John Bolton once said of the U.N.: "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." | Getty Trump's flirtation with Bolton sends shivers through Senate Republicans and Democrats have pledged to battle Trump if he names the least diplomatic diplomat to a top State Department post.

Donald Trump’s selection of ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson as secretary of state threatens to touch off a confirmation fight, but the man in the running to be Tillerson’s deputy could spark an all-out war in the Senate.

John Bolton, the mustache-sporting, Iraq War-cheering former United Nations ambassador, is possibly one of the least diplomatic diplomats ever to serve in the U.S. government. He has argued the U.S. should bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program, dismissed the idea of a Palestinian state and called the United Nations a "twilight zone."


Trump has shown a contrarian streak in his appointments so far, so the odds are good that the president-elect will tag Bolton for a powerful Foggy Bottom job. But signs are that senators will put up more resistance to Bolton than Tillerson.

Already, Republican Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentuckian with a libertarian bent, has threatened to block Bolton, a man he considers a warmonger. On Tuesday, Chuck Schumer, the incoming leader of the Senate Democrats, explicitly compared Tillerson and Bolton in a statement that clearly laid bare his preference, saying: "Mr. Tillerson’s worldview may not seem to be as dangerously interventionist as Mr. Bolton’s."

Back in 2005, Bolton, who was serving as undersecretary of state for arms control, failed to get confirmed by the Senate when then-President George W. Bush nominated him as U.N. ambassador. Bush circumvented the process by appointing Bolton during a recess, but not before significant doubts were aired about him by Democrats and State Department colleagues.

According to media accounts at the time, Bolton was a highly opinionated, intense boss who brooked little opposition to his point of view. One colleague testified that Bolton was a "kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy."

His time at the U.N. did little to endear him to Democrats or the international community. Bolton harbors a deep distrust of multinational institutions, and organizations such as the U.N. and the European Union, to him, are threats to national sovereignty and bloated, often-useless bureaucracies.

A Yale Law School graduate who often brushes off the views of those he calls the "High Minded," Bolton once said of the U.N.: "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." In his 2007 book, "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad," Bolton devoted a lengthy passage to his frustrations over how late U.N. meetings often started and how long they could drag.

Bolton quit the U.N. post after Democrats took control of Congress in the 2006 elections. While he had been considered one of the most hard-line Republicans on the Bush team — thanks in no small part to his support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq — Bolton hinted in his book that he became disillusioned with the Republican president as the years went on because he appeared to succumb to political pressure from the left to be more moderate.

On the Bush administration's struggle to deal with North Korea and its nuclear program, for instance, "the permanent government has triumphed over Bush, or at least over his principles," Bolton wrote, adding that as some Bush aides left, "the departure of many 'hardliners' was like eliminating players from the defense team in football."

A Bolton aide on Tuesday said he was not granting interviews, and Trump transition officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In recent years, however, Bolton has been a reliable presence on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, using his platforms to bash President Barack Obama at every turn and cultivate his own reputation as a force fetishist.

In 2015, John Bolton called on the U.S. to bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program. | Getty

In 2015, Bolton called on the U.S. to bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program, and he's urged Trump to abandon the nuclear agreement Obama reached with the Islamic Republic later that year. He's accused Obama of being weak and indecisive on the world stage, laying the blame for the violence in Syria at his feet. Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, also has voiced major concerns about the nuclear trajectory of North Korea, even alleging that Pyongyang and Tehran are in a secret nuclear alliance.

Bolton is deeply pro-Israel, so much so that he's suggested forgetting the idea of creating a Palestinian state. Instead, he's argued for placing the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control and handing the West Bank to Jordan. The left-leaning Jewish advocacy group J Street is among those urging Trump not to place Bolton at State.

"We oppose his nomination and believe his confirmation would greatly set back American diplomacy, our country’s national standing and the foreign policy and security interests of the United States and our allies, including Israel," the group said in a statement.

Bolton's disdain for multilateral institutions hasn't faded since he left the U.N. He cheered Britain's decision to leave the EU, calling it "a revolution in human affairs, opening up vistas for Britain once buried in European Union bureaucracy."

Bolton also has a wariness of treaties and international law. While serving as undersecretary of state for arms, Bolton helped engineer the withdrawal of the U.S. from the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. During his tenure at the U.N., he came out against proposals that the U.S. believed would have imposed new legal obligations on nations to intervene in other countries to prevent mass atrocities.

Bolton also has flirted with the fringes of the right, including people who traffic in anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. He wrote the forward to "The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America," a book co-authored by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, two figures viewed as stridently anti-Muslim by civil rights activists. He's also been friendly with far-right European leaders such as Britain's Nigel Farage.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Bolton repeatedly said Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton should be in jail. Just this week Bolton suggested that the intelligence-assessed evidence that Russia tried to interfere in this year's election may have been a "false flag"; after an uproar, he clarified that he did not mean to imply that the Obama administration had planted it.

Not all members of the foreign policy establishment are writing off Bolton's chances in the Senate this time. Lawmakers may be open to someone who can balance out Trump's isolationist streak and who understands the U.S. bureaucracy. Trump's lack of foreign policy knowledge and Tillerson's lack of government experience also could boost Bolton.

"Normally he would be seen as an extreme outsider and pushing in a direction a lot of traditional foreign policy types would be uncomfortable with, but in this administration ... some people may see Bolton as a steadying force," said Tom Wright, director of the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution.

The State Department presently has two deputy secretary of state slots. One is more of a chief operating officer position that deals with allocating resources and management issues. The other is more involved in formulating policy, and, if the Trump administration decides to keep the same structure, it will likely be the slot Bolton would slip into.

In his book, Bolton expressed strong displeasure with the way U.S. diplomats think and operate, suggesting a good deal could change if he gains much power over the foreign service. He argued the State Department needs a "cultural revolution" in which its diplomats understand that their client is the United States, not the country they are dealing with, and in which they act more like litigators defending American interests.

Within the State Department, feelings about Bolton are mixed. On the one hand, there's deep concern about animus toward the U.S. foreign service. On the other hand, there's an appreciation whenever Trump chooses someone with knowledge of the field.

“John Bolton, while he is a divisive figure, people understand that he knows how the State Department works," an employee of the department said in a recent interview. "He’s often viewed as hostile toward the bureaucracy, but he also knows how to use it and take advantage of its strengths.”

Even if Bolton could prove a capable manager or a necessary change agent when it comes to the role of the foreign service, he might find himself clashing with Trump and Tillerson on key policy issues such as how to deal with Russia.

The president-elect has repeatedly spoken fondly of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has indicated he might let the Russians have their way in Syria, where Moscow is backing Syrian regime forces battling rebels. And Tillerson has long-standing ties to Putin thanks to his work in the oil world — it's one of the reasons even some Republican senators are wary of him.

But Bolton has been a hawk on Russia for many years, and he's slammed Obama for seemingly being unwilling to stand up to the Kremlin. “I think in order to focus Putin’s thinking, we need to do things that cause him pain as well,” Bolton told Fox News in 2013.