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I Think The Russians Basically Don't Think The North Koreans And The Iranians Have The Capabilities To Get Weapon Systems That Can Threaten Them, Or That If They Do The Russians Know How To Handle Them And That That's The Reason That It's All The More Important That Russians Be Involved In The Sale Of High-end Conventional Weapons, The Bushehr Nuclear Reactor In The Case Of Russia And Iran, And Similar Kinds Of Relationships.

-John Bolton

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I Think The Russians

John Bolton

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I Think The Russians Basically Don't Think The North Koreans And The Iranians Have The Capabilities To Get Weapon Systems That Can Threaten Them, Or That If They Do The Russians Know How To Handle Them And That That's The Reason That It's All The More Important That Russians Be Involved In The Sale Of High-end Conventional Weapons, The Bushehr Nuclear Reactor In The Case Of Russia And Iran, And Similar Kinds Of Relationships.

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I Think The International Criminal Court Could Be A Threat To American Security Interests, Because The Prosecutor Of The Court Has Enormous Discretion In Going After War Crimes. And The Way The Statute Of Rome Is Written, Responsibility For War Crimes Can Be Taken All The Way Up The Chain Of Command. This Is The Sort Of Investigation That Some People Who Live In Fairyland Might Like To Undertake, But Which Bears No Relationship At All To Conditions In The Real World.

What We Want For The Iranian People Is Control Over Their Own Government, Which They Don't Have Now. So You Would Do It Through Supplying Resources And Support From The Outside To The Indigenous People Who Are Already Quite Unhappy. The Mullahs Have Made Hash Of The Economy Since 1979, There's A Huge Amount Of Economic Dissatisfaction. The Young People, Who Are Pretty Well Educated And Sophisticated, Know They Could Have A Better Life Than This Strict Islamic Law.

I Would Not Run As A One-issue Candidate. Anybody Who Does That Is Declaring Himself To Be Marginal.

Well, You Could Take Several Stories Off The Buildings Of Most U.s. Government Agencies And We'd All Probably Be Better For It Too.

Our Biggest National Security Crisis Is Barack Obama.

National Security

Reform Is Not A One-night Stand.

One Night Stand

Although We Refer To The International Criminal Court, The Real Problem Is The Prosecutor, Because It's The Prosecutor Who Decides Who To Investigate And What Cases To Bring. This Court Fundamentally Embodied A Potential For Abuse Of Governmental Power That I Felt Was Inconsistent With Being A Free Person - And [it Was] Inconsistent For A Free Country Like The United States To Subscribe To It.

I Want To Make Sure That, Not Only In The Republican Party But In The Body Politic As A Whole, People Are Aware Of Threats That Remain To The United States.

If Iran Obtains Nuclear Weapons, Then Almost Certainly Saudi Arabia Will Do The Same, As Will Egypt, Turkey And Perhaps Others In The Region.

I Don't Think I Would Have To Run A Campaign That's Financed Like General Motors.

Maybe It's My Libertarian Philosophy: But Being In Government Is Hard.

I Haven't Given Up On The Possibility That Sweet Reason Will Prevail.

The International Criminal Court Uses A Prosecution-only Approach. And By Putting Their Fate In The Hands Of Outsiders, Countries Are Really Dodging Responsibility For Actions Taken In The Name Of That Country, In The Name Of The People In That Country, By The People Of That Country Themselves. That Is, I Think, Fundamentally The Wrong Direction To Go In.

Obviously, You Make Preparations Before You Engage In Any Meeting.

If You Get A President (hillary) Clinton, You Might Well Find, Just As After Vietnam, That There Is A Retraction From Iraq And Of American Influence In The World. And In A Couple Of Years The Europeans Will Be Complaining About That Too.

America Needs An Adult In The White House Who Knows How To Deal With China.

My Priority Is To Give The United States The Kind Of Influence It Should Have.

Just As That Little Opening In The Iron Curtain That Hungary Created Caused A Flood Of People Out, And Ultimately The Beginning Of The End Of Communism In Europe, If You Could Get Refugee Flows Coming Out Of North Korea, While There'd Be A Very Difficult Humanitarian Problem In The Short Run, Both For China And South Korea, In The Long Run It Would Lead To Reunification.

I Don't Much Believe In Bumper Sticker Characterizations Of Foreign Policy.

As You Know, I Have Over The Years Written Critically About The U.n. I Have Consistently Stressed In My Writings That American Leadership Is Critical To The Success Of The U.n., An Effective U.n., One That Is True To The Original Intent Of Its Charter's Framers.

I'm Obviously Aware That People Are Quite Focused On The Economy Rather Than Foreign Policy Issues, But That Is Something That Should And Can Be Altered As People See The Nature Of The Threats Around The World That We Face.

I'm Not Sure History Has Ended.

The Republican Party Is The Party Of National Security. There's Hardly A National Security Wing Of The Democratic Party Anymore. So If We Turn Away From It, That'll Be A Big Problem.

I Am Not A Professional Politician.

The Nobel Peace Prize Has Become Hopelessly Politicized. I Think It Cheapens The Prize Itself.

Nobel Peace Prize

I Think That Ronald Reagan Had It Right, Being Against Abortion Except In Certain Limited, Defined Circumstances.

I'm A Conservative Republican. I Have Been Since I Was 15 Years Old And Participated In The 'goldwater For President' Campaign In 1964.

Iran Has Essentially Mastered All Of The Complex Science And Technology That They Need To Have A Completely Indigenous Nuclear Weapons Program. That Means That Our Options On Iran Are Extremely Limited, To Regime Change Or As A Last Resort, The Use Of Force.

It's Not Natural Disasters That Are To Blame For The Deprivation Of The North Korean People, But The Failed Policies Of Kim Jong Il.

I Think The Regime In North Korea Is More Fragile Than People Think. The Country's Economic System Remains Desperate, And One Thing That Could Happen For Example Would Be Under A New Government In South Korea, To Get The South Korean Government To Live Up To Its Own Constitution, Which Says Any Korean Who Makes It To South Korea, Is A Korean Citizen. A Citizen Of The Republic Of Korea. And You Could Imagine The Impact That Would Have Inside North Korea If People Thought, "if I Could Get Out And Make It To South Korea, I Could Have A Different Life."

The European Union Can Now Act Like A Major Power, At Least That Is What The European Union Tells Us.

I Think Some Of This Fascination With The 'arab Spring' Is Just A Grand Experiment With Israel's Survival.

The North Koreans Will Sell Anything To Anybody For Hard Currency. If Al Queda Came Up With Enough Dollars To Buy A Nuclear Weapon From North Korea I Don't Have Any Doubt That The North Koreans Would Sell It To Them.

I Think The Future Of China's Unknown, I Don't Know What Direction It's Going To Go In. It Could Go In The Right Direction, It Could. It Could Go In A Very Bad Direction, Too.

There's No Such Thing As The United Nations.

In The United States, There Is A Broadly Shared View That The U.n. Is One Of Many Potential Instruments To Advance U.s. Issues, And We Have To Decide Whether A Particular Issue Is Best Done Through The U.n. Or Best Done Through Some Other Mechanism.

It Was Right To Overthrow Saddam Hussein. It Was The Regime Itself That Was A Threat. I Think In Hindsight, What I Would Have Done Is Turn Authority Back Over To Iraqis Much More Quickly And Say: "your Country, You Figure Out How To Run It."

I Am Not A Neoconservative. I Am Pro-american.

I'm Not Saying That You Need A State Department That Looks Like The Litigation Department Of A Major Law Firm. But You Need People Who Are Not Afraid To Make The Case For The United States, Who Are Not Afraid To Stand Their Ground, Not Afraid To Be Isolated In International Organizations When That's The Correct Approach For Our Diplomacy. This Is A Cultural Change That Has To Be Effected Through Incentive Systems, Promotion Systems, Career Training Systems. This Is Not Something That You Can Do With The Stroke Of A Magic Wand, It's Going To Take Years To Make This Change.

There Is No Excuse For Waste, Fraud, And Abuse In The Defense Department Budget.

Negotiation Is Not A Policy. It's A Technique. It's Something You Use When It's To Your Advantage, And Something That You Don't Use When It's Not To Your Advantage.

I Think It's Critical That We Return National Security Issues To The Center Of The Overall Political Debate In America.

I'm Not Running Around The World Looking For Ways To Create Hostilities.

There's No Doubt That Iran Funds And Supplies Hamas With Weapons.

There Is No Patriotic Obligation To Help Advance The Career Of A Politician Who Is Otherwise Pursuing Interests That Are Fundamentally Antithetical To Your Values. That's Not The Call Of Patriotism.

The Press Tend To Stick With That The People Don't Care About Foreign Policy In Their Daily Lives And Aren't Concerned About It And So On And So Forth. I Don't Think That's Actually True.

By Creating A Prosecutor Who Is Overseen Over By A Court, They Are Melding Executive And Judicial Power In A Way That Can Lead To Terrible Abuses - As The Founders Of America Understood Full Well. It's Why They Created A System Of Separated Powers - To Set Up A Constitutional Mechanism That Would Enhance Freedom, By Making Sure That No One's Accumulation Of Power Could Predominate Over [that Of] Others.

You Don't Need To Spend Tens Of Millions Of Dollars On Political Consultants To Tell You What You Think When You Already Know What You Think.

My Philosophy Is Not A Bean-counting, Accounting 'look At This.' It Is A Philosophy That Smaller Government Is Better Government, And Government That Is Closer To The People Is Best Of All.

Just Like Sept. 11, Only With Nuclear Weapons This Time, That's The Threat. I Think That Is The Threat. I Think It's Just Facing Reality. It's Not A Happy Reality, But It's Reality And If You Don't Deal With It, It Will Become Even More Unpleasant.

The Only Thing That Will Stop Iran From Getting Nuclear Weapons Is Regime Change In Tehran.

North Korea Is Going To Get Away With Keeping Its Nuclear Weapons.

I Wouldn't Give Up On Russia, And With Oil At $90 A Barrel, They Can Refurbish Their Strategic Capabilities And Under An Authoritarian Regime, Those Nuclear Weapons Are Still There And In The Wrong Hands We Might Have A Problem Again.

I Think The International Criminal Court Could Be A Threat To American Security Interests, Because The Prosecutor Of The Court Has Enormous Discretion In Going After War Crimes.

The Way The Statute Of Rome Is Written, Responsibility For War Crimes Can Be Taken All The Way Up The Chain Of Command. This Is The Sort Of Investigation That Some People Who Live In Fairyland Might Like To Undertake, But Which Bears No Relationship At All To Conditions In The Real World.

Iran Is Barely Over 50% Persian, And Arabs, Baluchis, Azeris, Kurds And Many Other Groups Feel Left Out Of The Society. That Regime Has A Lot More Weaknesses Than People See.

The Iranian Government Is The Government That Supplied The Arms On The Karin-a To The Palestinian Authority Several Years Ago, They Are The World's Largest Central Banker For Terrorism, If They Thought It Was In Their Interest To Give A Terrorist Group A Nuclear Weapon To Use Against America Or Against Israel, I Don't Think They'd Hesitate.

The Culture Of The State Department Is Very Negative Towards A Conservative Foreign Policy. And The Model That We All Have, Of Civil Servants As Neutral Careerists Who Carry Out The Policy Of The Elected President, Doesn't Work Nearly The Way It Should In The State Department. So That There Are Many People Who Want To Be Good Civil Servants, Who Want To Try And Carry Out These Policies, But Are Afraid To Do So. And I'm Not Even Counting The Very Small Number Of Conservatives In The State Department Who Are Genuinely At Risk.

I've Never Attended Any Tea Party Functions.

Every Country Has An Aspect To It That Rubs Up People The Wrong Way.

Well, I'm A Libertarian Conservative, So I Believe In Limited Government/maximum Individual Freedom.

Diplomacy Is Not An End In Itself If It Does Not Advance U.s. Interests.

The European Arguments Against The Iran-libya Sanctions Act Demonstrate That "some Europeans Have Never Lost Faith In Appeasement As A Way Of Life. It Is Clear That Iran Is Cynically Manipulating Gullible (or Equally Cynical) Europeans To Advance Its Development Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

The Real Issue Of Dealing With Proliferation Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Nuclear, Chemical Or Biological Is: What Is Your Tolerance For Risk? And My Tolerance For Risk For Wmd Proliferation Is Pretty Close To Zero. Because Otherwise, We And Our Allies Are At The Mercy Of Regimes Like Ahmadinejad And The Mullahs In Tehran, Or Kim Jong Il And The Hitler-in-the-bunker Mentality In Pyongyang, Or Others Who Don't Share Our Calculus On The Value Of Human Life.

I've Been In The Government Bureaucracy, I've Practiced Law, I've Done A Lot Of Different Things.

People Don't Like To Talk About Victory And Defeat Anymore.

Victory And Defeat

I Have Looked At Public Opinion Polls In France In The Late 1940s And Early 1950s During The Height Of Marshall Plan Aid. They Had A Very Negative Attitude Towards The United States Then. There Were Negative Attitudes Towards The United States Because Of Vietnam. There Were Negative Attitudes About The United States When Reagan Wanted To Deploy Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles. I Don't Think The President Should Base His Foreign Policy On American Public Opinion Polls, Let Alone Foreign Public Opinion Polls.

I Have Decided Not To Run For President.

The Only Way To Resolve The North Korean Problem Is To Change The Regime.

Texas Is A Big State. It's A Major Force In The Republican Party.

It's Very Personal In Its Politics, Very Bitter And Very Negative.

I Am All In Favour Of Democracy In Iraq.

Let Me Ask, Who Died And Made Him King? Who Gave Him The Authority To Endanger 300 Million Americans? That's Not The Way It Works, And If He Thinks He Can Get Away With That, He's Got Another Think Coming.

Politicians, Like Generals, Have A Tendency To Fight The Last War.

Everybody Pursues Their National Interests. The Only One Who Gets Blamed For It Is The United States.

You Have To Negotiate From Positions Of Strength. And Right Now With Iran, We're Not Negotiating From A Position Of Strength. The Europeans Are Negotiating From The Position Of "please Give Up Your Nuclear Weapons Program, And By The Way If You Do We'll Give You Several Boatloads Of Carrots." The Iranians Are Quite Willing To Keep On Negotiating On That Line For A Long Time.

The U.n. Is One Of Many Competitors In A Marketplace Of Global Problem Solving.

Problem Solving

We Need A Strong And Effective State Department. We Can't Conduct American Affairs In The World Without It.

Let There Be No Ambiguity About The American View That Syria's Lack Of Cooperation .. Is Not Acceptable.

A Strong State Department To Me Means A Corps Of Career Officials Who Believe That Their Job Is To Advocate America's Interests And Who Are Trained In Effective Advocacy, Not Schooled In Accommodation.

A Lot Of People Have Said To Me, 'that's A Great Idea, Running For President. You'll Get Booked For More Speeches. You Can Write A Book.'

I Wouldn't Give Up On Russia. I Think They Have Legitimate Security Concerns From Islamic Fundamentalism, Not Only On Their Border But In Their Country.

Obama Sees America As Another Country On The Un Role Call. Somewhere Between Albania And Zimbabwe.

If I Were Doing The Security Council Today, I'd Have One Permanent Member, The United States, Because That's The Real Reflection Of The Distribution Of Power In The World. All International Laws Are Invalid, Meaningless Attempts To Constrict American Power.

Distribution Of Power

I Think The Russians Basically Don't Think The North Koreans And The Iranians Have The Capabilities To Get Weapon Systems That Can Threaten Them, Or That If They Do The Russians Know How To Handle Them And That That's The Reason That It's All The More Important That Russians Be Involved In The Sale Of High-end Conventional Weapons, The Bushehr Nuclear Reactor In The Case Of Russia And Iran, And Similar Kinds Of Relationships.

I Don't Think There Is Any Good Answer To The Question Why Shouldn't Gays And Lesbians Who Want To Serve Their Country Be Allowed To Do It.

The Solution To North Korea Is The Reunification Of The Korean Peninsula. China Could Influence The North; It Supplies 80 To 90 Percent Of North Korea's Energy. The United States Have To Put Pressure On China In Order For China To Pressure North Korea.

The Chinese Like The Satellite State [north Korea] Between China And Our Forces, They Fear That In A Reunified Korea, American Troops Would Be At The Yalu River And They've Seen That Movie Before. They Didn't Like It The First Time They Saw It And They Don't Like It Any Better Today. So They Are Quite Happy With The Divided Korean Peninsula And That's A Fundamental Difference Between The Way They See Things And The Way We See Things.

Swapping Bergdahl For Illegal Enemy Combatants (terrorists, In Common Parlance) Signaled Unmistakably To Taliban And Al Qaeda That Obama Is Determined To Withdraw From Afghanistan No Matter What The Cost To The United States Or Those In Afghanistan Fighting To Remain Free.

Don't Get Me Wrong: I Would Love To Be President.

Just As The Security Council Was Largely Irrelevant To The Great Struggle Of The Last Half Of The Twentieth Century - Freedom Against Communism - So Too It Is Largely On The Sidelines In Our Contemporary Struggles Against International Terrorism And The Proliferation Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

There's No Religious Test Under The Constitution. That's What It Says. Period.

You Know, As Somebody Who Writes Op-eds And Appears On The Television, I Appreciate As Well As Anybody That…there Is A Limit To What That Accomplishes.

People Say You Favor Assassination, What Do You Think War Is? Except That It's Assassination On A Much Larger Scale, A Much More Horrific Scale.

We Estimate That Once Iraq Acquires Fissile Material - Whether From A Foreign Source Or By Securing The Materials To Build An Indigenous Fissile Material Capability - It Could Fabricate A Nuclear Weapon Within One Year.

I Don't Think Hamas Will Be Satisfied Simply Ruling The Gaza Strip.

When You Have A Regime That Would Be Happier In The Afterlife Than In This Life, This Is Not A Regime That Is Subject To Classic Theories Of Deterrence.

I've Been Surrounded By Some Of The Best Economic Minds In The Country, And Hopefully I've Absorbed Some Of That.

If A Prosecutor In The Hague Decides That The U.s. Has Not Followed Through Effectively On An Investigation - Is Unwilling Or Unable To Carry It Through - Then That Person, That Prosecutor, In An Unreviewable Fashion Gets To Second-guess The United States? That Is Unacceptable. That Is An Assertion Of Authority Over And Above The U.s. Constitution.

There's No Such Thing As The United Nations. If The U.n. Secretary Building In New York Lost 10 Stories, It Wouldn't Make A Bit Of Difference.

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