Defense

Bolton: State Dept. needs revolution

by Nikita Vladimirov - 12/01/16 9:28 AM ET

.@AmbJohnBolton: The State Department needs a cultural revolution pic.twitter.com/IcpqXBWgHv

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) December 1, 2016

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton on Thursday called for a “cultural revolution” within the State Department.

“Changes need to be made at the State Department. It’s not a question simply of a management restructuring. It needs a cultural revolution for a lot of reasons,” he said in an interview on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

{mosads}Bolton, who is not believed to be one of the four or five finalists President-elect Donald Trump is considering for secretary of State, criticized the structure of the State Department, accusing it of becoming overly bureaucratic.

The former ambassador also said that the State Department has to do a better job following the president’s instructions on foreign policy.

“There are almost 70,000 employees at the State Department worldwide, so its a pretty big bureaucracy. And over the years its gotten the attitude that they are not there, necessarily, to follow what the president wants to do in foreign policy, that they are there to run foreign policy themselves,” Bolton said.

Bolton maintained that a successful secretary of State should always prioritize the interests of the president above those of the department.

“So I think a secretary of State has to follow what [James] Baker back in the George H.W. Bush administration … he said, ‘I will be the president’s envoy to the State Department and not the other way around,'” Bolton said.

Tags Donald Trump