Addressing a Young America’s Foundation conference in Columbus, Ohio, Bolton characterized the administration’s approach to the Russian intervention as one of a series of shows of weakness across the globe, from its response to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi to the Iran nuclear deal – an agreement over which he suggested Secretary of State John Kerry should resign. “The best thing we can hope for is the world goes to sleep for 16 months, because it’s not going to get any better,” he said. “The ground has already shifted under our feet dramatically. It will shift further until the next president is sworn in.”
President Obama meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York
From the outset, the response to Russia’s military buildup in Syria had been troubling. “Ten days ago, asked about this military buildup, Secretary of State John Kerry said, ‘Well, our experts believe that it’s just there for force protection.’ Now, this was an inane comment the moment he made it. What did he mean? That they inserted the force so it could protect itself?” “What was it protecting? It was protecting the capacity to do what Russia is now doing, which is bombing targets in Syria of forces that are hostile to the Assad regime, that Russia is supporting,” Bolton said. “I think the Russians are doing nothing less than challenging the United States for dominance in the Middle East – something we’ve had for over half a century.”
Bolton noted that Russia had alerted the U.S. to its imminent launch of airstrikes last week by dispatching a military general to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad with the message, “We’re going to begin air operations in Syria; you should get out of the air.” The administration responded by entering “deconfliction” talks, he said. (These are discussions aimed at reducing the likelihood of accidental collision or other mishap in airspace that is now being used by Russian warplanes as well as those of the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.) “Now that sounds reasonable,” Bolton continued, “but this is a demonstration how the Obama administration, again and again at the tactical level, is sacrificing American strategic interest.” He recalled that as the U.S. was about to launch an attack in 1991 against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq after he occupied Kuwait, Israel had asked the U.S. for deconfliction codes, to enable it to deploy its aircraft as well.
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