October 30, 2020
Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton says the Trump Admin-istration’s foreign policy with respect to Iran has had no “positive results” for the United States.
Pointing to President Trump’s “ad hoc, almost random decision-making” in the foreign policy area, he told NPR October 16 the administration’s “non-proliferation strategy, for example, with respect to Iran and North Korea, has produced no positive results in either of those cases.”
Bolton said he does not believe the United States is safer today than it was four years ago. “I think, unfortunately, it’s not safer, which is not to say that there haven’t been some important positive decisions made and some important accomplishments,” he said, including withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and from a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty with Russia.
“The trouble is, there has been no overarching strategy in the Trump Administration,” Bolton said, “so that the series of decisions that have been made really have not followed a pattern that leads us over a sustained period of time to a stronger position internationally. And I think that is a fundamental failing in the administration’s approach that contributes to the general conclusion, netted out across all the different issue areas, that we’re not in a stronger position today than we were when the administration took office” in 2017.
Bolton added that there are “two main threats” to the US, namely from China and Russia, because of “their nuclear capabilities, among other things.”
“With respect to both of those countries,” Bolton said, “we have no strategy.”
“These are all problems that are accentuated by the president’s ad hoc, almost random decision-making,” he said. “As I say, it produces decisions that I do agree with from time to time, but it does not produce a coherent, effective, sustained policy, which is what you need to be successful in national security.”