Britain’s expanded nuclear arsenal has a vital role to play in reining in China

March 23, 2021

If mutually acceptable arms-control treaties are suitable for Russia, France, Britain and the US, they are suitable for China

This article appeared in The Telegraph on March 22, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
March 23, 2021

Boris Johnson’s new national security strategy has generated two major controversies. First, the usual suspects are agonising about its laudable aim of increasing the ceiling on Britain’s nuclear-weapons stockpile. Second, characterising Russia as the most “acute threat” but China as only a “systemic challenge”, magnified by a hunger for trade, has created palpable uncertainty. Does Johnson’s government really accept that Beijing is truly an adversary (and likely an enemy), or does it pine for its predecessors’ accommodationism?

These issues are intimately related. A larger nuclear arsenal, part of a significant defence-spending increase, is prudent. “Global Britain” faces, as do we all, China’s burgeoning nuclear weapons capabilities and increasing risks of proliferation by North Korea, Iran, and others. The Cold War’s bipolar, US-USSR paradigm has long been obsolete, even as we continue defending against Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal, and its unacceptable behaviour in cyberspace, Europe and the Middle East.

Additionally, the UK needs a nuclear deterrent against biological and chemical weapons threats. Covid-19 proves how susceptible we are to biological weapons attacks. Russia’s attacks against the Skripals and Alexei Navalny, and Bashar al-Assad’s myriad assaults on Syrian civilians, show that chemical weapons usage is hardly far-fetched, whether from major powers, rogue states, or terrorists.

Britain need make no apologies for enhancing its nuclear stockpile. And so doing only underlines the related imperative of a strong, united international stance against China’s increasingly hostile posture.

Last week’s Anchorage meeting between top American and Chinese diplomats was a wakeup call to anyone who hasn’t already encountered Beijing’s “wolf warrior diplomacy”. This is not just a new look, but proof that Deng Xiaoping’s policy of “hide your capacities and bide your time” no longer governs. Indo-Pacific nations already understand, and are acting accordingly. A new “Quad” (India, Australia, Japan and America) held its first summit (virtually), also last week, not as an explicit anti-China alliance, but with the potential to become one. The North Atlantic Quad was critical in its time, but today’s real action is the Indo-Pacific, as Johnson’s Global Britain vision recognises.

The Indo-Pacific Quad members all have extensive economic ties with China, but the political-risk calculus of their trade and investment is changing rapidly. Beijing’s belligerence toward Taiwan; its sheltering of North Korea; and its provocations in the East and South China Seas, in Southeast Asia, and along the Line of Actual Control with India, speak volumes. Prior China trade, capital investment and supply-chain decisions by businesses and governments alike were made in a vastly different risk environment.

As tensions rise sharply, there is no need for a general government-directed “unwinding” of economic ties with China. Businesses themselves will choose to hedge against the new risks, re-shoring manufacturing and investment and significantly reducing exposure to China. National security threats do call for government action, such as against Huawei and ZTE, Beijing’s Trojan Horses aimed at controlling vital 5G networks.

New politico-military approaches like greater UK nuclear capabilities are critical in confronting China’s overall threat. As Moscow and Washington re-negotiate the 2010 New START Treaty, President Biden has repeated his predecessor’s call to include Beijing in any new nuclear-weapons scheme. Beijing has so far rejected this initiative, saying its weapons stockpile is “insubstantial” relative to Russia and America. But we cannot stand idly by while China, purely of its own volition, increases its nuclear forces until it reaches rough parity with the top two, and only then engage in nuclear arms control negotiations.

How, then, can Beijing be brought to the table? By having London and Paris agree to participate in the diplomacy, thus engaging all five legitimate nuclear powers under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, who by happy coincidence also comprise the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Last century’s Washington naval treaties provide precedent for differential weapons limits on states of varying strengths, so there is no legitimate historical or conceptual objection to such a negotiation. If mutually acceptable arms-control treaties are suitable for Russia, France, Britain and the US, they are suitable for China. And if Beijing still objects? What further evidence do you need to conclude China is not simply a “systemic challenge” but an “acute threat”? The UK’s strategy can then be revised accordingly.

What’s at stake in the first big meeting of top Biden administration and Chinese officials

March 15, 2021

This article appeared in The Washington Post on March 15, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
March 15, 2021

On Thursday, the Biden administration will conduct its first high-level meeting with China. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will confer with senior Communist Party Politburo member Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Anchorage. Sullivan has said he and Blinken will explain how the new team “intends to proceed at a strategic level,” conveying its interests and values, and its concerns with Chinese activities.

President Biden issued an “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance” earlier this month, “as we begin work on a National Security Strategy.” That leaves the administration’s preparedness for the meeting unclear, but even “guidance” in the absence of a full strategy is a start.

Biden has spoken once with Chinese President Xi Jinping, although China’s readout of the conversation portrays Xi as doing most of the talking about what he expects from Washington. Last week, Biden held the first summit (virtually) of the “Quad” (Japan, India, Australia and the United States), a unique, still-evolving forum to foster a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” Just before Anchorage, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet their South Korean and Japanese counterparts.

This is elemental choreography, reassuring allies and signaling that “regular order” in diplomatic process is back in Washington.

But process is not substance, and certainly not a strategy for dealing with unacceptable Chinese behavior. A by-no-means-comprehensive list of Beijing’s transgressions that require U.S. attention would include: meddling, blatant and subtle, with U.S. public opinion; building military bases in the disputed South China Sea; menacing Taiwan, Vietnam and India; increasing strategic nuclear forces and egregious global cyberwarfare; empowering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program; concealing the origins of covid-19; stealing intellectual property and forcing technology transfers; and genocide against Uyghurs and the repression of Hong Kong.

But listing points of friction is also not strategy. Considerable risk lies ahead if Biden’s most important China objective, however understated, is to “explore whether there are other avenues for cooperation,” as Blinken recently testified. This is equivalent to saying, “Let me tell you what our weak points are.”

Despite the administration’s denials, zeal for a climate deal may be first on the list.

Even if “other avenues for cooperation” is only a diplomatic nicety, Blinken and Sullivan must stress to the Chinese that Biden’s policy will differ fundamentally from his predecessors’. U.S. public opinion, as in many industrial democracies, has turned decidedly negative toward Beijing because of its conduct regarding covid. China’s manifold noxious actions, noted above, have also increased public disapproval.

That ought to tee up the most important point Blinken and Sullivan should make: This is not the Obama era. The good times (for China) are not going to roll again without massive changes in Beijing’s behavior — and not just by making promises, as was so often the case in years past. The United States today cannot afford to revive former president Barack Obama’s blinkered acquiescence in China’s conduct.

Given Biden’s few campaign pronouncements on foreign policy, his eight years as Obama’s vice president and a new administration overflowing with Obama alumni, Beijing could be excused for hoping that (his criticism of the Uyghur genocide notwithstanding) Biden will be the successor to Obama that Xi had expected Hillary Clinton to be in 2017. Biden would do well to disabuse Beijing of that idea.

Distinguishing himself from Obama may be hard for Biden. Ironically, distinguishing himself from Donald Trump’s transactional propensity for short time horizons and splashy deals may also prove difficult. If reaching climate change agreements with Beijing is as urgent as the vibes emanating from Biden’s special envoy John F. Kerry suggest, it could be impossible. Trump’s unpredictable gyrations are gone, but his fascination with big deals regardless of the cost to the nation may unfortunately remain.

Blinken and Sullivan must be clear, if they can be, that Biden, unlike Obama, recognizes China as at least an adversary, if not an enemy — and that the United States will tailor its policies accordingly. And that, unlike Trump, Biden will think and act strategically.

In Anchorage, the U.S. officials need not be bellicose in making these points, but they must be as confident and assertive as their Chinese counterparts will undoubtedly be in advancing Beijing’s interests. If Blinken and Sullivan fail to press hard for, say, less-belligerent Chinese behavior in the South China Sea to avoid jeopardizing what appear to be higher-priority objectives on climate change, Yang and Wang will sense it instantly. And Xi will not hesitate to try to exploit any opportunity presented.

This first high-level Washington-Beijing encounter will not resolve any major issues, and no one expects it to. If Blinken and Sullivan emphasize that Biden is developing a coherent strategy to resolutely oppose China’s objectionable behavior, that alone would be a vital difference from the past 12 years. If not, however, the China question will become an increasingly important focus of America’s domestic political debate, and one where Biden is unlikely to fare well.

Biden should stay in Afghanistan

March 01, 2021

This article appeared in The Washington Examiner on March 1, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton 
March 1, 2021

America’s 20-year history in Afghanistan inevitably colors debate about the U.S. interests at stake and what to do there next. Unfortunately, the debate often deteriorates into a war of bumper-sticker slogans: “ending endless wars” versus “standing by our commitments.”

Newly-inaugurated, President Biden now has a unique opportunity. Inheriting last year’s deeply flawed withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, Biden faces a May 1 decision whether to completely remove U.S. forces. In theory, earlier U.S. force reductions and the final departure were to be “conditions based.” Coming only in return for the Taliban’s ending of its support for international terrorists, its making peace with Afghanistan’s government, and its action to reduce in-country violence. No one seriously argues these conditions can be met by May 1. Accordingly, Biden has a critical choice.

The congressionally-mandated, bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group recently advocated extending the withdrawal deadline, essentially to buttress the withdrawal agreement’s conditionality. Biden thus has ample political cover to maintain the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, although he would be wrong to believe that the underlying deal requires only modest re-torquing to make it viable. One can certainly doubt that the Taliban will ever honor their commitments. In what is hopefully a renewed era of “normalcy” in policy debates, however, an extension also affords time to recalibrate our basic interests and stop the bumper-sticker bombardment.

Biden should conclude that the Taliban has already so materially breached the peace deal that it no longer binds Washington.

America’s basic interest is not facilitating an abstract Afghan “peace process,” like the Middle East “peace processing” mirage. The United States wants to ensure that Afghanistan is not a base for terrorist operations. “Peace,” as defined in the Afghan context, relates to this objective but does not guarantee it. Global terrorist operations can be organized and launched from states that appear and may well be entirely peaceful. While a stable, peaceful Afghanistan could enhance the possibility of preventing terrorist activities emanating from its territory, it is, bluntly stated, not essential.

Moreover, Washington is not responsible for building stability and peace there or anywhere else, especially when to do so means major changes in the fabric of Afghan society. Afghans can do their own nation-building in their own good time if they so desire. For America, the touchstone is our strategic interests, not complete congruence with Afghanistan’s. If it is fundamentally important for U.S. security to conduct “forward defense” there, and it is, that calculus does not change depending on whether the Afghan government’s military or political performance meets our expectations. We can certainly assist and urge them to do better, but their deficiencies, militarily or in reconciling with the Taliban, only bolster the argument that protecting America requires our continued presence. As Kabul is responsible for its domestic policies, we are responsible for our security.

If, therefore, it is not in our interest to withdraw, we should not, even if the conflict between the Taliban and non-terrorist Afghans continues indefinitely. This is not simply a squabble over nomenclature but over strategic goals. As with all valid long-term objectives, we must be prepared to persist for the long-term in order to achieve them. This is not what the Afghanistan Study Group recommends or what Biden probably prefers, but it is the only approach with a prospect for enduring success. As long as the Taliban are correct when they say, “you have the watches, we have the time,” we are doomed to fail.

There is another key American objective in Afghanistan, afforded by geography, not adequately recognized in previous administrations.

Situated between one nuclear-weapons state, Pakistan, and an aspiring nuclear-weapons state, Iran, Afghanistan provides a forward operating base for close scrutiny and access across its eastern, western, and southern borders. Not all intelligence, even today, is gathered from space by national technical means. Being proximate to two potential nuclear threats is not an asset to discard lightly. For the Biden administration in particular, mistakenly eager to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a continuing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan constitutes an insurance policy not merely against a resurgence of terrorism but against the growing nuclear-proliferation menace in the neighborhood.

U.S. interests in Afghanistan are also priorities for NATO allies, although the counter-proliferation responsibility falls more heavily on Washington. But there is no conflict between these interests that should inhibit continued NATO involvement in counter-terrorism programs, which thereby also support, albeit indirectly, the counter-proliferation programs. At present, NATO allies have roughly twice as many troops in Afghanistan as the U.S., a ratio that would imply a larger NATO presence if America’s deployment rose. Such an increase, possibly with similar enhancements in Iraq, could also have political benefits inside NATO, repairing some of the damage inflicted on alliance cooperation in recent years.

Britain’s Lord Palmerston urged that a statesman’s duty is to follow his country’s interests. The impending May 1 deadline in Afghanistan will test whether President Biden understands that logic.

Military Force Must Remain an Option With North Korea

February 23, 2021

Trump’s personal diplomacy failed, but Biden can’t go back to the Obama approach.

This article appeared in Bloomberg Politics on February 23, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
February 23, 2021

President Joe Biden last week made his most extensive foreign-policy remarks since taking office, speaking virtually to a G-7 meeting and the annual Munich Security Conference. Despite its worldwide proliferation threat, North Korea’s nuclear program went unmentioned, continuing its near invisibility under the new administration.

One reason for Biden’s reticence might be the pressure from the international left and others to reject three decades of bipartisan U.S. policy ostensibly aiming to denuclearize North Korea. While diplomatic tactics, focus and priority varied considerably under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, they all stressed that Pyongyang’s quest for deliverable nuclear weapons was unacceptable.

Unfortunately, they all produced the same result, namely the North’s continued progress toward an arsenal. During these long decades, we repeatedly heard that using force to keep the world’s most dangerous weapons away from the world’s most dangerous regimes was premature, provocative and unnecessary.

Now, some critics assert that because Pyongyang has essentially developed deliverable nukes, we should abandon denuclearization as unrealistic and unfeasible. The U.S. and its allies must instead accept a nuclear North Korea, working to contain its menace, as they say (in a facile analogy) the West did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Force must now be entirely off the table. Parallel recommendations have been made about Iran’s nuclear efforts.

Not surprisingly, many now rejecting denuclearization earlier believed the rogue regimes were either not pursuing nuclear weapons, or (contradictorily) were doing so only defensively. They strenuously opposed military action, or policies of reunification (Korea) or regime change (Iran), at least not without far more extensive negotiations to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully — a la the Obama administration’s North Korea policy of “strategic patience.”

Somehow, using force moved seamlessly from being “too much” to being “too late” without anyone noticing. Skeptics may ask whether this choir of the high-minded wasn’t being disingenuous all along: They never really believed diplomacy aimed at denuclearization would work, and they simply did not worry that rogue states with weapons of mass destruction were all that dangerous. How many of them are now on Biden’s national security team?

The contrast between continuing to strive for denuclearization versus swallowing failure as a fait accompli could not be starker. Japan, South Korea and many others simply cannot accept a nuclear North, with potentially far-reaching implications for their relations with the U.S. Every aspiring nuclear-weapons state or terrorist group watching North Korea could reasonably conclude that the U.S. and its allies lack the fortitude, concentration, attention span and perseverance to stop them from acquiring nuclear capabilities. And anyone understanding the fearful effects of the coronavirus pandemic can also only conclude that seeking the “poor man’s nuclear weapon” — biological and chemical capabilities — cannot be lightly dismissed either.

Biden would make a potentially fatal mistake if he surrenders the goal of denuclearization. Of course, even if he continues espousing a non-nuclear North Korea rhetorically, that would hardly guarantee he knows how to bring it about, any more than his four immediate predecessors did. Weak arms control and nonproliferation diplomacy is a specialty of Democratic presidencies, and there is every reason to fear Biden will follow suit.

Trump’s performance artistry with Pyongyang also weighs heavily on the Biden administration. Three failed photo-opportunity summits, a U.S. president who fell in love with the latest iteration of the Kim family dictatorship, and four years of continued North Korean progress toward deliverable nuclear weapons are enough to create migraines for those who must now pick up the pieces.

Nonetheless, from all the available evidence, North Korea is weaker today than perhaps ever before in its history. For its own opaque reasons, Pyongyang decided to impose even-greater detachment from the rest of the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, almost certainly reducing its already rickety economy to desperate levels. This is hardly the time to relieve the pressure of economic sanctions and international isolation. This is the time to demand concessions from Pyongyang, not reward its obdurate behavior.

Moreover, Biden’s biggest challenge, developing a strategy to contest China’s desire for Asian and ultimately global hegemony, should put North Korea at its center. For too many years, U.S. diplomats argued that China is a constructive actor in trying to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue. This has long since been made demonstrably false.

China has always been Pyongyang’s enabler, politically, economically and scientifically. President Xi Jinping could end the North’s nuclear aspirations in a stroke if he chose, and Washington must stress this reality at every opportunity. This will be the real test of Biden’s North Korea policy.

Boris Johnson holds the future of the fatally flawed Iran Deal in his hands

February 18, 2021

This article appeared in The Telegraph on February 18, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
February 18, 2021

News that Iran is fabricating uranium metal, reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s members on February 10, sent shock waves through national-security circles. Uranium metal’s most common use is forming the hollow sphere of highly-enriched uranium at the core of nuclear weapons. When imploded, the compressed uranium reaches critical mass and detonates in an uncontrolled fission chain reaction.

Predictably, Iran concocted various pretenses for its uranium-metal work, which fooled no one. Indeed, this is simply one more opening for Tehran to make public illicit work already undertaken but previously undisclosed. The mullahs are upping the stakes ahead of any negotiations with the Biden Administration, which is overly eager to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA).

The UK’s reaction to Iran’s latest ploy will be critical. The JCPOA was long a Holy Grail for the European Union, which the willfully blind Obama administration was delighted to embrace. Washington’s withdrawal from the deal amounted to sacrilege for the EU and its US arms-control acolytes. But however ambitious to rejoin Biden’s team may be, the world has changed dramatically since America’s departure in 2018.

In particular, the Middle East has shifted tectonically. Israel now has full diplomatic relations with Bahrain and the UAE, and with others likely in the near future. The shared reality that Iran is the greatest threat to regional peace and security is largely driving this Arab-Israeli rapprochement. The former adversaries will not react kindly to efforts to expose them to more imminent danger from Iran.

Continue reading the full article on The Telegraph by clicking here.

Biden’s bad move in Yemen

February 08, 2021

This article appeared in The Daily News on February 8, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
February 8, 2021

Yemen’s long, bloody “civil war” — which has essentially become a proxy war between Iran and Gulf Arabs — is correctly seen as a humanitarian tragedy. Too many, however, including President Biden, mistakenly think that solving the tragedy requires blaming the wrong side, effectively exonerating the real culprits and their surrogates.

Biden said last week in his first presidential foreign-policy address that “we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” This sounds significant, except that direct U.S. involvement ended with the 2018 suspension of in-flight refueling of Saudi air operations in Yemen.

Biden had already “paused” several pending weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, although these arms were always intended for general military purposes, not specifically for use in Yemen. Moreover, perhaps unwittingly, Biden’s ambiguous phrasing calls into question the separate U.S. campaign against Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, which threatens both Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

On Friday night, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced plans to revoke the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthi rebels, the principal target of Saudi and UAE military action, as a foreign terrorist organization. The Houthi, a Shia opposition sect, have long received considerable Iranian financial and military support, including in recent times cruise missiles and drones.

These weapons have been used against civilian targets in Saudi and the UAE, including airports and oil infrastructure. Along with weapons supplied by Iran to Shia militia groups in Iraq, they constitute real threats to the oil-producing Gulf monarchies.

In effect, Iran is trying to encircle its Arab enemies, chief among them Saudi Arabia, by installing a friendly regime in their backyard. Among the Arabian Peninsula states, Yemen is the poorest and most notably the only one without oil. Armed conflict and political hostility are the rule, not the exception, there: long-term, multilayered and ever-changing. Ancient strife led to repeated civil wars under British colonial rule and after 1967 when two independent states superseded the colony. Periodic conflicts between (and within) the two Yemens followed until, remarkably, reunification came in 1990.

It didn’t last long. Despite some short-lived stability, a Shia rebellion broke out in 2004. That revolt, after multiple permutations, is the primary conflict in Yemen today.

It is important to understand just what is going on here. Biden is not reversing President Trump’s strategy on Yemen, because Trump had none. He only branded the Houthis on his way out, Jan. 19, all but inviting Biden’s new team to upend the designation. Internal disputes and Trump’s own apathy thwarted action until his term was almost over.

Rather, Biden is making unforced concessions to Iran, laying the basis for resurrecting President Obama’s failed 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. The symbolic rhetorical gesture of “ending” U.S. support for Saudi war efforts is really a slap at Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, since 2015, Riyadh’s most forceful advocate for decisive action in Yemen.

Despite Biden’s implicit effort to characterize this as a brutal Saudi assault on an impoverished country, the central problem is Iran and its proxy, the Houthis. Biden’s decision to inhibit the Saudis and placate the Houthis will not contribute to peace, but will instead inspire the latter to further stiffen their position. Biden is following Obama’s utterly erroneous notion that appeasing Iran will induce it to engage in more civilized behavior on nuclear and other issues, and that Yemen’s Arab neighbors are the real threats to regional peace and security.

In fact, Tehran and its allies will be delighted that the Biden administration’s giveaways have begun, and you can anticipate the mullahs to ramp up their bloody and destabilizing mischief throughout the region and the world.

The White House justifies its policy by citing humanitarian concerns, ignoring that Iran and the Houthis, far better at ideological propaganda than their opponents, are cynically manipulating Yemeni civilians and foreign aid workers for their own strategic purposes. Listing the Houthi as terrorists, for example, was not an obstacle to the distribution of food or medical assistance, or to peacefully resolving the conflict. The obstacle is that the Houthis are terrorists, seeking, with Iran, tactical advantage over their local enemies while reducing the external support they can call upon.

At a bare minimum, U.S. pressure to bring peace and save civilian lives should be applied in an even-handed, not one-sided, manner. Doing that, however, might offend the terribly sensitive mullahs Biden is assiduously courting.

Iran has Biden right where it wants him. The losers are the Yemeni people. And, ultimately, the United States.

Beijing Won’t Let America ‘Compartmentalize’ Climate Change

February 03, 2021

Biden officials’ urgency about emissions makes them likely to sacrifice more-important goals.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on February 3, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton February 3, 2021

President Biden is eager to make climate change a central issue, and he can expect an intense debate. The trade-offs are complicated and the politics are difficult and uncertain. But the biggest challenge may be international, particularly dealing with China, America’s pre-eminent adversary. Does the Biden administration have the slightest idea how to reconcile its global environmental goals with its China strategy?

The early signs aren’t encouraging. Right or wrong, climate change wasn’t on President Trump’s priority list for dealing with China. But it is paramount to Mr. Biden. In Beijing’s eyes, this makes Washington the demandeur—in diplomatic parlance, the one asking for something. It is never a preferred position in negotiations. You want China to take action on climate change? asks Xi Jinping. Let’s talk about what you’re going to give to get it.

Climate diplomacy czar John Kerry knows he has a problem. Taking his first swing last week, he whiffed. Mr. Kerry told the world, “The stakes on climate change just simply couldn’t be any higher than they are right now. It is existential.” He added that Mr. Biden is “totally seized by this issue.” Asked about handling China, given the many contentious disagreements, Mr. Kerry answered that “those issues will never be traded for anything” relating to climate change, which “is a critical stand-alone issue” that it is “urgent that we find a way to compartmentalize, to move forward.”

He didn’t explain how he’d compartmentalize. Nor does former Obama official John Podesta, who recently said that climate change “changes defense posture, it changes foreign policy posture” and “begins to drive a lot of decision making.” He then contradicted himself, urging Mr. Biden to build “a protected lane in which the other issues don’t shut down the conversation on climate change.” Driving down that protected lane will be interesting.

Climate adviser Gina McCarthy compounded the confusion, stressing that “we have to start shifting to clean energy, but it has to be manufactured in the United States of America, you know, not in other countries.” Her own words prove that “compartmentalization” is a fantasy. Moreover, she underscored the risk, distinctly present under Mr. Trump, that national security concerns can easily devolve into old-fashioned industrial policy.

Unfortunately for Mr. Biden, China has a vote, too. Beijing reacted quickly, criticizing Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s affirmation that oppressing the Uighurs constitutes genocide. A Chinese government account tweeted: “China is willing to work with the US on climate change. But such cooperation cannot stand unaffected by the overall China-US relations. It is impossible to ask for China’s support in global affairs while interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests.” In response, Mr. Blinken repeated Mr. Kerry’s compartmentalization mantra.

China’s Asian neighbors worry about the consequences if the U.S. makes climate its priority. There are many reasons why climate change should rank lower than the Biden administration puts it. Plenty of us still believe that wind turbines don’t rise to the level of intercontinental ballistic missiles as a national security concern.

Beijing will obfuscate the stakes and trade-offs of its demands. Mr. Xi won’t propose substantially reducing carbon emissions in exchange for Mr. Biden recognizing the mainland’s sovereignty over Taiwan. But Chinese planners are certainly contemplating how to slice and dice their policy choices to achieve precisely that and other objectionable goals more subtly. Beijing’s negotiators could, say, be stubborn about climate-change issues with Mr. Kerry until Uighur sanctions are scaled down—then stay stubborn until the U.S. acknowledges Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea.

It isn’t enough to say that closer cooperation with the European Union will increase American bargaining leverage with China. In recent months, the German-led EU has been thoroughly accommodating Beijing on both trade and strategic issues, such as the threat Huawei poses to 5G telecommunications. For now, teaming up with a limp-wristed EU could leave America in a squeeze between China and our purported allies.

Nor can America ignore its Asian friends. India will resist greater global climate-change regulation and any weakening of America’s posture on China. Japan may be closer to Mr. Biden on climate, but it opposes significant concessions on security. Taiwan will be justifiably nervous for four years. Southeast Asia and Australia also have critical interests, which they won’t cast aside lightly.

Success on climate change and China won’t be as easy as the Biden administration may imagine.

Trump didn’t think, or act, strategically about China. Biden needs to do both.

January 26, 2021

This article appeared in The Washington Post on January 25, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 24, 2021

China honored me with an Inauguration Day surprise, sanctioning 28 former Trump administration officials, myself included, for being generally unkind to its authoritarian rulers. China’s real target, though, was the minutes-old Biden administration — a hint of things to come if it doesn’t dance to Beijing’s tune.

President Biden now has an evanescent opportunity to think strategically about China-U.S. relations across the full range of politico-military and economic issues. Chart the wrong course, and the negative consequences for America and the West generally could be crippling.

In 1989, George H.W. Bush conducted an analogous review of U.S.-Soviet relations. Criticized for dawdling and initially being too skeptical, Bush nonetheless got it right. His calibrated response to Eastern European unrest hastened the Warsaw Pact’s collapse, and his 1991 support for Boris Yeltsin led inexorably to the U.S.S.R.’s breakup. Freedom found an opening only a few believed possible.

Stressing the need for strategic planning shouldn’t be necessary, but after former president Donald Trump, even simple things need restating. The media usually focus on discrete decisions, but the primal question is whether his successor will think, and then act, strategically. Trump did neither. He didn’t read the fine strategy papers set before him, or else didn’t absorb them. His chaotic “decision-making” led from a bromance (in his mind at least) with Chinese President Xi Jinping to a trade war.

If Trump had won a second term, he might have careened back to bromance and a disastrous trade deal, just for starters. His pre-Nov. 3 “hard line” sought to reap the perceived political benefits of attacking “the China virus.” The post-election tsunami of sanctions and other diplomatic gambits from the administration reflected the reality that he was just no longer paying attention.

In policy terms, these measures were largely correct and should have been taken years ago. As presented, however, they were not strategically coherent, but simply additions to the archipelago of dots constituting Trump decision-making. Beijing clearly sees this, and by thus striking preemptively at the outset of Biden’s term, hopes to roll back as much as possible.

Of course, it matters enormously whether the administration pursues the correct strategy. Precisely because I both reject Trump’s strategic incoherence and fear that Biden represents merely a warmed-over version of President Barack Obama’s limp China policy, there must be real debate, both in public and in Congress, on the substance of Biden’s China strategy. That should not be too much to ask.

Brief op-eds are inadequate for the hard strategic task of matching U.S. resources to its China policy objectives, but here are several key markers. Once Deng Xiaoping broke from orthodox Marxism in the late 1970s, America’s China policy rested on the premise that economic reform would produce increased domestic freedom, and that internationally China would be a “responsible stakeholder” engaged in “a peaceful rise.” Both predictions have proven false, as Secretary of State-designate Antony Blinken tacitly acknowledged in his recent confirmation hearing.

We need to know whether Biden shares this conclusion and what flows from it, because the stakes are high. For example, China can no longer be seen as just a normal trading partner. Trump had it backward, typically, when he frequently described the European Union as like China, only worse. The E.U. often out-bargains U.S. trade negotiators, a legitimate concern; China seeks not just trade advantages but also hegemony in the Indo-Pacific and then globally. This is a far more serious cause for alarm than E.U. auto tariffs. China’s theft of intellectual property alone is a paramount national-security threat, not an obscure trade issue.

Similarly, China’s military belligerence in the East and South China seas, its designs on Taiwan, its enormous buildup across the full spectrum of military capabilities and its bullying of benign powers (such as abusing Canada for arresting Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in 2018 at the U.S. government’s request) all belie any notion of a peaceful rise. Faced with such Chinese provocations, a substantial reduction in the U.S. defense budget sought by some Democrats would hardly bespeak resolve. Instead, a major increase is needed, and not just because of China.

Understanding the nature of Beijing’s threat is also critical. This is not an ideological, Cold War struggle. China is not pursuing Marxist theory, although its domestic policies certainly have nothing to recommend them. Xi is not only crushing Uighurs and other non-Han minorities, but also extinguishing religious freedom and crushing Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. American minds do not take kindly to “civil-military fusion,” or “social credit scores,” whereby Beijing measures the worthiness of its own citizens. This is not Communism at work, but authoritarianism, pure and simple. Misreading it as Marxism 2.0 will impede strategic clarity, not enhance it.

Finally, a process point. Debate about the United States’ China strategy must be … strategic. We exacerbate political partisanship if policy debates are about personalities rather than substance. Because Trump didn’t “get” policy, he saw criticism from his political foes as a personal affront and lashed out. His opponents responded in kind, and partisanship worsened. Trump is now yesterday’s news, as his style of politics should be, especially in national-security affairs.

Trump Impeachment 2.0 Is as Flawed as the First

January 25, 2021

I am not saying Trump is innocent. But if his foes really wanted to punish him, they would simply ignore him.

This article appeared in The National Review on January 25, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 25, 2020

I have nothing good to say about Donald Trump’s meretricious argument that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election; or Trump’s trying to steal it for himself by frivolous if not fraudulent litigation and administrative proceedings and intimidating elected officials at all government levels; or his inciting violence on January 6 to preclude Congress from fulfilling its duty to certify the Electoral College vote; or Trump’s sundry efforts to convert the Justice Department into his personal law firm (including trying to suppress my recent book, on the pretext that it contained classified information, which it did not).

Nonetheless, like Impeachment 1.0, the 2021 edition is badly conceived, poorly executed, and likely to produce precisely what the first round did: results 180 degrees contrary to the objectives that impeachment supporters say they want. Last year, Nancy Pelosi said endlessly that Trump was “forever impeached,” somehow never mentioning that he was also “forever acquitted” by the Senate. Instead of deterring and constraining Trump, as Pelosi contends, the failed first effort, if anything, emboldened and enabled him. He got away with it once and could thereby reasonably conclude he could get away with it at will.

Which brings us to Impeachment 2.0. Like the first, it is too narrowly drawn (first Ukraine, now the Capitol desecration) and was rushed through the House on largely partisan lines. Neither scenario is the right way to do impeachments, 50 percent of which in U.S. history have occurred in the past twelve months. Let me be clear: I am not saying Trump is innocent. Or that he has “suffered enough.” Or that we should “turn the page.”

I am saying we should be clear-eyed and cold-blooded about what a Senate trial and conviction would mean. Holding Trump “accountable” is not the only cost-benefit metric, or even the right one. The real measure is whether the country will emerge from the ordeal better than when it entered, not how gravely Trump is damaged. With blood in their eyes, however, impeachment proponents ignore the bigger picture.

A critical unknown is whether the Constitution permits impeachment or trial of a former president. Trump, we know confidently, will contest jurisdiction not only in the Senate but also in court. Endlessly. His great fundraising Wurlitzer will work overtime, as will his followers’ echo chamber, while the litigation plods on long after the Senate’s work is over.

The constitutional debate is already underway, and those arguing that former presidents (and other ex-officers subject to impeachment) cannot be tried have the better argument. In particular, Article II, Section 4 says expressly that such officers “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Trump obviously cannot be removed from office if he no longer holds it, which would render this provision of the Constitution meaningless. So doing would violate a basic principle of contract, statutory, and especially constitutional construction that such writings should be construed so that no provision is rendered meaningless. Was it just a slip of the pen when the Framers wrote “shall be removed from Office”?

But the clause’s real importance is in the light it sheds on the fundamental jurisdictional issue of whether post-incumbency impeachment trials are permissible at all.

If fairness to an impeached incumbent president, in the extraordinary circumstances of a Senate trial, requires the chief justice to preside, why doesn’t fairness also require the chief to preside after a president leaves office? Did the Framers believe that it was acceptable to be less fair to a former president — as many would say if Vice President Kamala Harris or Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy presided? The only logical conclusion we can draw from this dilemma, reinforcing the points made above, is that there is no constitutional warrant here for a Senate trial.

There’s no doubt that the Senate trial will only provide more oxygen to Trump, in his self-absorbed efforts to garner attention. Attention is what Trump lives for. If his foes really wanted to punish him, if they wanted to inflict the most terrible fate possible, they would simply ignore him. They could organize societal “shunning” of Trump, as some religious denominations do.

Nor would a Senate conviction bring closure to the Trump era; instead, it would simply add fuel for the Wurlitzer and the “stab-in-the-back” narrative Trump is already crafting. Perversely, conviction would validate Trump’s basic complaints. On balance, therefore, the country generally and the Republican Party particularly would be better off without the Sturm und Drang that surely lies ahead. If I were cynical, I would say that Democrats believe they benefit by keeping Trump center stage, rather than Republicans. Congressional Democrats benefit from Republican fratricide and Trump’s toxicity (as demonstrated in the January 5 Georgia Senate runoff results), and avoid attention to their own internal strife and leftist policies.

I predict that a sufficient number of Senate Republicans will conclude that their chamber lacks jurisdiction, and Trump will again skate free. Felicitations to all who participate. Let’s not do it again soon.

What’s Wrong with a European Army

January 19, 2021

An expiring arms-control deal is a chance to address hypersonics and make China come to the table.

This article appeared in FORUM.EU on January 18, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 18, 2020

The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, now completed at last, is the most consequential event in EU history for its aggregate military power. And it is entirely negative. At a stroke, the EU has lost its second-largest armed force, with no prospect that remaining member states, individually or collectively can fill the gaping hole left by London’s departure. The European Union has long been less than the sum of its parts, and that sum is now considerably smaller. Decades of fantasising about an independent “EU army” should have come to an end on December 31.

That won’t happen, of course, because many Europeans have long-believed, often quietly and in discrete conversations, that Europe was “a state under construction,” and, like all proper states, had to have a proper state’s accoutrements: army, central bank, currency, and more. But some aspects of national sovereignty are almost impossible even for the most fervent Europhiles to relinquish, and military power is understandably the hardest of all.

The fantasising should stop for reasons unrelated to Brexit, notably the existence of Nato. The Atlantic alliance is perfectly capable of doing anything the EU could do, has been doing it for seven decades, and is poised to become even more important in the coming years. Britain’s renewed independence will have a powerfully uplifting effect in Nato’s politico-military decision-making, and more broadly, such as in the UN Security Council, with London now entirely free from the cumbersome, puree-making EU common foreign and security policy.

Some persistent advocates of greater independent EU military capabilities are arguing that Washington is no longer a reliable partner, but that is false. Unquestionably, Donald Trump was no friend of Nato, but Europeans should not draw long-term conclusions from his attitudes toward Nato or international affairs generally. He never proceeded according to coherent philosophical or policy logic, and history will rapidly judge his administration to be an unfortunate aberration. Trump saw problems in narrowly transactional (and largely financial) terms, and through the prism of how events could be made to benefit him personally. Extrapolating future US policy from Trump’s “policies,” therefore, is not only wrong, but dangerous.

That is not to say that European Nato members can now safely ignore the 2014 Cardiff Commitments, especially the pledge to spend two per cent of their GDP’s on defence capabilities by 2024. Trump’s obsession with the need to raise Nato spending may have been expressed in his usual idiosyncratic fashion, but it reflects the consistent view, across America’s political spectrum, that its allies must better understand the array of threats facing the west, and the need for everyone to pull their weight.

In a famous 2016 interview just before leaving office, for example, Barack Obama chastised Britain and France, along with many others, as “free riders” for their inadequate 2011 performance against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Obama Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta repeatedly echoed these complaints. The cost-sharing issue is not going away under Biden, both because he likely agrees with Obama, and because Republicans won’t let it.

Even leaving Brexit and Trump aside, EU efforts on defence matters have been, and are almost certain to remain, long on rhetoric and process and very short on substance and resources. After considerable fanfare and arduous effort almost twenty years ago for example, the “Berlin Plus” agreements have resulted in only two EU peacekeeping operations, both merely taking over from prior Nato forces. While Commission President Ursula von der Leyen may urge the EU to develop “credible military capabilities,” that is far easier said than done. It would be much more persuasive to see Germany raise its defence spending to the Cardiff target, which von der Leyen knows from her tenure as FRG Defence Minister is not going to happen; Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government with the Social Democrats has struggled just to maintain defence spending, let alone increase it. The same is true across Europe. As 2020 ended, Reuters reported that the first EU defence review “found that only 60% of the national troops and weapons nominally available to Nato are in a fit state to be deployed.” Pushing for more “independence” from Washington could leave Europe bereft of America’s presence and continuing inadequate defence spending EU-wide.

Von der Leyen also said, after Brexit, that “our future is made in Europe.” But this too is fantasy. Global threats, from China in particular, but also from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism, are growing, not receding. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s vision of “Global Britain” is considerably more astute than an inwardly-focused “little Europe.” European capitals would be better advised to heed the suggestion made by former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar to expand Nato into a global organisation, including possible new members like Japan, Australia, Singapore and Israel. There is no need to create a “league of democracies,” as some have suggested, to confront increasing threats from authoritarian regimes. We already have one in Nato, which simply needs to be enlarged beyond its birthplace in the North Atlantic area.

The basic reality is that a sustained programme to create a meaningful EU military would constitute a dagger pointed at Nato’s heart. That is undoubtedly what some really hope for, and not just our adversaries, but even many in Europe and America. Let us hope they are disappointed, at least until the lions lie down with the lambs.