Of course, neither military nor academic experience could prevent some national-security advisors from making terrible mistakes. But if Kissinger is right that “[high] office teaches decision-making, not substance” and that it “consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it,” then the narrow professional experience through which Bolton has amassed his intellectual capital matters a great deal. He has never served in the military. He has never studied another region of the world, or another period of history, at the graduate level. He has spent his entire adult life in the interlocking world of hawkish think tanks, Washington law firms, Republican politics, and the right-wing media. And he manifests that narrowness in the smugly insular worldview he brings to his new job.

Over the past two decades, Bolton has written dozens of columns and essays, often for the flagship publications of the American right. To read them is to enter a cocoon. His writing is filled with assertions—about the purity of America’s intentions, the motivations of its adversaries, the uselessness of diplomacy, and the efficacy of war—for which he offers either feeble evidence or no evidence at all.

Consider Bolton’s op-eds about Iran. Before the 2015 nuclear deal, these pieces mostly followed a similar arc. They began with the insistence that, since Iran’s leaders were fanatically determined to develop nuclear weapons, diplomacy, sanctions, and inspections were a waste of time. “In truth, since the diplomacy/sanctions approach is Obama’s declared policy, we already know the end of the story: Iran with nuclear weapons,” Bolton wrote in October 2009. Bolton’s primary evidence for this sweeping claim? Vague, unsourced, pronouncements about Iran’s supposed invulnerability to petroleum and financial sanctions. In July 2012 he argued that Iran’s “mullahs will never agree to an intrusive verification mechanism that could actually detect systematic cheating.” How did Bolton know inspections could not work? It’s anyone’s guess. He cited no studies on the past efficacy of international inspections or on Iran’s record in complying with past agreements. He quoted no research at all. The technique is Trumpian: The less evidence you have, the more certain you sound.

After declaring diplomacy, sanctions, and inspections futile, Bolton—in his pre-Iran deal columns—again and again arrived at the same conclusion: There is no alternative to war. According to Bolton, that truth was too “unpleasant” and “inconvenient” for the Obama administration to face. But even as he congratulated himself for dispensing with comforting illusions, Bolton assured his readers that war wouldn’t be that bad. In the event of an Israeli attack, he wrote in October 2009, “Iran is highly unlikely to retaliate in a way that could prompt a direct confrontation with the U.S. military.” Why would Iran’s leaders, who Bolton described in the very same article as “religious fanatics who prize the hereafter more than life on earth,” carefully calibrate their response so as to avoid harming the United States? Who knows? Bolton cited no historical precedents, and quoted no Iranians or academic experts on Iran. Iran’s leaders are whatever he needs them to be: reckless when he’s arguing for the futility of diplomacy, but cautious when he’s arguing for the utility of military force.