Q&A: John Bolton

National Journal's Ronald Brownstein spoke with John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, for the May 23 edition of "National Journal On Air." This is a transcript of their conversation.

Q: John Bolton -- former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, former undersecretary of State, now a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a supporter of Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Mr. Bolton, welcome to "National Journal On Air."

Bolton: Glad to be here. Q: Mr. Bolton, Senator McCain has been extremely critical of Barack Obama over the past week for saying that he would meet with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela without precondition. What’s the risk of talking?

Bolton: Well, I think the question you always have to ask yourself in a situation like this is what are the cost and benefits of negotiation. I think it is far too facile, as Senator Obama has said, to simply sit down without precondition with leaders like the leaders of Iran and North Korea. I’ll just name a couple of costs you have to weigh in the balance. First, the legitimacy you confer on leaders like that -- legitimacy from meeting as equals with the United States that they can use both in their own internal political situation and externally in the broader world. And secondly -- and this is particularly important in the case of states that are seeking or already have weapons of mass destruction -- time works on the side of the proliferators. They use negotiations -- and the Iranians and North Koreans have both proven this -- to perfect the complex science and technology they need to master having these weapons. So simply sitting down with them gives them an asset -- time -- that they couldn’t otherwise obtain. So when you look at this and say, it’s not a question of do you talk with adversaries or not -- the question is, what’s the cost-benefits analysis? And in these cases, I think Senator McCain clearly has the better of the argument. Q: Well, let me ask you this -- and I think your comments there may point to your answer -- now Senator Obama has made a great deal in response in this back-and-forth in saying look, I’m saying without precondition, but I’m not saying without preparation. There would be preliminary diplomatic contact before we reach the level of heads of state talking to each other. Does that change the equation at all in your mind?

Bolton: No, and I must say that is a silly, indeed, embarrassing statement for a candidate for president of the United States to make. Obviously, you make preparations before you engage in any meeting. You made preparations before this interview. Of course there are preparations. The notion that you meet without precondition, however, is not a process point. It’s a substantive point, and for him to try to align the distinction that way -- I just think that’s embarrassing. I think the American people are a lot smarter than that. Q: I appreciate, by the way, your faith in my work ethic in preparing for this interview. Let me ask you this: Under what circumstances then, if any, would it be appropriate for the next U.S. president to meet with the leaders of the kind of countries that Senator Obama referred to?

Bolton: Well, I’m not sure that, really, the question of the president meeting should even enter into the picture. That is something that you do when everything is arranged for success, and we are far from that circumstance with respect to Iran, North Korea and a lot of others. The better question, I think -- when do you negotiate, under what circumstances, with a rogue state, for example, to see if they might give up their nuclear weapons? The case of Libya is instructive here. Libya, reacting to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, reacting to the seizure of a critical shipment of their nuclear weapons program, and ultimately reacting to the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, gave up their weapons program. Not because we negotiated with them, not because it was the negotiations that persuaded them, but because external reality had changed in a way that convinced Muammar Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons. On a cost-benefit scale, I think it clearly made sense to enter into the negotiations, and they proved successful. We have seen no sign from either Iran or North Korea that they have truly made a strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program, which is basically what Libya did. Q: Now, the Obama campaign does argue, though, and I think you alluded there, that the Bush administration has, on occasion, talked with countries that we consider antagonistic -- certainly, Libya, North Korea, there have been interactions with Syria. Has the Bush administration, of which you were a part, been willing to talk to adversaries, also, when they consider it in our interests to do so?

Bolton: Of course, and so does everybody else. I mean, Senator Obama is trying to make this into a debate between his reasonable willingness to talk with adversaries on the one hand, and the approach of Senator McCain or the Bush administration on the other being a bunch of unilateralist cowboys who never talk to anybody. That’s not the dispute at all. Every negotiation is an individual decision, whether it’s in our interest to talk or not to talk. And, I think, here’s the key point: 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. Q: Well, you know, you make the point that it is a technique, a tactic, whether to talk to the leaders of nations that we consider a threat. We’re arguing about the tactic right now, but is there something larger in this dispute? I mean, do you see this as indicative of a larger difference between the way a President McCain and a President Obama might approach the challenge of defending America’s interests in the world?

Bolton: Yes, I think it is larger than that. I think it was revealing -- yet another comment Senator Obama made today, that Iran is supporting Hamas and Hezbollah -- two terrorist groups -- is pursuing nuclear weapons, because we are not talking to them. That reflects a breathtaking naïveté, and lack of appreciation as to what the Islamic Revolution in Iran has been up to since 1979. And I think Senator Joseph Lieberman said it very well at a dinner speech for Commentary Magazine on Sunday in New York, when he said that the Democratic Party, his party, needs to learn that you don’t stop threats to American national security by being inoffensive to the people who are making the threats. This is a reflection of a larger international reality that I must say Senator Obama seems not to comprehend fully. Q: Now, on the other hand, we have the report this week that Israel is negotiating with Syria over the objection of the Bush administration. Is that a mistake by Israel? Are they doing the same kind of thing that Barack Obama is saying the U.S. should do?

Bolton: I think they are making a mistake trying to negotiate with Syria now, because I don’t think Syria has any independent ability to make decisions. Over the past several years, Syria has become functionally a satellite of Iran, so that if the Israelis really wanted to negotiate with somebody, they ought to be in Tehran, not in Damascus. They are not talking to those capitals. I think it’s a mistake on their part. I think it will be seen as a mistake in their domestic politics, and it certainly wouldn’t fit my cost-benefit analysis of a fruitful place to have discussions. Q: Do you think a President McCain, like President Bush, would discourage the Israelis from having such negotiations?

Bolton: I would hope so, although I can’t speak to that question precisely. I think what you see now is Syria being used as a conduit for Iran to supply particularly Hezbollah, a terrorist group in Lebanon which is a dire threat to the democratically elected government there. And the cost of negotiating with Syria is real. It is a conferring of legitimacy, and it is giving them more time to consolidate a position in Lebanon that -- we’d actually spent years trying to push Syria out of Lebanon, so it’s rolling that policy back as well. Q: A couple final things... If a President Obama -- if there is a President Obama, and he does launch negotiations with Iran and Syria, how would that affect Israel’s leverage? The dynamics of the Israeli security situation?

Bolton: I think it will make Israel’s security situation more difficult. I think an effort to negotiate with Iran will be seen by the mullahs as a sign of weakness on the part of the United States. I think that was their clear reaction when former Secretary of State [Madeline] Albright apologized to Iran for the 1953 coup that the CIA sponsored there against Prime Minister [Mohammad] Mosaddeq. She thought it was a way to show that we were trying to move away from our past policies, and they took it as a sign of weakness and reacted accordingly. And I think an effort to negotiate with them would be treated the same way. I suspect, as they look at our public opinion polls -- and you can bet they are watching our election very carefully – their reaction to this is to say, we’re just going to sit tight until the American election and see what happens. Q: Finally, Mr. Bolton, let me ask you: Obviously this argument has been simmering for a long time -- really since last summer, when Barack Obama gave his initial answer to the question in a CNN/Youtube debate -- but the latest round was ignited when President Bush made his remarks recently in the Knesset, warning against talking with terrorists. Now, as you know, the Democrats interpreted those as criticism of Obama. The White House said that was overdrawn, but I’m wondering, having worked for President Bush, do you think after this experience he will be more cautious about saying things that could be interpreted as interjecting him in the campaign, or do you think he is going to be willing and eager to go out there and defend his foreign policy against criticism from the Democrats that he considers unfair?

Bolton: I think President Bush says what he thinks, and I think the real interesting aspect of this was the reaction of the Democrats, including Senator Obama. If they had simply said the president is repeating something he has been saying for seven straight years, this flap wouldn’t have occurred at all. I really think it was a case of, if the shoe fits, wear it. Q: All right. John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, thanks for joining us.

Obama is an empty suit pimped by the media.

Check out this awesome video:

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The same kind of terrorists who support Obama did this:
http://www.frugalsites.net/911/attack/
Never apologize for them.
Never appease them.
Never forget.

Obama is an empty suit pimped by the media, but he is controlled by leftist political interests that not coordinated . At first it was the Chicago machine and the Rev. Wright that was behind Obama and speaking through Obama. But, that didn’t play well on the national level. Sure, he still has that Stanford educated Daley advisor on his staff, but he’s got to have way more than that because their is no cohesion to Obama’s message.

Look at how he had to fire Malley the week before Bush went to Israel. He thought that the Republicans were going to use Malley to attack him, while Bush was in Israel, so he dumped him. The anti-Israel position has been a trade mark of the Black Liberation Thelolgy, but Obama dumped Malley to try to win the Jewish vote. Who advised him to do this? Not Jeremiah Wright.

Are you looking for a debate?
Just joking.
I’ll start a debate just as non-controversial.
Refute this: Michelle is brattier and meaner than Obama.
I’d guess she’s at least as smart as the senator, and more accustomed to getting her way. She’s whinier, more suspicious, dislikes white men more than Obama, and seems more supportive of Jerry Wright.
Except for the last one, Michelle is just like Hillary.
No wonder they dislike each other more every day.
HRC’s remark today about RFK collapsed the wave function of HRC’s weak vice-presidential probability. Hillary’s chances of being on the ticket thrive in a parallel universe.
But, if Michelle sees an HRC VP as necessary for her magical husband to be the only president ever who likes other countries more than ours, she’ll send Mrs. Bill Clinton a bouquet in a waterford vase.
She’s power hungry, just like Hillary.
I read that the choice for democrats is between one lawyer married to a bratty screeching lawyer and a bratty screeching lawyer married to a disbarred lawyer.
Anyway, it’s too bad Obama’s comments before the Jewish group in Florida, on yesterday I think, have not gotten wider coverage. He was terrible. Wimpy. His acceptance of Israel’s mortal enemies as morally equivalent to Israel was palpable to me. And, I’m asleep most of the time.
I do like the fact that Hillary has very good grammar.

I’d like to see Bolton run for President. Diplomacy is for sissies- it has never worked in recent times. Well maybe for Libya but that was a different situation altogether. Has no relevance. It also had to do with voluntarily renouncing nuclear development, but we could have bombed Libya and achieved the same result.

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