forgotten presidents even before i began the book, and it occurred to me there might be something these presidents off so had in common, not just that they were forgotten. announcer: university of north carolina constitutional law professor michael gerhardt talks about two of his books, the forgotten presidents and impeachment. >> i think bill clinton did a lot to merit his own impeachment. he knew members in congress were looking for him to make mistakes, and then when he made those mistakes and later testified under oath in a way that was false, for which he was later held in contempt by a judge for perjury, bill clinton made his impeachment almost inevitable. announcer: at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a." announcer: now, national security advisor john bolton outlines the trump administration strategy on iran,

north korea, china, and russia adds an event hosted by the alexander hamilton institute. this is just under an hour. [applause] >> good afternoon. glad to be here. happy halloween. [laughter] i see most importantly you have kept your mustache despite the unrelenting pressure on you. that shows a lot about your spine. long had turned quite a time ago, so there was not much more to do. >> how about we start off, since we have so many students and aspiring foreign-policy hands, asking for a j generic career advice question. things have changed so much since you entered the field. what do you think has fundamentally changed and what

are some of the promises for our students and some of the challenges you did not have to face? mr. bolton: i started off as a lawyer. there is nothing better than getting into foreign-policy then to do something else for a long time. for those interested in international affairs, this is a better time than there has ever been before. there did not used to be too much alternative between joining the foreign service at the state department or joining the military and serving overseas. now i think american business is so international that you have a much better opportunity to have a variety of career choices. i think where the government still fails is in not encouraging and allowing movement back and forth between the government and the private sector. i think that this would enhance both the government and the private sector, if there was more movement back and forth, but it is a very hard culture to

overcome and not one you can reverse overnight. dealing perspective of with all kinds of international issues, the opportunities today are much broader for younger people. dan: in terms of government service -- a of people don't know this about you -- but the breath of experience you have from being a lawyer in the justice department to being involved with the first gulf war and writing the national cease-fire resolution and moving on to the w administration as undersecretary of state, and now national security advisor. what has changed the most in government since you have last been in? mr. bolton: i think it has gone more bureaucratic, more sclerotic, harder to get things done. it is really depressing to see the difficulty that we have in making decisions, even complex decisions.

it seems to me in days gone by, they were decided more rapidly. i think the number of things that require coordination that prevent rapid effective decision-making has become more and more difficult. i think another related issue is how hard it is for people from the outside to come into the government. the excessive nature of the so-called ethics checks. the kinds of investigations that people have to go through. were designing a system to discourage people from coming into the government, you would do it exactly this way. that risks building up a priestly class of people who only serve in the government, particularly when it comes to policy. i believe the virtue of american society historically has been fluidity, flexibility, the ability to move geographically

and between jobs -- geographically in between jobs. to the extent you wall government off from rest of society, i think that is a big mistake. dan: are there any fixes? mr. bolton: i think part of what needs to happen is a congress that is more willing to allow for the executive branch to make decisions that increase flexibility and reduce bureaucracy. that give the president greater authority to move budget levels around within departments and even between departments. i don't think that is very likely to happen. federalistll in number 70, alexander hamilton said the characteristic of the executive branch was decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch. does anyone think that sounds like our federal government today? [laughter] mr. bolton: it certainly does not sound like congress. this is a real problem,

internationally and domestically as well. dan: moving on to the national security strategy and your role implementing it. great i think the innovations or transformations has been -- the initial national security strategy was to name china and russia as revisionist great powers and to say we are in an era of great power competition and we are going to compete more vigorously. of course, iran was mentioned as a more regional power. how have you seen that play out and what would you like to do to carry that competition more vigorously forward? mr. bolton: don't forget north korea is a threatening regional power as well. the most important thing is to think strategically to begin with, to understand that other powers in the world have their own plans, have their own

interests, and are implementing them. we are not simply observing something and occasionally running into a problem. there are countries that have interests that are fundamentally adverse to ours that we have to deal with. that's not to say that you don't seek areas for cooperation. i think that is all the good. nobody is looking for ceaseless competition. but to believe that history has ended, as people said about 30 years ago, that geopolitical conflict has disappeared, that we are purely in an era of economics, is all fundamentally

wrong. and i don't want to say that we are back in the 19th century. we might be back in some century before that, with far more lethal weapons available to the parties involved. and unless you are prepared to protect the united states' interests by having our own strategy to deal with countries whose adverse interests become more and more apparent, we will suffer one setback after another. i think being able to think in those strategic terms is critical, otherwise you do nothing but ad hoc react to one event after another. dan: in terms of difficult political questions, i think you raised some of this in your last trip with russia, when you inform them of our intent to leave the imf. but the question of china and russia getting too close, or casting them, as they both are strategic competitors, i think that is a fact. but you mentioned to the russians that we should talk about china. i believe that is what was reported. mr. bolton: and occasionally press reports are correct. dan: i wanted to check. what was reported is that you mentioned to the russians, who obviously were not happy about our informing them on the imf treaty, that perhaps we should

talk to them about the china threat. mr. bolton: if you look at the geography and demography of east asia, in the case of russia you have a country with a huge landmass, very substantial mineral resources, and a very large population. to the south is a country with a constrained landmass, short on resources, and a very large population. so one has to ask the russians how long that situation will in a without them being potentially difficult position. so i think this question of looking, for example, in the case of intermediate range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, our estimate is somewhere between 33% and 50% of china's missiles fall into that category. none of them can reach the united states. and we all have our issues with

countries on our southern border. russia's interests -- russia's is use our -- russia's issues are little bit more acute than ours are. i think this is a matter for russia to take very seriously, and i think it is something we should take very seriously, too. dan: do you see any evidence those two great powers are cooperating too much for your liking? mr. bolton: i would not exaggerate it. in many respects, they are on the other side of some of the most important transactions, which necessarily means that while their interests appear to coincide, in fundamental terms they don't. russia is an exporter of hydrocarbons and china is a major importer. russia sells advanced weapons systems and, at least so far, china buys advanced weapons systems. although i have complete confidence that they are doing to the russians the same thing they do to many american products and businesses, they are stealing their intellectual property, they are

copying it and duplicating it, and pretty soon, they will sell the same weapon systems for prices lower than the russians. dan: cooperating with russia in stabbing ip theft would be true innovation, i think. danger, of course, is if china, russia, and iran -- russia and iran obviously do cooperate -- but if three of those revisionist powers start to cooperate more -- i don't think you see too much evidence of that -- but is it a concern? mr. bolton: i think one of the linkages between the strategic competitors of russia and china and the issues of iran and north korea really do can side -- really do coincide in many respects. it is so important in dealing with north korea and dealing with iran, is that although the proliferation threats are more important, they have significant ties to the strategic threats as well. one day, history will tell us

exactly how much of the a contribution china and russia made respectively to the north korean and iranian nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. we have a certain amount of evidence, we can speculate on it. a lot of these problems of proliferation derived initially from great power competition, . the nuclear capabilities, for example, of india and pakistan, going back to cold war days, from russia-chinese rivalry back then. in the case of pakistan, we know from what we learned from the libyan nuclear weapons program that the weapons design that the great proliferator entrepreneur kahn was selling around had chinese markings. so there's a lot of commonality between the proliferators, the rogue states, the regional threats, and what they derived

over time from the global powers, too. dan: important point. so much of the talks about north korea have to do with their own strategic forces and their threats to employ them against south korea and japan. but the proliferation threat, i imagine, has not gone away. generally speaking, in terms of global proliferation and countries and networks proliferating, how much difference do you see now from when you were last in government in charge of those very issues? mr. bolton: i think the risk of proliferation and proliferation markets remains very high. it is endemic in proliferation itself, as each new power gets nuclear capability. the incentive of neighboring powers or others who have hostile interests grows mathematically. so the effort to stop proliferation, to stop north korea's nuclear program, is not just to deal with the threat of

north korea, but the possibility of the onward transfer of both nuclear technology and actual nuclear weapons and to stop iran before it gets to that point has implications not only in the middle east and what iran's capabilities are, but the risk they would also transfer it in the future. dan: the national defense strategy, which obviously was a corollary or even a support document to national security strategy, was really prioritized when secretary mattis said china is far and away our nearest competitor that we have to shape the military to face, compete with, and stop them from doing things we don't like. russia was also up there. they put terrorism further down. how do you think about that? mr. bolton: i think because it is a strategy paper, you ought to look primarily at the strategic level. i think the importance of all of these things that were written before i joined the government,

and which i am content to leave as written because i think they were well done, is to be able to plan over a longer period of time. too often in the government, one problem, as the cliché goes, the urgent crowds out the important. it is not that terrorism has ceased to exist as a threat. there are a lot of reasons to believe that in many respects, it has become more difficult to find, that the dangers are really continuing to grow, and in the perfect storm where terrorists get weapons of mass destruction, that threat really remains. if anything, what i think we are saying is that the spectrum of threats has grown. today we can say, well, there are no threats from other great powers that existed in the short time in the blissful 1990's after communism collapsed. it wasn't true then, although people did not perceive it. it is certainly not true now. so you have a range of threats from the more particular

terroristic threat, right up to great power competition and everything in between. that's why there is such strain on resources and a strain on budget, to correct for eight years of understanding, dramatic -- eight years of dramatic underspending under by obama. still very difficult to do even for an administration that is still determined to make the military will again. dan: on the military budget, there was a plus side for the coming fiscal year and the last fiscal year. there is some talk about going back down after that. how seriously should we take that top? are you satisfied with where the military budget is heading? mr. bolton: the president's budget guidance is that everyone is going to cut 5%, or the aggregate cut will be 5%. some of the howls of outrage are already coming from the various parts of the government. it is a fact that when you are

national debt gets to the level ours is, it constitutes an economic threat to the society. that threat ultimately has a national security consequence. it just has to be that we can constrain government spending in ways that allows us to spend on the priorities we need to. so i think in the budget that omb is crafting right now, you will see significant spending cuts, not in the entitlement programs, because in the near term the budget deficit problem is in the discretionary spending. the entitlements, in a few years and that will have to be addressed, but right now you can have significant impact on both the deficit and national debt by cutting government spending on discretionary programs. dan: what do you think that will do to the defense budget over four or five years? mr. bolton: in the near term, i think it is going to flatten out. i don't think there's much

question about that. i think the president and the defense department have put a lot of emphasis on things like procurement reform and finding ways to reduce costs across a wide variety of areas. i think in the reagan years, when there was a big defense buildup, there was perhaps not so much emphasis on cost cutting and taking costs out. i think that is the difference here. hopefully, although the budget may not be in an upward curve, the effect of spending the money will increase. dan: let's switch gears a little bit. it is related. you had, i imagine, one of the biggest changes you've had to address is the cyber world. you have said some things about -- you said some things and i think have a new strategy out about a new approach to cyber. feeling like the last administration was too defensive in their approach. can you say more about that? how do we deter -- how do we think about deterrence in the

cyber realm? mr. bolton: we just recently published the first comprehensive federal government cyber strategy, but even before that, we issued a directive , which is classified. and so -- dan: therefore you can't say much about it? mr. bolton: therefore i am only going to say the really good parts. [laughter] mr. bolton: that effectively reversed the obama administration view on offensive cyber operations. reducing these of procedural restrictions on undertaking offensive cyber operations. that doesn't mean that it's a no holds barred environment. there are still decision-making channels that we go through, and i think very carefully protected channels. but the gridlock, the inability to do anything effectively, has been eliminated, and i think that is critical.

because i think that if our adversaries can take steps against us in cyberspace and feel no consequences, no pain or bear no cost, they have no incentive to stop attacking us in cyberspace. the objective here is not to have unrestricted cyber warfare . the objective is to create structures of deterrence by making our adversaries understand that when they engage in offensive cyber activities themselves, they will bear a disproportionate cost. so that they think about it a lot harder before they launch a cyber operation to begin with. that is what we want to do, number one. number two, i think we have to think about it in asymmetric terms. they look at us in asymmetric terms. they don't say, here's the cyber battle space over here and here is everything else over there. we can respond to a cyber attack

with a non-cyber retaliation and they need to understand that, too. so the point that we want to make publicly and what we can talk about is that we are prepared to undertake -- we are right now undertaking offensive cyber operations in connection with defending the integrity of our electoral process and defending the overall integrity of our information technology systems, and our adversaries better know that and understand that. dan: do you see any adversary reaction so far? mr. bolton: i think it is too soon to tell. i think part of this is getting the word out that this is not the obama administration. although you might think they would have figured that out by now, it never hurts to stress your brand. and every once in a while, when somebody notices something has gone wrong, they will say, the good old days are gone, aren't they? dan: final question for me is what is the role -- the

executive director mentioned the religious liberty and laying a wreath at this event. what is the role of human rights both as a tool of great power competition but also as an intrinsic view itself in the national security policy? mr. bolton: it is obviously a critical element. that is why it is in the strategy. i was one of the original members of the commission on international religious freedom when it was established back in 2000. so to me, it has always been an important part of policy. and i think you have to look at it as part of the objectives that america seeks. we don't disguise and we shouldn't disguise and we shouldn't apologize for what our system does for freedom around the world. we've got a lot of allies who are not in the same position we are. that is not a value judgment on them, that is a question of their own development and choice. and we've got to keep the real

objective in mind here, which is to protect american interests and those of our friends and allies around the world. dan: i was kidding before, i have a final question. mr. bolton: i know how this works, i've done it before. [laughter] dan: that was kind of a tee up to the final question. we are in a great power competition. you were certainly a staunch reaganite in the cold war era. u.s. information campaigns, strategic information operations were so key. we don't really have that capacity anymore. do you believe there is a need for something like that? a new -- not to suggest new bureaucracy, but some kind of capacity that can go to the diplomatic level rather than tactical? mr. bolton: i think it is absolutely critical. i think it is a sad commentary on the last two administrations, how much our capabilities have atrophied. and i think we have to think

long and hard about how to restore that. in terms of where it should be, i have been in the agency for international development, the -- the state department, and what used to be the arms control and disarmament agency. in terms of where to put it, i would put it in the state department. i think that is where it should be. but this is a case where congress needs to work with the administration to make some pretty fundamental changes in the structures we have now. dan: thank you. we are going to open it up to a few questions. there is a big crowd out here. so we are going to keep the press for last. i think that is what gabe said. if you could ask your question quickly. so we can get everybody's questions in. back there. go ahead. >> mr. ambassador, thank you very much for being here. i am with formerly the arizona

state chapter. war has itself become the policy to many americans, the policy objective to many americans and policymakers, which has decreased our deterrence level. do you think this is an issue, and if so, does the administration have any plans to fix this problem, maybe by a successful use of force to demonstrate willingness? to put it in academic levels, are we going to war anytime soon? [laughter] mr. bolton: to put it in practical political levels, no. [laughter] mr. bolton: if i were back in a think tank environment, i'd be happy to have a discussion about that. if i tried to respond to your question in the serious way that your question deserves, the press in this room would be writing stories, every one of which began with war. [laughter] we will let them have that chance later.

mr. bolton: somebody else will ask another question. but the point of a peace through strength approach is precisely to avoid getting into a hostile confrontation. and it is one reason why you need a strong military. it is one reason why you need the kinds of budget increases the president has proposed. but it also has to do with your diplomatic posture and what you expect and what you insist on in the conduct of your adversaries. i think for far too long, we have encouraged the possibility of military action by our adversaries and their surrogates, because of our weakness. our military weakness and our diplomatic weakness. let me give you a case study from the past week, the imf nf treaty. it is, beyond question, a view

shared by every nato ally that russia is in serious breach of the inf treaty, that they have been in breach for six years or more. this was the view of the obama administration, repeated publicly in their compliance reports to congress and amplified by this administration, including most recently, secretary of defense mattis's briefing with the secretary of nato a few weeks ago. the response of the obama administration to the palpable violations of the treaty was to simply keep talking. now, we are at a point in terms of russian violations, where the president has decided that we are going to get out of the treaty. people have said, oh my goodness, can't you just try to bring the russians back into compliance? let's review the bidding on that diplomatically. the american position is the russians are in violation of the treaty. the russian position is they are not in violation of the treaty. let me ask you this. how do you bring the russians

back into compliance when they don't think they are out of compliance to begin with? that's the reason the president made it unmistakably clear about 10 days ago that we are going to withdraw from the inf treaty, and i think that would be entirely justifiable if i didn't even have to mention the word, china. i could also mention words like iran and north korea. the reason is, leaving aside some of the other successor states of the soviet union, the only two states bound by the inf treaty are russia and the united states. it is our view that, as i say, the russians have violated it. they have already withdrawn from the inf treaty by their violations. that leaves one country bound by the inet treaty, and we are sitting in it. think about that for a minute. if we had successfully launched an effort 10 or 12 years ago to china into the inf treaty to universalize it, we might be in a different circumstance.

but is there a person in this room who really thinks china will destroy even as much as half of their ballistic missile capability to come into a universalized inf treaty? the diplomatic response to repeated treaty violations, the diplomatic response to other countries taking advantage of not being bound by the treaty 's obligations, the response by the obama administration was zero. so what encouragement does that give to our adversaries? it says cheat and succeed. don't enter into treaties with united states and succeed. what we are going to say is if you are in a treaty with the united states, you are going to abide by it. we have more lawyers per capita at the pentagon than any other defense industry in the world, we couldn't violate a treaty if we wanted to. anyone else who wants to sign a treaty with the united states is going to have to adhere to it or there will be consequences. dan: quickly before i turn to arvin on the inf, how soon will

we be able to build our own cruise missiles? cruise missiles, i guess? mr. bolton: this is one of the reasons why the inf treaty really is a relic of the cold war, because air or sea launched cruise missiles right now are not in violation of the treaty if they are in the baltic sea. if you put them on the ground in europe, then they are in violation of the treaty. it really would not take that much in terms of research and development, already underway under the treaty. at some point in due course, we will give formal notice of withdrawal and material breach, and then we would be in a position not to comply with the treaty. that is going to follow in due course. dan: as they say in china, we're going to hurt the feelings of a lot of chinese people in doing so. >> staying with china, how closely intertwined is the national defense strategy as concerns china, along with the economic strategy? because right now, leadership

seems to be focused on kind of fixing the vision 2020 china plan, which is more about the economic side than the defense side. and how much of an alliance approach are we using? because it seems on the economic side that by tearing up the tpp, which was really an anti-china treaty, we left our allies a little bit out of the picture. is this a strategy? how is that going to be done? mr. bolton: on tpp, let's be clear. hillary clinton said she would get out of the tpp, too. inthe two major contenders 2016, neither believed in the tpp. hillary may not have been telling the truth, i'm just throwing that out as a possibility. i think she would have withdrawn from it as well, or withdrawn from the negotiations. look. i think that the tariffs that the trump administration has imposed really are an economic version. imposed on china, an

economic version of what we have done with the inf treaty. i remember vividly the arguments made by china when they came into the wto that by bringing it into the wto, international norms would pressure chinese behavior, that things would change, and they would become a more market-oriented, rules-based society. instead for more than 20 years, they have continued to steal our technological property, engaged in transfers, discriminate it against foreign trade investment . and donald trump called them on it and said, you are not going to get away with it anymore. for all the other disagreements we have with europe on some of these economic issues, they feel the same pain from chinese behavior on ip and technology transfer and the rest. our assessment is that china is amazed at what the trump administration has done. what are these people doing?

we aren't getting away with it anymore, that's not in our game plan here. we are looking through the pages and they are not supposed to do this. they are supposed to sit back and take it. i think it has caused a lot of hurt feelings, as dan said, inside china, that we are not a well bred doormat anymore, and i think it will produce some changes in behavior. dan: we have a question back there. mr. bolton: i might say, i am a free trader, unlike alexander hamilton. [laughter] dan: that was just to get things going. go ahead. you can speak loudly. >> -- carnegie endowment for international these. i have a question on north korea. in february, you wrote an op-ed about a first strike on north korea and the justifications for that. i'm wondering how your thinking on that has changed or not, especially if this period of engagement ceases and negotiations are no longer

ongoing. what do you think about military options? mr. bolton: i have written and said a lot of things over the years, and i still believe every one of them. but i don't compare what i said when i was a free spirit to what i say now as the national security advisor, because obviously i am in a very different kind of place. i give my advice to the president and he decides what he is going to do. i like to say i am the national security advisor, not national security decision maker. we are launched on a particular course with north korea. the president is determined and optimistic he can see it through. mike pompeo has been working as hard as anybody i know can work on this and continues to do so. that is the course we are on. and you know, if we can get north korea to denuclearize in a serious and permanent way, it would be a huge achievement and it would warrant donald trump getting the nobel peace prize. you i am tempted to ask, if

were a think tanker -- [laughter] dan: what would you be writing about in north korea right now. but i will not do that. mr. bolton: you sneaky devil. dan: we will open it up to the press. >> josh rogan, washington post. thanks for your time and service. next week, the trump administration will impose new crippling sanctions on the iranian economy, including sanctions on countries who refuse to significantly reduce their imports of iranian oil. the two top countries that are importers, china and india, have said very clearly they are not going to do that. also turkey and russia may not cooperate. are you going to sanction them or give them waivers? either way, how do you presume to get iran back to the table to get a better deal than obama did less thanressure is what obama was able to achieve? mr. bolton: i think the pressure exerted by the sanctions already in place and by the threat of

the is sanctions coming back into place has already had a greater effect on iran, even than the sanctions from europe under the security council resolutions. i think that because sanctions were imposed over a period of years on iran in a gradual fashion, and the iranian regime was able to react to those sanctions, mitigate the effects, and hunker down and work their way through it. when the nuclear deal to the fact in 2015, i think the sanctions came off and the iranians said, it is a new era. they forgot their negotiation techniques, they were not hunkered down. when we and imposed -- when we we reimposed the sanctions, they weren't ready for it and i think they weren't ready for it now. i think you can see the consequences in the continuing collapse of the iranian currency, and the demonstrations that began before we left the deal in december last year but continue all around the country. i think it is really a very different environment than before. in terms of how we deal with the specific imposition of the sanctions coming next week, the

president said, unmistakably, our goal is maximum pressure and that it would be to drive iranian oil exports to zero. we understand, obviously, a number of countries immediately surrounding iran, some of which i just visited last week, others that have been purchasing oil, may not be able to go all the way to zero immediately. we want to achieve maximum pressure, but we don't want to harm friends and allies, either, and we are working our way through that. i think it is important that we not relax in the effort. and i think already use the reduction in purchases in -- already you see reduction in purchases in countries like china, that you wouldn't have expected. countries still in the nuclear deal. we have also seen in chinese financial institutions withdrawing from engaging in transactions with iran. european businesses are fleeing

the iranian market. most of the big ones are already out. i think the consequences continue, and i think if you just look at the behavior of in the nonnuclear area, you saw the iraniancy to attack opposition rally in paris, resulting in the arrest of several iranian diplomats, who are really iranian intelligence agents. you saw in this country a couple months ago indictments against iranian agents who were scoping out israeli targets and jewish targets in america. and just yesterday, we saw the danish government announced the arrest of more iranian intelligence officials planning an assassination in denmark. so i think the awareness that this regime was not fundamentally changed by the 2015 nuclear deal, that it failed in its foundational premise, that if you could only solve the nuclear issue, everything else would be .

-- would be resolved. i think the pressure is growing. i think people understand there has to be fundamental change in the behavior of the iranian regime to get them to come back to the table, and that is what they are after. to be clear, when the president says maximum pressure, i read maximum pressure to me and -- maximum pressure to mean "maximum pressure." dan: we had a question here. >> my name is erin o'malley with fox news. what is the agenda for the president's meeting with putin next weekend? mr. bolton: i think in paris, the armistice day celebration, it will be brief. looks like there will be other opportunities. the reason that he has sent me twice to moscow to meet with my counterpart on other occasions is he thinks that despite the political dust in the air in this country about interference and collusion, that it is important to have sustained

diplomatic engagement with them. that is the reason he went to helsinki. that is the reason we are still talking about it. there are a lot of issues to discuss. the inf treaty is certainly one of them. we have other arms control issues. we have their behavior in the middle east and a whole range of other areas that it is important we continue conversation on. >> just a follow-up. not to obsess about china, but that is what i do for a living. else you or anyone talk to and russia have any reaction to your suggestion that perhaps there should be more talks about a common approach on some strategic issues relating to china? mr. bolton: it was less a suggestion to have a common approach than to talk about what --means to see china in pursuing its current policies,

which in the south china sea are near belligerent in many respects. and in the east china sea, engaged in behavior that is very troubling to japan, taiwan, to others. traveling to india in bear part of asia. troubling to the central asian republics. i think it is important to have that conversation, and if you are not speaking with the russians at a senior level, you can't really do that. dan: i think this gentleman was very patient. >> [inaudible] [laughter] it.hat's right, he kept >> [inaudible] >> anything i can do. >> the iranians, we work in the portal for no member -- for november for a big change on the oil business, the oil market.

prices. how much saudi arabia would play a role to establish the market first? second, for the danish operation that was countered by the swedish and danish intelligence, do you think that would help you to convince your counterparts in europe to take a better approach or pro-american approach toward iran? mr. bolton: with respect to the oil market, one of the things that the administration has done that the obama administration did not do was attempt to encourage other producers to alter their production to make up for drops in output from iran. there are chemical differences in oil and refiners have different capabilities, so it has been an interesting exercise. but i think we have been able in a number of cases to find alternative sources for purchasers of iranian oil to be able to engage. we are looking for others. we think we will have more success there. and that both stabilizes the international price of oil and

eliminates the need for countries to rely on iran. in terms of the terrorist behavior of iran -- you know, ronald reagan designated iran as the first state sponsor of terror. what they are engaged in now is just outright terrorism as a state itself. they are not sponsoring terrorism, these are terrorist attacks that they are planning. so i think our friends in europe think look at this, and i it makes unfortunately persuasive evidence for our point that it is not just the nuclear threat of iran. and that one of the mistakes of the iran nuclear deal was that it didn't address the other aspects of iran's malign behavior, in military terms and in its involvement of terrorism. no: quickly on that point, one has asked about saudi arabia yet. the question about iran and saudi arabia -- for educational

purposes at the alexander hamilton society, we have clear national security interests with respect to saudi arabia and keeping saudi arabia on our side and the coalition in the gulf, but we also have human rights concerns. how do you see that balance playing out in real-time? mr. bolton: we have said unmistakably to the saudi government, the president has, secretary pompeo has, i have, others have, that we expect them to get to the bottom of this. we expect there to be accountability for what happened, which was criminal, without any question. and they have promised to do that. and they have gone a long way already and we'll see what the next steps are. as the president said, this is a very important relationship. it goes back to franklin roosevelt and it has significance not just in the issue of iran, but in a wide variety of other ways as well. dan: ok.

the woman over here. cnn --k you, police with elise with cnn. i'd like to follow-up on saudi arabia. obviously, the murder of jamal khashoggi has brought to light some of the concerns that the u.s. has had with leadership in saudi arabia, not just on human rights, but on yemen and their actions in yemen and the situation with qatar. i was wondering in light of that, is there a larger discussion with saudi arabia right now about the whole actions of saudi arabia and how that relationship is going to go forward? as you said, there are a lot of strategic interests involved, but there are also a lot of concerns that i think have not been addressed and now might be an opportunity to have a wider discussion. mr. bolton: you mentioned yemen. i think secretary pompeo and secretary mattis both put out statements on that yesterday. i think there are a whole range of issues, obviously, we do

discuss with the saudis. i also think it is important to look at the records of other countries in the region, which are not -- many of those regimes not filled with jeffersonian democrats. so you can be upset about the human rights record of an american friend, but that doesn't mean our adversary's human rights record is any better. just to recall what jean kirkpatrick said about that in her famous article and commentary, that the possibility of change in the right direction is far more present in our allies than in some of our adversaries. dan: let's wrap up with this because we are running out of time -- we are about to. two years left, two and a half years, at least for this term. looking backu say after a few years as national security advisor?

if you could achieve three things, what would they be? what would you call a win, a successful term? mr. bolton: getting out of the iran nuclear deal, getting out of the inf treaty. number three, to be determined. [laughter] dan: thank you very much, ambassador bolton. this is such a great thing for our students and for the alexander hamilton society in general. we really enjoyed you coming by and speaking with us. mr. bolton: it is my pleasure. good luck to the society. it is a great organization. [applause] >> if the students good, up and take a picture -- students good come up and take a picture, that would be great.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [no audible dialogue]

announcer: coming up this weekend on book tv, tonight at 8:05 eastern, new york time magazines jeanmarie last guest talks about her book "to obama." >> the woman with the goal to was in greenwood, south carolina , at a rally for obama in 2007. the rally was a bust.

no one there but a small gathering of local folks needing something to do. obama was looking out at the emptiness. fired up, ready to go, the woman with the goal to abruptly shouted. as if on cue, the people around her repeated her words, began to chant, and in an incident, the rally went from dismal to glorious. it shows you what one voice can do. one voice can change a room, obama said at a campaign rally over a year later, recounting the story. if a voice can change a room, it can change a city. announcer: on afterwords, republican senator ben sasse from nebraska talks about his book "them: why we hate each other and how to heal." he is interviewed by arthur brooks. >> i don't think political tribalism is the story of our moment. i think it is filling the vacuum of declining local tribes,

family, deep friendship, long-term shared locations or meaningful work, local worship. all those things are being undermined by the moment we are at in technological history. announcer: watch this weekend on c-span2's book tv. announcer: new congress, new leaders. watch the process unfold on c-span. democrats have reclaimed control of the house. republicans maintain majority control of the senate. as the parties organize the new congress, watch it unfold on seized in -- watch it unfold on c-span. announcer: congress returns tuesday at the house is working on funding for the federal government, which runs out on december 7. the senate returns for votes on coast guard programs and a nomination for the federal reserve board.

announcer: next, q&a with author michael gerhardt on the presidency of jimmy carter. at the veterans day arlington cemetery. ♪ this week on q&a, university of north carolina constitutional law professor michael gerhardt discusses his book "the forgotten presidents" michael, when did you first start thinking about the book you read -- you wrote in 2013 on the forgotten presidents? mr. gerhardt: i've been thinking about it a lot. for other