Former U.S. Ambassador criticizes Obama’s foreign policy

Barack Obama is unlike any U.S. president in recent memory, says John Bolton, the 25th U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who served during the Bush administration.

"He sees America's role in the world as being very different than the way other American presidents have seen it."

And that's not necessarily a good thing, according to Bolton, who spoke to a capacity crowd at the Wake Forest University School of Law on Friday, Oct. 2. The law school and the Federalist Society, a student organization, sponsored Bolton's discussion in the Worrell Professional Center.

"I think President Obama is a very different kind of president than we've had before, and I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but I would just summarize those reasons with the observation that he is really our first post-American president."

Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is a strong critic of Obama, whose foreign policy can be interpreted by the world as belying weakness, showing the United States lacks the conviction and the fortitude to effectively deal with intransigent leaders in North Korea, Russia and Iran. Bolton is a frequent contributor to Fox News; he appeared on the network Monday afternoon to speak about the nuclear proliferation talks with Iran, as well as other international issues.

President Reagan, he says, saw America as "the shining city on the hill." But Obama operates more like a community organizer – a negotiator and a compromiser – than an advocate for America.

"That, I think, is not the role that we envisage for a president. And I think that's not the role that most Americans think they are giving to someone when they elect a president."

Obama often talks of extending an open hand to U.S. adversaries, trying to persuade them to unclench their fists as problems and differences are negotiated toward peace. In Obama's mind, the simple act of negotiation is a policy unto itself.

"I think it's reflected repeatedly, in concrete aspects, in his foreign policy," Bolton says.

That open hand is often returned as a metaphorical slap to the face. Negotiation is not a policy but a technique, a process point rather than a substantive one.

"Negotiation is no different than any other kind of human activity. It has costs and it has benefits," Bolton says.

"He extended the open hand to Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-il responded by exploding North Korea's second nuclear device, by testing again, extensively, North Korea's ballistic missile capabilities and essentially by kidnapping and holding hostage two American reporters to use them as bargaining chips."

For countries such as North Korea and Iran, time spent negotiating is a valuable asset. Through negotiation, North Korea has "given up" on its nuclear ambitions five times in the past 20 years, says Bolton, pointing to the irony.

"I would say the major problem with President Obama's North Korea policy is that it's almost identical to the failed Bush administration policy, which tried for over six years to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, with essentially no success at all."

Bolton compared U.S. and European policies toward stopping nuclear proliferation to the movie "Groundhog Day."

"We have been around this track any number of times before."

Britain, France and Germany, for example, have negotiated with Iran in an effort to end uranium enrichment efforts in that country. "For over six years, the Iranians essentially stiffed the Europeans time and time again."

Bolton pointed to Iran's intention to open for inspection the formerly clandestine nuclear enrichment facility in Qum, Iran. If inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency ever do inspect the facility, what they'll find is "a lot of empty underground facilities, because anything interesting will have been removed."

"Much more disturbing is the fact that if the Iranians were building redundancies to the existing nuclear facilities that -- and Qum is an example -- it's quite likely that they've got other backup facilities that we don't know about yet, and don't have adequate proof for. That is a demonstration that Iran is much closer, and has much more extensive capabilities, to achieve delivery of nuclear weapons than we had previously thought, and that's very bad news."

Being billed as a hidden success in the negotiations is an agreement in principle to transfer some of the low-enriched uranium to Russia, where it will be enriched from 3 percent to up to 20 percent. The material, which wouldn't approach the 90 percent enrichment threshold for weapons grade, would be used for an aging medical research reactor in Tehran.

Bolton offered the following analogy.

"The Iranians are on first base when it comes to uranium enrichment, we fear they're going to get to home plate – weapons grade – and the Russian answer is to move them to second base. Perhaps one of you can to explain to me how that is mitigating the problem of Iran getting to weapons-grade uranium. Obviously, once the Russians enrich it and ship it back to Iran, the Iranians can enrich it further. So I think this is, on careful examination, not only not progress, it legitimizes Iranian enrichment of the uranium they already have, contrary to four supposedly legally binding (U.N.) Security Council resolutions that tell them not to enrich at all."

The agreement allows the Iranians time to spend both on their nuclear program and on their ballistic missile program.

"This, combined with North Korea, sends a signal of American weakness in diplomacy that can only encourage other adversaries around the world. If that's how negotiation is going to be carried out after eight months of the Obama presidency, we've got significant problems that lie ahead."

The world is waiting for a decision from the United States regarding its policy in Afghanistan, which Obama formulated in March but changed last month. The equation now includes Pakistan, which has 60 to 200 nuclear weapons, says Bolton, who holds a law degree from Yale University.

"The issue of Afghanistan is not now limited to the stability of that country; it goes critically to the influence the Taliban and al-Qaida have in Pakistan.

"All of our NATO allies, every one of them, are watching the decision – what we're going to do in Afghanistan – and will calibrate their own subsequent decisions on troop contributions and other support based on this decision."

The significance of Obama's policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot be understated, says Bolton, whose experience over three Republican administrations included senior positions with the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"And if, like the policies with respect to North Korea and Iran and Russia and elsewhere, they show weakness, then I think we are for a long three years until the end of the president's term, and I think it will be a demonstration of the adage that it's not really American strength that's provocative in the world – what's provocative is American weakness."

by: John Trump