John Bolton Erases The Obama Doctrine, Puts America First

Now that Florida’s Keystone Cops, whiny Jim Acosta’s tantrum and other nonsense is in the rearview mirror, it’s time to take a look at what is happening in the real world — the world that the media is largely ignoring.

Hmmmm…looks like National Security Advisor John Bolton is quietly crushing the Make America Weak And Her Enemies Strong Obama Doctrine throughout this hemisphere.

Bolton has identified what he calls a “troika of tyranny” that includes Havana, Caracas and Managua, that is a root cause of enormous amounts of human suffering in those countries and in adjoining countries. Further, he says these three create much of the regional instability we are seeing that is leading to the expansion of gangs and the continual flow of migrant caravans northward toward the U.S. border.

Bolton called Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua “the genesis of a sordid cradle of communism in the Western Hemisphere,” at a recent speech at Miami’s Freedom Tower, the 17-story structure  where Cuban refugees were processed in America after fleeing Fidel Castro’s brutal regime.

Identifying and isolating this troika of tyranny is a total break from the previous administration. Bolton said, “…we will no longer appease dictators and despots near our shores in this Hemisphere.”

The Obama administration took its normal approach with dictators — whether Communist, or Muslim, or nationalist (Russia) — which involved either doing nothing and whistling past atrocities with fine words and no actions, or actually rewarding some of them for no reason and with no positive outcome. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry said during Obama’s second term that the “era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” which basically turned out to be enabling language for a weak America.

The Obama-Kerry team continued the Obama-Clinton team policies of giving financial and diplomatic rewards upfront to some of the worst tyrants, in return for the same vacuous “hope and change” he promised to Americans — and with the same awful results. It failed spectacularly in Iran with the totally one-sided nuke deal, it failed in Russia with the childish reset button and it failed through Central and South America.

For instance, the Obama Doctrine of appeasement and giving goodies did absolutely nothing in Cuba. Despite the glories of Jay-Z and Beyonce strolling Havana for propaganda pictures by the Havana tyrants, restoring diplomatic relations and travel did nothing but strengthen the still-iron grip of the Communist regime on the long-suffering Cuban people.

In Venezuela, Obama hugged that nation’s killer president, Hugo Chávez, and then punted any American policy to Brazil, thinking the neighboring country would help stabilize things. That was never going to end well and it didn’t, as Brazil itself spiralled into corruption and internal strife.

The same lack of vision and gumption allowed for the return of powerful Communist dictator Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Neighbor Honduras and Nicaragua are the two countries from which people are now escaping northward. Allowing Ortega back in power and appeasing and ignoring him is a part of the reason we are now facing a migrant crisis.

By identifying these three tyrannical governments, Bolton has ended the Obama-Clinton-Kerry troika of do-nothingness.

Ending the bad old policies is only the start. In the same speech, Bolton announced that the United States would be issuing new penalties against dozens of entities linked to Cuba’s oppressive military and intelligence services, plus restricting business and travel to the island.

Further, President Trump has signed new executive orders placing sanctions on Venezuelan gold; and sanctioned Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, his wife, and his associates and supporting government officials. Cutting off money to tyrants is often a way of strangling them out of power.

These are solid steps toward weakening those regimes and the hold they have on their own people, and the instability they project to their neighbors.

And finally, Bolton and the White House are considering appointing a “czar” that would directly handle American policy with the troika of tyranny, along with those three countries’ connection to Russia. There are Russian fingerprints on all three and Putin will likely work to prop them up and make everything in our neighborhood worse unless the United States is aggressive in stopping them at the root.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. The featured photo is by David Pennington on Unsplash.

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