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If any of John Bolton’s current military ventures trigger a confrontation with an alliance of Russian, Iranian, Chinese or even Turkish military power, on the Richelieu model President Donald Trump, not John Bolton, will be thrown under the bus.

https://spectator.us/john-bolton-problem/

Douglas Macgregor

Thanks in large part to John Bolton, America, the global cop, is back on the beat. This time it’s the Caribbean and the Persian Gulf in a near-simultaneous demonstration of resolve.

For Bolton, President’s Trump national security adviser, Venezuela is an exceptionally appealing target. Juan Guaidó, the democratic socialist who is Washington’s choice to lead Venezuela is dutifully following Bolton’s script asking for US military intervention to install him and his followers in power.

Why not? Venezuela harbors a few hundred Russian Special Operations Soldiers and at least 2,000-3,000 Cubans. Crushing the pathetic Venezuelan Armed Forces would be another exercise in clubbing baby seals on the Iraq or Afghan model.

Venezuela might also be the last place on the planet where a carrier battle group can sit just offshore in support of a marine amphibious assault. Against any capable opponent these operations would end quickly, far out to sea, in volleys of precision guided missiles and submarine attacks, but Venezuela is naked in the face of US military power. At most, Venezuela offers the potential for a low-level civil war launched from the interior on the Afghan model.

True, Moscow could escalate horizontally meaning that Russian forces could provoke an incident in the Baltic Littoral, particularly in Estonia where large numbers of Russians legally reside. In Ukraine, Russian air and ground forces could move suddenly to seize Odessa and establish a Russian military presence on the Romanian border. Putin, after all, plays chess, not checkers. But that’s not likely, is it?

Iran’s economy is reportedly on the verge of collapse. Iran is in a deep recession and inflation is running at about 40 percent, yet Iran still presents a threat to its neighbors serious enough in Bolton’s words to warrant ‘maximum pressure’ to suppress Iran’s appetite for war — the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force.

Why not? Iran’s defensive capabilities are modest, though still robust enough to sink a few ships and damage a carrier. If provoked, Tehran may simply conclude it has nothing to lose, but it’s not Iran’s capabilities that worry US military planners.

Russia is very unlikely to tolerate an American military intervention against Iran. US forces already sit on Russia’s borders and routinely sail close to Russia in the Baltic, the Black Sea and the North Pacific.

Iran may well be Putin’s line in the sand. Moscow’s space-based assets would share intelligence with Tehran. Russian ground, air defense and aerospace forces would move rapidly into northern Iran. Russian submarines would show up in short order in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.

Beijing is equally unlikely to sit still given its dependence on Iran’s role in developing China’s ‘One belt, One Road initiative.’ It’s already done so. The unmanned aircraft diverted to Iranian control did not find its way into Iranian hands without Chinese assistance.

How fascinating it would be to sit in the Oval Office when Bolton explains these unanticipated developments to President Trump, who ran on none of this? Senior advisers like Bolton who urge presidents to initiate military action always express confidence that the opponent, especially, a weak opponent, will back down, or, at most, put up weak resistance…

If any of John Bolton’s current military ventures trigger a confrontation with an alliance of Russian, Iranian, Chinese or even Turkish military power, on the Richelieu model President Donald Trump, not John Bolton, will be thrown under the bus. John Bolton will just shrug his shoulders as he did after the Iraq debacle and say, ‘Intervention was still the right call.’ He’ll simply return to his old job at the American Enterprise Institute, Foundation for the Defense of Democracy or another of the many neocon-friendly think tanks…

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