John Bolton Quotes

If I were doing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member, the United States, because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world. All international laws are invalid, meaningless attempts to constrict American power.

People say you favor assassination, what do you think war is? Except that it's assassination on a much larger scale, a much more horrific scale.

I don't think Hamas will be satisfied simply ruling the Gaza Strip.

North Korea is going to get away with keeping its nuclear weapons.

I think some of this fascination with the 'Arab Spring' is just a grand experiment with Israel's survival.

My philosophy is not a bean-counting, accounting 'look at this.' It is a philosophy that smaller government is better government, and government that is closer to the people is best of all.

There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

Let me ask, who died and made him king? Who gave him the authority to endanger 300 million Americans? That's not the way it works, and if he thinks he can get away with that, he's got another think coming.

Well, I'm a libertarian conservative, so I believe in limited government/maximum individual freedom.

Just like Sept. 11, only with nuclear weapons this time, that's the threat. I think that is the threat. I think it's just facing reality. It's not a happy reality, but it's reality and if you don't deal with it, it will become even more unpleasant.

The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.

There's no such thing as the United Nations.

If Iran obtains nuclear weapons, then almost certainly Saudi Arabia will do the same, as will Egypt, Turkey and perhaps others in the region.

Our biggest national security crisis is Barack Obama.

In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

Well, you could take several stories off the buildings of most U.S. government agencies and we'd all probably be better for it too.

When you have a regime that would be happier in the afterlife than in this life, this is not a regime that is subject to classic theories of deterrence.

Reform is not a one-night stand.

Obama sees America as another country on the UN role call. Somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe.

Although we refer to the International Criminal Court, the real problem is the prosecutor, because it's the prosecutor who decides who to investigate and what cases to bring. This court fundamentally embodied a potential for abuse of governmental power that I felt was inconsistent with being a free person - and [it was] inconsistent for a free country like the United States to subscribe to it.

I think the International Criminal Court could be a threat to American security interests, because the prosecutor of the court has enormous discretion in going after war crimes.

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

I'm obviously aware that people are quite focused on the economy rather than foreign policy issues, but that is something that should and can be altered as people see the nature of the threats around the world that we face.

The real issue of dealing with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical or biological is: What is your tolerance for risk? And my tolerance for risk for WMD proliferation is pretty close to zero. Because otherwise, we and our allies are at the mercy of regimes like Ahmadinejad and the mullahs in Tehran, or Kim Jong Il and the Hitler-in-the-bunker mentality in Pyongyang, or others who don't share our calculus on the value of human life.

Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.

By creating a prosecutor who is overseen over by a court, they are melding executive and judicial power in a way that can lead to terrible abuses - as the founders of America understood full well. It's why they created a system of separated powers - to set up a constitutional mechanism that would enhance freedom, by making sure that no one's accumulation of power could predominate over [that of] others.

I'm a conservative Republican. I have been since I was 15 years old and participated in the 'Goldwater for President' campaign in 1964.

The Nobel Peace Prize has become hopelessly politicized. I think it cheapens the prize itself.

We estimate that once Iraq acquires fissile material - whether from a foreign source or by securing the materials to build an indigenous fissile material capability - it could fabricate a nuclear weapon within one year.

Every country has an aspect to it that rubs up people the wrong way.

The solution to North Korea is the reunification of the Korean Peninsula. China could influence the North; it supplies 80 to 90 percent of North Korea's energy. The United States have to put pressure on China in order for China to pressure North Korea.

It's very personal in its politics, very bitter and very negative.

Let there be no ambiguity about the American view that Syria's lack of cooperation .. is not acceptable.

I'm not saying that you need a State Department that looks like the litigation department of a major law firm. But you need people who are not afraid to make the case for the United States, who are not afraid to stand their ground, not afraid to be isolated in international organizations when that's the correct approach for our diplomacy. This is a cultural change that has to be effected through incentive systems, promotion systems, career training systems. This is not something that you can do with the stroke of a magic wand, it's going to take years to make this change.

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.

Just as the Security Council was largely irrelevant to the great struggle of the last half of the twentieth century - freedom against Communism - so too it is largely on the sidelines in our contemporary struggles against international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

It's not natural disasters that are to blame for the deprivation of the North Korean people, but the failed policies of Kim Jong Il.

I don't think I would have to run a campaign that's financed like General Motors.

I don't much believe in bumper sticker characterizations of foreign policy.

If a prosecutor in The Hague decides that the U.S. has not followed through effectively on an investigation - is unwilling or unable to carry it through - then that person, that prosecutor, in an unreviewable fashion gets to second-guess the United States? That is unacceptable. That is an assertion of authority over and above the U.S. Constitution.

I am all in favour of democracy in Iraq.

Swapping Bergdahl for illegal enemy combatants (terrorists, in common parlance) signaled unmistakably to Taliban and al Qaeda that Obama is determined to withdraw from Afghanistan no matter what the cost to the United States or those in Afghanistan fighting to remain free.

I don't think there is any good answer to the question why shouldn't gays and lesbians who want to serve their country be allowed to do it.

The culture of the State Department is very negative towards a conservative foreign policy. And the model that we all have, of civil servants as neutral careerists who carry out the policy of the elected president, doesn't work nearly the way it should in the State Department. So that there are many people who want to be good civil servants, who want to try and carry out these policies, but are afraid to do so. And I'm not even counting the very small number of conservatives in the State Department who are genuinely at risk.

I haven't given up on the possibility that sweet reason will prevail.

I've never attended any Tea Party functions.

We need a strong and effective State Department. We can't conduct American affairs in the world without it.

Just as that little opening in the Iron Curtain that Hungary created caused a flood of people out, and ultimately the beginning of the end of communism in Europe, if you could get refugee flows coming out of North Korea, while there'd be a very difficult humanitarian problem in the short run, both for China and South Korea, in the long run it would lead to reunification.

Iran is barely over 50% Persian, and Arabs, Baluchis, Azeris, Kurds and many other groups feel left out of the society. That regime has a lot more weaknesses than people see.

I think the regime in North Korea is more fragile than people think. The country's economic system remains desperate, and one thing that could happen for example would be under a new government in South Korea, to get the South Korean government to live up to its own constitution, which says any Korean who makes it to South Korea, is a Korean citizen. A citizen of the Republic of Korea. And you could imagine the impact that would have inside North Korea if people thought, "If I could get out and make it to South Korea, I could have a different life."