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The Room Where It Happened
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Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Thunder Out of China”
Bolton says that the shape of the 21st century and beyond will hinge on US relations with China. He challenges the view that as China grows more democratic, its political and economic ascent on the world stage will remain benign and bloodless. In Chinese President Xi Jinping, Bolton sees a ruthless autocrat whose crackdowns on ethnic, religious, and political minorities offer a chilling view of a future in which China dominates international affairs.
While Trump grasps the threat China poses economically and militarily, his record on addressing this threat is woefully inadequate, writes Bolton. He attributes this to Trump’s persistent inability to distinguish between America’s interests and his personal interests. In his zeal to make a trade deal with China that will help him electorally, the president projects weakness to the far savvier Xi, according to Bolton. This is evident in Trump’s willingness to interfere in law-enforcement investigations into Chinese companies like ZTE and Huawei, which echoes earlier efforts to squash investigations into Halkbank at Erdogan’s behest. Meanwhile, Trump fails to capitalize on opportunities to exert legitimate diplomatic pressure on China. For example, he refuses to issue a strong statement on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Nowhere is this dynamic more clear than in an in-person meeting between Trump and Xi at the 2019 G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Bolton makes a series of provocative accusations about the content of that meeting. He claims that Trump pleaded with Xi to help him win the 2020 election by buying more American wheat and soybeans, thereby helping Trump shore up votes in the heartland. The implication couldn’t be clearer to Bolton: Trump is inviting a foreign adversary to meddle in US elections. In a separate conversation at the G-20, Bolton says Trump offered his explicit support of Xi’s efforts to build concentration camps to detain the Uighurs, an ethnic Muslim minority in China. Aside from the human rights implications of this statement, Bolton characterizes it as strategically unwise, writing that it “meant we could cross repression of the Uighurs off our list of possible reasons to sanction China, at least as long as trade negotiations continued” (312).
Finally, Bolton briefly addresses Trump’s much-criticized record in dealing with the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, attributing it to the president’s belief that he can talk his way out of any crisis. Bolton also vigorously defends his own decision to shutter a National Security Council office dedicated to battling pandemics, a move that comes under intense scrutiny as the US flails in its efforts to fight the coronavirus. He writes, “At most, the internal NSC structure was no more than the quiver of a butterfly’s wings in the tsunami of Trump’s chaos” (317).
Chapter 11 Summary: “Checking into the Hanoi Hilton, Then Checking Out, and the Panmunjom Playtime”
After the 2018 midterm elections, a second Trump-Kim meeting seems inevitable to Bolton. In the lead-up to the projected summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, Bolton reserves special criticism for State Department special envoy Steve Biegun, who makes public statements alluding to the US’s willingness to follow the “action for action” model preferred by Kim. This causes a fair bit of tension between Bolton and Pompeo. With the State Department outside of his control, Bolton turns his efforts toward convincing Trump that there will be nothing lost politically or diplomatically by refusing to reach a deal in Hanoi.
In late February the summit finally arrives, as Bolton divides his efforts between managing North Korean affairs and the Venezuela crisis. Trump, meanwhile, is consumed by personal and domestic issues pertaining to Michael Cohen, his former lawyer who is slated to give damaging testimony to Congress that same week. Trump even cancels preparatory briefings before the Kim meeting because he was up much of the night watching the Cohen hearings.
During Trump’s one-on-one with Kim, the North Korean leader is fixated on closing the Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for the easing of UN sanctions, a classic action-for-action ploy that Trump rejects, adhering to Bolton’s instructions. The same dynamic holds for the group meeting Bolton attends, which ends in tense silence on both sides. The summit ends without a deal, which Bolton counts as a success. Less sanguine about the summit is Kim himself, who reportedly orders Kim Hyok Chol, a member of his delegation and Biegun’s counterpart, executed. Kim Yong Chol, meanwhile, is sent to a labor camp but later released.
In the weeks after the summit, as Trump begins to second-guess his tough posture in Hanoi, he requests that penalties be rolled back on two Chinese companies that violated North Korea sanctions. To Bolton, this projects weakness in that it shows a rift between Trump and his own Treasury Department. Meanwhile, relations between Japan and South Korea deteriorate over a host of issues, which works to Kim Jong Un’s benefit. Amid all this instability in the region, North Korea resumes testing short- and medium-range missiles, a development Trump is loath to condemn with a statement. Instead, Trump tweets,
North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse (343).
In Bolton’s view, Kim sees Trump as a man desperate for a deal who is held back only by his own advisors.
Shortly thereafter, Trump decides he wants to meet Kim at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, extending an invite via tweet. Bolton sees this as a terrible idea. With no desire to be there at the inevitable photo op, Bolton forgoes the meeting and flies straight to Ulan Bator in Mongolia for a previously scheduled commitment.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Trump Loses His Way and Then His Nerve”
At Bolton’s urging, Trump designates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, a branch of the Iranian military, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in April 2019. In another move consistent with a “maximum pressure” approach on Iran, Trump ends waivers that allow certain countries to buy oil from Iran without facing sanctions penalties. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Javad Zarif tells the media that Trump wants to negotiate with Iran but his advisors won’t let him. Bolton sees this as a transparent move—one used by Russia, North Korea, and others—to play on Trump’s vain belief that only he can repair US relations with its adversaries.
In response to the “maximum pressure” campaign, Iran escalates its “maximum resistance” response, arming Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shia militias in Iraq and increasing aid to the Taliban. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also announces Iran’s intention to violate four important parts of the nuclear deal, to which Europe still belongs. In a conversation with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dunford, Bolton acknowledges that this pattern will only persist under the current regime, implying that the logical end goal of maximum pressure is regime change.
In May and June there are two sets of attacks in the Gulf of Oman on oil tankers belonging to US allies. Bolton, Pompeo, and NSC officials accuse Iran of being responsible for the attacks. Upon being presented with this information, the president does what he often does in discussions of Middle East adversaries: he launches into an extended rant on a variety of topics including John Kerry, why steam catapults on aircraft carriers are better than electronic systems, and the supposedly exorbitant wages the US pays Afghan soldiers—$10 a day.
Meanwhile, Acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan withdraws his nomination to the permanent position over family issues. He is replaced by Mark Esper, Pompeo’s old classmate at West Point.
On June 20, Iran shoots down a US Global Hawk drone worth an estimated $150 million. This is the last straw for the Principals Committee, all of whom believe that a retaliatory attack is needed. Bolton, Dunford, and Pompeo agree to an attack plan and present it to Trump, who gives them the green light. The attack is scheduled for 9:00 p.m. that evening.
Around 7:00 p.m., as Bolton returns to the office after going home for a change of clothes, he learns that the attack is delayed one hour. Shortly thereafter, Trump asks for a conference call with Bolton, Pompeo, and Dunford. On the call, Trump cancels the attack. He says someone told him there would be 150 Iranian casualties, which he adds is not a proportionate response to the downing of unmanned drone.
Bolton is stunned, calling it “the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do” (403). The turnaround comes just hours after Trump berated Dunford in the Situation Room because the targets were too small. Bolton later learns that the 150 casualty count came from White House lawyer John Eisenberg, who counseled Trump to cancel the attack on the grounds that it may be illegal. Bolton calls both the casualty count and the legal argument total nonsense. At this point, Bolton is very close to resigning.
Finally, Bolton works frantically to prevent a proposed meeting between Zarif and Trump in Biarritz, France—a meeting that, had it occurred, would have definitely led to Bolton’s resignation.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
These chapters include incidents that, if true, are arguably the most newsworthy portions of Bolton’s book. In early January 2020 excerpts of The Room Where It Happened leaked to the press as the book went through a government review process. Journalists immediately understood the seriousness of Trump explicitly entreating Xi for help in the presidential election. Dozens of major outlets picked up the story, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, Politico, and the BBC.
The revelations further establish a trend in which Trump asks foreign adversaries to meddle in US elections. He did so publicly on the campaign trail when he asked Russia to find Hillary’s emails. Moreover, Robert Mueller investigated claims of explicit collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia; though faced with hostile witnesses and obstructive efforts by the president, the investigation failed to unearth definitive evidence of a criminal conspiracy. Some commentators even pointed out that this wasn’t the only time Trump asked for election help from Xi. In October 2019, with Trump already facing impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, Trump publicly asked China to investigate Joe Biden, his eventual competitor in the 2020 presidential election. (Baker, Peter, and Eileen Sullivan. “Trump Publicly Urges China to Investigate the Bidens.” The New York Times, 3 Oct. 2019.) Like so many of Bolton’s incendiary claims, this fits into a preexisting public pattern for Trump, which lends credence to its veracity.
Given that the election-interference allegations are a repeat of what Trump already did in public, many journalists were even more disturbed by the revelation that the president applauded the detention of 1 million Uighurs in concentration camps. Aside from this being an astounding example of a sitting US president advocating for human rights abuses, Bolton points out that, from a practical standpoint, it removes the Uighur issue as a way to put pressure on Xi. This is indicative of Bolton’s broader attitude toward foreign human rights abuses, in that he views them in terms of how they best serve US national security interests. This is also seen in Bolton’s response to the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which likely came at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In Bolton’s view, the murder is reprehensible yet forgivable because, should US-Saudi relations suffer, Saudi Arabia will buy weapons from Russia instead. Similar logic is seen with regard to the Kurds in Syria. Bolton hopes to save the Kurds from Turkish oppression less out of consideration for Kurdish human rights and more because he fears they will align with anti-American extremists if the US abandons them.
In Bolton’s telling, Trump’s relationship with Xi exhibits all the hallmarks of the president’s dealings with foreign authoritarians. In public Trump launches into near-xenophobic rages against China on Twitter or in press conferences. In private Trump projects weakness by betraying his desperation to reach a landmark trade deal. This reluctance to offend is common to Trump’s relationships with foreign adversaries, according to Bolton. Why else, he implies, would Trump so openly embrace what are clearly human rights violations on the part of the Chinese government. Also evident in the Trump-Xi “bromance” is the president’s willingness to interfere with investigations of Chinese companies, a dynamic seen earlier with regard to Erdogan and Halkbank.
Bolton’s discussion on China inevitably turns to the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in the Chinese province of Wuhan. Again, he suggests that Trump’s harsh public rhetoric is unlikely to slow China’s ascent as long as the president is willing to make concessions on trade. Some outside commentators even suggest that Trump’s tough-on-China attitude may hasten the country’s rise. In the wake of a particularly anti-China speech at a September 2020 meeting of the UN General Assembly, Vox journalist Jen Kirby pointed out that by abandoning the World Health Organization during a pandemic, Trump is actively ceding global influence to China. (Kirby, Jen. “At the UN, China’s Xi showed he understands the system better than Trump.” Vox, 22 Sep. 2020.)
On a final note pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolton defends his decision to restructure the National Security Council’s pandemic response team shortly after his arrival, a decision that became enormously controversial in hindsight. While Bolton may be right that whatever ill consequences caused by the restructuring pale in comparison to other failings across the federal government, many observers have questioned Bolton’s defense that he merely streamlined NSC offices. At Just Security, Jeremy Konyndyk, a global development expert who served in the Obama administration, writes:
Bolton’s chosen approach to NSC ‘streamlining’ involved decapitating and diluting the White House’s focus on pandemic threats. He eliminated the Senior Director position entirely, closed the biodefense directorate, and spread the remaining staff across other parts of the NSC. That’s the opposite of streamlining. Instead of giving the issue a distinct institutional presence, expertise, and voice in the policy process, Bolton’s reorganization left it fragmented across other directorates that were focused on other higher priorities. (Konyndyk, Jeremy. “Lessons Ignored: John Bolton’s Bogus Defense of ‘Streamlining’ Away Our Bio-Readiness.” Just Security, 16 Mar. 2020.)
At the very least, writes Brookings Institute Fellow Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Bolton’s restructuring was part of a broader pattern in Trump administration personnel decisions that, in her view, left the country ill-prepared to combat a pandemic. She adds that among the 11 pandemic-related positions in the White House, the Trump administration saw 32 instances of turnover in less than four years, compared to 19 instances of turnover under eight years of Obama, and 16 instances under eight years of George W. Bush. (Tenpas, Kathryn Dunn. “How instability and high turnover on the Trump staff hindered the response to COVID-19.” Brookings, 7 May 2020.) Among those pandemic-related positions was the assistant to the president for counterterrorism, which no longer exists because Bolton got rid of it.
Finally, these chapters examine the incident that, perhaps more than any other, contributes to Bolton’s decision to resign: Trump’s last-minute reversal on the Iran strike. While Bolton’s opposition to Trump’s reversal is unsurprising, the intensity with which he opposed the move drew some scrutiny after the book’s publication. Some readers may rightly wonder if Trump’s choice to cancel a deadly attack as retaliation for the downing of an unmanned drone really deserves to be called “the most irrational thing [Bolton] ever witnessed any President do” (403). Yet the reversal of an attack on the country Bolton feels poses the greatest threat to America is only part of what rankles the author. He is disturbed by the utter chaos reflected in Trump’s decision-making in the hours leading up to the attack. At first, Trump criticizes Dunford because the attack is too small. Then, at the urging of a nonmilitary, non-national security staffer, the president impulsively cancels the attack because it is too big. To Bolton, this shows indecisiveness and caprice, two qualities rarely associated with great leadership. So while observers who are loath to escalate military tensions with Iran surely welcomed Trump’s last-minute decision, it is also fair to acknowledge Bolton’s concerns over what the incident says about Trump’s capacity to lead.
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