Bolton was a supporter of the Vietnam War,[33] but avoided combat through a student deferment followed by enlistment in the Maryland Air National Guard.[29][34][35] During the 1969 Vietnam War draft lottery, Bolton drew number 185. (Draft numbers were assigned by birth date. Numbers 1 to 195 were eventually called up.)[36] As a result of the Johnson and Nixon administrations' decisions to rely largely on the draft rather than on the reserve forces, joining a Guard or Reserve unit became a way to reduce the chances of service in Vietnam.[37] Before graduating from Yale in 1970, Bolton enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard rather than waiting to find out if his draft number would be called.[31]: 11 [38][39] He attended Active Duty for Training (ADT) at Fort Polk, Louisiana, from July to November 1970.[31]: 11 After serving in the National Guard for four years, he served in the United States Army Reserve until the end of his enlistment two years later.[7]
He wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book: "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."[34] In a 2007 interview, Bolton explained his comment in the reunion book saying his decision to avoid service in Vietnam was because "by the time I was about to graduate in 1970, it was clear to me that opponents of the Vietnam War had made it certain we could not prevail, and that I had no great interest in going there to have Teddy Kennedy give it back to the people I might die to take it away from."[33][40] In his 2007 book, Surrender Is Not an Option, Bolton described his perception of the war as a "futile struggle", and that "[d]ying for your country was one thing, but dying to gain territory that antiwar forces in Congress would simply return to the enemy seemed ludicrous to me. Looking back, I am not terribly proud of this calculation..."[31]: 11
