Where John Bolton stands on Iran nuke deal, North Korea, Russia

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President George W. Bush (R) and Ambassador to the UN John Bolton (L) meet in the Oval Office of the White House December 4, 2006 in Washington, DC. Bush accepted Bolton’s resignation as Ambassador to the United Nations when his term is up in January 2007.

“The president has also said that he was against President Bush’s war in Iraq, saying it was a disaster. And Bolton was one of the architects of that [war,]” added Davis, who also wrote an opinion piece on Bolton’s appointment for CNBC.

After leaving the Bush administration, Bolton joined the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, where he expressed some of his confrontational rhetoric in op-eds like “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” Within the last year, he wrote “The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First” and “How to Defund the UN.”

“If you take his advice and attack North Korea, and if you take his advice and change the regime in Iran, I mean, my goodness, if you thought Iraq was bad, this is like 10 times that,” Davis said in regards to Bolton’s op-eds.

“Bolton doesn’t even talk about diplomacy. For him, it’s either abject surrender on the opposition or it’s war, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for negotiation.”

Meanwhile, Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy firm Eurasia Group, said Bolton’s post is “a dramatic shift in favor of a more military-first approach to policy.” He called it “less ‘jaw-jaw’ and more ‘war-war.'”

“That matters a great deal for an America First president who is inclined to take policies on his own, without consulting allies or, frequently, dissenting opinions in his own Cabinet,” Bremmer added.

Bolton, through a spokesperson, declined comment for this article.

Here’s a roundup of Bolton’s views on various national security matters: