The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

On returning to Washington, I spent the next months preparing for the dramatic step of INF withdrawal. To prevent leaks that would agitate the press and foreign-policy establishment, I thought we should pursue a quiet, low-profile, but expedited approach, rather than endless meetings among staffers who had lived with the INF Treaty their entire government careers and couldn’t bear to see it die. Trump, I believed, was on board, although I was never certain he understood the INF Treaty did not regulate nuclear weapons as such, but only their delivery vehicles. I wanted to launch US withdrawal from the treaty (which would be an important signal to China, among others), or possibly even mutual withdrawal, before my next meeting with Patrushev, in Moscow, in late October. Experience taught me that without action-forcing deadlines, bureaucracies could resist change with incredible tenacity and success. We also needed to prepare our NATO allies for the INF’s demise. Too many European political leaders believed they lived beyond “the end of history” and that nothing external should be allowed to roil their contented continent. It was a nice thought: tell it to Russia and China, not to mention all Europe’s good friends in Iran. An example of the conversations we needed to have took place on October 3 with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. Maas, a Social Democrat, was part of Merkel’s coalition, and doubtless an INF supporter. I didn’t say how far along our thinking was, but I em...