Mr. Bolton was US President Trump’s national security adviser.

By Qian Liyan

John Bolton, appointed as US National Security Adviser since April 2018 and also known as a "war maniac", was "fired" by US President Donald Trump this Tuesday.

Since Bolton is the third National Security Adviser of President Trump to resign during his presidency, the incident has raised high attention from the outside world.

Bolton, the man who is passionate for gunpowder deep down, is a typical "Hawk". One of his "feat" is probably the encouragement of Jorge Bush, the then US President to launch war against Iraq in 2003.

Bolton's "hawkish" style, to some extent, is similar to Trump's practice of rebuilding America’s hegemony with its state power and brutal act. As a result, he became the US president’s National Security Adviser in 2018.

However, being "fired" all of a sudden is not totally unexpected although the similarity is not identical. Disagreements in foreign policies are the main reason for the two to part ways.

In the past few months, Trump and Bolton have distinctly shown wider gap over issues related to Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. Bolton wanted to speak with "fist", but Trump was not willing to resort to nuclear options as he was aware that the US currently could hardly sustain another war.

Consequently, the US usually brakes in time as it is about to literally involved in a war even though it pursues the "US priority" policy and increased tensions of potential wars through extreme oppression at every turn.

The US government even had to cancel air strikes at the last minute though the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft worth of hundreds of millions of dollars was shot down by Iran.

Moreover, Bolton’s mindset is locked in the era when the Cold War just ended and the United States became a country of self-importance. For him, maintaining US hegemony is the top priority, and he believes the use of force is the only option. However, for other questions such as where the US hegemony came from, and why it is necessary to maintain the hegemony is not something he was concerned about.

It is generally acknowledged that the US has to make a huge sacrifice to maintain its hegemonic status. At the same time, due to the decline of the manufacturing industry and other reasons, the US has not only faced high fiscal deficit, but also more serious social contradictions and social divisions.

Therefore, the most urgent task for the US government is to revitalize its economy, so as to maintain the existing hegemony. It is also easy to tell that Bolton’s belligerent policy is not in line with the current thinking of the government. As a result, being fired is not something unexpected for Bolton as a bellicose "Hawk".

Some analysts believe that with the curtain call of the hawkish national security adviser, the number of warmongers in the US government's diplomatic team is reduced and that chances for the US to resort to force in the future are deemed to become thinner.

What is worth noting, however, is that to make the US "great again" through unilateralism and protectionism remains the core of the US government’s foreign policy.

As a matter of fact, whether the "Hawks" side gets ousted or the "doves" side succeeds, the US government’s pursuit of unilateral and protectionist values will remain unchanged.

Qian Liyan contributed to this article. The article was originally published in the PLA Daily in Chinese on September 12, 2019.