The markets took a tumble again today, and I’m just going to guess that President Trump’s replacement of H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor with former U.N. Ambassador, advocate of the Iraq War ,and for bombing Iran John Bolton may be a factor in this retreat (I see CNN is also blaming worries about a trade war).
While in the past (real) war has not necessarily been a bad thing for business, this time around there’s a couple of flies in the ointment.
First, the weapons are becoming so potent that the damage can destroy consumers, markets, and the businesses themselves.
Second, the general recognition in the investment and commercial worlds of the mendacity and amateurism of this President must concern, even frighten, most leaders of big international businesses, which must consider themselves vulnerable to the results of war, and investors must realize this as well. High tech firms may also find themselves targeted and vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and in this case the attacks may not even come from putative enemies, but merely adversaries which we are not currently targeting. This would be due to the attribution problem.
Bolton, of course, is trying to shed any responsibility for his ridiculously aggressive statements of years past. From CNN:
John Bolton said on Thursday that his past policy statements are “behind me” and that, after taking over next month as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, “The important thing is what the President says and the advice I give him.”
But Bolton’s history of provocative, often bellicose pronouncements, typically in the form of calls to bomb countries like Iran and North Korea — along with his unwavering support, before and after, for the 2003 invasion of Iraq — are impossible to pass off, especially as Trump considers tearing up the Iran nuclear deal and prepares for talks with Pyongyang.
It’s all in that second paragraph, isn’t it? President Trump presumably judges him on what Bolton’s said and done, and so must we. If Bolton still thinks the Iraq War was a good thing, even in the teeth of the disaster it became, not to mention the false pretenses under which it was motivated, then what kind of advice is he going to give to President Trump when he’s negotiating with, say, Putin, or Kim?
And just to stir the pot a bit more, former Republican diplomat Richard Haass wrote a tweet about the situation:
@realDonaldTrump is now set for war on 3 fronts: political vs Bob Mueller, economic vs China/others on trade, and actual vs. Iran and/or North Korea. This is the most perilous moment in modern American history-and it has been largely brought about by ourselves, not by events.
This from a seasoned world observer – not a tin-pot real estate developer and his discredited National Security Advisor.
It’ll be interesting to see how long Bolton, and for that matter the tariffs, last. Trump hasn’t shown a great deal of backbone in the past, but you never know when he’ll find think it’s time to toughen up. No doubt just when you wish he wouldn’t.
