The war hawk cabinet in Washington

The recent changes to Trump's war cabinet are chilling.  His latest pick, adding George W. Bush's Ambassador to the UN John Bolton as the new National Security Adviser, is bad news for the world.

Let's take a quick look at some of the early comments from Asia as people try to assess what may result from such a bad appointment.

After months of painstakingly building a relationship with the departing national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, South Korean officials now have to manage their “very bad chemistry” with Mr. Bolton, “who is all about sticks,” said Lee Byong-chul, senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul.

“We will have to see if Bolton opens his mouth and launches his verbal attacks against the North,” Mr. Lee said. “That will give North Korea an excuse to step away from its summit proposal. The Trump-Bolton team then will ramp up pressure. And we will hear more talk about a pre-emptive strike and see tensions rising again on the Korean Peninsula.”

The appointment “adds to the perception of the U.S. basically being a headless chicken, which is bad for the world,” said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo.

In Congress even the weak-kneed opposition Democrats are complaining about Bolton - which is to be expected although many of the Democrats don't really seem to disagree with most of the slash and burn politics that Bolton is famous for.  The recent recycled red-baiting of Russia and China from the so-called 'progressives' is not much different from the kind of talk we've historically heard from Bolton who is most famous for helping to sell Bush's illegal and immoral 'shock and awe' attack of Iraq in 2003.

One of the better Democrats is Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) who tweeted:

I can’t think of anyone more dangerous than John Bolton to be the National Security Adviser. Pompeo and Bolton are standard bearers for the interventionist neocon foreign policy establishment, addicted to regime change wars, without any thought of the deathly cost or consequence

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) March 22, 2018

I've been saying since Trump's election that the one good thing that will come from him will be the acceleration of the collapse of the US military and economic empire.  With appointments like Bolton  Washington's allies around the globe will be left to either join the suicidal march to oblivion or begin to separate themselves from the reckless and corrupt policies coming from Pennsylvania Avenue.

One can only hope that the American people will awaken from their long Rip Van Winkle-like slumbers and stand up against the increasingly dangerous, provocative and destabilizing foreign policies being orchestrated by the US-NATO war machine.

Bruce