John Bolton came out of the woodworks Saturday and said on CBS that Joe Biden was making “mistake after mistake” on Ukraine. He claimed Biden could have prevented the conflict, but didn’t. He says Biden shouldn’t have announced publicly that troops wouldn’t be sent to Ukraine before the conflict, to leave the burden of ambiguity on Russia. He also said that Biden should have stuck it to the Russians sooner, before the conflict began.
The problem is that John Bolton never met a war he didn’t like. When he worked for Donald Trump, the former President said that he was pressuring him to go to war so much that if he had taken his advice, the US would have been in World War VI.
Mr. Bolton said, “I think now they don’t know what outcome to expect; they don’t know what they want to achieve,” regarding a resolution of the Ukraine conflict. The problem is that Mr. Bolton offers none of his own besides regaining the full territorial integrity of Ukraine, something that is not likely to happen. Neither does President Biden. And then he wonders why polls consistently show him losing to Donald Trump in a rematch of 2020.
The only solution for such conflicts is for the sides to talk. If one round of talks fail, then the only solution is to keep talking. That is how Ronald Reagan was able to strike a deal with the Soviet Union to eliminate intermediate range missiles and lay the groundwork for peace for the next generation. But somehow, the notion that one must talk to one’s enemies is rocket science for people like Mr. Biden or Mr. Bolton, who have a lot more in common than they care to admit.
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