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When a former White House national security adviser and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says he was involved in plotting coups abroad, the world takes notice.
John Bolton, speaking live with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “The Lead” Tuesday afternoon, said the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was not a “carefully planned coup d’état” — and that he would know.
“As someone who has helped plan coups – not here but in other places – it takes a lot of work and this is not [Donald Trump] did,” Bolton, who was the Trump administration’s top national security official for 17 months before his bitter departure in 2019, told Tapper.
In an interview with CNN, John Bolton says he planned foreign coups
It was a passing mention, apparently intended more as a scathing criticism of the former president than a bombshell admission of responsibility.
But clips of the remarks went viral online, attracting millions of views from all over. Within hours, they sparked official condemnation and unofficial speculation from foreign observers, particularly in parts of the world where decades of US intervention remain fresh memories.
Evo Morales, the former Bolivian president who was ousted from office in 2019 by the military amid murky election allegations, tweeted on Wednesday that the remarks showed the United States was “the worst enemy of democracy and life “.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, called Thursday for an international investigation into Bolton’s remarks.
“It is important to know in which other countries the US has planned coups,” Zakharova told Radio Sputnik.
Was Bolton serious? While some in the United States had their doubts, distant rivals suggested it was just further confirmation of what they already knew.
“This is not a surprise,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a daily news conference on Thursday. “The admission simply shows that meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and overthrowing their governments has become standard practice of the US government.”
“It’s very much part of the U.S. rulebook,” Wang said.
Bolton did not elaborate on what, if any, coups he was involved in planning during the interview. When pressed by Tapper, he pointed to the failed attempt to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in 2019, but added that the United States had “not that much to do with it.”
This was a strange example. For one thing, Bolton said the attempt to oust Maduro was “obviously not a coup” in 2019.
Maduro’s government has accused the United States of helping to fuel political instability in Venezuela.
Maduro did not offer a response after Bolton’s comments on Tuesday. But Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s permanent representative to the United Nations, jumped on Twitter to respond that Bolton was right: The coups did take a lot of work. “For this reason, he also failed with his local agents in Venezuela,” Moncada wrote.
Some international relations experts said Bologna’s comments could be a setback for well-intentioned U.S. policy.
“This is detrimental to our efforts to advance and support democracy,” said Larry Diamond, a scholar at Stanford University-Hoover Institution. “We already have enough trouble countering Russian and Chinese propaganda.”
Bolton was not immediately available for comment.
To America’s foreign critics and enemies, Bolton often plays the role of boogeyman, representing the worst of US foreign policy and neoconservative interventionism.
As an official, his hardline views won him few friends internationally. But he appears to relish his reputation, writing in a book that being called “human scum” by North Korean state media in 2003 was the “highest accolade” he had received.
Bolton had two stints in senior positions. Under President George W. Bush, he held senior arms control posts before becoming ambassador to the United Nations in 2005. He was a major supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.
After Bush, Bolton spent years in the foreign policy wasteland — though he hardly went hungry, taking positions at right-wing Washington think tanks, working with a global private equity firm and serving as a Fox News contributor.
He returned to government service in April 2018 as Trump’s White House national security adviser — his third in less than 18 months.
He didn’t last long, leaving the administration in September 2019. Foreign policy appeared to be one of the main sources of contention, with Trump later tweeting that despite Bolton’s reputation as a hawk, Trump actually had “stronger” views on Cuba and Venezuela.
So what coups might John Bolton have been involved in?
In Turkey, local media supporting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan linked Bolton’s recent remarks to the failed attempt to overthrow the Turkish government in July 2016. Bolton, who was not in government at the time, was a critic of Erdogan at the time.
Takvim, a pro-government tabloid, printed an article on Wednesday citing Bolton’s 2016 statements in support of the “insidious” coup attempt. The paper notes that Bolton has spoken out in support of Kurdish groups in Turkey and neighboring countries.
Takvim pointed to a 2016 appearance on Fox News during which Bolton claimed Erdogan was trying to “recreate the Ottoman Caliphate” with an Islamist government. Bolton criticized Erdogan for not supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“If it goes down, I won’t shed any tears,” Bolton said. “I don’t think he was a friend of the United States.”
Bolton has supported coups in the past.
In a 2008 interview with Al Jazeera, he said coups can sometimes be a “necessary way to advance American interests” and defended the 1953 overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, orchestrated by the Central intelligence management.
“I think the U.S. should have that capability,” Bolton said, citing Iran and North Korea as two areas the United States should focus on toppling hostile regimes.
But despite the speculation, a number of former US intelligence officials on Tuesday responded with derision to Bolton’s remarks.
“Bolton has never touched a coup,” tweeted Milton Bearden, a former CIA chief who oversaw US covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. “And anyone who thinks that fomenting coups is a good idea just doesn’t get out enough.”
Julian Mark contributed to this report.
correction
An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Bolton’s CNN interview aired Wednesday. It aired on Tuesday. The article has been corrected.
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