John Bolton is a conservative foreign policy hawk who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2005–2006) and later as National Security Advisor (2018–2019). He contributed extensively to The Weekly Standard over nearly two decades, writing sharp critiques of U.S. diplomatic concessions, the United Nations, and international agreements. His articles reflected his hawkish stance on issues including NATO, Russia, the Oslo Accords, and multilateral institutions like UNESCO.
For alumni of U.S. national-security departments and agencies, Hillary Clinton’s email saga is mind-numbing. The publicly available information makes clear she and her aides violated so many elementary security prohibitions that alumni are speechless. They wonder, had they done what she did, how…
During his traditional year-end press conference in Moscow, Vladimir Putin delighted in toying with America’s political process by touting Donald Trump as the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Less clear was whether Putin was delivering kudos or lumps of coal to the…
By any objective measure, Russia has made a strategic decision to challenge America for dominance in the Middle East. Despite depressed global oil prices and economic sanctions intended to curb his Ukraine adventurism, Vladimir Putin is pursuing an undisguised effort to expand Moscow’s military…
On May 14, I joined a tiny, highly exclusive group of Republicans, namely those who have decided not to seek our party’s presidential nomination. By contrast, the coach section of the party contains perhaps two dozen people who have announced (or soon will) their availability. Good luck to them all…
Immediately after Israel’s March 17 election, Obama administration officials threatened to allow (or even encourage) the U.N. Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state and confine Israel to its pre-1967 borders. Within days, the president himself joined in, publicly criticizing not just…
Vladimir Putin’s efforts to establish hegemony over Ukraine may now have reached a decisive point both for the balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe and for the NATO alliance. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko warned on August 30 that Russia’s invasion of his country and extensive aid…
The continuing Ukraine crisis raises both a critical “what if?” question and a pressing policy issue. What if, in April 2008, the Europeans had not rejected President Bush’s proposal to bring Ukraine and Georgia onto a clearly defined path to joining NATO? And today, urgently, should we try again…
Negotiations for an “interim” arrangement over Iran’s nuclear weapons program finally succeeded this past weekend, as Security Council foreign ministers (plus Germany) flew to Geneva to meet their Iranian counterpart. After raising expectations of a deal by first convening on November 8-10, it…
On October 17, Saudi Arabia was elected by the United Nations General Assembly to a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council. The next day, Riyadh made a stunning announcement: It was declining the seat, because of the council’s longstanding “inability to perform its duties and responsibilities”…
The ongoing failure of talks concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program, most recently in Istanbul on July 3, is no surprise. This latest negotiation charade between Iran and the Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany (P5+1) is the culmination of 10 years of innumerable diplomatic…
The Nobel Peace Prize is the world’s most prestigious award, as Jay Nordlinger argues in this erudite and insightful history. He has written not only the go-to reference book for the prize and its laureates but also an important philosophical reflection on the nature of “peace” in modern times.
Last week, Russia and China obstructed the Obama administration’s Syria policy by vetoing an anti-Assad Security Council resolution backed by the Arab League, Britain, France, and the United States. As harmful as this defeat was in its immediate consequences, it may bode even worse for efforts to…
Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis has written an impressive biography of George Kennan, the Cold War strategist, Soviet expert, and intellectual icon of the liberal establishment. Well worth reading, it nonetheless raises the basic question of whether Kennan’s concrete contributions justify the many…
The Palestinian Authority succeeded last Monday in becoming a member state in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The vote was 107 in favor, 14 opposed, and 52 abstaining, with France, Spain, Austria, and India among those supporting PA admission. Two of…
In his lengthy State of the Union address, President Obama was brief on national security issues, which he squeezed in toward the end. International terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even America’s relief efforts in Haiti all flashed past in bullet-point mentions. On Iraq and…
WHETHER LAST WEEK'S heralded Mideast summit will achieve either its immediate goal of ending violence in Gaza and the West Bank or its larger aspiration of reviving the "peace process" is unclear at the moment. What is clear, regrettably, is that a fundamental and perhaps irreversible shift in…
THE World Trade Organization, inaugurated in 1995, has had a much rockier beginning than anything experienced by its less-structured predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. A bitter early leadership struggle between developed-country and less-developed-country members of the WTO…
The Greatest Threat
Taipei
IRAQ IS BACK IN THE NEWS -- in a context that should pointedly remind us how completely American policy toward Saddam Hussein has collapsed. The immediate issue is U.N. Security Council debate over a resolution that would recreate some semblance of the old UNSCOM weapons inspection program in Iraq.…
DEBATE OPENED LAST WEEK in the Fifty-fourth United Nations General Assembly, highlighted in the media by President Clinton's annual address. But Secretary General Kofi Annan had made the real news even before the session started, by publicly proclaiming that only the U.N. Security Council can…
DEBATE OPENED LAST WEEK in the Fifty-fourth United Nations General Assembly, highlighted in the media by President Clinton's annual address. But Secretary General Kofi Annan had made the real news even before the session started, by publicly proclaiming that only the U.N. Security Council can…
Taipei, Taiwan
JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS, President Clinton addressed the families of the victims in the Pan Am 103 tragedy. He left a clear impression: Their long wait for justice would soon be over.
FINALLY, FOR THE FIRST TIME in the six years of his administration, President Clinton took vigorous military action against Iraq. Nonetheless, his December 16 speech to the nation was unclear about both the real objectives of the attack and the level and duration of force that were to be applied.…
President Clinton's embarrassing failure in November to punish Iraq militarily illuminates two broad and profoundly disturbing themes of his foreign policy. The first is his near-compulsive unwillingness to use decisive military force to achieve critical American objectives, even when conditions…
THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICA'S LIBYA POLICY -- nearly lost in the recent crush of news -- should not be allowed to pass unnoticed, for the Clinton administration's reversal of almost seven years of consistent policy on the Pan Am 103 bombing is highly damaging. Not only does the administration's…
IN THE MOST STINGING INDICTMENT YET of the Clinton administration's Iraq policy, United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigned last week. He wrote that Washington's unwillingness to hold Iraq to the letter of numerous Security Council resolutions "makes a mockery of the [U.N.…
IN AN ASTONISHING PAIR OF REPORTS at the end of last week, the Washington Post and NBC revealed that the Clinton administration has repeatedly sought to limit the work of United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq. Administration officials -- led by secretary of state Madeleine Albright -- have, in…
Since the Baghdad deal between Saddam Hussein and U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan on February 23, analysts have waited to see how Iraq would treat U. N. weapons-inspection teams. The early results are in, and, unsurprisingly, the Iraqis have posed no major obstacles to inspectors. At least until…
THE REASON U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI Annan went to Baghdad is not hard to understand: He believed his job required him to make every effort to avoid the use of force against Iraq. Whether one agrees with his view or not, there is no doubt that Annan reflects the ethos in what many U.N. employees…
DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON, Iraq all but slipped from public view -- doubtless to quiet prayers of thanks from the Clinton administration. Since Saddam Hussein effectively barred United Nations weapons inspectors from carrying out their responsibilities in late October, the administration's strategy…
YOU MIGHT THINK THE UNITED NATIONS would want to punish Saddam Hussein for disrupting and nearly killing the U.N.'s own efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Instead, the U.N. Security Council last week effectively rewarded him. Not only did the council extend the misnamed "oil-…