Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Trump’s Random Policy Generator Claims Another Victim

The president’s hiring process results in fairly arbitrary decisions. Quitting the INF treaty is the latest.

Looking the part.

Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

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Let’s talk about President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the INF treaty.

Unlike, say, the Paris climate pact, or the trade deals Trump has criticized, the INF treaty wasn’t something the president particularly seemed to care about. (It’s an agreement with Russia to ban mid-range, ground-based nuclear weapons.) What’s going on instead is the increased influence of National Security Adviser John Bolton who, as Dan Drezner puts it, “never met an international agreement that he did not want to depart.”