The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  All these negotiations about our role in Syria were complicated by Trump’s constant desire to call Assad on US hostages, which Pompeo and I thought undesirable. Fortunately, Syria saved Trump from himself, refusing even to talk to Pompeo about them. When we reported this, Trump responded angrily: “You tell [them] he will get hit hard if they don’t give us our hostages back, so fucking hard. You tell him that. We want them back within one week of today, or they will never forget how hard we’ll hit them.” That at least took the Trump-Assad call off the table. We didn’t act on the talk about striking Syria.

  Efforts to create the international monitoring force, however, did not make progress. One month later, on February 20, Shanahan and Dunford said it would be an absolute precondition for other potential troop contributors that there be at least some US forces on the ground in the “buffer zone” south of Turkey’s border, with logistical support coming from al-Asad in Iraq. I certainly had no problem with the idea, but raising it with Trump was undoubtedly dicey. In an Oval Office pre-brief for another Erdogan call the next day, I said the Pentagon believed unless we kept “a couple of hundred” (a deliberately vague phrase) US troops on the ground, we simply could not put a multilateral force together. Trump thought for a second and then agreed to it. Erdogan said he really wanted Turkey to have exclusive control of what he called the “safe zone” inside northeastern Syria, which I thought unacceptable. With the speakerphone on the Resolute desk on mute, I suggested to Trump he simply tell Erdogan Dunford was handling those negotiations, the Turkish military would be in Washington the next day, and we should just let the military-to-military talks continue. Trump followed through.

  Afterward, I raced to my office to tell Shanahan the good news. A few hours later, I called Dunford to be sure he had heard, and he said, “Ambassador, I don’t have much time to talk because we’re going outside right now for the ceremony to rename the Pentagon ‘the Bolton Building.’ ” He was as pleased as we all were and agreed that “a couple of hundred” was a good figure of speech (which could mean up to four hundred without too much poetic license). He would make clear to the Turks he didn’t want any of their troops south of the border. I called Lindsey Graham, urging him to keep it quiet so others didn’t have a chance to reverse it, which he said he would do, also volunteering to call Erdogan, with whom he had good relations, to urge full support for Trump’s decision. Unfortunately, Sanders issued a press statement, without clearing it with anyone who knew the facts, which caused significant confusion.28 We had to explain that “a couple of hundred” only applied to northeastern Syria, not At Tanf, where there would be another two hundred or so US forces, for a total north of four hundred. I deliberately never tried to pin it down more precisely, despite the media confusion. Dunford also assured me he had calmed down US Central Command, which was worried about contradictory news reports, saying, “Don’t worry, the building is still named after you.”

  With occasional bumps in the road, this was the situation in northeastern Syria until I resigned. ISIS’s territorial caliphate was eliminated, but its terrorist threat remained unabated. Prospects for a multilateral observer force deteriorated, but the US presence remained, fluctuating around fifteen hundred country-wide. How long this “status quo” could last was unknowable, but Dunford preserved it through the September 30 end of his term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Erdogan’s belligerence remained unchecked, perhaps because of Turkey’s deteriorating economy and his own domestic political troubles. Trump refused to impose any sanctions for Erdogan’s S-400 purchase, ignoring widespread congressional dismay.

  When Trump finally erupted on October 6, 2019, and again ordered a US withdrawal, I had left the White House nearly a month earlier. The result of Trump’s decision was a complete debacle for US policy and for our credibility worldwide. Whether I could have averted this result, as happened nine months before, I do not know, but the strongly negative bipartisan political reaction Trump received was entirely predictable and entirely justified. To have stopped it a second time would have required someone to stand in front of the bus again and find an alternative that Trump could accept. That, it seems, did not happen. There was some good news, however: after years of effort, on October 26, the Pentagon and the CIA eliminated ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a daring raid.29

  Afghanistan: A Forward Defense

  By late 2018, Afghanistan was undoubtedly a sore spot for Trump, one of his principal grievances against the “axis of adults” so beloved by the media. Trump believed, not without justification, he had given Mattis all the leeway he requested to finish the Taliban, as with finishing the ISIS territorial caliphate. In Iraq and Syria, the stated goal had been accomplished (whether it should have been the only goal is a different story). In Afghanistan, by contrast, the stated goal was not in sight, and things were undeniably going the wrong way. That grated on Trump. He believed he had been right in 2016, he believed he had been right after the military failures in 2017 and 2018, and he wanted to do what he wanted to do. A reckoning was coming.

  Trump opposed a continuing US military presence in Afghanistan for two related reasons: first, he had campaigned to “end the endless wars” in faraway places; and second, the sustained mishandling of economic and security assistance, inflaming his instinct against so much frivolous spending in federal programs. Besides, Trump believed he had been right in Iraq, and everyone now agreed with him. Well, not everyone.

  The argument I pressed again and again, regarding all the “endless wars,” was that we hadn’t started the wars and couldn’t end them just by our own say-so. Across the Islamic world, the radical philosophies that had caused so much death and destruction were ideological, political as well as religious. Just as religious fervor had driven human conflicts for millennia, so it was driving this one, against America and the West more broadly. It wasn’t going away because we were tired of it, or because we found it inconvenient to balancing our budget. Most important of all, this wasn’t a war about making Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or any other country nicer, safer places to live. I am not a nation builder. I do not believe what is, after all, an essentially Marxist analysis that a better economic way of life will divert people from terrorism. This was about keeping America safe from another 9/11, or even worse, a 9/11 where the terrorists had nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. As long as the threat existed, no place was too far away to worry about. The terrorists weren’t coming to America on wooden sailing ships.

  By the time I arrived, this debate had been through many iterations, so I did not face a clean slate. My first involvement was May 10, 2018 (later in the day after the post-midnight return of the hostages from Korea), when Zalmay Khalilzad, a friend I had known since the Bush 41 Administration, who had succeeded me as Ambassador to the UN in 2007, came to visit. “Zal,” as everyone called him, an Afghan-American and also former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, said he had been approached by people purporting to speak on behalf of various Taliban factions who wanted to talk peace. He had spoken to others in the US government who could evaluate the bona fides of these approaches, but he wanted to give me an early heads-up in case they proved real, which by late July Khalilzad told me they had. I saw no reason further contacts shouldn’t proceed, not that I expected much, and he initially became a back-channel negotiator with the Taliban. Within a month, the role had expanded to Khalilzad’s being one of the growing number of State Department “special envoys,” a convenient role that avoided having them confirmed in more traditional State positions.

  Given Trump’s periodic eruptions on our continuing military presence in Afghanistan, there was a growing sense we should have a full NSC meeting, or at least a military briefing, before the end of the year. I wanted any briefing to be as far after the elections as possible, but for reasons I never understood, Mattis wanted it sooner. It was finally scheduled for November 7, the day after the congressional midterms. I was sure Trump would be unhappy about the Republicans’ losing control of the House, no
matter what happened in the Senate. Did Mattis in particular want a flat-out Trump decision to withdraw, so Mattis could then resign on a matter of principle? Or was this an institutional Pentagon effort to have Trump be squarely responsible, not US failings during the course of the war, and especially not the collapse of the beloved counterinsurgency strategy that had failed in both Afghanistan and Iraq? Pompeo agreed with me that the briefing should have been held later in November, but we couldn’t stop it.

  At one p.m. on Election Day, I met with Khalilzad, who thought he had more time to negotiate with the Taliban than I believed likely, given my expectation Trump would pull the plug, perhaps the next day. Pence told me Mattis still argued we were making military progress in Afghanistan and should not change course. Pence knew as well as I that Trump didn’t believe that, and there was substantial evidence Mattis was wrong. Here, once again, it wasn’t so much that I disagreed with Mattis substantively as it was frustrating that he was determined to run into the wall on Afghanistan (as on Syria), and that he had no alternative line of argument to avoid getting the “wrong” answer. Kellogg sat in on the Pence-Mattis meeting and told me later Mattis simply repeated what he had said for two years. No wonder Trump was frustrated with what he called “his” generals. To my litigator’s instincts, this was the sure way to lose. In truth, I didn’t have a better answer, which is why I wanted more space after the elections before having this briefing.

  At two p.m. on November 8, we convened in the Oval, with Pence, Mattis, Dunford, Kelly, Pompeo, Coats, Haspel, myself, and others present. Pompeo led off, but Trump quickly interjected, “We’re being beaten, and they know they’re beating us.” Then he was off, raging against the statutorily mandated Afghanistan Inspector General, whose reports repeatedly documented wasted tax dollars but also provided amazingly accurate information about the war that any other government would have kept private. “I think he’s right,” said Trump, “but I think it’s a disgrace he can make such things public.” Mentioning Khalilzad, Trump said, “I hear he’s a con man, although you need a con man for this.” Pompeo tried again, but Trump rolled on: “My strategy [meaning what ‘his’ generals had talked him into in 2017] was wrong, and not at all where I wanted to be. We’ve lost everything. It was a total failure. It’s a waste. It’s a shame. All the casualties. I hate talking about it.” Then Trump raised the first combat use of the MOAB (“Massive Ordnance Air Blast”), “without your knowledge,” said Trump to Mattis,30 complaining for the umpteenth time that the MOAB had not had its intended effect. As was often the case, Trump had truth mixed with misunderstanding and malice. Mattis had delegated to the US commander in Afghanistan authority to use the MOAB, so further authorization was unnecessary. As for the MOAB’s effects, that remained a matter of dispute within the Pentagon. One thing was sure: Mattis was not going to win this argument with Trump, who knew what he wanted to know, period. I knew I didn’t want this briefing.

  Predictably, Mattis ran right into his favorite wall, lauding the efforts of other NATO members.

  “We pay for NATO,” said Trump.

  “ISIS is still in Afghanistan,” said Mattis.

  Trump said, “Let Russia take care of them. We’re seven thousand miles away but we’re still the target, they’ll come to our shores, that’s what they all say,” said Trump, scoffing. “It’s a horror show. At some point, we’ve got to get out.” Coats offered that Afghanistan was a border-security issue for America, but Trump wasn’t listening. “We’ll never get out. This was done by a stupid person named George Bush,” he said, to me. “Millions of people killed, trillions of dollars, and we just can’t do it. Another six months, that’s what they said before, and we’re still getting our asses kicked.” Then he launched into a favorite story, about how we helicoptered schoolteachers every day to their school because it was too dangerous for them to go on their own: “Costs a fortune. The IG was right,” he said, veering off into a report about the construction of “a billion-dollar Holiday Inn” and saying, “This is incompetence on our part. They hate us and they shoot us in the back, blew the back of the guy’s head off, arms and legs and things [referring to a recent “green-on-blue” attack where a Utah National Guardsman was killed].31 India builds a library and advertises it all over.”

  On it went. “We’ve got to get out. My campaign was to get out. People are angry. The base wants out. My people are very smart, it’s why [Dean] Heller lost [his Nevada Senate reelection bid]. He supported Hillary.” Mattis tried again, but Trump was on to Syria: “I don’t understand why we’re killing ISIS in Syria. Why aren’t Russia and Iran doing it? I’ve played this game for so long. Why are we killing ISIS for Russia and Iran, Iraq, which is controlled by Iran?”

  Pompeo gave in, saying, “If that’s the guidance, we’ll execute it, but the story is that we won’t get victory.”

  Trump answered, “That’s Vietnam. And why are we guarding South Korea from North Korea?” Pompeo said, “Just give us ninety days,” but Trump responded, “The longer we take, the more it’s my war. I don’t like losing wars. We don’t want this to be our war. Even if we did win, we get nothing.”

  I could see it coming; sure enough, Mattis said, “It’s your war the day you took office.”

  Trump was ready: “The first day I took office, I should have ended it.” And on and on it went. And on.

  Trump finally asked: “How long do you need?” and Pompeo said, “Until February or March. We’ll prepare the options to exit.” Trump was furious, furious he was hearing what he had heard so many times before: “They’ve got it down so fucking pat.” Then he was back to criticizing Khalilzad, and whether anything the Taliban signed would be worth anything. “How do we get out without our guys getting killed? How much equipment will we leave?”

  Dunford spoke for the first time, saying, “Not much.”

  “How do we get out?” asked Trump.

  “We’ll build a plan,” said Dunford.

  I had been silent throughout because the whole meeting was a mistake. Inevitably, Trump asked, “John, what do you think?” I said, “It sounds like my option is in the rearview mirror,” explaining again why we should counter terrorists in their home base and why Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program made it imperative to preclude a Taliban haven in Afghanistan that might accelerate Pakistan’s falling to terrorists. Dunford said if we withdrew, he feared a terrorist attack on the US in the near future. Trump was off again—“Fifty billion dollars a year”—until he ran down and said to no one in particular, “You have until Valentine’s Day.”

  Most participants filed out of the Oval dispirited, although Pompeo and I remained behind as Sanders and Bill Shine rushed in to say Jeff Sessions had resigned as Attorney General, the first of many year-end departures. One month later, Trump named Bill Barr to succeed Sessions. Also one month later, after another report we were losing ground to the Taliban, Trump exploded again: “I should have followed my instincts, not my generals,” he said, reverting to the MOAB’s not having its intended effect. He now didn’t want to wait for Khalilzad but wanted to announce the withdrawal of US forces prior to the end of his second full year in office, or even before. If he waited until his third year, he would own the war, whereas if we exited in the second year, he could still blame his predecessors. I said he simply had to address how to prevent terrorist attacks against America once we withdrew. He answered, “We’ll say we’re going to flatten the country if they allow attacks from Afghanistan.” I pointed out we had already done that once, and we needed a better answer. I said I might have been the only one worried about Pakistan if the Taliban regained control next door, but Trump interrupted to say he worried as well; the speech had to address that issue. Basically, as we talked, the outline of the speech emerged: “We’ve done a great job and killed a lot of bad people. Now we’re leaving, although we will leave a counterterrorism platform behind.” Fortunately, the concept of a counterterrorism platform was already well advanced in Pentagon thinking, but it was har
dly the first choice.32

  At my regular breakfast with Mattis and Pompeo, this one on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, I suggested we seek to answer three questions: Would the Afghan government collapse after we left, and, if so, how fast? How fast and in what ways would ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist groups react to withdrawal? And how fast could the various terrorist groups mount attacks on the United States?

  We scheduled another Oval Office meeting for Monday, and Mattis had barely begun before Trump was all over him. I felt sorry for Mattis, not to mention the country as a whole. After a somewhat shortened version of what he’d said in the prior gathering, Trump concluded, “I want out before January 20. Do it fast.” He then turned to his visits to Walter Reed, where the wounded soldiers had not had the impact on Trump they have on most people, impressing them with their bravery and commitment to their mission. Trump had simply been horrified by the seriousness of their wounds (oblivious also that advances in military medicine saved many men who would simply have died in earlier wars). Then we were back to the MOAB not having its intended effect and other refrains, including “that stupid speech” in August 2017 where Trump had announced his new Afghanistan strategy of moving onto the offense. “I said you could do whatever you wanted,” he said, and glared, looking straight at Mattis. “I gave you complete discretion, except for nuclear weapons, and look what happened.” Trump was bitter whenever his 2017 speech came up, but one wonders how he would have felt if the strategy had prevailed. Pompeo told me later that, from his CIA perch at the time, he felt Mattis had unfortunately wasted several months in 2017 doing nothing, afraid Trump would reverse himself and start talking again about withdrawing. We certainly could have used those months now.