Bolton: Sanctions won't stop Iran

From The Australian, January 15, 2007, by Sarah Baxter, Washington [my emphasis added - SL]....

AS America's ambassador to the UN, John Bolton was no tame diplomat..... He is a free man now and eager to have his say.

Bolton engaged in tortuous negotiations over sanctions for Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs with little confidence they would work. "I wouldn't have engaged in negotiations with Iran in the first place," he said, evidently disdainful of Britain, France and Germany's years of reaching out to Iran. "The policy has failed. Sanctions won't stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons."

.....Bolton's disillusion with the UN is such that he would like it to face competition from other international organisations. "The choice is to fix it or go somewhere else," he said.
He favours building up NATO as a rival in the belief that it could expand into a "caucus of democracies" - a permanent coalition of the willing. ....."I think NATO should go global. There is no reason why Japan and Australia shouldn't join."

NATO could also make room for Israel. "Why not?" he said. "It's a European country, fundamentally. Turkey is a European country and it is further east."

Bolton believes that Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, is wasting her time trying to restart the Middle East peace process. The Arab-Israeli conflict was "not a priority", he added. "I don't see linkage to Iraq, and Hamas and Fatah are in a state of civil war."

....In Bolton's view, America needs to take the lead in global affairs rather than the ineffectual UN because "who else will?".

Now back at the American Enterprise Institute, an old perch, he has taken over the office of the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick, another outspoken UN ambassador, who was every bit as ardent a defender of the perceived national interest.

One of his greatest concerns is the threat to Israel and the West posed by Iran's nuclear program. Regime change is "preferable" to striking Iran's sites, he noted, but "the only course worse than the use of force is an Iran with nuclear weapons".

"There are all kinds of ways to change the regime," Bolton added, citing covert and overt means to topple the theocracy. "We have an extensive diaspora of people with Iranian heritage in America who we don't use effectively."

Once that is sorted out, there is still the problem of what to do with Iraq. Unlike Bush, Bolton believes Iraq is already at war with itself: "The fundamental point is whether the civil war that exists is going to continue."

Bolton has often been mistaken for a neocon, but while he considers democracy preferable to other forms of government, he does not consider it America's duty to spread it. The shape and form of the nation is irrelevant: what matters is that Iraq is either tolerably pro-Western or de-fanged. He has no regrets about the removal of Saddam Hussein; now it is up to the Iraqis if they want to engage in "fratricide". The same goes for partition: "If the future of Iraq is to stay together, that's fine. If not, I couldn't care less from a strategic perspective."

In that sense, he is the authentic voice of the pre-September 11 Bush, before the President chose spreading the "fire of freedom" as the best way to protect his country from terrorism. Will America revert to its traditional moorings? Bolton is out of the UN but he could fit in with the new conservative thinking.

The Sunday Times