Bolton said Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state “will go down as part of the larger Obama foreign policy of seeing American influence weakened all over the world.”
“I think their fatal mistake – I mean, they made so many, we don’t have time to go through them all – but their fatal mistake was not understanding the Arab Spring, not understanding that it was not an outbreak of democratic sentiment,” Bolton judged. “It was really the rise of radical Islam to an even more significant level than anywhere else. And so their policies during the four years she was at the State Department, and in the time since then, have been incoherent. They can’t seem to get a grip on just exactly what it is they want.”
“Look at Egypt as one example, where they supported Mubarak, then they wanted Mubarak overthrown. Then they said, ‘Well, let’s postpone it. Let’s have elections.’ That brings the Muslim Brotherhood to power, and they say, ‘Well, maybe that wasn’t such a great idea.’ And the net-net is now, after all this time, almost nobody in Egypt trusts the administration, and the Russians have been expanding their influence,” he said.
“In Syria, we’ve seen the extraordinary circumstance of Russia building a new airbase in Latakia, just a few minutes’ flying time from the northern border of Israel. Unfortunately, whoever the next president is, it’s not enough just to say, ‘Okay, I guess we’ll reverse the Obama administration’s policies’ because the Russians, among others, have created facts on the ground that you can’t just snap your fingers and wish away. We are in a worse position today, across the Middle East, than we were on January 20, 2009, and I don’t think Hillary has a clue how to change that,” said Bolton.
“I think their fatal mistake – I mean, they made so many, we don’t have time to go through them all – but their fatal mistake was not understanding the Arab Spring, not understanding that it was not an outbreak of democratic sentiment,” Bolton judged. “It was really the rise of radical Islam to an even more significant level than anywhere else. And so their policies during the four years she was at the State Department, and in the time since then, have been incoherent. They can’t seem to get a grip on just exactly what it is they want.”
“Look at Egypt as one example, where they supported Mubarak, then they wanted Mubarak overthrown. Then they said, ‘Well, let’s postpone it. Let’s have elections.’ That brings the Muslim Brotherhood to power, and they say, ‘Well, maybe that wasn’t such a great idea.’ And the net-net is now, after all this time, almost nobody in Egypt trusts the administration, and the Russians have been expanding their influence,” he said.
“In Syria, we’ve seen the extraordinary circumstance of Russia building a new airbase in Latakia, just a few minutes’ flying time from the northern border of Israel. Unfortunately, whoever the next president is, it’s not enough just to say, ‘Okay, I guess we’ll reverse the Obama administration’s policies’ because the Russians, among others, have created facts on the ground that you can’t just snap your fingers and wish away. We are in a worse position today, across the Middle East, than we were on January 20, 2009, and I don’t think Hillary has a clue how to change that,” said Bolton.
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