In Trump year one, the paleocon-ish elements in his circle — Steve Bannon, most prominently — were sidelined by H. R. McMaster and James Mattis, and Trump ended up with a realist-leaning foreign policy run by businessmen and generals, with Nikki Haley occasionally sounding neoconservative notes at the U.N.
But Trump didn’t get along with McMaster and Rex Tillerson — and he clearly thinks he might like hawks better. So now we have an administration in which both paleoconservatism and neoconservatism are sidelined, and straight-up hawkishness is institutionally ascendant as it has rarely been in modern presidencies — save in the Peak Cheneyism following 9/11.
Boltonism need not be as disastrous as Cheneyism. If a realist like Cheney can turn into a “1 percent doctrine” hawk, then perhaps Bolton can transform the other way, and find a strategic prudence that his “let’s fight everyone” punditry conspicuously lacks. Also, Mattis’s military form of realism might have a restraining influence over Trump, and Trump’s bluff and bluster might not readily translate into okaying the war-on-all-fronts strategy that Bolton has tended to endorse.
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