The Ricochet Podcast - Live From CPAC #7: John Bolton

Episode Date: February 27, 2015

In this installment of our Live From CPAC series, Jay Nordlinger talks to former Ambassador John Bolton. Source

Well, it's Jay Nordlinger doing some interviews for Ricochet and National Review. And our guest right now is Ambassador John Bolton. As President George W. Bush referred to him, the man with the mustache. I'm glad you're here. Glad to be with you. Let's get right to it. The world is aflame. What should we send the Ukrainians, if anything? Well, I think we should certainly arm the Ukrainian government. I think

we can send them trainers. This does not involve Americans in potential fighting in the eastern region of the country. But we need to up the capacity of the Ukrainian government to withstand what can only be described as Russian aggression. Putin cannot stand unlimited casualties. I don't believe that the Ukrainian army can defeat the Russian army. That's not the objective. The objective is to make it so costly that Putin gives up whatever his ambitions are. It may be too late, honestly, but I think we've got to start better late than never. I'm not sure we'll do it in the next two years, but if we had a real

president, that's what I would recommend. Stay in that part of the world. If Putin aggresses against one of the Baltic nations, against a NATO member, will the United States and NATO lift a finger or simply let it go? Under this president, I'm afraid that we will do nothing. And I think that will mean the effective end of the NATO alliance. I've never been more worried about NATO. I think Putin has watched the weakness of the West's reaction to what Russia's been doing in Ukraine. And he's seen something he could not possibly have imagined when this started, namely the potential to shadow, shatter NATO. Whether he risks it or not, I don't know, but certainly nothing that's being done in

Washington today should give him any pause. If Communist China, if the PRC moved to swallow Taiwan, would we, could we lift a finger? Well, I think we certainly could lift a finger. To be clear, I don't think China wants war over Taiwan. I think they want Taiwan to fall into their laps like a ripe fruit. And that may be what happens in the next two years. You know, even during the Clinton administration, when the Chinese built up missiles on their side of the Taiwan Strait, President Clinton sent two carrier battle groups steaming toward Taiwan.

I've asked audiences all over the United States in the past few years, do you think Barack Obama would send even one carrier battle group that way? Nobody ever raises his or her hand. The Chinese must surely understand that. And the Chinese, like other adversaries and potential adversaries, can read the calendar just as well as we can. They don't know who will be elected in November of 2016, but they know they've got roughly two years left.

So I think we're in for a great increase in the pace and the scope of challenges we face in the next two years. Taiwan might be one of them. Let's go to the Middle East. Is it too late to help anybody in Syria? It's very close to being too late, but I think we have to look at ISIS as a potential new state in the region. I think the states of Syria and Iraq have basically collapsed.

And I think if we allow ISIS to consolidate its control over the territory it holds and become a new terrorist state, we will face a threat far greater than Taliban in Afghanistan. They've already had thousands of Western European and American people come with valid passports who can go back to their home countries when they're finished training. And this new radical state, if it's allowed to exist, will be a continuing threat. That's why I think we've made a mistake these last seven months in not finding ways to strike it down. My view has been what Winston Churchill said about the Russian Revolution. He said we should have strangled Bolshevism in its cradle. That's what we should

have done to ISIS. We may yet be able to do it, but we're wasting time. In Libya, where ISIS has been active, were we inattentive there after our military operation? Did we drop the ball? Absolutely. And, you know, what's ironic here is that the Bush administration was criticized, I think, with some validity after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein of not having thought through adequately what we would do once we had won the first war. And we paid a heavy price for our inattention and failures there

until Bush finally ordered the surge and we regained the ground we had lost. Barack Obama was one of the most strenuous critics of the war in Iraq, and yet after the overthrow of Gaddafi, he turned his back and walked away. The country disintegrated. It became a haven for terrorists and warlords, culminating in the murder on September the 11th, 2012, of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. You still can't get the president to pay attention to Libya.

This is the consequence. If you're going to take a step like overthrowing a foreign government, which I think we need to do in our own interest from time to time, you have to contemplate what follows that. And the president utterly failed in that responsibility. That's why we have chaos now and ISIS rising in Libya, killing Coptic Christians. John, I think in 2009, I believe it was 2009, John Negroponte told me in an interview on the record, look, Iran's going to get the bomb. They just will. Now, it's 2015.

They don't have one yet. That's a long time. I'm slightly surprised. But are they going to get the bomb? Yes. Look, especially if they sign this deal that Obama and the other permanent members of the Security Council have negotiated, it's only a matter of time. And the decision is entirely up to Iran. They've got the capability to do it right now. I think what explains the passage of time that you mentioned is that Iran is not racing to build one or two nuclear weapons. They have been building and are continuing to build a broad and deep nuclear infrastructure. So when they finally decide to produce weapons, it won't be two or three. It will be scores or hundreds.

And they're proceeding at a relaxed pace because they're not afraid of us. They don't think we'll do anything. They hear the president say all options are on the table. They don't believe it any more than the Israelis do. So that's why the only threat Iran really faces is the possibility of an Israeli strike. I don't know what will happen. They're not worried about us. A lot of people hate Benjamin Netanyahu with a passion.

A lot of people love him. Paul Johnson once called him a man of destiny. Do you admire Netanyahu, or are you a critic? No, I admire him. I think he understands his country faces a true existential threat. He faces the threat of a nuclear holocaust if Iran gets nuclear weapons. He has not followed the political conventional wisdom in his country, and yet he's twice been prime minister.

He's in the midst of a very difficult re-election campaign. But somebody needs to make the hard decision whether Israel will take preemptive military action against Iran's program as it did in 1981 against Iraq, as it did in 2007 against Syria. I think Netanyahu is the man to do it. Whether he'll get that opportunity or not, I don't know. This seems like a smaller matter compared with the apocalypse. Let's talk about anyway these new relations developing between Washington and Havana. Some of us have long thought that we could begin normalization with the Castro dictatorship if they gave us something, an election maybe, some liberalization. Are we

getting anything for what we are granting the Castros or are we simply doing it unilaterally? This is the most visibly ideological policy decision in international affairs I think the president has made. This is the mantra of the left wing in America for 50-plus years, that we should recognize the Castro regime, and that's what we're about to do. And in the face of this massive concession, the regime is now arresting more human rights advocates. They don't fear the United States. They, too, read the calendar, and I can't underline that enough. They're going to try and close this deal, see the sanctions eliminated to the extent the president can do it unilaterally, something he's not afraid to do on other domestic, more domestic issues.

And I do think it rises to a cosmic level internationally because it's another example of the United States surrendering to a pipsqueak adversary in the form of the Castro regime. And I think our adversaries and our friends alike say, my God, if that's what he does after almost 60 years of American policy, think what else he might yet do. Here with Ambassador John Bolton, all of our lives we've heard the following phrase from defense cutters,

lean and mean, going to be lean and mean. I'm sure you've heard that every month. And I'm all for lean and mean, but there comes a point at which our military is too lean, too slight. Is it too small right now or bidding to be? I think it is too small right now and it's going downhill. It used to be our strategy was to be able to fight two medium-sized contingencies, as they like to say, around the world simultaneously, two medium-sized wars at the same time, notionally one in the Middle East, one on the Korean Peninsula. We can't even fight one such war now.

And inevitably our capabilities will continue to decline as, for example, Navy ships age out before their replacements can be built. The next president is going to have a huge task in terms of increasing the defense budget, and I think we've got to be very clear-eyed about this. We need massive cuts in federal expenditures. That has to mean even more massive cuts in domestic expenditures to get the military budget back up. Every other department in government has gone through the ceiling under Barack Obama. Only the Pentagon has been cut.

So the cuts have been disproportionate. The reallocation has to be disproportionate, too, because if we don't have the basic defense capabilities, you can have a strong American president with the kind of will and resolve of Ronald Reagan. He needs the capabilities, too. I've got two more questions. Before Obama's re-election, that is, before the 2012 election, you told me, you know, there's nothing wrong with this country,

there's nothing wrong with our government or policy that a good president or a real president can't fix. We just need to get one in. So now we'll have four more years. Does that still hold true? Can the next president, if he's the right kind of president by our lights, can he get us back on track? Yes, I think he can. I think it's a psychological change that's required, but I think the right kind of president can do that. If we can hold a majority in both houses of Congress, we can fix the resource question. But it's going to take a president who understands that the president's first responsibility is to protect the country,

that national security is not a sidelight, something you can pursue when you're not dealing with Medicare Part B and other domestic issues. And I hope, even with a Republican president, that we have somebody who understands that in his gut, that this is the most important issue, because I think that's critical. I once heard you say of the world, especially complainers about America, they'll miss us when we're gone. What do you mean by that? Well, I think if America is on an inevitable path to decline, withdrawal, inward-looking attitude, there are only two possibilities in the rest of the world. One is that we have international chaos because nobody steps forward to provide the stability and order that we provide, or that others step in to try and provide it who will not nearly be as benign as we are. And what people will miss about us is while they complain that we're too strong when we're active,

as soon as we become less active, they complain even more about that. They've been able, in Europe in particular, to rely on the American umbrella. There's no umbrella over us. So I think that's why America's got to make a fundamental choice. It's not that we can't reverse the mistakes we've made. But if, as Obama thinks, the country is on a path inevitably toward being a less important force in the world, you can't count on the American way of life and our standard of living staying as they are today. You can't take the props out of the minimal international stability we have

and not expect there's going to be a change. Well, we've been talking to John Bolton, son of Baltimore, son of a firefighter, graduate of Yale twice, and early on in the Reagan administration, someone dubbed him, or a group of people dubbed him, the truest, was it Reaganaut or Reaganite? Reaganaut. Truest Reaganaut. John Bolton, thank you very much.

Thank you, Jack. Ricochet. Join the conversation.