Jordan: Stumbling into an Abyss

May 25, 2022
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By Dr. David Wurmser
Flaring tensions between Jordan and Israel, and in particular the escalating, hostile rhetoric coming from Amman, over the “status quo” on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem have stunned long-term observers of the situation. Even strong advocates who traditionally defend and even advocate increasing Jordan’s regional role were jarred. Israelis have been particularly shocked by the acerbic determination of Jordan’s exacerbation of this tension. As a result, some now question that relationship.

Moreover, that volley of harsh statements was made by the most senior Jordan officials over recent weeks against the backdrop of the most fatal terror wave Israel has faced in many years, with 20 Israeli fatalities in just over a month, and as hundreds of thousands of Muslims gathered on the Temple Mount to chant, “Khaybar, Khaybar Oh, Jew!; the army of Muhammad is returning,’ which is a blunt reference to the extermination of the Jews at Khaybar by Muhammad in 628 AD. The juxtaposition terror attacks and chants for another genocide of Jews against the verbal assault from Amman amplified the recoil Israelis felt from the substance of the statements and lead many who in the past supported Jordan to doubt Amman’s continued goodwill toward Israel and the resilience of the attending peace treaty.

Israel, the United States and those who view Arab-Israeli peace as positive should indeed be concerned about the survival of the peace treaty. Indeed, Jordan’s behavior in public plunged a dagger into the heart of the reigning Israeli defense concept since 1967; Jordan and Israel shared an interest in preventing the Palestinian issue from exploding out of control and threatening the Kingdom, and thus Amman could be counted upon by Israel to always help calm and manage the fallout of any increase in local and regional tension. Suddenly, Jordan was instead pouring kerosene onto Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

However, the statements themselves are not the problem, nor did this latest episodic flare-up in Palestinian violence cause the emerging “Jordanian problem.” It merely exposed something much deeper and more troubling about the state of affairs in Jordan.

Indeed, both the statements and Jordan’s vulnerability to Palestinian escalations are symptoms of a failing Jordanian policy. Or more accurately, Jordan’s instability and the more provocative and hostile Jordanian policy in fact both reflect and result from an underlying shift in King Abdallah’s strategic outlook. That shift not only is out of kilter with the spirit of various articles in the Israel-Jordanian peace treaty, but contradicts it.

The shift is not recent, but likely occurred between five and ten years ago. And the longer and deeper it takes root, not only will the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty come under further duress, but the purpose of the shift to shore up King Abdullah’s reign politically will fail. The stability of the Kingdom, in fact, will deteriorate further.

Jordan’s tantrum

Since April, Jordan has not only escalated its rhetoric against Israel, but has crossed several red lines in this round of conflict.

Echoing Palestinian incitement

Most particularly, it descended to unprecedented levels when its prime minister, Bisher al-Kasawneh, praised those who attacked the Jews and called those Arabs who work with Israeli authorities as legitimate targets for violence. He praised the rioters as those:

“who proudly stand like minarets, hurling their stones in a volley of clay at the Zionist sympathizers defiling al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli occupation government.”

The term “Zionist sympathizers” cut Israeli hard because it so closely echoed a highly inflammatory statement by the Israeli Arab List leader Ayman Oudeh made a week earlier right after a Christian Israeli-Arab policeman, Amir Khouri, was killed in the line of duty as several Israelis were being killed in a terror attack in Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv in March. The verbal assault by Oudeh on Arabs who have integrated into Israeli official institutions like the military and police was a clear attempt to denigrate their memory, especially since he then proceeded to call on Arab police in Israel to resign and resist. Jordanian PM’s Kasawneh’s words – which both praised resistance to Israel and denigrated those police who cooperate with Israel — on the heels Oudeh’s statement were inescapably to many seen as an intentional echo. The statement thus horrified Israelis and emboldened their adversaries.

Moreover, Jordan de facto accepted Israel’s ultimate control over the Temple Mount in the 1994 peace treaty. In return, Israel would prioritize consideration of Jordan’s special and historical role over Muslim holy sites. But Jordan, via Prime Minister Kasawneh’s statement annulled Israel’s legitimacy and erased any Jewish connection to the Temple mount by calling Israelis illegal colonial settlers, a second time a week after the first statement:

“Israel has no sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem! It is a Muslim place of worship, and only the Jordanian Waqf has full authority over the management of the compound…This is occupied Palestinian land.”

These were particularly bitter pills for Israel to swallow coming in the wake of a sudden, unexpected wave of Palestinian terror that claimed 20 Israeli lives.

Contradicting the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty

And it was essentially annulling two critical parts of the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty. Article 2, paragraph 3 states that: “They will develop good neighbourly relations of co-operation between them to ensure lasting security, will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and will settle all disputes between them by peaceful means.” The point is so important that the treaty returns, expands and dwells at length on this point again in Article 4, which states:

  • ”Both Parties, acknowledging that mutual understanding and co-operation in security-related matters will form a significant part of their relations and will further enhance the security of the region, take upon themselves to base their security relations on mutual trust, advancement of joint interests and co- operation, and to aim towards a regional framework of partnership in peace…The Parties undertake, in accordance with the provisions of this Article, the following:  
  • to refrain from the threat or use of force or weapons, conventional, non-conventional or of any other kind, against each other, or of other actions or activities that adversely affect the security of the other Party; 
  • to refrain from organising, instigating, inciting, assisting or participating in acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, subversion or violence against the other Party; 
  • to take necessary and effective measures to ensure that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, subversion or violence against the other Party do not originate from, and are not committed within, through or over their territory (hereinafter the term “territory” includes the airspace and territorial waters). 
  • ‘Consistent with the era of peace and with the efforts to build regional security and to avoid and prevent aggression and violence, the Parties further agree to refrain from the following:  
  • joining or in any way assisting, promoting or co-operating with any coalition, organisation or alliance with a military or security character with a third party, the objectives or activities of which include launching aggression or other acts of military hostility against the other Party, in contravention of the provisions of the present Treaty.“

In other words, Kasawneh’s statements – echoing Palestinian threats and allowing Jordanian territory to be a haven for factional heads calling for violence against Israel, praising those who attack Israelis by senior officials, and labeling Israeli Arabs who serve in Israel’s defense structures as traitors are all direct violations of the peace treaty.

The second inconsistency with the peace treaty emerged from Article 9, Paragraph 2 of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace, which says that:

“In this regard (i.e., regarding freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance), in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem…When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.”

While this article benefits Jordan greatly, it also enshrines Jordan’s acknowledgement of Israel’s ultimate control over the area. Kasawneh, in contrast, asserts Israel as a squatter and essentially promotes Jordan as the sovereign authority over the Temple Mount and Israel as an illegal occupier. In both his first and second statements, PM Kasawneh sought to criminalize the essence of Article 9 and through that, the very Israeli control through which Jordan derives its “special role” on the Mount in the peace treaty.

Moreover, this Jordanian behavior followed a particularly intense two-month period in which Israel’s leadership had invested great time and capital in coordinating with Jordan, including by offering major concessions and goodwill gestures to Amman and the Palestinians, in order to ensure that the Ramadan-Passover-Easter holiday trifecta would pass smoothly. Indeed, Israel paid some price in confidence among Gulf Arabs and Egypt by trying to bring Jordan and the Palestinian Authority into Abraham Accords structure at the United States’ behest during the recent Negev Summit in March. As such, Jordan’s turn toward a darker side not only raised doubts about that investment, but humiliated the Israeli government at a highly sensitive political moment, especially those political leaders most involved, namely Benny Gantz, Omer Bar-Lev and Yair Lapid.

Jordan suggests resurrecting the 1852 Ottoman status quo

Another troubling aspect of recent months has been that Jordan’s government drafted a position paper elevating and expanding its “legal” role in Jerusalem and demanding the revival of the “historic status quo.” It then released, or perhaps “leaked” portions to the public, not as an official Jordanian position, but as one of the Jerusalem Waqf.

The document is highly problematic and aggressive in its claims and demands. First, what is one to make of this new concept, “the historic status quo?” Anyone who has visited the Temple Mount since 1967 understands that there has never been a static status quo. It has evolved considerably over the five and half decades since then. And that evolution has invariably been in the Muslims’ favor:

  • There are ever increasing restrictions on visiting the site by non-Muslims, including the banning not only of any religious articles, but even non-Palestinian Authority sanctioned tour books.
  • The Waqf has increased the expanse and intensity of its Palestinian-Arab nationalist and Islamist political behavior, especially after 1994 when it fell under the control of Ikrima Said Sabri.
  • The Waqf also in several periods undertook activities that damaged the archeological, sacred remains of the temple.
  • The Waqf expanded – especially in recent years – the definition of “Muslim holy places” from originally the al-Aqsa mosque alone to now not only the entire Temple Mount compound but even the Western Wall (called by Muslims the al-Buraq wall after Muhammad’s horse which supposedly was tied up there).

The Jordanian document, instead of acknowledging the increasing, restrictive control by Muslims of the entire Temple Mount area, instead furthers a timeline of grievance of erosion of Muslim rights and control since 1852 which it noted as a prelude to demanding a restoration of the “historic status quo.” Placed in this context, the term “historic status quo” which Jordan seeks is clearly not a reference to anything which was in place or evolved since 1967 – since going backwards in the last 55 years increases non-Muslim rights — but a reference to the original rights enshrined by Ottoman edicts until the beginning of the erosion of exclusive Muslim control that started in 1852 upon which the document focuses.

Indeed, Jordan via this document demands full sovereignty essentially over the Temple Mount, even in cases of emergency or attack on Israel or Israelis. Indeed, even in conditions that worshippers are attacked at the Western Wall from atop the Mount, Israeli police could no longer be allowed on the Temple Mount for any condition or reason. Jordan also demands “giving the Waqf the authority to severely restrict non-Muslim visits to the Temple Mount; requiring non-Muslims to apply to visit in writing in advance; and setting restrictive tour routes of no more than 500 feet (150 meters) in each direction for non-Muslim visitors.”6

Official Jordanian statements in recent weeks since also outline the justification for such demands by the Jordanian government: Israel “illegally” occupies Jerusalem and that thus it has no right to determine realities and regulations governing the sites in it. In short, for all intents and purposes, the Jordanian government simultaneously insists that the Israeli presence in eastern Jerusalem is illegal, while at the same time insisting that under the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreements, Israel lent Jordan de facto, if not de jure, sovereignty over the holy sites. And the reference to 1852 raises the strong likelihood that “holy sites” means all “holy sites,” not only Muslim since that is the “historic status quo” as it stood in 1852 at the chosen beginning of Jordan’s timeline of grievance.

As if that was not provocative enough, Amman then shopped the document around the region and with officials in the United States. Such an action is inescapably hostile and can be seen only as a calculated humiliation of Israel, an attempt to raise tensions between Jerusalem and a relatively unsympathetic current administration in Washington, and finally also as an attempt to damage Jerusalem’s relations with some of its newer peace partners, such as the UAE.

Jordan moves to “Vaticanize” the holy sites

But if Jordan is trying to wrest sovereignty away from Israel, it will need a governing body with full authorities and heft to function effectively as the sovereign government of the Temple Mount complex. Which is where the issue of the size and role of the Waqf authority and structure comes in.

A decade ago, the Jerusalem Waqf was a rather small, administrative body primarily concerned with the preservation of Islamic structures, institutions and interests over Muslim holy sites. Over the last half decade, however, it has ballooned and changed into primarily a political institution advancing Palestinian national interests and monitoring and harassing the presence of non-Muslims who test their rights to freedom of worship (also enshrined in the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty) or presence on the Temple Mount and posing a direct challenge to Israel’s sovereignty over the area. In other words, for the first time since World War II under Hajamin al-Husseini, who sided with and strategically helped the Nazis, the office of the Mufti in Jerusalem has become a political instrument of confrontation. True, there has been some movement in that direction several decades ago under Ikrima Sabri as the Mufti in the 1990s, but his removal and replacement with a more pro-Jordanian Mufti halted that drift in the first decade and a half of the 2000s.

But since 2016, something began to change. The Size of the Waqf and its employees expanded dramatically, to the point where there were as many as 850 employees by the beginning of this year – a size vastly greater than any administrative structure over the area required.

Indeed, as if that was not odd enough, the Jordanian monarch asked for an additional four dozen to be hired by the Waqf over the last several weeks. Israel has thus far refused that request.7

And not only has the Waqf employee base been expanded, so too has its administrative council over the last several years under Jordanian pressure.8 Both tracks are designed to increase Jordan’s control over the religious sites, but these moves also largely expand the power of key, and notably corrupt, PLO officials (such as Yousef Dajani, who is an Abu Mazen crony and the former head of the East Jerusalem Electric Company).9 To note, the peace treaty bars Jordan from siding with any third party to undermine Israel in any of the territory west beyond the Jordan river.

To be clear, what Jordan is trying to do with the vast expansion is to create a sovereign structure ruling not only over the Temple Mount, but other holy places as well given the context of the references to 1852 and “the historic status quo,” at which time the Ottoman Khaliph had ultimate sovereignty and authority over all religious sites, not only Muslim. In short, Jordan is trying to turn the holy sites of Jerusalem into a status akin to the Vatican in Rome and over Catholic assets, except in this case, such a dispensation would also govern the key Christian and many Jewish holy sites too (the Western wall has been redefined by the Waqf, for example, as the al-Buraq wall, marking the wall to which Muhammad’s horse, al-Buraq had been tied during his night journey to the furthest [al-Aqsa] mosque, which thus makes it a Muslim holy site).

Underlying it is the same concern Jordan has about the Palestinian population more broadly. Jordan fears the complete loss of control by Abu Mazen over his population and ceding of the leadership to Turkey, Hamas and Iranian-oriented factions. Having spectacularly failed to employ elections last spring (2021) to validate the decade-and-half rule of Abu Mazen – another effort led by Jordan and Abu Mazen which led to war and weakening of Abu Mazen – Jordan embarked on another shibboleth designed to shore up Abu Mazen and Jordan’s leadership among Palestinians, this time to try to preempt Hamas, Turkey, Iran and Iran on this issue. However, this effort led to the opposite result.

By expanding the Waqf, expanding Jordan’s control over the Waqf along with the PLO’s leadership, King Abdallah hoped to preempt its complete takeover by Hamas and other geopolitically threatening factions. The problem is that not only is this failing to shore up either the PLO’s leadership role or Jordan’s currency among Palestinians, this all is being done at the expense of Israel, and at the expense of delegitimizing and undercutting Israel’s sovereignty and control over the site. The result is not that Jordan replaces Israel to fill the expanding vacuum left by Israel, but that Hamas dashes in successfully to fill it. In other words, Jordan’s strategy is enabling rather than preempting a greater role and control of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others.

As such, most disturbing is that the Waqf – which answer ostensibly to the Jordanian King – was directly involved in encouraging and inciting the violence centered on the al-Aqsa mosque. Jordan is creating a Frankenstein’s monster that weakens both it and Israel.

Indeed, it is easily predictable that such a vast expansion of the Waqf and erosion of Israeli continued legitimacy on the Mount (a policy onto which the Biden administration has now signed) becomes exponentially more disturbing as the Waqf – instead of being essentially an administrative body – assumes the role of instigator and organizer of the riots that occurred over the last three months on and around the Temple Mount (including the very serious attempt to cause a riot and embarrass Israel during Easter services at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre).

Jordan shifts geopolitically away from the West

This shift in Jordan toward the Arab nationalist camp also carries with it a geopolitical shift more reflective of the historical alignment of Arab nationalism against the West, including for example in supporting Russia against Ukraine. Jordanian papers – especially “state-sponsored” daily, al-Rai – are increasingly tolerant of and even echo some of the worst Holocaust denial theories de jour, and peddle extreme versions of anti-Semitic attacks and re-writes of history that convolute Nazism and Judaism, narratives which are by their very essence incitement. Muhammad Kharroub wrote on May 8, for example:

“[It was] the heroic Soviet soldiers and generals who invaded the Third Reich, flew the Red Flag over its headquarters and declared the defeat of Nazism while the Zionist movement and a group of Jewish leaders made a pact with its leader, Hitler.”10

And employing the concept of global Jewish conspiracies that dominate superpowers: “[Disagreements between Israel and Russia] have attracted the attention of political and media circles and research centers in Russia, and some of them have opened the ‘dossiers’ of the Jews and Zionists and [to discuss] the role their institutions played in dismantling the Soviet union and in usurping the Soviet-Russian civil sector and privatizing it for paltry sums in favor of U.S.-supported Jewish mafias.”11

Another writer in the same state-sponsored paper wrote: “Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov exhibited courage when he refuted the ostensible contradiction between Judaism and Nazism by making a statement that will in no doubt go down in history that ‘Adolf Hitler had Jewish blood in his veins.”12 And “This lie was followed by another one, amplifying the Jewish Holocaust and falsifying a lot of information about it as Zionist propaganda maintained that the Nazis killed almost six million Jews during World War II out of the 11 million Jews worldwide at the time. This figure is hard to believe.”13

Such articles in organs affiliated with the Jordanian state are calculated to instigate violence. And observers of Jordan have noted with alarm for several years the rising intensity and increasing frequency of these sorts of grotesque anti-Semitic incitement and conspiracy theorizing over the last half decade, to the point where Jordan is rapidly becoming an epicenter of the new anti-Semitic literary and journalistic scene.

This deterioration is perhaps most intense lately, but it is not a recent addition. Since 2017 at least, Jordan has turned to a much more confrontational path with Israel.

And one must also recall the role played by Jordan last year in the sequence of events that led to the summer 2021 war and the underlying dynamics that led to last May’s escalation into war. Indeed, the war began months earlier when Jordan, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the newly minted Biden administration launched a plan to resurrect the Palestinian Authority by holding an election that they believed would lend the PA an easy electoral victory which then could be leveraged to validate its authority, strengthen it, and through that to resurrect the moribund Palestinian “peace process.”

The plan went horribly awry, however, when it became clear that Abu Mazen’s PLO would face not victory, but a certain catastrophic electoral annihilation and with it political collapse. Thus, the PA chose to cancel the elections rather than follow through. Cancelling elections because of imminent loss only deepened the PLO’s loss of legitimacy, which thus encountered an enormous backlash and threat of civil war – which in turn would certainly have been won by Hamas. As a result, the PA attempted to deflect blame for cancelling the elections onto Israel and began whipping up a war hysteria. That war hysteria (for which Hamas had long prepared) led eventually to war (for which Hamas had also long prepared). Hamas held all the cards.

Jordan failed, however, to learn from this failure. Instead of revisiting its policy of based on championing the most damaging aspects of the PA’s failed narrative and strategy to itself regain control of Palestinian Authority leadership, Jordan tied itself ever deeper to this rudderless PLO which has been reduced strategically to employing a one-trick deck show (Defend Jerusalem from the Jews!) as its ship sinks.

Where to from here?

This point of this article is neither to question Jordan’s intent on remaining within the peace treaty with Israel, nor to review of the genuinely disturbing rising anti-Semitic nature of Jordanian discourse, although both legitimately have led some in Israel to begin to weigh the costs of continuing to answer to Jordan’s steady diet of demands or indulge its provocations.

Indeed, one has to acknowledge that Jordan’s King has for decades actually had amicable relations with Jews and has never been considered in any way particularly hostile to the Jewish people. This shift and recent anti-Israeli behavior is, to be true to the historical record, quite out of character. So much so that this new wave is likely not the result of any heartfelt or genuine anger, but a more calculated move driven by the increasing desperation.

Moreover, almost all years Netanyahu was prime minister, other than his last four, were calm years in Israeli-Jordanian relations, in contrast to disturbed relations not only in the last five years, but even now when Jordan faces a rather sympathetic government in Jerusalem.

Rather, Jordan is reacting to the failure of the Oslo process to produce a new Palestinian leadership capable of actually leading the Palestinian Arabs rather than pillaging them, and encouraging them into peace rather than employing incitement to divert internal anger. The complete failure of the Oslo process to transform the revolutionary, externally-imposed leadership into a genuine governing structure left a power vacuum among Palestinians, which was additionally exacerbated by the dilution of Jordanian influence over the Palestinians caused by decisions both by those made early by Moshe Dayan after Israel assumed control of the area in 1967 and by King Abdallah’s father’s (King Hussein’s) decision in 1988 to sever his ties and claims to the areas of Judea and Samaria.

In essence, this led to a situation today where Jordan knows a vacuum has emerged among the Palestinians that is being filled by dangerous regional forces, but at the same time Jordan has left very little effective ability to control Palestinian politics.

That, however, is a manageable circumstance, and Israel will eventually prevail over Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any other foreign power like Turkey or Iran that seeks to lord over the Palestinians and ride their plight to pursue fantasies of Israel’s destruction. What is far harder to manage is Jordan’s strategic misstep in handling this circumstance – the answer to which will be addressed in following parts of this essay.

 Biden must stop the promiscuous publicizing of U.S. intelligence

May 25, 2022
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This article appeared in The Washington Post on May 25th 2022. Click here to view the original article.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Biden administration released substantial intelligence analyses about Russia’s capabilities and intentions, purportedly to deter the attack by making public the extent of U.S. knowledge about Vladimir Putin’s planning. Similar unprecedented revelations continued after hostilities commenced.

Neither President Biden’s intelligence releases nor his other deterrence efforts stopped the invasion. Nonetheless, his advisers and media acolytes, piling speculation upon speculation without concrete evidence, claimed that publicizing the information — rather than simply sharing it privately with allies — bought time and helped unite NATO. The media did precious little reporting of the costs involved or other possible motivations.

Publicly revealing sensitive intelligence makes sense when a president has clear objectives, a coherent strategy and, ultimately, when the revelations advance U.S. interests. That can be an aspect of intelligence statecraft: the use of data, analysis and advocacy to advance U.S. national-security objectives. But intelligence is a valuable commodity, often acquired at great cost and risk. Publicizing it promiscuously can endanger sources and methods. It can also prove counterproductive and embarrassing when inaccurate, and encourage the bureaucratic propensity to leak.

Does the Biden administration have a strategy, or did these scattershot efforts reflect larger failures in information statecraft?

Divergent bureaucratic, political and policy cultures disagree on publicizing intelligence. The State Department suffers from institutional logorrhea, whereas career intelligence personnel generally make “Silent Cal” Coolidge seem chatty. Some policymakers in the current executive branch, with roots in liberal academia, think tanks or politics, suffer from “mirror imaging”— the idea that “adversaries” are typically reasonable people just like us, ready to find common solutions to common problems. If only they had the same information we had, this view holds, they, too, would behave responsibly.

That doesn’t describe the worlds of Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. As Putin told me on more than one occasion: “You have your logic, we have ours; let’s see who prevails.” And even if Russia or China have superior information-warfare capabilities, releasing classified information shouldn’t be our knee-jerk response.

In this matter, Biden seems to be largely refighting his last war. The catastrophic strategic and operational failure of the United States’ humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan unnerved his administration — and made Biden look clueless. Contrary to Biden’s repeated assertions that Afghanistan’s government and military could withstand Taliban attacks, they swiftly collapsed. The White House response was contradictory and confused, utterly ineffective in stemming the flood of public criticism.

Seemingly determined to prevent renewed perceptions of incompetence, Biden’s team tried to show that, with Ukraine, unlike in Afghanistan, they were on top of events and knew what Russia was about. Nonetheless, its performance has been spotty and sometimes incautious, including revealing less-than-certain intelligence during the war. Biden had to contradict his advisers’ release of information indicating Putin was poorly briefed by timid subordinates. The administration’s hunger to disclose extended to foreshadowing, inaccurately, North Korean ICBM or nuclear tests before or during Biden’s now-completed Asia trip.

Even after Biden tried reining in “leaks” about the war in Ukraine, which amounted to bureaucratic boasts about agency successes, the deluge continued.

Most damaging were articles on U.S. information-sharing with Ukraine, which by explaining what was impermissible, told Russia exactly what we were sharing with Kyiv. Providing “kill chain” intelligence (information that directly facilitates attacking enemy forces) to a foreign military can place the United States in or very near combatant status. Publicly discussing it is risky business, especially considering Putin’s repeated threats, and Biden’s evident fear of doing anything possibly deemed “escalatory,” such as supplying Ukraine with Polish MiGs. Some “leaks” about such intelligence sharing indeed looked “defensive,” authorized anonymous conversations intended to protect the United States, but which were accidentally quite revealing.

What was inexplicably underreported and under-analyzed by the pro-Biden media is why the United States was so mistaken in its pre-invasion intelligence assessment that Russia would gain swift victory in Ukraine, with Kyiv falling in days and the entire country in weeks. Fearing sudden Russian successes, the administration leaked that it would support guerrilla operations afterward, presumably to deter Moscow from invading. A U.S. offer to provide Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky safe passage from Kyiv showed little confidence in his government’s survivability. You can be sure that China noted these intelligence failures carefully.

It is not just a coincidence that the intelligence and communications strategy mistakes in Ukraine echoed errors in Afghanistan. Now recognizing these failures, two major blunders hardly six months apart, the U.S. intelligence community is, quite rightly, reviewing its performance. They have much to do.

These patterns must change. Revitalizing the now-dilapidated Cold War legacy of effective U.S. international communications has supposedly been a national priority for decades. If Congress is looking for bipartisan reform projects, this one should be top of mind. Repeated congressional battles over organization charts and personnel — all self-inflicted wounds — have to stop. We knew how to do this once; try doing what worked 50 years ago.

John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump and is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

Biden must decide what ‘victory’ in Ukraine means — and if he’ll do what it takes to win it

May 05, 2022
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This article appeared in The New York Post on May 5th 2022. Click here to view the original article.

President Joe Biden’s responses to Russia’s attack on Ukraine comprise a series of failures.

First, he failed to deter the invasion itself, the devastating consequences of which are unfolding daily. Second, US intelligence grossly overestimated Russia’s military competence, briefing Congress that Kyiv would fall in days and the whole country in weeks.

Third, US and allied assistance has repeatedly been behind the curve, with Ukraine saved primarily by its own soldiers’ grit and Russian military ineptitude.

Congress is nearing approval of $40 billion in new aid. Many now talk not merely of “saving” Ukraine but of “victory.” Of course, it would be helpful to know what we mean by that.

Without defining our objectives (and Ukraine’s) more precisely, we will remain in today’s semi-coherent muddle, even as we enter what Ukraine’s defense minister calls a “new, long phase of the war.”

Moscow’s unprovoked aggression launched a war primarily about territory. President Vladimir Putin and many Russians believe Ukraine and other Soviet territories were illegitimately sundered from the rodina, Mother Russia, and they want them back. Ukrainians, with equal passion and far more justification, want full sovereignty and territorial integrity, as mutually agreed among all Soviet republics when the USSR dissolved on Dec. 31, 1991.

Defining “victory” is becoming more urgent. Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asked Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to consider an immediate cease-fire, which Moscow undoubtedly saw as a sign of weakness. At a minimum, before negotiations start, we should know what we are negotiating for, which at the moment we do not.

Importantly, defining “victory,” or at least agreeing upon a common set of Ukrainian-NATO goals, is where allied unity is most likely to fracture irreparably.

Putin knows this for a certainty. The veneer of alliance unity, incessantly touted by the Biden administration and its media scriveners, already conceals enormous differences in the strategy and implementation of both economic sanctions and military assistance.

While acceptably resolving the conflict requires settling many contentious issues — Russian reparations and accountability and Russia’s post-conflict relations with the West to name a few — the major dispute is over territory and sovereignty. We can predict, as can Putin, that many of our “allies” will perform poorly during the negotiations. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, himself revealed that French President Emmanuel Macron pressured him last week to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia so Putin could save face. Zelensky, quite properly, refused.

The combatants’ opening positions are clear. Russia will insist on uti possidetis (roughly, “keep what you hold”), with each side maintaining control of the territories they respectively dominate on the day hostilities stop (whether by unilateral action or mutual cease-fire).

That will be the Kremlin’s position in any short-term cease-fire — and for the long term, in effect permanently. Indeed, this reality underlines why Russia will likely keep grinding away militarily, still hoping to increase the total territory seized since February 24.

Whatever the terms of any cease-fire, Ukraine will surely insist on quickly regaining sovereignty and territorial integrity over its borders as of the USSR’s dissolution, thus requiring Russia to withdraw both from areas seized since February and those taken in 2014, including Crimea. As of now, Zelensky sees no reason to accept anything less.

The United States should endorse Ukraine’s position, which is, indeed, what we have theoretically asserted since 2014. Implementing that position, however, implies that we provide weapons and intelligence assets not simply to stop Russian advances but to retake considerably more lost ground than Ukraine has achieved to date.

Yet it is far from clear that Biden believes in victory or accepts the necessary implications. He personally decided against transferring Polish MiGs to Ukraine, fearing that doing so would be “escalatory.” Ukrainian pilots, though, no longer want MiGs but American F-15s and F-16s and appropriate training. Is Biden prepared for that?

What happens in future negotiations is unknowable, but it would be a significant blow to American credibility globally to come as close as Ukraine has to defeating a superpower only to give away at the negotiating table what has been won at such a high cost on the battlefield. We do not have forever to make up our minds.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Donald Trump, 2018-’19, and US ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-’06.

Biden’s unforced error at the United Nations

April 25, 2022
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This article appeared in The Hill on April 25th 2022. Click here to view the original article.

The Biden administration is committing an unforced error at the United Nations (UN) that risks reviving the long-simmering issue of the veto power wielded by the Security Council’s five permanent members. Russia’s Feb. 25 veto of a draft resolution deploring its invasion of Ukraine prompted a renewed effort to delegitimize the “Perm Five” veto, a controversial issue since the UN’s founding in 1945. 

Astonishment at Moscow’s veto and its result emerged in headlines such as: “Russia’s veto makes a mockery of the United Nations Security Council.” To which, the proper response is: mockery of the Security Council? Where have these people been the last 77 years? Have they forgotten the Council’s near-total Cold War paralysis and irrelevancy, the UN’s longest running failure? 

During the Charter’s drafting, many Americans and others objected to granting Security Council vetoes to World War II’s major victors. Eleanor Roosevelt, for example, said, “a good many people think that… the veto power should be done away with in order to insure a wider expression of the majority point of view. For the time being, however, that idea has been set aside.” Not until 1970 did Washington cast its first veto. 

The current effort to constrain the veto is led by Liechtenstein (yes, you read that correctly), with more than 50 co-sponsors on a measure requiring the General Assembly, within 10 days of a veto, “to hold a debate on the situation as to which the veto was cast.” 

Surprisingly, the Biden administration, alone among the Perm Five, has joined this misbegotten effort, on which the Assembly will vote April 26. With due respect to the good people of Liechtenstein, their government needs better international priorities.   

Unwise and unnecessary, the proposed resolution, following Mrs. Roosevelt’s logic, reflects the long-standing urge to weaken and ultimately eliminate the veto. Its proponents apparently either don’t understand or don’t care that, for the United States, an undiminished, unimpaired veto power is an absolute prerequisite to continued participation in the UN itself.  

Consider carefully the Biden administration’s own dangerous arguments. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield criticized Russia for its “shameful pattern of abusing its veto privilege.” 

But there never would have been a “Security Council” without the veto, which Joseph Stalin demanded and Franklin Roosevelt accepted. They would be amazed and amused (Mrs. Roosevelt notwithstanding) to hear it called a “privilege.” The Charter’s Article 27 expressly authorizes the veto, to which every original signatory and every subsequent member agreed. In the UN context, the veto is not a privilege, it is a right.  Arguing that it is merely a privilege implies it can be taken away or should be relinquished. If that’s President Biden’s view, he should initiate a broad debate on the issue in Congress, which would be especially informative during this midterm election year. 

Clearly, there is no acceptable excuse for Russia’s conduct in Ukraine, but “shameful” is in the beholder’s eye. As Elliott Abrams has stressed, the overwhelming majority of America’s recent vetoes have been to protect Israel. 

U.S. vetoes were often alone, with France and the United Kingdom deeming America’s position inappropriate or even a little shameful. Certainly, Russia and China weren’t happy. Nonetheless. two of my happiest days as UN ambassador were when I cast Security Council vetoes against unjust anti-Israel resolutions. Limitations on the veto power will never be imposed only on countries casting “shameful” vetoes, but on all permanent members. That is flatly unacceptable to the United States.  

Moreover, Liechtenstein’s resolution is utterly unnecessary to achieve the supposed “transparency” its proponents seek. Its immediate real-world impact will be trivial, hardly worth the effort being expended to obtain its passage, unless its cosponsors’ ulterior motives are part of a larger delegitimization effort. No one can say for certain how much this resolution will undermine the veto long-term, but for the U.S. to co-sponsor it suggests either blindness or Biden administration complicity with the delegitimization objective. 

It’s not as though vetoes are cast in secrecy. Every veto in UN history, like all formal Council actions, has been made in open, formal Council sessions, open to print and electronic press and the public. Almost all Council members make statements explaining their votes, particularly vetoes, for anyone interested. The Charter (in Article 31) specifically provides that any UN member “may participate… in the discussion of any question brought before the Security Council whenever the latter considers that the interests of that Member are specially affected.”  

I cannot recall any instance where the Council has denied a member’s request to speak. The Charter also provides (in Article 24) that the Council “shall submit annual and, when necessary, special reports to the General Assembly for its consideration.”  What more is needed? 

If anything, the Security Council is now so transparent that its frequently feckless actions are already in plain view. The Biden administration may stand behind Liechtenstein’s proposal, but other nations should understand that this is merely a fit of absence of mind, not a permanent change in American support for the veto power.   

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and held senior State Department posts in 2001-2005 and 1985-1989. His most recent book is “The Room Where It Happened” (2020). He is the founder of John Bolton Super PAC, a political action committee supporting candidates who believe in a strong U.S. foreign policy. 

 

Twilight of Turkish Democracy

April 22, 2022
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This article appeared in The Washington Examiner on April 22nd 2022. Click here to view the original article.

Turkish democracy has reached a turning point. 

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade strongman rule has reversed his country’s progress toward a liberal society. On April 6, the Turkish President secured the passing of new electoral laws that will make it more difficult for smaller parties to enter parliament, thereby inhibiting opposition coalitions and allowing him to use state resources to organize his own campaign events. These changes will make it harder for opponents to challenge Erdogan’s tightening grip on the Turkish electoral system. 

As Erdogan prepares to run for re-election in the coming year, the importance of a vibrant and functioning Turkish civil society cannot be overstated. And it could not be more at risk. 

These changes are the latest in a string of moves designed to dismantle what remains of Turkey’s once-promising democratic architecture. Erdogan’s authoritarianism has galvanized resistance in the form of an opposition coalition — the “Nation Alliance” led by the Republican People’s Party — while the dire state of the economic, social, and political situation in Turkey has catalyzed vibrant anti-government protests against inflation and for women’s rights and academic freedom. 

The June 2023 elections will be a crucial test for pro-democracy voices in Turkey to rebuild their institutions. Their success will depend on their ability to bolster Turkey’s most at-risk hallmarks of free and fair elections: transparency, non-interference in voting, loser’s consent, and a free press. 

They face an uphill battle. President Erdogan’s regime has curtailed media access, undermined an open campaign process (though bribery, intimidation, and violence), and is now seeking to further obfuscate the voting process through blatantly undemocratic reforms. 

Erdogan’s campaign to degrade free media has made Turkey one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The government now controls 90% of the country’s media through regulatory bodies like the High Council for Broadcasting; the Press Advertising Council, which allocates state advertising; and the Presidential Directorate for Communications, which issues press cards. 

Under Erdogan, censorship laws have also been wielded as a weapon against online political discourse. A 2020 media law imposes requirements on social media platforms to remove content at the command of the Turkish government or else risk punitive fines. Facebook and Twitter have submitted to Turkish government censorship, closing another avenue for healthy political discourse among Turkish voters. 

Outside of media and online discourse, civil rights activism in general has been targeted by Erdogan’s regime. Reporters Without Borders has said that “questioning authorities and the privileged is now almost impossible” under Erdogan. Opposition parties are also increasingly persecuted by the regime, making effective political resistance increasingly difficult. In 2021, the state Prosecutor argued that the pro-Kurdish HDP party was working toward breaking the “unity of the state.” The Constitutional Court forced the closure of the party and banned 451 elected officials. These most recent reforms take further aim at the opposition, legalizing the use of state resources when the President is campaigning for himself while other ministers will be barred from doing the same. 

In prior elections, Erodgan’s government has conducted systematic campaigns of intimidation. In Ankara, a local election was marred by claims of vote-rigging. Kurdish communities in particular face acts of intimidation and voter suppression. The government militarizes voting centers in the Kurdish region, claiming the security forces must “protect” against the threat of attacks by Kurdish terrorists. The People’s Democratic Party reported that political activities were banned from organizing in the streets. Under threat of intimidation by the state, Kurds are stripped of their right to vote freely. 

In 2019, in what may prove a premonition of the 2023 elections, Erdogan showed that he is willing to directly interfere with democratic processes to try to cling to power. 

He commanded that the Higher Electoral Commission rerun the Istanbul mayoral election after his party lost in spite of systematic irregularities that had actually worked in its favor. Despite his best efforts to intervene, his party also lost the re-run. The subsequent blowback shows it is not a foregone conclusion that Erdogan can get away with electoral interference in 2023. 

The global pandemic and war in Ukraine have precipitated economic volatility and internal political turmoil. However, the free world cannot lose sight of the importance of Turkey’s upcoming elections, which will be watched by many of the world’s autocrats in waiting, keen to find out what they can get away with. Erdogan has systematically undermined every one of Turkey’s major democratic institutions to create a deeply skewed playing field. Holding his regime to account requires coordinated action from the international community, illumination of his thuggish tactics to suppress political minorities, and real consequences should he fail to make meaningful progress to restore civil discourse within Turkey. 

Progress here means releasing imprisoned journalists to restore some semblance of a free press, allowing NGOs to effectively monitor the upcoming election, and cessation of hostilities against and censorship of opposing political voices. The international community should wield sanction power (as it has against Russia), turn-off foreign military sales, and level severe consequences should Erdogan fail to achieve these objectives. 

John Bolton is a former UN ambassador and White House National Security Adviser. He serves as an advisor for the Turkish Democracy Project. 

European leaders obsessed with continental integration are undermining NATO

April 18, 2022
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This article appeared in The Telegraph on April 18th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

Commentary on Nato “unity” against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been misplaced. Nato is not unified in seeking Moscow’s defeat, and Kyiv’s memory of the execrable Minsk agreements, imposed with French and German participation, remains strong. Ukraine stays in the fight largely through its own determination and homegrown capabilities such as the missiles that sent the Moskva to the Black Sea floor. 
 
The alliance’s performance on sanctions is scattershot, with results mixed so far and the future uncertain. Military assistance is uneven, though the UK and Eastern European responses have been outstanding. The biggest failure is Joe Biden’s uneven political leadership: weak, often late in coming, grudging and strategically incoherent. Germany, France and others are lagging. 
 
This war is not over, and the negotiations that will ultimately ensue will be tortuous. It is no time for Nato members to pat themselves on the back. Nonetheless, now is precisely the moment for policymakers to consider the alliance’s future. We should not forget that Henry Kissinger’s classic 1965 study was called The Troubled Partnership; it still is, and will be, though for radically differing reasons. 
 
First, the good news. Finland and Sweden seem poised to apply for membership. Public opinion in both countries has shifted dramatically in favour of joining Nato since Moscow’s aggression. These additions would strengthen Western dominance in the Baltic Sea, further isolate Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, and eliminate an ambiguous grey zone between Nato’s eastern and Russia’s western borders. Other “neutrals” might now also step up. Here’s looking at you, Ireland. 
 
On the negative side are Turkey and France. Turkey’s President Erdoğan is now the least-allied of Nato allies. Notwithstanding Kyiv’s effective use of Turkish-supplied drones, Ankara’s acquisition of Russian S-400 air-defence systems risked compromising the critical F-35 program, thereby endangering other Nato allies. 
 
If Turkey’s 2023 elections are free and fair, Erdoğan’s defeat, which is entirely possible, would significantly repair the damage he has done. If he wins, his neo-Ottoman Middle East ambitions (and other troublesome behaviour) will remain threatening. 
 
France, facing a potentially close presidential run-off, is problematic, especially given Emmanuel Macron’s persistent efforts to enhance the European Union’s military capabilities in ways that undercut Nato. Marine Le Pen has gone further, calling explicitly for a second French withdrawal from Nato’s integrated military command. None of this is constructive. 
 
Most important is the German question. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s pledge to invest €100 billion in defence, including purchasing 35 nuclear-capable F-35s, is helpful. Nonetheless, much more is needed to upgrade Germany’s pitifully inadequate military capabilities, and to ensure Scholz’s dramatic commitment is sustained over time. Will Germany revert to its Cold War resolve to maintain adequate national defences, or will it relapse into pretending it is too dangerous to be trusted with guns? 
 
Central to Nato’s future is the appropriate division of labour with the EU. For Macron and others, increased EU political integration is the highest goal, leading them to advocate increased EU military capabilities and related programs that impinge on Nato responsibilities. For example, the EU made its first ever budgetary expenditure for military assistance to Ukraine, even as Nato was making precisely the same allocation decisions. This was no coincidence. 
 
Do these integration-obsessed leaders believe the EU has no other problems worthy of their attention? Is this why they focus on expanding EU mission creep into Nato territory? For America, such efforts are daggers pointed at Nato’s heart. If anyone truly believes the EU treaty’s mutual defence clause is equivalent to Nato’s Article 5 – good luck to them. Let’s remember, the EU has only one nuclear-weapons state, whereas Nato has three. Insistence that Europe be responsible for its defence risks undercutting American support for Nato, leaving Europe protected primarily by politicians’ rhetoric. 
 
Better leadership in Washington, new alliance members, renewed German (and even, post-election, Turkish) Nato commitments, and a substantially enhanced British role, exemplified by its current performance, would all be major pluses. Moreover, the growing threat from China should brace every Nato country for global threats to their security. History still has plenty in store for Nato if it can vindicate itself by performing successfully in today’s Ukraine crisis. 
 
John Bolton is a former US national security adviser 

Let Ukraine or Russia, Not the ICC, Prosecute War Crimes

April 14, 2022
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This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on April 14th 2022. Click here to view the original article.

Harrowing images of slain Ukrainian civilians add to the evidence of Russian war crimes. While many Europeans favor hauling the perpetrators into the International Criminal Court, Washington has largely ignored the ICC since removing its signature from its foundational Rome Statute in 2002. 

That may be changing. The Biden administration has made noises about cooperating with the ICC, and on March 3 a bipartisan group of senators introduced a resolution that “encourages member states to petition the ICC and the ICJ [International Court of Justice] to authorize any and all pending investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity” committed by Russia. 

Many Americans seem unaware that aiding the ICC has significant implications. The ICC is a fundamentally illegitimate assertion of power, thoroughly lawless in purportedly exercising jurisdiction over countries (and their individual citizens) not parties to the statute. The court and its prosecutor, who decides what cases to launch, aren’t part of any coherent governance structure and are under no restraining constitutional checks and balances or democratic controls. These and many other defects are unfixable, as I told Congress in 1998. ICC proponents say its 123 state parties govern the court, but this is laughable. The ICC governs itself. The prosecutor is selected by the court, which may not trouble Europeans but contravenes America’s separation of executive and judicial powers to protect liberty. It lacks jury trials, traditionally important to Americans. 

The ICC’s existence, therefore, is potentially threatening. Fortunately, its record is negligible, largely because its pretensions to authority mirror those of the equally impotent ICJ. That neither has yet become dangerous to America’s democratic, constitutional sovereignty is cause for relief, not complacency. 

European Union members seem fine with surrendering their sovereign powers to supranational bodies and appear ever ready to surrender ours as well. What they and others do is their business, but it shouldn’t be ours. The imperative some Americans now feel to “do something” risks putting the U.S. in the hypocritical position of invoking the ICC when it suits us, but not otherwise. We should continue ignoring the ICC because of its fundamental flaws from America’s perspective, and instead support sounder alternatives. 

Ukraine provides an excellent test case. The crimes were committed there; the overwhelming mass of evidence is there; and Ukraine remains a viable state whose prosecutors have already begun their work. ICC supporters, for their own ideological reasons, say Ukrainian courts are biased and unable to administer evenhanded justice. Even some Ukrainians favor washing their hands of this burden. Nations don’t mature politically, however, by ducking responsibility, fearing they might be imperfect. Neither America nor Ukraine should succumb to these temptations. When national courts afford equal justice to all, they validate constitutional, democratic legitimacy and sovereignty. If colonial courts in 1770 could conduct fair trials of the Boston Massacre’s perpetrators, represented by John Adams no less, why should we assume today’s Ukrainian courts can’t also measure up? 

ICC supporters say Ukrainian courts can render only mundane judgments, whereas Russian defendants should be charged with “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”—offenses within the ICC’s jurisdiction. “Mundane” crimes like murder, rape, torture, arson and destruction of property are insufficiently condemnatory of Russia’s behavior, they say. This is a fundamentally political argument, revealing precisely why the ICC is in key respects a political and not a judicial body, devoid of effective constitutional or democratic control. Clear-eyed people world-wide can see and understand what Ukrainian courts will reveal. We need no schooling by Platonic Guardians in The Hague. 

Even better would be a new Russia conducting criminal prosecutions. Vladimir Putin’s rule won’t last forever. How countries handle war crimes and human-rights abuses committed in their names is the truest test of, and the best way to achieve, real political maturity. Allowing a successor regime to shrug off moral responsibility for reckoning with the nation’s past is erroneous. Ceding authority to a distant international body is cowardice, not enhanced maturity. 

Certainly, risk of mistake and failure is ever present, but without taking that risk, there is no easy national path back to trustworthiness and honor. Even worse, shirking enables future autocrats to assert that Russia was sold out by traitors and foreigners. Read “Mein Kampf” for the road map. 

Especially if very few defendants come into Ukrainian custody, a new Russian government would have considerable work to do. Post-1989 regime change across the former Soviet bloc required successor authorities to confront their nations’ unsavory pasts. Some, such as former East Germany and Hungary, responded with prosecutions; others, such as Czechoslovakia, with procedures similar to the truth-and-reconciliation model South Africa followed after apartheid, or a mixture of approaches. The victors in 1945 began Germany’s de-Nazification, but elected German governments continued it. 

Choosing the right judicial decision-maker isn’t an arcane jurisdictional issue, nor is it deferrable to the vague future. American leadership can significantly enhance Ukraine’s principled national sovereignty and remind Russians that their ultimate place in history is in their hands, not in a distant international court. 

Mr. Bolton is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” He served as the president’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06. 

What’s Next for Russia and Ukraine?

April 04, 2022
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This article appeared in 19FortyFive on April 4th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

Six weeks into Russia’s second invasion of modern Ukraine, Moscow’s stunning military failures dominate the West’s attention. Unsurprisingly, therefore, basic misperceptions are becoming conventional wisdom, thereby potentially distorting future U.S. policy, making it even less effective than at present. The following corrective effort is only illustrative, not exhaustive.

This is not Putin’s war, it’s Russia’s war. Western leaders are deluding themselves to think that Putin alone is responsible for the invasion. As Russia’s president, he obviously makes the final decisions, but he is far from alone in believing passionately that Ukraine (not to mention Belarus and other once-Soviet republics) should be returned to the rodina, Mother Russia. This is certainly true for the siloviki, the “men of power” forming the core of Putin’s advisors, from several of whom I once heard personally their message that Ukraine is a failed, illegitimate state.

Kremlin leaders have a thirty-year obsession with reabsorbing their lost empire. News reports on today’s war often read eerily and confusingly like 2014 news accounts of the Crimea annexation and Donbas invasion, reflecting the West’s historical ignorance and short attention span. The siloviki have many egregious, bloody faults, but short attention is not one of them.

No wonder America’s media and the Biden Administration are surprised by independent polls showing increasing Russian public support for Putin, even in the face of Western sanctions and Moscow’s flagging war effort. Not all Russians feel Putin’s irredentism as deeply as he. A sufficient number do, however, so that whatever else endangers Putin’s regime, public opinion is not only not a threat, it is for now a pillar of regime strength.

Putin does not have a screw loose, nor does he suffer from insufficient, inaccurate information. Not all of Putin’s advisors grovel and snivel, fearing from telling him the truth. Contrary analysis by unnamed Biden administration sources may be elements of our information war against Russia, but they do not describe Kremlin reality. Even in autocratic regimes, there are always advisors more than happy to point out their rivals’ failures, and to provide fulsome evidence to put them in a bad light. Like America, Russia has multiple intelligence agencies that vie bureaucratically for influence and attention. Besides, Soviet embassies don’t need the SVR to communicate back to Moscow what Western media are reporting. There is no upside for every fawning Putin advisor to cover for those who can easily be blamed for evident failures.

The Pentagon offered the most absurd lyrics for the “Putin is uninformed and a little nuts” mantra, speculating that his lack of information could impede ongoing Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations. For Moscow, these negotiations are merely a propaganda exercise, something affording a patina of reasonableness to its belligerent position. Ironically, it was President Biden who brushed this chatter aside, saying “I don’t want to put too much stock in that at this time because we don’t have that much hard evidence.”

Westerners may not understand how much Putin and company value Ukraine, but that is our problem, not his. We heard this same psychoanalysis in 2014. Angela Merkel among others reportedly believed Putin was “out of touch with reality.” Andrei Illarionov, a former close Putin advisor now in the U.S., corrected her: “People in the West think Putin is irrational or crazy. In fact, he’s very rationale according to his own logic, and very well-prepared. It is not Putin who is out of touch with reality — it is the West.” This rings true. More than once, Putin has said to me, “you have your logic, we have ours; we will see which prevails.”

Part of the problem may be Putin himself. Not his advisors. He may have dismissed hard facts contrary to his preconceptions, a common human failing. It would be an equally grievous mistake, however, for America to think Putin has not by now recovered. Moreover, Russia’s battlefield failures may result from still-endemic corruption and incompetence throughout its military. “Ghost soldiers” whose salaries, weapons, rations and supplies found their way into black markets, as lower-ranking officers submitted false reports on unit strength and readiness up the chain, have now been laid bare. Despite twenty years trying to reform and modernize Russia’s military, the Ukraine conflict demonstrates that these efforts were far from successful.

Russia’s strategic mistakes have cost it dearly, but it has not yet lost the war. Russia did not launch this invasion with only one goal. The Kremlin was likely considering several options, depending on how the war unfolded. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, the top-line strategic objective seems to have been capturing Kyiv, overthrowing Zelensky’s government, and replacing it with a Quisling regime under Moscow’s control. This strategic blunder cost Russia numerous opportunities elsewhere in Ukraine that might already have been achieved, in turn enabling Moscow to pursue additional priority objectives. By trying too much at once, however, Moscow’s reach substantially exceeded its grasp, and it failed broadly.

Broadly, but not fatally.

The cliché tells us generals always fight the last war. In 2014, Russia seized the Crimea almost without firing a shot. Indeed, significant portions of Ukraine’s navy defected to Russia’s side. Fighting in the Donbas region was not so successful for Russia, but neither were the military costs high nor subsequent Western sanctions effective. One can easily imagine Moscow’s leaders envisaging a similar scenario in 2022. They were obviously wrong.

Even more importantly, on and after February 24, Russia violated the fundamental military doctrine of force concentration. Instead of aiming at a small number of key targets with overwhelming forces, Moscow attacked broadly with inadequate manpower, firepower and logistics. Ukraine’s heroic resistance was totally unanticipated. The result was failure to win most key objectives: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and more. Russian arms have had relatively greater success in southern and eastern Ukraine, but even these advances are far from overwhelming.

Now, Russia is belatedly trying to get its act together, withdrawing from areas around Kyiv and other northern cities Ukraine, perhaps back into Belarus and Russia, to regroup, reinforce and resupply. Moscow will either try again in the north, or redeploy these forces to the

east and south, where reinforcements are arriving from existing deployments in Georgia, the Middle East and elsewhere. The media report Syrian soldiers returning Russia’s earlier favors to Assad’s regime by coming to Ukraine, likely without crash courses on the Geneva Conventions.

The Kremlin’s goal now will likely be maximizing its military and political control throughout southern and eastern Ukraine. Russia’s overarching goal of fully conquering Ukraine is almost certainly out of reach for now, but there are many alternative, subsidiary objectives. If Putin could accomplish significant elements of these lesser goals, he would be well-placed to persuade Russia’s public that the war was worthwhile, and to induce all-too-many Westerners to turn the page, and return to “normal” economic and political relations.

Almost certainly the critical second-tier objective is control over Ukraine’s substantially Russophile areas, effectively splitting the country in two. The Kremlin’s targets are southern Ukraine, particularly control over the Black Sea’s strategically important northern coast, and eastern Ukraine, east of the Dnieper River to the city of Dnipropetrovsk and then north to the Russian border. Broadly speaking, eight Ukrainian oblasts (in addition to Crimea) are involved: Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odessa.

These oblasts are predominantly or substantially Russian-speaking and Russian Orthodox, as compared to areas more Ukrainian-speaking, Ukrainian Orthodox or Catholic. This, of course, is the Kremlin’s view, not an exercise in Wilsonian self-determination. Because Ukraine’s demographic distribution looks like a bad case of measles, and citizens are often ambivalent or conflicted in their religious loyalties, these characterizations are not bright lines. Russia may well fail to conquer all this territory, but the more it seizes, the stronger its bargaining position when negotiations actually turn serious.

For now, Russia’s military position in eastern Ukraine is relatively strong, and “victory” entirely possible. Along the Black Sea, however, Moscow had been blocked, and Odessa seems beyond its grasp at the moment. Nonetheless, if Moscow reconstitutes its forces, coordinates its land, sea and air efforts, and Western support for Ukraine’s military insufficient, taking Odessa is still feasible. With the east and much of the south secure, Russia could make territorial “concessions” by withdrawing from areas it still holds in the north, but which are no longer tenable long-term. Putin is counting on flagging Western interest and unity. This would make it difficult and costly if not impossible to push Russia from what it holds near its current borders and Crimea. Uti possidetis remains a powerful form of diplomatic inertia.

Washington needs to step up its leadership, and NATO its performance. Let’s be clear: NATO is not fully united. The West must do better in tightening the economic noose around Russia and increasing and speeding its military assistance to Ukraine. Performance to date is mixed. Despite incessant hosannas about Alliance unity, the West is already fraying. The United Kingdom and the United States have led in supplying hardware and intelligence, but others, like France and Germany, have lagged, starting with Berlin’s pre-war offer of 5,000 military helmets, and continuing later by supplying former East German Strela missiles, over thirty years old, that did not work. Time and again, President Biden has responded to pressure from Congress and the Allies rather than leading himself, acting either belatedly or not at all, as in his refusal to authorize transferring the Polish MiGs.

Remember, every day the war grinds on is further evidence of NATO’s fundamental, unalterable shame: failing to deter Russia in the first place because of shredded credibility (see Georgia, 2008, Ukraine, 2014, and the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal); grossly inadequate threats

of future punishment through selective, inadequate sanctions; and Biden’s early December unforced error, rejecting even the possibility of U.S. force, in exchange for exactly nothing.

This pattern must be reversed, and quickly. Given Russia’s mistakes so far, it would be a fool’s errand to bet it can successfully reculer pour mieux saute, but it is at least possible. We are likely therefore in a slow-motion race to see whether Moscow can get off its back before Ukraine’s military breaks under the strains (incompletely reported by Western media) it has felt. Time is on Moscow’s side, so slow or inadequate Western resupply efforts could be ruinous. The Western is not unified on sanctions.

Europe’s purchases of Russian oil and gas continue, and China, India and others are providing financial lifelines keeping Russia’s economy afloat. Looking ahead, the real efficacy of sanctions turns on rigorous enforcement and enhancement to close loopholes as Russia creates them. The best day for any sanctions’ regime is the day it is announced, dropping rapidly if the sanctioning powers are not as least as creative as their target. Historically, U.S. sanctions enforcement and enhancement has been decidedly mixed, and the Europeans are, to be polite, far from diligent. Modern history’s most effective and comprehensive sanctions were imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Enforced by the U.S. and allied militaries, even these were not enough to oust Saddam’s invading forces.

The Alliance’s biggest test will be maintaining diplomatic unity at the inevitable moment when Moscow decides on serious negotiations. The siloviki see the West’s weakness for money not for the ideological reasons of their Communist predecessors, but with at last equal clarity. Already, France and Germany are searching for ways to end military hostilities before one side or the other scores a decisive victory, thus freezing the conflict without materially resolving it. This would certainly be the typical European approach. If, however, Russia emerges from its current military debacle with anything even remotely smacking of victory, the reverberations in Europe and worldwide, especially in Beijing, will be enormous. Nattering on about NATO unity may warm hearts in elite Washington circles, but all that talk is worth what you pay for it. American leadership and NATO performance to date have been inadequate. Face up to it.

The clear lesson is that Americans should not bliss out prematurely. This is a European conflict. Think Thirty Years War or Hundred Years War. Putin is

Reaganism Podcast: John Bolton on the Crisis in Kyiv

April 01, 2022
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On this episode of Reaganism, recorded at our Reagan Institute Strategy meeting on February 24, John Bolton, former National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the United Nations discusses Russia’s military assault on Ukraine, the impact of Trump’s presidency on national security, and what America must do to strengthen our defense.