The Reality Check

John Bolton is a realist. He doesn't shade foreign policy in diplomatic subtleties and code, well I guess because he doesn't have to anymore. John Bolton was appointed as the US Ambassador to the United Nations by George W. Bush. After John Bolton left the UN, especially in the last couple of years of the Bush Administration, he became one of it's biggest critics.

John Bolton is now at the American Enterprise Institute writing and speaking on foreign policy issues with a sobering reality that is much needed. John Bolton sees the end game and like most things in the real world, you don't get to pick from a positive or negative solution. In foreign policy, they all have negative consequences, you just have to decide which ones you're willing to live with.

In this interview with John Stewart, John Bolton is talking about the choice of whether or not to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. In his view, although bombing anyone always has negative consequences, having a nuclear Iran is far worse. If Iran gets the nuke, it will overturn how the world, especially Israel, relates to them. It's a huge card to hold, even if you never use it. The strength of a nuclear weapon is not in it's use, but in it's potential.