The German government reportedly told the project companies to “ignore” the missives dispatched by Ambassador Richard Grenell.

Nord Stream 2 is the 1,222-kilometer pipeline being laid in the Baltic seabed which will greatly increase delivery of natural gas from Russia to Germany. It will double Germany’s import of Russian gas when complete. But the Trump administration has repeatedly voiced its objection to the project, claiming that it will give Moscow undue political leverage over Europe. Trump has warned of sanctions on participating companies, which include German and Austrian firms.

The flagrant ulterior agenda is seen as the US trying to undermine German-Russian energy trade, for the purpose of selling more expensive American liquefied natural gas to Europe. So much for American free-market capitalism!

Grenell’s letters to the German firms – received at the weekend – are viewed as an unprecedented threat to the nation’s conduct of private business. The US embassy denied it was a threat, saying the letters were merely stating Washington’s policy of imposing sanctions.

It is but the latest furore involving the maverick envoy who has been accused in the past of violating diplomatic protocol by meddling in Germany’s domestic affairs. German media have previously blasted Grenell for seeking “regime change” in Berlin because of his open support for the anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany (AfD).

When Grenell took up his diplomatic post in Berlin last May, he immediately provoked a political firestorm when he tweeted that German companies doing business with Iran “should wind down operations” or face punitive American sanctions. That was at the time President Trump pulled out of the international nuclear accord with Iran. “Never tell the host country what to do, if you want to stay out of trouble,” snapped Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany’s former ambassador to Washington.

Only a few weeks after that dubious debut, Grenell gave an interview to the pro-Trump Breibart News outlet, boasting that he wanted to “empower other conservatives throughout Europe”. That was taken as an endorsement of the AfD in Germany, which has emerged as a serious challenger to the political establishment in Berlin.

Martin Schulz, the former leader of the Social Democratic Party, was among several political figures who then demanded Grenell’s dismissal. “What this man is doing is unheard of in international diplomacy… he’s behaving like a colonial officer of the far-right,” said Schulz. He added a fair point by noting: “If a German ambassador were to say in Washington that he was there to boost the Democrats, he would have been kicked out immediately.”

Grenell’s high-profile media interventions concerning German politics and business do appear to constitute a brazen breach of the 1964 Vienna Convention which stipulates that diplomats must remain neutral on matters of policy concerning host nations. Officially, an ambassador’s role is to lobby discreetly on behalf of his government, and to always adopt a low-profile.

Of course, this would not be the first time that US embassies and envoys have violated the Vienna Convention in host countries. Washington habitually uses these outposts for fomenting regime change.

Richard Grenell, however, has openly flouted these norms and acted as an unabashed mouthpiece for Trump, echoing the president’s contempt for the German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The upshot, according to Der Spiegel, is that Grenell has become politically isolated in Berlin. Merkel “keeps him at a distance” and most politicians, except for the AfD, have shunned his contact.

After the latest controversy of writing warning letters to German companies, it may be the final straw for Berlin’s tolerance.

Already, the German media have been commenting on how the “trans-Atlantic partnership” is finished under Trump.

Business newspaper Handelsblatt commented previously: “Nothing in trans-Atlantic relations is normal any longer… Berlin has for too long clung to the illusion of trans-Atlantic normalcy… the era of close ties is now over”.

Moreover, there are increasing calls among German politicians and media for a “strategically autonomous Germany and Europe” unfettered by Washington’s policies.

Such a development is long overdue and its necessity long predates Trump. Since the end of the Second World War, Germany has resembled an occupied country for American military power and a subordinate to Washington’s political objectives. The primary objective has always been to prevent Germany from developing a natural partnership with Moscow, previously with the former Soviet Union, and subsequently the Russian Federation.

The absolute disregard for German sovereignty was perhaps best demonstrated not by the Trump administration, but during the presidency of Barack Obama when it emerged that American intelligence agencies were tapping the personal phone calls of Chancellor Merkel. If that’s not colonial arrogance, then what is?

Yet the German political and media establishment barely protested over that infringement by Washington on the country’s sovereignty and its leader.

What Trump and his cipher-envoy in Berlin have done is take the arrogance to an unbearably overt level. Trump has been kicking Germany for alleged “unfair trading practices”, denigrating Merkel over her refugee policy, browbeating Berlin to double its spend on NATO military budget, and lambasting German businesses for not complying with Washington’s hostile foreign policy towards Iran and Russia.

Trump in his boorish style is merely laying bare the long-presumed US hegemony over Germany. And it’s not a pretty sight. Berlin is being shamed into having to be seen to stand up to this American bullying.

The absurdity is that the US and its NATO acolytes have been foaming at the mouth for the last two years about alleged and unproven Russian interference in domestic politics of Western states. Whenever the glaring reality is it’s the Americans who are driving horses and coaches of interference through their supposed allies, who are evidently vassals.

Currently Europe under threat from “populist and neo-Nazi formations” and the only way to counter it is to stay united. In other words, there must be no EU reforms, no policy changes, those Brussels-based pooh-bahs will go on enjoying their serene lives tut-tutting about the nefarious plans of those who oppose them, and refugees will be free to pour in until the EU explodes.

Has Russia done anything specifically to provoke the accusations that it has plans to meddle in the European election race? Not a thing, but there is somebody else who has.

No, the EU leadership is not dismayed enough to raise a hue and cry over the scandalous remarks made by US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell. It sees no need to do anything about it. In June, the ambassador did not shy away from openly promising to use his office to help far-right nationalists inspired by Donald Trump take power across Europe! In an interview with Breitbart News, Richard Grenell said he was “excited” by the rise of far-right parties on the continent and wanted “to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.” Those were his literal words!

If that’s not interference, then what is? But no, no warning has been issued about the danger of US meddling in Europe’s May elections. Just imagine what would happen if a Russian ambassador to an EU country publicly said such a thing! Mr. Grenell did not see anything wrong with praising the Austrian government coalition, which includes the Freedom Party that was formed in the 1950s by a former Nazi officer. He actually lectured the Germans about what their government should look like. It seems like times have changed and intervening in European politics on behalf of far-right leaders has become the norm, at least for the ambassadors of the United States.

George Soros, a US billionaire who became one of the world’s wealthiest people by managing hedge funds and betting on currency fluctuations, has meddled in European elections many times. The last Italian election is one example. His Open Society Foundations spend $940 million a year in 100 countries in pursuit of political goals. He has been asked to leave Russia and Hungary, the country of his birth, for interfering in politics. The “Soros network” has great influence in the European Parliament and in other European Union institutions. It’s an open secret that the billionaire is a vehicle used by the US State Department to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs. USAID and the Soros network often team up. Last year, six US senators signed a letter asking the State Department to look into government funding of Soros-backed organizations, but to no avail. The State Department always protects the financier.

Last year, the “Soros list” was made public. It contained the names of 226 MEPs from all sides of political spectrum who are eager to promote the ideas of Soros, such as the integration of Ukraine into the EU, and, of course, taking a stand against Russia. The lawmakers on the list hold roughly one-third of the seats in the European Parliament! They vote as they are told by a US tycoon. But no, this fact has been swept into the shadows. there is no threat to democracy, no negative impact on any elections — nothing to worry about. Can anybody imagine what would happen if it were revealed that a Russian oligarch with close ties to the government was keeping a list of “allied” European politicians? Europe is adamant about countering foreign influence and the “threat” coming from … Russia. The fact that one-third of MEPs are “allied” with George Soros is not a big thing. It’s Moscow’s alleged “meddling” that is keeping the EU leaders and media magnates from sleeping.

Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Trump, is pretty busy at present. He is in the process of setting up a non-profit Brussels-based foundation called The Movement, to support right-wing anti-EU parties during the European Parliament races. The British Ukip party has already pledged to work with it. The short-term goal is to produce a European Parliament in which every third lawmaker belongs to a right-wing “supergroup,” so that it will be possible to disrupt parliamentary proceedings. “Right-wing populist nationalism is what will happen. That’s what will govern,” Steve Bannon told the Daily Beast. “You’re going to have individual nation states with their own identities, their own borders.” According to the source, “The operation is also supposed to serve as a link between Europe’s right-wing movements and the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus in the US.” He wants a well-financed, centralized operation in order to bring right-wingers together. The Daily Beast quotes Raheem Kassam, a former Breitbart editor, who said, “Forget your Merkels.” According to him, “Soros and Bannon are going to be the two biggest players in European politics for years to come.” What would Europeans say if a formerly highly placed Russian official with close ties to the president set up a political movement to openly influence the Old World’s political life?

The Movement would challenge the work of philanthropist George Soros, and his liberal Open Society Foundations (OSF). If they succeed, Americans closely linked to the US government will control European mainstream politics. One-third (Bannon) plus one-third (Soros) equals two-thirds — an overwhelming majority consisting of right-wingers and liberals.

The US involvement in European politics is so evident and extensive that talking about Russian “meddling” sounds farcical. The Americans are free to do anything they want. It never occurs to European leaders to sound the alarm and put the issue on the EU’s security agenda. They are too busy looking the other way while turning a blind eye to the fact that the meddling they fear so much has already been taking place without hindrance for a very long time indeed.

Bolton was the only US ambassador to the United Nations never to have been confirmed by the US Senate. George W. Bush took advantage of the Senate's recess to confer upon the extreme war-hawk a recess appointment. It was Bush's way of paying back Bolton for serving as one of the Bush campaign's disruptive attorney- surrogates during the 2000 Florida presidential vote recount.

Wherever Bolton sees a conflict in the world he, like Cheney, sees an opportunity for US military engagement. Bolton is a standard neo-conservative — someone who, like Cheney, dodged the Vietnam draft but is all-too-willing to commit US troops to foreign battlefields. While at the UN, Bolton and his openly gay assistant and diplomatic valet, Richard Grenell — tapped to be Trump's ambassador to Germany – were known for their constant inability to get along with other delegations, save for one, Israel. Bolton infamously got into heated arguments with the British ambassador over procedures and rules in the Security Council.

While an official in the Reagan administration’s US Agency for International Development (USAID), Bolton, according to divorce papers served by his ex-wife, allegedly forced his wife to engage in group sex activities at New York's Plato's Retreat, a swingers’ sex club, in the 1970s and 80s. A decade later, while an attorney for USAID contractor International Business & Technical Consultants Inc. (IBTCI), USAID, Bolton harassed a female USAID contractor who was working in Kyrgyzstan. According to the contractor, Melody Townsel, Bolton made her life miserable during their time together in Russia.

Townsel told the “Dallas Observer” in May 2005 the following about Bolton’s antics: “[John Bolton] began chasing [me] through the halls of a Russian hotel – throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman.” Townsel added that this “went on for two weeks, during which time Bolton routinely visited me… to pound on the door and shout threats." Bolton also falsely told Townsel’s colleagues that she “was under federal investigation for misuse of funds and that she was bound for federal prison.” Townsel said Bolton made "unconscionable comments about my weight, my wardrobe… and my sexuality, hinting that I was a lesbian (for the record, I'm not)." “Time” magazine and the “Toronto Star” corroborated Townsel’s version of events, even as right-wing propaganda mouthpieces like radio’s Rush Limbaugh called her a liar. In a case of likes attracting one another, Bolton’s sexist attitude toward women and his insulting demeanor toward subordinates are likely what first attracted Trump to the walrus-mustached former ambassador to the UN.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell privately warned a few Republican senators during Bolton’s confirmation hearing in 2005 that Bolton was not suited to be the American ambassador to the UN because his former top diplomat for arms control had problems with those who disagreed with him. Former chief of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) Carl W. Ford, Jr. was even blunter when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bolton was a “quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" and "a serial bully.” In the end, the Senate – including Democrats and Republicans – could not bring itself to confirm someone as unqualified and dangerous as Bolton for the UN post.

But Trump sees nothing wrong with Bolton as National Security Adviser. Bolton reportedly plans to conduct a purge of White House National Security Council staffers deemed by him to be disloyal to Trump and prone to leaking information to the media. However, when it comes to leaks, Bolton has several of his own in his dossier.

During the Bush presidency, while Bolton was still serving as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, he is believed responsible for taking part in the leak of national security information from the INR and the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 2003, Bolton, who had virtually declared war on INR, was working closely with Vice President Cheney's staff, including Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, David Wurmser, and John Hannah, as well as Karl Rove, to craft propaganda justifying the war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Bolton was part of the Bush administration cabal that outed the identity of CIA non-official cover (NOC) agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates cover firm. Plame's identity was disclosed by Bolton and his friends in retaliation for her husband, Joe Wilson, a former Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad and a former ambassador to Gabon, penning an op-ed in The New York Times that debunked Bush's spurious claim that Iraq received "yellow cake" uranium from Niger. By exposing Plame and Brewster Jennings, Bolton put into jeopardy NOCs around the world, agents who were critical to the CIA's clandestine missions, including identifying networks used for the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Exposure by Bolton, Rove, Libby and others of the Brewster Jennings & Associates counter-WMD operation also resulted in the exposure of allied intelligence NOCs and private business assets working for British and German intelligence agencies, who were assisting the CIA in its efforts to counter the flow of WMDs. The foreign agents worked for Britain's MI-6 (Secret Intelligence Service) and MI5 (Security Service) and the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The German counter-WMD operation concentrated on the smuggling of nuclear material from the former Soviet central Asian states. The British agents, using "trading company" fronts, had close contacts with assets in Iran, North Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Ukraine, China, India, Pakistan, and Russia.

Bolton also misused National Security Agency intercepts for political purposes. As National Security Adviser, Bolton will have access to all-source intelligence, including NSA communication intercepts. In 2005, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) revealed during Bolton’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee UN ambassador nomination hearing that Bolton requested transcripts of 10 NSA intercepts of conversations between named US government officials and foreign persons. Later, it was revealed that US companies [also treated as "US persons" by NSA] were also identified in an additional nine intercepts requested by Bolton. The requests for NSA intercepts by Bolton were as suspicious as those requested more recently by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, apparently for no valid reason other than curiosity or something more sinister.

The following NSA intercepts were among those requested by Bolton and his neo-con cabal in Cheney's office:

♦ Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and their conversations with their counterparts and officials around the world;

♦ Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns and his telephone conversations with International Atomic Energy Agency director general Mohammed el Baradei and Britain’s top non-proliferation official William Ehrman (Bolton was frozen out of negotiations between Burns, Britain, and Libya over the stand down of the Libyan weapons of mass destruction program;

♦ Burns’s conversations with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al Shara over charges by Bolton that Syria possessed WMDs and conversations between Burns and former chief UN Iraq weapons inspector Hans Blix;

♦ Various phone calls made by Chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Brent Scowcroft;

♦ US Special Envoy on North Korea Charles “Jack” Pritchard and his telephone conversations with US ambassador to South Korea Thomas Hubbard, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs James Kelly, and Richard Armitage;

♦ New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and his telephone conversations with Secretary of State Powell and North Korea’s deputy UN ambassador Han Song Ryol [confirmed personally by Richardson to the author];

♦ Phone conversations between Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden and his Iranian counterpart, Majlis foreign affairs chair Mohsen Mirdamad;

♦ Phone calls between Biden, his staff, and William Burns and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman;

♦ Former President Jimmy Carter’s phone conversations with Cuban officials before and during his May 2002 trip to Cuba (Carter said he found no evidence to support Bolton’s claims of Cuban biological weapons development).

Bolton's multiple requests for NSA "raw SIGINT" or signals intelligence evoked the following response from then-NSA director Michael Hayden in an internal NSA memo:

"(U) US law and policy present more serious issues. EO [Executive Order] 12333 recognizes that electronic surveillance is so intrusive that we have established very specific rules to prevent unreasonable intrusion into privacy. EO 12333 tells us that information derived from electronic surveillance is not to be shared unless two criteria are met: US person information has been minimized so as to uphold 4th Amendment protections from unreasonable search and the information provided is of inherent intelligence value.

(U//FOUO) Much of the above would delight many of those who have been clamoring for more extensive access to our databases and other SIGINT derived information. [Emphasis added] These folks usually couch such views in the form of a request for 'raw SIGINT'—a formulation that usually connotes little knowledge about our discipline and even less likelihood that any kind of sharing with them would lead to something useful!

(U//FOUO) When I press for an explanation of what these folks mean by 'raw SIGINT' (usually accompanied by an explanation on my part of our production processes: access, collection, processing, translating, analyzing, reporting), I’m finally told that what they really want are English language transcripts of intercepted communications. They often seem surprised when I report that that usually that doesn’t help us much in terms of dealing with the volume of modern communications and in fact would probably add to our workload. And to those who might have linguists in appropriate languages, I also point out that no one would be served by 'amateur night' with inexperienced analysts second-guessing our linguists about the meaning of guarded conversations in obscure dialects laced heavily with allegorical Koranic references and spoken by interlocutors who seem to easily confuse the 'is' with the 'ought to be.'”

Bolton represents the worst American diplomatic face that Washington ever displayed to the world. The Senate rejected him to be America’s ambassador to the UN. The National Security Adviser position does not require Senate confirmation. With Bolton in position at the White House and current CIA director Mike Pompeo in charge of the State Department, the United States will be on a steady course to war. May the human race survive Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, and the other minions of the American neocon right-wing who now control the helm of the American ship of state.

John Bolton as National Security Adviser, with Nikki Haley in Bolton’s old job at the U.N. and fundamentalist Christian dominionist Mike Pompeo moving from CIA director to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, means that the neocons — never happy with the prospects of a Trump administration – will, once again, be in the driver’s seat of American foreign policy after a nine-year hiatus. Bolton’s tenure at the U.N. was punctuated by his own undiplomatic outbursts, as well as those of his spokesman, Richard Grenell, Trump’s nominee to be US ambassador to Germany. Bolton strenuously pushed the neocon foreign policy line, as spelled out in the charter for the movement founded in 1997, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Bolton is a staunch interventionist, which would appear at odds with the non-entanglement foreign policy espoused by Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. However, as Trump entered his second year in office, it was apparent that one branch of the neocons, the most hawkish element and one linked to the Christian fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party, had captured control of the foreign policy levers of the Trump White House. Bolton has called for the US to declare war on Iran and North Korea and he has advocated for a US troop deployment to Syria to combat the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

Bolton also favors scrapping the Iran P5+1 nuclear agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Bolton’s international views are no different than those of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a camaraderie Bolton shares with Trump.

The mere fact that Bolton has been a recent frequent guest at the Trump White House and that Trump reportedly values Bolton’s advice, is a threat to global peace.

On June 29, 2017, long after Trump sought Bolton’s advice, the former ersatz US ambassador to the UN wrote the following neocon screed for Fox News: “There are signs the Assad government may be planning another chemical attack. American pilots have struck forces threatening our allies and shot down a Syrian plane and Iranian-made drones. The probability of direct military confrontation between the US and Russia has risen . . . Instead of reflexively repeating President Obama’s errors, the Trump administration should undertake an ‘agonizing reappraisal,’ in the style of John Foster Dulles, to avoid squandering the victory on the ground . . . In Syria, Kurdish forces fighting ISIS [Islamic State] are linked to the Marxist PKK in Turkey. They pose a real threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity.”

Bolton wants the United States to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization and supports Trump’s backing of the Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates embargo against Qatar as punishment for its ties to both the Brotherhood and Iran. Bolton also wants added to the US terrorist list Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Bolton is on record as favoring the creation of a new “secular” Sunni state in Iraq that would be bankrolled by Saudi Arabia. The new Sunni state, in Bolton’s view, would stymie the creation of a Shi’a arc of control extending from Iran through Iraq to Syria and Lebanon.

On the issue of Palestine, Bolton has demanded the abolishment of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which administers aid programs for Palestinian refugees. In May 2017, before accepting the Guardian of Zion Award from Bar-Ilan University in Jerusalem, Bolton told The Jerusalem Post that the “two-state solution” of Israel and an independent Palestinian state should be abandoned, Hamas, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority disbanded, Gaza given to Egypt, and the West Bank divided between Israel and Jordan. Bolton cynically said he believes in a “three-state solution” with Israel, Egypt, and Jordan taking control of current Palestinian territory. While representing the Bush administration at the U.N., Bolton and his chief adviser Grenell were known for coordinating all of America’s votes on Middle Eastern matters with the Israeli delegation.

Bolton’s world view is to turn the clock back to the 1950s and the “containment” policy advanced by Secretary of State Dulles. In the 1950s, “containment” meant containing the Soviet Union. For Bolton, containment now applies to boxing in Iran, joining Turkey in defeating the Syrian Kurds because Bolton believes they are linked to a “Marxist” Kurdish party in Turkey, and seeking the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria. That Bolton has gotten the ear of Trump, whose world view is a mile wide and a half-inch deep, should trouble the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond.

Bolton’s neocon rhetoric on NATO is no less alarming. He wants membership in NATO fast-tracked for Ukraine and Georgia. Bolton as Trump’s national security adviser would help usher into the Trump White House Bolton’s fellow neocons ensconced at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, where Bolton enjoys a senior fellowship. Bolton favored US military action to prevent to retrocession of Crimea to the Russian Federation. Bolton’s appointment as Trump’s national security adviser would avoid US Senate confirmation, which, for Trump, would mean no contentious Senate floor battle with such anti-Bolton Republicans as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

In yet another hearkening back to the days of Dulles, Bolton has promoted an updated version of the discredited “domino theory” for the Western Hemisphere. President Ronald Reagan tried to convince the American public that if the Sandinista government was permitted to take root in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and soon, Mexico, would fall to the Communists. Reagan warned that the Communists could then take over the US-Mexican border town of Harlingen, Texas because it was two-day’s driving time from Nicaragua. Bolton served in the Reagan State Department alongside such neocons as Elliott Abrams, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs and the person behind Reagan’s “Communists in Harlingen” nonsense. It was also a so-called “domino theory” that was promoted by Bolton’s hero, Dulles, and his Cold War successors as Secretary of State to defend US military intervention in Southeast Asia to prevent Communism from spreading from China and North Vietnam to Thailand, Malaysia, and, eventually, even Sydney, Australia and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Bolton views the instability in Venezuela as a prelude for such anarchy spreading to Colombia and throughout South and Central America. Bolton believes that Cuba and Nicaragua are working hand-in-glove with Venezuela to destabilize Latin America and the Caribbean. Bolton opposed the normalization of US relations with Cuba and he supports Trump’s downgrading of those ties. Of course, Bolton fails to mention that it was under the Bush administration that repeated US attempts to destabilize Venezuela began and they never ceased. Bolton would rather see Venezuela fall under the control of a right-wing autocrat, such as those who gained power in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile from progressive presidents.

Bolton actually believes Iran is exploiting the political turmoil in Venezuela to gain access to the country’s uranium deposits. He also is convinced that Hezbollah has established a drug-running network in Latin America. Bolton has called on Trump to reassert the arcane Monroe Doctrine – proclaiming the Western Hemisphere as America’s domain – because of “Russian meddling” in Latin America. Bolton’s predilection for such conspiracy theories, while welcomed and highly sought in Republican Party cuckoo land, are not the product of sober intelligence analysis of world events. John Bolton, a dangerous madman, certainly has no place in any White House, particularly one that is already led by someone who is mentally unhinged.