John Bolton on Foreign Policy

America is a benign force globally

1. Voters should reject any candidate who treats national security policy in a dismissive or off-hand way. It is not enough to 'check the box' by mentioning foreign policy every once in a while.
2. Candidates should be proudly patriotic. They should assert that a strong American international presence is positive and necessary for us and our allies, and say clearly that America is a benign force globally, providing order and stability, providing the foundations for the interlocking, global economy and our way of life here at home.
3. Candidates must demonstrate they understand how closely interwoven domestic and foreign policy are. A strong economy depends on that strong international presence. These are not alternative priorities, but are inextricably connected.

America's biggest threat is self-induced weakness

Weak America means trouble in Russia, China, & Libya

• Look at the Middle East, Russia's puppet Assad is still in power.
• Russians are selling weapons to the Egyptian government for the first time since the early 1970s, threatening Israel.
• Iran, working with Russia and running rings around Obama, Clinton and Kerry in nuclear arms talks.
• In Latin America we see Russia re-establishing influence in Cuba and in Venezuela, threatening our own hemisphere.
• In China you've got a major military build-up going on, building their first blue water Naval capability, ladies and gentlemen, while Obama scoffs at our declining Navy.
• But worst of all, worst of all, is Libya. Libya is the paradigm of the Obama doctrine's failures. The attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was a direct attack on the US.

Help Egyptian Army over Muslim Brotherhood, even if elected

But Bolton said his view is the only one that works for the long term. "If the Muslim Brotherhood wins, say good-bye to the peace treaty with Israel and stability in Sinai," Bolton said. "Egypt has not yet succumbed to civil war, as Syria has, but it's getting close."

Bolton wrote: "The Muslim Brotherhood is not a normal political party as Westerners understand that term. It is an armed ideology--a militia that fires on its opponents and burns down churches. The Brotherhood, therefore, shares full blame for the continuing carnage. Should it ever regain power, whether through free elections or otherwise, it will never let go."

International Criminal Court constrains U.S. freedom

In 1986, Pres. Reagan wisely decided to block the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea because it creates an international authority with the right to tax private undersea mining. The Obama administration's efforts to convince the Senate to approve the agreement have proven unavailing.

North Korea is unnatural relic of post-WWII deal; reunify it

Second, the US doesn't need or want its military forces situated along the Yalu. The American objective, currently being implemented, is to have them near the peninsula's southern tip, available and mobile for use elsewhere in Asia & the Pacific.

North Korea is an unnatural relic of a "temporary" Moscow-Washington arrangement following Japan's defeat. It has no historical claim to legitimacy as a separate state. Its citizens have never freely consented to it. And its continued existence leaves 23 million people perennially close to starvation. North Korea cannot open and survive, as the regime itself well knows. But it almost has deliverable nuclear weapons. Persuading China to support reunification is the best answer. A reunification strategy should have been pressed decades ago, but better late than never.

US strength is not provocative, but restrains rogues

When that perception becomes widespread, we are truly in danger. Others calibrate their policies to take advantage of our weakness or inattentiveness, and act to our detriment and that of our friends, as has been happening these past three and a half years, as friend and foe alike around the world has taken Obama's measure. That is why Romney's return to a Reaganite foreign policy is so necessary for Washington and our allies.

We need a president who believes in American exceptionalism

A: Contrary to what its critics, including many in this country, say, American exceptionalism simply recognizes the reality of our distinct history. After all, a Frenchman, Alexis de Toqueville, first characterized us as "exceptional," and he didn't mean it entirely as a compliment! Obama once compared US exceptionalism to Britain & Greece, and he easily could have listed the other 190 UN members. If everyone is exceptional, no one is, leading almost inexorably to believe that the US has no special role to play internationally, even on its own behalf. It leads to a "come home, America" approach that inevitably weakens the US, its friends and allies, and the values and interests we should be advancing

Support new sovereigntists against globalistas

Fortunately, while globalista academics, their handmaidens in the political commentariat, leftist think tanks, and non-governmental organizations were hard at work, others, in the late '90s, were awakening to the consequences of all that buzz. Sometimes derided as "new sovereigntists" by the multilateralist chorus, these analysts and practitioners began examining both the precepts and the implications of the global-governance agenda.

American sovereignty is chipped away by global governance

Opponents of unfettered US sovereignty have been fashioning constraints on the exercise of our fundamental democratic rights, national power, and legitimacy. We have been locked in a struggle between sovereignty and "global governance" that most Americans didn't even know was happening. Not surprisingly, therefore, the "Americanists" have been losing to the "globalists".

And the general public does not yet appreciate the chasm between these two worldviews.

International "norming" constrains US sovereignty

One way to drive norming is through votes in multilateral organizations, operating under the "one nation, one vote" principle.

International human rights experts & courts not needed in US

This is not the view, however, of those who want to constrain our sovereignty. After all, if we decided what is right and wrong, they couldn't second-guess us and bend us to their views.

Unitary UN: funding based on measurable accomplishments

I had no doubt that Bush, a former US permanent representative to the UN, who had called it "the light that failed," had a thoroughly realistic view of both the UN's potential and its problems. The issue, though, was to translate out intentions into a strategy that was more than just perpetual dissatisfaction with contribution levels. I created a conceptual framework called the "Unitary UN" for this purpose, hoping to take a global view of the entire system, to compare performance levels so we could allocate funds based on real accomplishments. No other country paid as much attention to what the UN actually achieved, as opposed to its aspirational rhetoric.

Happiest moment at UN: exiting International Criminal Court

My only regret is that we didn't unsign more bad treaties, like Kyoto and the CTBT, during the Bush administration.

United Nations Security Council overemphasizes Africa

In 2006, the Council passed a total of 87 resolutions, of which 76 dealt with specific conflict situations. Of those, 46 addressed African conflicts. As tragic and homicidal as Africa's conflicts have been, however, there is no serious argument that 60% of the aggregate threat to international peace and security is concentrated on that continent, not when compared to the global proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism. The Council concentrates on Africa for a variety of reasons, and one could make the argument that this concentration was justified if problems in Africa were actually being solved. The unfortunate reality, however, is that the UN is both ineffective in Africa and inattentive (and often ineffective) to more pervasive problems elsewhere.

1981: Returned $21M in unspent USAID funds to Treasury

Although we made only a start in the 1980s at AID, the collapse of Communism seemed to show that pro-liberty, premarket forces essentially won the debate.

Organized repeal of UN "Zionism is racism" resolution

During the Cold War, there was essentially no chance that the Soviets would give up their hard-won victory. With the advent of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, however, I saw the possibility of righting the historic wrong represented by "Z/r" and also demonstrating that the US might actually be able once again to win highly contentious votes in the General Assembly. Yes, Resolution 3379 was a shameful thing, but it would be a huge effort to repeal. "Let it lie on the shelves and gather dust" was the way one Soviet diplomat put it to me.

Persistence paid off. As one of its last official acts before it dissolved, the Soviet Union voted to repeal the resolution it had inspired. "Z/r" was dead.

Legally binding international law? Just theological exercise

Pointing at me, Bush said, "Now look, John, this piece of paper is important from our strategic perspective. Putin is at huge risk, and he needs to fight off his troglodytes. Without a treaty, however, there is no discipline, but we're not going to have any changes by Congress; this will be a straight up-or-down vote."

UN Security Council is effective; don't expand it

• Dealing with threats to international peace and security, such as Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the disintegration of former Yugoslavia
• Establishing and overseeing UN peacekeeping operations
• And many more.

State Dept. requires political leadership to change

1. The most serious of State's cultural deficiencies is one that the permanent bureaucracy has named: "clientitis." The term means excessively advocating the interests of the country or region for which an official is responsible.
2. "Moral equivalency," a disease of the sophisticated, is highly contagious. It involves equating actions or policies that are fundamentally different. For example, Palestinian terrorism and Israeli defensive responses are equated.
3. "Mirror imaging" is related to moral equivalency, involving the inability to see that representatives of other countries do not bargain on the same terms as our diplomats.
4. Most fundamentally, State careerists are schooled in accommodation and compromise with foreigners, rather than aggressive advocacy of US interests.

Role in the world: military strength and moral clarity.

American foreign policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategi