Iran: Regime Change is Within Reach

July 03, 2017

This article appeared in the Gatestone Institute on July 3, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
July 3, 2017

The following is a transcript of Ambassador John Bolton’s speech to the Grand Gathering of Iranians for Free Iran, on July 1, 2017.

It’s a great pleasure and an honor to be with you again here today. I must say, we come at a time of really extraordinary events in the United States that the distinguish today from the circumstances one year ago. Contrary to what virtually every political commentator said, contrary to what almost every public opinion poll said, contrary to what many people said around the world, Barack Obama’s first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not the president of the United States.

So for the first time in at least eight years that I’ve been coming to this event, I can say that we have a president of the United States who is completely and totally opposed to the regime in Tehran. This is the true feeling of the president, and he’s made it very clear — he made it clear during the election campaign last year, he’s made it clear numerous statements and even in tweets since then; he completely opposes the Iran nuclear deal signed by his predecessor.

Now, there is underway, as there often is in a new American administration, a policy review to determine what US policy will be on a whole range of issues, including how to deal with the regime in Tehran. But even as that review goes on, Congress is moving, with what for Congress is great speed, to enact new economic sanctions legislation against the regime in Iran. These sanctions, when they are put in place, will be because of the regime’s suppression of its own people, and because of their continued support for terrorism around the world — they will not be related to the nuclear issue, although the regime in Tehran has said if these sanctions are enacted into law, they will consider it a breach of the agreement.

Well, that’s nothing new, since the regime has been in breach of the agreement for two straight years. And it’s also it’s also critical, as we look at this policy review, to understand what we want the outcome to be and what, in the United States, many of us are working toward. The outcome of the president’s policy review should be to determine that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its 40th birthday.

The fact is that the Tehran regime is the central problem in the Middle East. There’s no fundamental difference between the Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rouhani — they’re two sides of the same coin. I remember when Rouhani was the regime’s chief nuclear negotiator — you couldn’t trust him then; you can’t trust him today. And it’s clear that the regime’s behavior is only getting worse: Their continued violations of the agreement, their work with North Korea on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, only continues to grow.

And let’s be clear: Even if somebody were to say to you that the regime is in full compliance with the nuclear deal, it doesn’t make any difference. North Korea is already perilously close to the point where they can miniaturize a nuclear weapon, put it on an intercontinental ballistic missile, and hit targets in the United States. And the day after North Korea has that capability, the regime in Tehran will have it as well, simply by signing a check. That’s what proliferation is, that’s what the threat’s about, and that’s why Donald Trump’s views on North Korea are so similar to his views on the regime in Tehran.

But in the region as well, we face a very, very dangerous point. As the campaign to destroy the ISIS Caliphate nears its ultimately successful conclusion, we must avoid allowing the regime in Tehran to achieve its long-sought objective of an arc of control from Iran, through the Baghdad government in Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, and the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon — an arc of control, which if it’s allowed to form, will simply be the foundation for the next grave conflict in the Middle East. The regime in Tehran is not merely a nuclear-weapons threat; it’s not merely a terrorist threat; it is a conventional threat to everybody in the region who simply seeks to live in peace and security.

The regime has failed internationally. It has failed domestically, in economics and politics — indeed its time of weakening is only accelerating, and that’s why the changed circumstances in the United States, I think, throughout Europe and here today, are so important.

There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs, and that opposition is centered in this room today. I had said for over 10 years since coming to these events, that the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change, and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself. And that’s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran! Thank you very much.

John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad”.

China’s choice on North Korea

April 28, 2017

This article appeared in USA Today on April 28, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
April 28, 2017

For 25 years, U.S. presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, have tried persuasion (through diplomacy) and coercion (through economic sanctions) to induce North Korea to abandon its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs. All these efforts have failed. Pyongyang happily commits to denuclearize in exchange for economic benefits, but never honors its commitments.

A 26th year will also fail. North Korea sees deliverable nuclear weapons as its ace in the hole, synonymous with regime survival. When we say “give up your nukes,” Kim Jung Un and his generals hear “give up your regime (and your lives).” They won’t do it.

Barack Obama’s gutting of our nascent missile-defense capabilities has made pre-emptive action more likely. More robust detection and missile systems, although far from perfect, would provide more time and confidence that we could protect innocent American civilians from a terrorist nuclear strike by Pyongyang.

Only one non-military alternative now exists: convincing China that reuniting Korea, essentially by the South peacefully absorbing the North, is in both of our best interests.

China fears that truly applying its enormous economic leverage would collapse the Pyongyang regime, resulting in millions of refugees flowing into China, and American troops positioned on the Yalu River. Washington can assure Beijing that we (and Seoul) also fear massive refugee flows, and would work with China to stabilize the North’s population as its government disintegrated, and provide humanitarian assistance. And China can rest assured we don’t want U.S. forces on the Yalu, but instead want them near Pusan, available for rapid deployment across Asia.

There is a deal here, not based on Pyongyang renouncing its nuclear program, but on China and America ending the North’s threat by peacefully ending the North.

Ironically, a pre-emptive U.S. attack would likely have the consequences Beijing fears: regime collapse, huge refugee flows and U.S. flags flying along the Yalu River. China can do it the easier way or the harder way: It’s their choice. Time is growing short.

Iran & the next Middle East war

April 09, 2017

This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review on April 9, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
April 9, 2017

Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists and their state sponsors may not be the only threat from the Middle East. But in the coming years, it definitely ranks first on the list.

Thus, as American decision-makers focus on destroying ISIS in Syria and Iraq, they should also be shaping how that war ends to prevent nuclear Iran from benefiting the most.

Syria’s chemical-weapons attack against rebel forces and President Trump’s forceful response at week’s end clearly demonstrate how complex is the regional balance of forces.

The Pentagon is reviewing options to defeat ISIS as rapidly as possible, thus preventing the radical Islamists from recruiting, training and deploying more terrorists throughout the West. This is all to the good, alleviating the dangers to innocent civilians far from the Middle East conflict.

But the Pentagon and the White House should also emphasize another critical strategic fact inherent in any complex, multiparty conflict: Completely eliminating one combatant invariably benefits all those remaining. Certainly, this current war is as complex and volatile as any America has ever seen. Nonetheless, the United States must defeat ISIS through a strategy that maximizes the postwar position of its allies rather than Iran’s. Conversely, Iran and its regional surrogates (Iraq’s current regime, Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorists) should find their relative strength increased as little as possible.

However unpleasant it may be to face the reality of one conflict rapidly succeeding another, our anti-ISIS strategy must recognize Iran’s long-term scenario, where its coalition strives for regional hegemony over Israel and Arab states friendly to America. Iran remains the most prominent state sponsor of terrorism, first designated by Ronald Reagan in 1984 and holding that dubious designation ever since. It is the world’s central banker for international terrorism, funding and arming Shia terrorists like Hezbollah and Sunni terrorists like Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Troubling Trump ‘reality’

It is therefore troubling when Trump administration spokesmen say that leaving Assad in power in Damascus is now a regional reality we must accept. Instead, as we pursue the top priority of destroying ISIS, we should avoid strengthening either Assad’s Iran-backed regime or Hezbollah, which dominates Lebanon and threatens Israel.

In both Iraq and Syria, many Sunnis supported ISIS not because of its extremist ideology but because they opposed, respectively, the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad or Assad’s Alawite regime in Damascus. Accordingly, the last thing we want is a Tehran-dominated Iraqi government increasing its territorial control over Sunni lands in Western Iraq recaptured from ISIS.

We should substantially reverse President Obama’s support to Iraq’s government, as in the ongoing battle for Mosul, which is slowly being obliterated. Baghdad’s forces, especially its Shia militias, are continuing to commit atrocities against the Sunnis and Christians they are supposedly liberating from ISIS, laying the basis for future conflicts.

Divisions among the Kurds are equally complicated; some are reliable allies in Iraq, but others are mortal enemies of Turkey, still a NATO ally, albeit a problematic one.

Tehran’s arc of influence

Tehran’s objective is clear: an arc of influence from Iran through Iraq and Syria, anchored in Lebanon by Hezbollah. From this geographic base, terrorist attacks against Israel, Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula’s oil-producing monarchies, conventional warfare and ultimately even nuclear weapons are entirely feasible.

There should be little doubt that Iran, whose path to deliverable nuclear weapons was paved by Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement, would readily use or threaten to use those weapons, or provide them to terrorists, to achieve regional hegemony. Iran’s continuing menace as a terrorist state is inextricably linked to its nuclear program, and that is one reason why Obama’s nuclear deal is so inadvisable.

It also explains why meaningful anti-terrorism cooperation with Russia is impossible as long as Russia aligns itself with the ayatollahs.

The grim reality is that Russia and Iran are functional allies in this and probably future Middle East wars, less interested today in destroying ISIS than in consolidating and expanding their positions in preparation for the next conflict.

Russia stood by Assad even when his prospects looked bleakest during Syria’s bloody post-2011 civil war. Moscow was determined not only to maintain its Tartus naval facility in Syria, but to expand its reach, regaining levels of influence unmatched since Anwar Sadat expelled Soviet military advisers in the 1970s.

By unequivocally calling for ISIS’s immediate defeat, candidate Trump marked victory in this critical aspect of the war on terror a principal goal of his administration, distinguishing himself clearly from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Now, to re-establish real international peace and security, we should achieve victory over ISIS in ways that protect America and its friends against the continuing nuclear and terrorist threats from Tehran’s radical Islamist regime.

John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and, previously, the undersecretary of State for arms control and international security.

Tomahawks fired, now think about the new Middle East

April 09, 2017

This article appeared in The Times (UK) on April 9, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
April 9, 2017

The Obama era in American foreign policy ended in Syria in the early hours there on April 7. Donald Trump’s prompt, calibrated and devastating assault on the airbase from which al-Assad’s dictatorship launched planes loaded with chemical weapons to murder innocent civilians was a fire bell in the night for all of America’s present and potential adversaries.

Whether Syria (and perhaps Russia) thought they would get away with the renewed use of chemical weapons based on media perceptions of Trump’s national security proclivities, we may never know. But his response has demonstrated that Trump will do what he believes is necessary when America’s security is threatened.

Vladimir Putin and perhaps even US Democrats will now realise there is no puppet of Moscow in the White House.

Iran and North Korea should take due note of the effects of 59 well-aimed Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles (“T-LAMs” in our jargon: they should become familiar with it).

No Hollywood scriptwriter could have imagined a scenario where Trump orders the attack and then sits down to dinner with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, and their wives. Welcome to the American way of war.
There is no doubt that Trump’s limited and precise attack was fully justified. Syria was a party to the chemical weapons convention, as is the United States. Whenever any party to a treaty that forbids the use or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction breaches its commitments, that constitutes a threat to American national security.

Critics in Washington who argue that the president needs congressional authorisation should study their constitutional history.

In the immediate aftermath of the strike, many will ask only what is next for Syria. In fact, the geostrategic question is far broader, encompassing nearly the entire Middle East.

Two important politico-military factors have changed dramatically since Trump took office.

First, unlike Barack Obama, Trump has no concern that his actions in Syria, especially those directed against Assad, will adversely affect the nuclear deal with Iran. Trump’s criticisms of that deal are abundantly clear.

Second, and perhaps even more important now, we are rapidly approaching the point of eliminating the Isis “caliphate” in what used to be Syria and Iraq. It behoves Washington and all other concerned parties to think hard about what will replace the vacuum created when Isis’s territory is liberated.

It is especially important to structure the Isis defeat to minimise the upside advantages for the Iran-led coalition, which includes the pro-Iran Baghdad regime, Assad’s Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorists.

Russia is allied with this coalition, openly so in the case of Syria where Russia has a naval base at Tartus and a new airbase at Latakia.

We should not think only in terms of an either/or outcome in Syria: either Assad goes or Assad stays. There may be other outcomes, including partitioning Syria (and Iraq), leaving Assad in control only of what has been called “the Alawite enclave”.

Complex, seemingly intractable issues lie ahead, as the post-First World War Middle East order collapses, but they cannot be ignored under the complacent assumption that Syria and Iraq will simply re-emerge as the states they were before the ill-named Arab Spring and the equally ill-fated US decision to withdraw its forces from Iraq, both in 2011.

The Kurds are already de facto independent from Iraq and no one will force them back into Iraq against their will. Sunni Arabs will never happily submit to a government in Baghdad dominated by a Shi’ite population outnumbering them three to one and dominated by Tehran.

Similarly, Syrian Sunnis will not accept Assad as their ruler again. To believe otherwise is to ignore that such outcomes will simply precipitate further conflict and more extremism.

The main issue is to keep the aspiring nuclear weapons state Iran, still the central banker of international terrorism, from emerging in an even more menacing regional position.

Weakening Assad’s forces — and reminding Tehran implicitly of what Washington did to Saddam Hussein in 2003 — can only improve the regional prospects for stability. The lesson is that American strength is a force for international peace and security and American weakness an incentive for the world’s predators.

April 6, the day in US time when Trump ordered the strike against Syria, marked the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into the First World War.

We never asked for global responsibilities, but when it mattered we acted and we acted justly. Let America’s critics around the world think on that. I am particularly proud to be an American today.

John Bolton was the American ambassador to the UN, 2005-6

Possibilities for reunifying the Korean Peninsula

March 28, 2017

This article appeared in the Washington Times on March 27, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
March 27, 2017

With North Korea threatening its sixth nuclear test, and the pace of its ballistic-missile tests quickening, Pyongyang’s global threat is ever more imminent. Twenty-five years of self-defeating American efforts to negotiate with the world’s only hereditary Communist dictatorship have, not surprisingly, proven fruitless.

The North’s persistence and duplicity, U.S. naivete and diplomatic incompetence, and political and economic backing over the years from China, Russia and Iran have all contributed to the current crisis, where good options are scarce. After decades of rhetoric and failed diplomacy, Republican and Democratic alike, we have all but run out of time to prevent a nuclear North Korea by peaceful means.

Accordingly, national-security strategists are now examining American military options to protect our innocent civilians, and those of regional allies South Korea (inconveniently enmeshed in a constitutional crisis) and Japan. Given Seoul’s vulnerability to Pyongyang’s chemical and biological weapons (which its choice of VX nerve agent to assassinate its leader’s half-brother has recently reminded us), the choices all embody significant risks. Moreover, the consequences of one of Barack Obama’s worst legacies, his gutting of America’s national missile-defense program, now leave us painfully vulnerable at home.

Do any diplomatic avenues remain open? Only one offers any possibility of a lasting solution, as opposed to resuming talks with North Korea in the diaphanous expectation that the 26th year of such negotiations will produce results not discovered in the first 25. That possibility — peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula — Washington has all but ignored these last decades, although the upside of potential success is enormous.

The case for Korean reunification is not an appeal to China to help America. It is an argument for China to look to its own national interest, and to act accordingly. Consider these postulates:

First, the Korean Peninsula will be reunified. Its division in 1945 was purely expedient, intended to be temporary, and just as unnatural as Germany’s contemporaneous partition. The only questions are when and how Korean reunification will occur: Will it be through war or the North’s catastrophic collapse, or will the United States, South K
Korea, China and others manage the South absorbing the North coherently?

Second, China may actually believe what it says in opposing a North Korean nuclear-weapons capability because it destabilizes East Asia and therefore harms China’s own economic development. For years, however, Beijing’s behavior has been schizophrenic, fostering, for example, the inevitably doomed Six-Party Talks, while disingenuously arguing that the real solution had to be found between Washington and Pyongyang.

In fact, China, through its massive economic power over North Korea, could itself quickly remove any Pyongyang regime. Communist ideology, embodied in the unappetizing metaphor that their respective Communist parties are as close as lips and teeth, has for years impeded Beijing’s leaders from contemplating Korean reunification. Today, however, younger Chinese leaders understand and talk openly about the ugly piece of baggage the North represents for China itself.

Skeptics believe China will reject reunification principally on two grounds. Beijing dreads with good reason that Pyongyang’s collapse could produce a refugee flood across the Yalu River into Manchuria, a humanitarian emergency taxing China’s resources and also risking political and economic destabilization. (Seoul fears a similar refugee tide into the Demilitarized Zone.) In response, Washington and our regional allies should pledge full cooperation with Beijing to avoid massive refugee flows from North Korea as its prison-camp structures dissolve.

This will doubtless involve complex, fraught issues like deconflicting intervening foreign forces in the region as the North’s regime collapses, and securing its missile facilities and stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. In addition, we need a communications program urging North Korea’s population to remain in place, plans for the substantial and expeditious distribution of humanitarian aid, and other steps to help steady the North’s population even before significant refugee flows begin. While there are unquestionably political implications in these issues, they are fundamentally technical, and ultimately manageable.

China’s real objection to a managed reunification obviously rests on strategic concerns, namely what America’s role in a reunited Korea will be. Most importantly, Beijing does not want U.S. forces along the Yalu River. China didn’t like that movie in 1950, and doesn’t like it any better today. Fortunately, Washington doesn’t want our troops deployed on the Yalu, either, any more than today it wants them pinned down in the DMZ as a trip wire. Being fixed in essentially indefensible positions is bad tactics and worse strategy, especially given the attractive alternative of redeploying U.S. forces to the southern tip of the Peninsula. From Pusan, they could be rapidly deployed in Korea as events might require, or elsewhere across East Asia. China may not like that, either, preferring complete U.S. withdrawal to Japan or points further east, but that is simply Beijing dreaming. China should be satisfied with our forces stationed near Pusan, far more desirable for both powers than standing watch on the Yalu.

One final consideration for Washington is that we should long ago have stopped considering North Korea as merely an Asian problem. What Pyongyang has today in terms of deliverable nuclear weapons, Iran can have tomorrow by making a simple wire transfer. The North’s cooperation with Iran on ballistic missiles, intended to be used as delivery systems for their respective nuclear weapons, extends back 25 years, just as long as our fruitless negotiations. And there is every reason to believe the two rogue states are also cooperating on nuclear-weapons technology, such as Iran’s possible financing of the Syrian reactor destroyed by Israel in 2007. Moreover, since North Korea will sell anything to anybody for hard currency, international terrorists need only take a number.

Reaching agreement with China on Korean reunification will not happen overnight, which is why we should have broached the subject 15 years ago or more. But if we wish to avoid resorting to the military option, we must move immediately today. Better ideas are welcome. What should not be welcome is blithely sitting down with Pyongyang for a 26th year of diplomatic failure.

Trump, trade and American sovereignty

March 08, 2017

The WTO’s process for settling disputes fails to deter violators and leaches national power

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on March 7, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
March 7, 2017

President Trump’s trade rhetoric until now has been simple and effective: America is getting ripped off, he says, and things need to change. Simplicity works on the campaign trail, but how does it translate into actual governance?

Earlier this month the administration submitted the annual National Trade Policy Agenda to Congress. The submission takes particular aim at the World Trade Organization’s “Dispute Settlement Understanding,” which provides a quasi-judicial process for resolving international trade disagreements. Although technical, even arcane, the DSU is dear to the hearts of global-governance advocates. The Trump administration is right to criticize its performance.

Agreed to during the Uruguay Round of world trade talks in 1994, the DSU has had some successes. But it is often criticized for failing to deter violations of the WTO’s substantive trade provisions and for too often exceeding its mandate by imposing new obligations on one or more parties, particularly against American interests.

This alarming trend extends beyond trade. A rising number of international agreements create “judicial” or “legislative” bodies that interpret and expand obligations well beyond what is laid out in underlying treaties, placing them beyond the effective control of domestic democratic institutions. This trend raises legitimate fears among states that they will lose sovereign authority. This fear is particularly acute in America, where the Constitution unmistakably fixes sovereignty in “We the People.”

The U.S. has in the past rejected or renounced international agreements that were not conducive to its interests. In 1986 the Reagan administration withdrew from the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. In 2002 the Bush administration unsigned the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court. The U.S., thankfully, still has not ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty, thereby avoiding the jurisdiction of the tribunal it creates.

Washington has also blocked declarations by periodic “treaty-review conferences,” which have a similar tendency to expand member-state obligations beyond those contained in the original agreements. Likewise, the Trump administration is considering withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose creation the Bush administration voted against in 2006, and which the U.S. did not join until President Obama took office in 2009. The American people are often the last to learn of their new and purportedly legally binding commitments.

That isn’t to say that these international decision-making bodies are established exclusively to evade the burdens of America’s Constitution, only that evasion is their clear consequence. The unspoken objective is to constrain the U.S., and to transfer authority from national governments to international bodies.

The specifics of each case differ, but the common theme is diminished American sovereignty, submitting the United States to authorities that ignore, outvote or frustrate its priorities. Nothing in the Constitution contemplates such submission to international treaties or bodies. While many European Union governments seem predisposed to relinquish sovereignty, there is scant hint of similar enthusiasm in America. Moreover, the United Kingdom just dealt a stunning blow to the notion of Europe’s “ever closer union.” By reasserting their sovereignty, the British are in the process of escaping, among other things, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.

That brings us back to trade. The DSU is not, as some say, analogous to U.S. courts, which preserve the Constitution’s nationwide free-trade area through the “dormant Commerce Clause” doctrine. America is a real civil society where real courts have real enforcement capabilities—a far cry from the “global community” fantasyland. If Americans feel increasingly unable to restrain the exercise of judicial and legislative power at home, why should anyone be surprised to learn that international bodies are even worse?

Limiting an aggrieved country’s ability to resort to the DSU is not a rejection of free trade. To the contrary, it is a rejection of the unaccountable, legalistic morass into which free trade can all but disappear. In reality, ignoring DSU outcomes has always been an option for those prepared to face the consequences.

What is the World Trade Organization’s central objective? Is it to promote actual free trade, or is it merely to reify the DSU? If, in fact, this faltering dispute-resolution mechanism is the WTO’s central pillar, without which global free trade is doomed to collapse, we can legitimately conclude there is something gravely wrong with the direction of the basic enterprise.

Some countries cause more global trade problems than others. China is doing tangible harm to the regime of liberal international trade by striking first, and sometimes repeatedly, in violation of substantive WTO obligations in fields like intellectual property protection. Such countries—not those that retaliate rather than submit to the DSU—deserve the world’s ire.

If the DSU fails to deter repeated acts of trade aggression because of its cumbersome nature and faulty decisions, then the problem is likely the DSU, not its critics. Ironically, many global-governance advocates play down the DSU’s significance since it involves only trade, not existential political questions. Such modesty might seem becoming, but precedents established in one aspect of international affairs inevitably bleed into others.

The burden properly lies with the White House to specify how it will confront the DSU’s failings, many of which seem embedded in its design. Whatever steps President Trump recommends should be understood and measured against the larger dangers of global governance. The shadows cast by other flawed multilateral “authorities” make clear that U.S. sovereignty is at stake.

Trump Needs ‘Long-Term Strategy to Keep Russia in Check in Europe and Middle East’

February 23, 2017

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton on the Trump administration’s top foreign policy objectives:

“The two immediate threats are the proliferation of nuclear, chemical weapons. We see Iran and North Korea as the sort of two leading-edge threats in that regard. And then, second, the continuing threat of radical Islamic terrorism, with ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban in Afghanistan, all really threatening us in palpable ways today.”

“We need to have a long-term strategy to keep Russia in check in both Eastern and Central Europe and in the Middle East.”

“The relationship with China, I think, will be the dominant international issue for the United States for the rest of this century, and we’re not doing well right now.”

Trump Appointees Must Avoid ‘Siren Song’ of Positive Media Coverage in Shaping Policy

February 23, 2017

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton discussed the mainstream media’s efforts to influence the administration:

“One of the bedrock principles of conservatism – and I think they start with the belief in American exceptionalism and the notion that our national security policy has to be based on American interests.”

“…In the mainstream media commentary about the president’s emerging team and the direction he’s going in, some of the themes that show how the press, the mainstream press in Washington, tries to manipulate new Republican administrations.”

“But what the media and the Democrats are trying to do now is convince them: ‘You don’t want to be controversial. You don’t want to be ideological. Things are just fine. Be a technocrat. Tinker around the edges. Don’t change much.’ That’s not what Donald Trump got elected to do. That’s the fight really on the national security front, I think, for the soul of the administration.”

Trump’s New Start With Russia May Prove Better Than Obama’s

February 13, 2017

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Febraury 13, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
February 13, 2017

Media tittle-tattle about President Trump’s telephone calls with foreign counterparts received new fuel last week after details leaked of a conversation with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The usual anonymous sources alleged that when Mr. Putin raised the 2010 New Start arms-control treaty, Mr. Trump asked his aides what it covered—and then, once briefed, declared it to be one of those bad Obama deals he planned to renegotiate.

If so, Mr. Trump got the treaty right. From America’s perspective, New Start is an execrable deal, a product of Cold War nostrums about reducing nuclear tensions. Arms-control treaties, properly conceived and drafted, should look like George W. Bush’s 2002 Treaty of Moscow: short (three pages), with broad exit ramps and sunset provisions.

Although President Obama had considerable help from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in this diplomatic failure, Russia was hardly blameless. Moscow subsequently exploited the treaty’s weaknesses to rebuild and modernize its arsenal of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles, while Mr. Obama stood idly by. Republican senators opposed New Start’s ratification, 26-13 (three of them didn’t vote), as did 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Mr. Trump’s remarks are therefore squarely in the party’s mainstream.

Not so, however, are some of Mr. Trump’s comments—or at least the inferences drawn from them—on Mr. Putin’s political and military adventurism in Europe. Many Republicans worry that, rather than strengthening the international economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its belligerent incursions into eastern Ukraine and its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Mr. Trump may reduce or rescind sanctions entirely.

This apparent difference is no small matter. Legislation to codify the existing sanctions is pending in Congress. It has overwhelming—most analysts think veto-proof—bipartisan support. Commentators wonder whether the remarkable Republican solidarity on Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominations might be shattered if Russia policy is the first area in which the new administration faces off with the Republican congressional majorities.

The sanctions on Russia for its interference in Ukraine are already under assault in Europe: Germany, France and others appear close to succumbing to their apparently hard-wired inclination to sacrifice geostrategic imperatives for economic ones. Elections across the Continent this year may produce results even more favorable to Moscow (possibly, in part, because of Russian meddling). By contrast, the Baltic republics and other NATO members in Eastern and Central Europe are alarmed that Russia’s adventurism would increase if its Ukraine aggression were brushed aside and sanctions lifted.

Yet amid the breathless press accounts about Mr. Trump’s purported fancy for Mr. Putin, one thing is clear: The Trump administration’s policy toward, and even its strategic assessment of, Russia is still under construction. Most important, if the substance of Mr. Trump’s comments on New Start was accurately reported, it shows him resisting items on Mr. Putin’s wish list, and not for the first time.

Mr. Trump has, for example, unequivocally opposed Mr. Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. On Feb. 1, National Security Adviser Mike Flynn put Iran “on notice” that the deal was on life support. New U.S. sanctions against Iran underlined the point. The White House is reportedly considering listing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, which should have been done decades ago. Such a move would have a significant political and economic effect on Moscow’s military-industrial complex, particularly Rosoboronexport, its international arms-sales agency.

Washington should be also push back against Russia’s inserting itself militarily and politically into the Middle East by using the Syria conflict as a wedge. While Ukraine may seem an unrelated issue, it is not. Moscow’s diplomatic efforts to “solve” the Syrian conflict are in substantial part an effort to “help” Europe with the Syrian refugee problem, providing yet another inducement to wobbly Europeans to roll back sanctions. Any perceived American weakness on the sanctions would embolden Russian efforts to further penetrate the Middle East, increasing the dangerous, destabilizing effects of Moscow’s tacit alliance with Iran.

Significantly, Mr. Trump has said he doesn’t know what his relationship with Mr. Putin will ultimately be, and he must surely recognize that national interests, not personal chemistry, underlie great-power foreign policies. America doesn’t sacrifice its national-security bottom line just because a foreign leader “may smile, and smile.”

So let’s raise our glasses to Mr. Trump’s disdain for New Start, not to mention the Iran nuclear deal, and hope for more of the same. The new president ought to strengthen the sanctions, reassure NATO allies (while juicing them to meet their commitments on military spending), and then have coffee with Vlad. Negotiate only from positions of strength.

Mr. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Disarming the Iran threat

February 11, 2017

This article appeared in the Tribune-Review on Febraury 11, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
February 11, 2017

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Washington this Wednesday to meet with President Donald Trump. While the two leaders have a full agenda to cover — including international terrorism, the ongoing carnage in Syria and Israel’s continuing efforts to find peace with its neighbors — Iran’s nuclear-weapons program undoubtedly will dominate their discussions.

Rightly so. Iran’s long-standing program to develop deliverable nuclear weapons is a palpably existential threat to Israel and friendly Arab states in the Middle East. Joint Iranian-North Korean work on missiles and quite likely on nuclear matters demonstrates that the threat is truly worldwide. It is no accident that the Jan. 29 Iranian missile test that provoked Trump’s strong response involved testing a re-entry vehicle. Missiles designed to launch weather satellites into orbit need not be designed for re-entry, but missiles delivering nuclear weapons to their targets obviously do.

CALL FOR A ‘COMMON STAND’

Just before meeting last week with British Prime Minister Theresa May, Netanyahu told Israel’s Cabinet that the West needed to take a “common stand” against “Iranian aggression.” Unfortunately, after Barack Obama’s fatally flawed June 2015 Vienna nuclear deal with the ayatollahs, the West is badly divided. The Vienna agreement’s elimination of economic sanctions against Iran has enticed Europeans in particular to enter extensive trade and investment dealings with Tehran. This is precisely what Iran intended: to make it difficult, if not impossible, to restore meaningful international sanctions once the West realized its basic strategic mistake in striking the deal and its frightening long-term consequences.

As long as Obama remained president, Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs had little to fear. The advent of Trump’s White House, however, has changed all that. The new administration’s tough rhetoric and renewed sanctions demonstrated clearly that critics of Obama’s appeasement policy have taken command in Washington. They now face the question of how to pull the United States out of the hole into which Obama put it — and to do so as soon as possible.

Accordingly, Trump and Netanyahu can make progress toward accomplishing several objectives at this week’s meeting. First, they should fashion a diplomatic strategy to recreate the West’s common political resolve to prevent the ayatollahs from ever getting nuclear weapons. The emphasis should be on “effective.” Strong rhetoric, military maneuvering and economic sanctions all have their place, but even the now-defunct sanctions regime had not slowed down Iran’s nuclear and missile efforts. Putting a tough-minded Western coalition against Iran back together will face heavy going, but it is both vital and urgent.

Second, and to that end, Israel and America must enhance their intelligence-gathering capabilities and cooperation. We know already that Iran has significantly shredded the Vienna deal’s provisions regarding heavy-water production and missile testing. Since the ayatollahs’ project to obtain deliverable nuclear weapons has been an animating desire of their regime since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, we can safely assume they are still at it, likely violating many other provisions of the Vienna deal.

We can also infer that Obama gave very low priority to uncovering and investigating Iranian breaches. Undoubtedly, there is fertile ground for Trump’s new intelligence-community leadership and the Israeli government to compare notes on what nefarious actions Iran has taken since the Vienna deal.

TWO LEADING ROGUE STATES

Moreover, we know that Iran and North Korea, the two leading rogue states, have cooperated for over 25 years on ballistic missiles, and there is compelling anecdotal evidence they are similarly cooperating on nuclear matters. Working with South Korea, Japan and others, America and Israel must do far more to investigate potential linkages than in the past eight years.

Third, Trump and Netanyahu must address how to eradicate ISIS without enhancing Iran’s influence across the Middle East. Obama’s approach to ISIS, a slow-motion campaign that could take years to reach its objectives, if ever, actually strengthens Tehran’s hand in the region along with its surrogates and allies, such as Hezbollah, the Assad regime and the current Baghdad government. Even if ISIS is ultimately defeated under Obama’s approach, Iran will emerge the real victor. Trump has already ordered the Pentagon to review U.S. military options. Now, he and Netanyahu should develop a comprehensive political framework into which the new military strategy will fit.

Wednesday’s meeting in Washington has the potential to change overnight the last eight years of American retreat from the Middle East and from the great global threats of our time, such as nuclear proliferation. Not all the problems will be resolved in one meeting, but the importance of this encounter cannot be overemphasized.