Bolton: "Obama is presiding over declining American influence and prestige because he thinks we are too powerful, too dominant in the world."

Bolton: "Obama is presiding over declining American influence and prestige because he thinks we are too powerful, too dominant in the world."(Triblive).By John bolton.

Under Barack Obama, American influence in the Middle East has sunk to levels not seen since before World War II. From Israel to Saudi Arabia, from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates, our friends are shaking their heads, wondering why we have seemingly taken leave of our senses.

Across this vital region, Obama is effectively empowering our opponents and turning his back on U.S. supporters and allies. He has openly courted implacable adversaries like Tehran's ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood, allowed Chinese penetration to reach unprecedented levels and restored Russian clout to pre-1979 proportions.

And Obama is far from finished.

The U-turn he is engineering in America's international influence is global in scope but its most visible manifestations are emerging in the Middle East. Two long-standing U.S. allies — Egypt and Saudi Arabia — seem determined to separate themselves from key U.S. policies unless Obama reverses course. And if these pillars supporting American interests in the region crack, other regional friends — notably Israel and the Arabian Peninsula's oil-producing monarchies — will face major adverse consequences.

Sensing these schisms developing even before they emerged publicly, both Russia and China moved decisively to fill the vacuum Obama is creating.

True, neither Egypt nor Saudi Arabia is a Jeffersonian democracy. If Obama were supporting real “liberals” (if they existed in strength), there might be more justification for spurning both countries' current regimes. But Obama is doing no such thing. In Egypt, he is implicitly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, an overt opponent of Western values of freedom of conscience and representative government. In Syria, Obama's indecisive and unstable policies have allowed Bashar Assad to regain his footing, thus bolstering a key Iranian surrogate. Moscow, already Assad's most important non-regional ally, now is the major outside player there, right alongside Iran.

Americans must realize that we are seeing not merely a series of separate U.S. policy failures or a run of bad luck in the Middle East. Obama is presiding over declining American influence and prestige because he thinks we are too powerful, too dominant in the world. And so, by extension, are our allies in the region, especially Israel.

The indisputable evidence demonstrates that Obama's guiding ideology is as radical in international affairs as in domestic policy. Just as he wants to “spread the wealth around” domestically, so too he is at ease in “spreading” U.S. power around internationally. We will pay for Obama's radicalism for years to come.Read the full story here.