”.

Trump is turning the economic screws on Cuba, Russia and People’s China and he clearly supports the crippling sanctions regime against Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Trump has destroyed all hopes for peace in the Middle East with his “deal of the century” that gives the Zionists everything they want. And his government continues to support the feudal Saudi king’s war in Yemen that has cost tens of thousands of lives and brought the country to the brink of the worst famine it’s seen in 100 years.

Bolton’s departure will hopefully lead to the resumption of realistic negotiations between US imperialism and Democratic Korea. But only time can tell whether this marks a genuine turning point for the Trump administration.