If you didn\u2019t know John Bolton and you heard him speak last week in Coral Gables before the Bay of Pigs veterans, you would be forgiven if you thought you were hearing a campaigning politician as opposed to the national security advisor to the President of the United States.<\/p>\n
Bolton discussed some consequential measures (some announced hours before in Washington), but he was in Miami to rally emotions. He spared no twist of rhetoric, from \u201ctroika of tyranny\u201d to \u201cthree stooges of socialism.\u201d He felt compelled to criticize President Obama 14 times by name, even though it had been 453 days since Obama had anything to do with policy toward Cuba or any other place. He implored his audience\u2019s help in rejecting socialism \u201cin this hemisphere and in this country,\u201d as if a red tide were upon us.<\/p>\n
But Bolton was meek when it came to his most critical point: regime change in Caracas, Havana, and Managua. For all his extravagant rhetoric, he avoided any clear expression of President Trump\u2019s commitment to achieve such an end.<\/p>\n
Instead, Bolton\u2019s Coral Gables doctrine is about economic sanctions that he hopes will work if they are draconian enough and applied long enough.<\/p>\n
But even among Bolton fans there is doubt, a tacit recognition that he has given President Trump a set of tactics that draw applause and a strategy that seems to be, \u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n