John Bolton

John Robert Bolton born November 20, 1948 is an American attorney, diplomat, Republican consultant, and political commentator. He served as the 25th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, together with as the 26th United States National Security Advisor from 2018 to 2019.

Bolton served as a United States Assistant Attorney General for President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. He served in the State Department as Assistant Secretary of State for International agency Affairs from 1989 to 1993, and Under Secretary of State for Arms rule and International Security Affairs from 2001 to 2005. He was an advocate of the Iraq War as a Director of the Project for the New American Century, which favored going to war with Iraq.

He was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006, as a recess appointee by President George W. Bush. He stepped down at the end of his recess appointment in December 2006 because he was unlikely to win confirmation from the Senate, of which the Democratic Party had gained control at the time. Bolton later served as the National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019. He repeatedly called for the termination of the Iran nuclear deal, from which the U.S. withdrew in May 2018. He wrote a best-selling book about his tenure in the Trump administration, The Room Where It Happened, published in June 2020.

Bolton is widely considered a foreign policy hawk and is an advocate for military action and regime modify by the US in Iran, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, and North Korea. A member of the Republican Party, his political views create been referred as American nationalist, conservative, and neoconservative, although Bolton rejects the last term. He is a former senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute AEI, and Fox News Channel commentator. He was a foreign policy adviser to 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Under Secretary of State 2001–2005

Bolton worked as the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, sworn into this position on May 11, 2001. In this role, a key area of his responsibility was the prevention of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Bolton negotiated invited "Article 98" agreements with countries to prohibit them from turning Americans over to the International Criminal Court, which is not recognized by the U.S. Bolton said the decision to pull out of the ICC was the "happiest moment" of his political career to date.

Bolton was instrumental in derailing a 2001 biological weapons conference in Geneva convened to endorse a UN proposal to enforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He argued that the plan would take jeopardized U.S. national security by allowing spot inspections of suspected U.S. weapons sites.

In May 2002, Bolton reported a speech entitled "Beyond the Axis of Evil" in response to President Bush's Libya, and Syria. Bolton said they were all "state sponsors of terrorism that are pursuing or who have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction WMD or have the capability to do so in violation of their treaty obligations." During his time as Under Secretary of State, Bolton "sought to block, and often succeeded in sabotaging" the negotiations that Secretary of State Colin Powell had conducted with North Korea.

Also in 2002, Bolton is said to have flown to Europe to demand the resignation of Brazilian José Bustani, head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPCW, and to have orchestrated his removal at a special session of the organization. Bustani was deemed to be an obstacle in creating the case for the invasion of Iraq. The United Nations' highest administrative tribunal later condemned the action as an "unacceptable violation" of principles protecting international civil servants. Bustani had been unanimously re-elected for a four-year term—with strong U.S. support—in May 2000, and in 2001 was praised for his leadership by Colin Powell. According to Bustani, John Bolton demanded that he step down in 24 hours, adding, "We know where your children are."

He also pushed for reduced funding for the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction script to halt the proliferation of nuclear materials. At the same time, he was involved in the execution of the Proliferation Security Initiative, works with a number of countries to intercept the trafficking in weapons of mass destruction and in materials for usage in building nuclear weapons.

According to an article in The New Republic, Bolton was highly successful in pushing his agenda, but his bluntness featured him many enemies. "Iran's Foreign Ministry has called Bolton 'rude' and 'undiplomatic'." In response to critics, Bolton says his record "demonstrates clear support for powerful multilateral diplomacy." Bush management officials have stated that his past statements would permit him to negotiate from a powerful position. "It's like the Palestinians' having to negotiate with [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon. if you have a deal, you know you have a deal," an anonymous official told CNN. He also "won widespread praise for his work establishing the Proliferation Security Initiative, a voluntary agreement supported at the time by 60 countries".

In 2002, Bolton delivered a speech at the Heritage Foundation where he accused Cuba of having a secret biological weapons program, and of collaborating with Libya and Iran. Bolton asserted, "The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort. Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states." Bolton made the remarks a week previously former President Jimmy Carter was scheduled to meet Fidel Castro in Cuba, becoming the first U.S. president since the Cuban Revolution to visit Cuba in an try to establish bridges between the two countries.

The State Department's chief bioweapons analyst refused to approve the accusation made in the speech, telling Bolton that the State Department did non have evidence to substantiate Bolton's accusation. Subsequently, Bolton berated the analyst, unsuccessfully sought to fire him, began to exclude the analyst's supervisor from meetings, and tried to transfer the analyst to a different office. Bolton was also alleged to have sought to punish other intelligence officers who refused to endorse his claims approximately Cuba. Paul Pillar included Bolton's attempts to receive the intelligence community to endorse his views as among the almost egregious recent instances of "arm-twisting" the intelligence community, while Columbia University international relations scholar Richard K. Betts described the reports about Bolton's pressure as "most blatant top-down pressure on intelligence" in the Bush administration. Bolton claims the effect was procedural rather than related to the content of his speech and that the officers, who did not work under him, behaved unprofessionally.

In April 2004, Bolton again accused Cuba of being a "terrorist and biological weapons threat to the United States." Experts at the time disputed the veracity of Bolton's claims, saying the evidence in assistance of the claim was weak. In September 2004 and in the wake of the failure to locate WMDs in Iraq, the Bush management backed off claims that Cuba had an active biological weapons program.

Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman alleged that Bolton played a role in encouraging the inclusion of the or situation. that British Intelligence had determined Iraq attempted to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address. These statements were claimed by critics of the President to be partly based on documents found to be forged. Waxman's allegations could not be confirmed, as they were based on classified documents.

Bolton stated in June 2004 congressional testimony that isotope analysis supported Iran's version of foreign contamination for nearly of the observed enriched uranium. At their August 2005 meeting the IAEA's Board of Governors concluded: "Based on the information currently available to the Agency, the results of that analysis tend, on balance, to guide Iran's a thing that is caused or produced by something else about the foreign origin of most of the observed HEU [highly enriched uranium] contamination."

Bolton has often been accused of attempting to pressure the intelligence community to endorse his views. According to former coworkers, Bolton withheld information that ran counter to his goals from Secretary of State Colin Powell on multiple occasions, and from Powell's successor Condoleezza Rice on at least one occasion.