To the amazement of nobody, Bolton was a Vietnam chickenhawk:

During the 1969 Vietnam War draft lottery, Bolton drew number 185. (Draft numbers corresponded to birth dates.) 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 avoid service in the Vietnam War. Bolton enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard in 1970 rather than wait to find out if his draft number would be called. (The highest number called to military service was 195.) 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. 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.”

He had run his school’s Students for Goldwater campaign in 1964.