Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton began his CPAC address with a bit of good news, rallying the conservative crowd by counting down the days left in the Obama administration.
He countered that point, however, by stressing that a Hillary Clinton presidency would only be a continuation of the previous eight years — at least on the issue of national security.
“If we don’t act sensibly,” Bolton said, “Hillary Clinton will be the next president. And make no mistake, her national security policies are indistinguishable from Barack Obama’s.”
After studying Clinton’s decisions as U.S. secretary of state, as well as her own words in the autobiography Hard Choices, he suggested Clinton would usher in a “continuation” of the current — and deeply flawed — platform.
“Obama has allowed the world to grow more dangerous and and threatening and chaotic every day,” he said.
While insisting America must be the force for global stability, Bolton acknowledged critics who feel other nations benefit from that stability without any skin in the game. He noted, however, that there “isn’t anybody else who is going to do it.”
The fact that other nations benefit “is a plus to us,” Bolton advised.
“That they don’t pay their fair share of the burden,” he continued, “is something to be corrected.”
According to Bolton’s assessment, Obama has shirked his duty by allowing chaos around the world to spread unchecked.
“China is building islands in the South China Sea and putting naval and air bases on top of those islands,” he said.
In addition, he said North Korean missile tests, Russia’s expansion by force, and turmoil afflicting the European Union are evidence of foreign policy failures that would continue in a Clinton administration. Bolton then focused on the Middle East, which he said is “descending into chaos,” a trend punctuated by Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
He called the recent agreement “the worst diplomatic failure in the history of the United States,” concluding the “strategy that [Secretary of State] John Kerry pursued was written by Hillary Clinton.”
Source: Western Journalism
