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President Obama’s Foreign Policy: An Assessment Former "Bush 43" UN Ambassador (and foreign policy iconoclast) John Bolton spoke on September 11th in Washington as part of the "First Principles on First Fridays" Hillsdale College lecture series.
Unsurprisingly, Bolton excoriated Obama’s foreign policy. He lamented Obama's retreat from the belief in American exceptionalism at the D-Day commemoration, citing the president's statement that all nations believe themselves exceptional (and implying that the U. S. is no more exceptional than others). Examining inter alia Obama's policies toward North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel, he finds them sorely flawed. "Kim Jong Il,” Bolton predicted, “will never be talked out of his nuclear weapons program, which he sees as a trump card against the United States, Japan and South Korea." The Iranians are "being transformed from a theological autocracy into a theological military dictatorship." The two ways to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons are regime change ("less and less likely") and preemptive military force ("extraordinarily unattractive…, but the alternative is much less attractive"). In Iraq, we are willy-nilly pursuing a withdrawal strategy regardless of on the ground political developments. Afghanistan, which Bolton doubts will ever become a stable democracy, is no longer a "good war;" it has become, instead, "another war from which [liberals] want to get out" regardless of regional consequences. And in the Middle East, Obama makes the mistake of believing that solving the Palestine-Israel conflict will bring peace when the real problem is Iranian support for Hamas/Hezbollah. In short, a withering, from-the-right, critique of Obama/liberal foreign policy, but without the nuanced examination that would commend it to any but conservative believers. |
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