This is the kind of situation in which John Bolton shines

Exactly the right guy to be delivering this message in Moscow:

On Saturday, President Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. This treaty, signed when Ronald Reagan was president and the USSR still existed, essentially bans the US from possessing nuclear delivery systems that cover the 500 km-5500 km battle space. Russia has said since 2007 that it doesn’t see what it gets from adhering to the treaty and to make their point they have fielded weapon systems that flout the language of the treaty. In the meantime, the treaty prevented the US from responding to China’s development and deployment of nuclear systems the US can’t legally own.

Today, National Security Adviser John Bolton was in Moscow to deliver the bad news to the Russians face-to-face:

National Security adviser John Bolton held firm Tuesday to President Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from a landmark arms control treaty in place since the Soviet era.

Bolton gave no specific details on the next possible U.S. steps to withdraw from the deal to limit intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

But Bolton echoed Trump’s assertions of Russian violations of the pact, suggesting that no progress was made to ease the impasse during Bolton’s talks with top Russian officials including President Vladi­mir Putin.

The Kremlin denies any violations and says scrapping the 31-year-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, would be a “dangerous” development and could spark a new arms race.

“The American position is that Russia is in violation,” Bolton said at a news conference. “Russia’s position is that they are not in violation. So one has to ask how to ask the Russians to come back into compliance with something they don’t think they’re violating.”

In a bit of dark humor that underscored the moment, Putin quipped about the balance between peace and force represented by the Great Seal of the United States.

“As far as I can remember, the U.S. seal depicts an eagle on one side holding 13 arrows, and on the other side an olive branch with 13 olives,” Putin said, sitting across from Bolton at talks before the news conference. “Here’s the question, ‘Did your eagle already eat all the olives and only the arrows are left?’”

“Hopefully I’ll have some answers for you,” Bolton replied. “But I didn’t bring any more olives.”

“That’s what I thought,” Putin said, provoking laughter from Bolton.

What a refreshing change from the nonsense we usually get from our government's national security and foreign policy apparatus.