On a mini tour of Canadian cities Calgary and Toronto last Wednesday and Thursday, John Bolton, America's former Ambassador to the UN spoke of dire consequences for America's position in the world if Barack Obama is elected to a second term.
"It's not American strength but American weakness that our enemies find provocative," warned Bolton, a current adviser to Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Barack Obama is the first US president in history to effectively renounce American exceptionalism, a term first described by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. The desire to be liked seems foremost in Obama's foreign policy goals, but Bolton observed it's easy to get one's adversaries to like you if you make concessions to them. Obama is a president who is happy to make concessions to Russia and China who have both stymied American interests repeatedly under his presidency. They have blocked sanctions against Iran and Syria and have provided diplomatic cover for North Korea.
Regarding the Iranian push to acquire a nuclear weapon, were Obama to be reelected, that would be a near certainty. Sanctions may be hurting Iran`s economy, but they are having no affect on its nuclear program and military action or regime change there is the only way of preventing their getting a nuclear bomb.
Iran`s largest embassy in the world is in Venezuela, not because of long-standing cultural ties, as Bolton noted, but because the authoritarian regime of Iranian ally Hugo Chavez is helping Iran launder oil money to circumvent international banking sanctions.
American military strength is at its weakest since Jimmy Carter, whose policies Obama has been increasingly replicating. If Bolton is correct, an unhindered Obama, who was disclosed to have promised Russian President Medvedev that he would have ` more flexibility` to make further concessions and weaken American missile defenses in a second term, would lead the United States down a disastrous path given the opportunity.
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