Former national security adviser and U.N. Ambassador John Bolton told Newsmax on Friday that "liberal Democratic" principles over strategic ones are solely to blame for the Biden administration's failure in Ukraine.
Bolton made the comments on "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE," telling the host that first and foremost, the "Biden administration's inability to come up with a strategy it's willing to back" is exacerbating Ukraine's attempts to beat back the Russian offensive.
Second, Bolton criticized the administration for thinking that throwing billions of dollars at a problem is akin to a strategy.
"If you look at what they do domestically, they measure success by inputs," Bolton told Higbie. "'We've spent 10 billion more federal dollars on a program, they don't measure it on outputs and outcomes. They're doing the same in Ukraine.
"We're in a two-front struggle here: No. 1, stop the Russian aggression and No. 2, to get the Biden administration to come up with a clear plan of what they're trying to do," Bolton said.
Bolton railed against the "endless debates" of what kind of tank to send to Ukraine or whether to allow F-16s, the latest wrangling out of the Biden administration.
"This is no way to run a war. This is not strategy," Bolton said. "This gives the Russians the time they've used to dig in eastern and southern Ukraine."
"I've got a lot of quarrels with the way the Biden administration's handled this, and I understand why many people are worried about it," he added. "I think we have to look at what's America's best interest, and strategically it's making sure that Russian aggression doesn't succeed."
Bolton said NATO should have listened to President George W. Bush in 2008.
"We'd have had Ukraine into NATO by now and I don't think the invasion would have taken place," Bolton said. "I think Russia was deterrable and the Biden administration didn't even try."
As it stands now, the Biden administration has fiddled around so much that it's hard to predict how the offensive ends in Ukraine, he said.
"It's a lesson we're gonna have to learn because if aggression goes unpunished, we're gonna face more of it from China in places like Taiwan and Russia elsewhere in the former Soviet Union," Bolton said.
"So there's a lot resting on how this comes out."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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