John Bolton wins without running

John Bolton announced Thursday that he would forgo a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was never going to become a top tier contender. But Bolton, had he entered the fray, might have pushed the major contenders toward his hawkish approach to foreign policy and national security matters. Except, as it turns out, they were already there.

The rise of the hawks has undoubtedly been facilitated, at least somewhat, by the primary voters themselves. They are concerned about rising global threats and anxious for more assertive U.S. leadership in the White House. Neither should it be discounted that this aggressive posture fits comfortably with the Republican presidential contenders’ deeply held convictions on foreign policy and national security.

But in an interview with Bolton earlier this week in which the outspoken critic of President Obama’s dovish foreign policy offered the Washington Examiner a glimpse of what he thought the next president should do to re-orient U.S. policy on international affairs, he didn’t sound much different than the rest of the Republican field, save for libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

“As in the change between [President Jimmy] Carter and [President Ronald] Reagan, you need to establish immediately that there’s a new government in Washington that has a very different world about a strong American presence in the world,” Bolton said. “That political signal alone, when Reagan took office, was enormously valuable.”

Bolton said the top three priorities for Obama’s successor are nuclear weapons proliferation, the continuing war on terrorism and strategic threats posed by Russia and China in Eastern Europe and East Asia. “If Obama signs this deal with Iran, I would cancel it immediately. If they haven’t reached nuclear weapons, I think you have to think about working with Israel, if Israel has not yet struck their nuclear weapons program,” he said.

Almost every Republican presidential contender, official or not, has long ago said they would cancel Obama’s Iran deal if it is not approved by Congress, as appears highly unlikely. Indeed, the issue has become something of a foreign policy litmus test for the candidates. They agree with Bolton as well on the challenges of pulling the U.S. out of any agreement with Iran given that the other world powers party to a deal are unlikely to follow suit.

“There are only two outcomes,” Bolton said. “One is, Iran gets nuclear weapons; the other is that somebody uses military force to prevent that. Those are both extraordinarily unhappy outcomes.”

Bolton, 66, has been a polarizing figure at least since the mid 2000s, when President George W. Bush nominated the outspoken hawk for the U.N. ambassador post. After Bush failed to get enough Republicans to support Bolton’s confirmation in what was then a majority GOP Senate, he installed the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security via recess appointment.

Ever since, Bolton has functioned as a leading Republican voice for an aggressive, Reaganesque foreign policy. His platform was elevated in the aftermath of the Iraq war.

As most Republicans shied away from the strong national security policies that had defined the party since 1980, Bolton only grew more adamant that the GOP return to its modern roots. The Baltimore native and corporate lawyer, first brought to Washington by James A. Baker III to work in the State Department of President George H.W. Bush, has since 2013 raised more than $7.5 million combined for his political action committee and super PAC.

Bolton said that his foreign policy views certainly made him an ardent anti-Communist when he began his professional foreign policy career under the first President Bush. He bristles at the “neoconservative” label that most have attached to him in recent years. He said the term isn’t accurate.

“No. 1, I remember when that word was invented back even before Reagan. Some smart aleck described a neoconservative as a liberal whose been mugged by reality. And, I’ve never been a liberal. So, I don’t qualify,” he said. “In contemporary terms, I think the neocons are people who believe democracy promotion ought to be a central element of American foreign policy and I don’t think it should have that high an objective.”

Disclosure: The author’s wife works as an adviser to Scott Walker.