The new order is our chance to keep up in fast changing world

November 15, 2016

This article appeared in The Times UK on November 15, 2016. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
November 15, 2016

In the closing days of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, crowds at his rallies frequently broke into chants of “Drain the swamp!” The swamp in question was Washington, which Trump voters generally saw as interested only in preserving its own comfortable status. “Swamp” was a particularly insightful characterisation, recalling the 19th century when European diplomats considered Washington a hardship post because of its hot, humid summer weather, and the miasmas emanating from the swamplands along the Potomac. By analogy to British politics centuries ago, Mr Trump’s coalition reflected the “country party” against the “court party” in Washington.

There is also considerable swampy territory abroad, where international organisations sometimes act as if they are governments rather than associations of governments and sprout bureaucracies with pretensions beyond those of cosseted elites in national capitals. These international swamplands have thrived under the Obama administration, but their days may now be numbered.

International bodies take many different forms, and it serves no analytical purpose to treat them interchangeably. Nato, for example, is not equivalent to the United Nations. Neither is equivalent to the European Union. Each has different objectives, and different implications for constitutional and democratic sovereignty. For a century, the sovereignty issue has been central in US foreign-policy debates. Starting with the Senate’s 1919 rejection of the treaty of Versailles, to the 1999 defeat of the comprehensive test ban treaty, to America’s 2002 unsigning the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, preserving American sovereignty has been an important principle.

Similarly, the Brexit referendum was, above all else, a reassertion of British sovereignty, a declaration of independence from would-be rulers who, while geographically close, were remote from the peasantry they sought to rule. The peasants have now spoken. Unable to drain the Brussels swamps alone, Britain walked away, which the US has itself done on occasion, withdrawing from Unesco under Ronald Reagan (joined by Margaret Thatcher’s Britain). The Brexit decision was deplored by British and American elites alike, but not by most US conservatives, and definitely not by Donald Trump.

It does not surprise Americans that British elites have not reconciled themselves to losing: their counterparts in America are equally appalled that somehow mere voters rejected the heir apparent to the presidency, and many are now in the streets protesting. They would all be better advised to heed Alexander Hamilton’s comment about the House of Representatives during New York’s ratification debate over the constitution, “Here, sir, the people govern.”

Indeed, ultimately the people do govern. In America, popular sovereignty is embodied in the constitution’s first three words: “We the people.” By endorsing Brexit, British voters have put the bilateral US-UK relationship at the top of Washington’s agenda after Inauguration Day.

Although the transition is still young, Mr Trump has always had a decidedly different view of Brexit from Mr Obama, who contemptuously warned Britain that it would go “to the back of the queue” in trade negotiations if Leave prevailed.

Now, with some imagination and resolve, London and Washington can fashion a new economic relationship, perhaps involving Canada, with the potential for significant economic growth. Let the EU wallow in strangling economic regulation, and the euro albatross that Britain wisely never joined.

Unravelling Britain’s EU bonds will doubtless be difficult and perilous, especially if EU political theologians prevail over commonsense businesspeople. Rewriting trade rules with the United States will also be complex, but the potential economic upside for both countries is enormous.

This is a unique opportunity, and why a successful trade deal should be at the front of the diplomatic queue for both governments.

Nato received considerable attention during the presidential election as Mr Trump criticised member governments whose defence budgets were inadequate. His concern for European under-spending on national security was no different from what US officials, on a bipartisan basis, have lamented for decades. Importantly, Mr Trump has made it clear that his intent is to strengthen Nato, which has been floundering in the post-Cold War era, with its objectives in doubt and its decision-making increasingly sclerotic.

Nato is America’s kind of international partnership: a classic politico-military alliance of nation states. It has never purported to assume sovereign functions, and is as distant as is imaginable from the EU paradigm.

Looking forward we should urgently consider the proposal by José Maria Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister, to make Nato a global alliance. Mr Aznar has suggested admitting new members such as Japan, Australia, Singapore, and Israel, a dramatic departure from Nato’s original transatlantic focus, but which recognises new global realities. Much depends on whether Europe’s Nato members still have a global perspective, or whether they are content for Europe to be simply an appendage to the Asian land mass.

Then there is the sprawling United Nations system, which provides the most dramatic opportunity for change in international organisations. Proposals to reform the UN and its affiliated bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF are almost endless. The real question is whether serious, sweeping reform of these organisations (which make Nato decision-making processes look like the speed of light) is ever possible.

We have not lacked for daring ideas in this field. In 1998, during the Asian financial crisis, the former secretaries of the Treasury William Simon and George Shultz, and Walter Wriston, a former chairman of Citibank, wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “The IMF is ineffective, unnecessary, and obsolete. We do not need another IMF, as Mr [George] Soros recommends. Once the Asian crisis is over, we should abolish the one we have.”

They were willing to think creatively about what new circumstances required, including discarding international organisations no longer fit for purpose.

Twenty years on, we still need such creativity, not just regarding the IMF but the World Bank and the regional development banks. We should consider privatising all the development banks, with the possible exception of the one for Africa. There is no lack of investment capital globally, and private capital flows now easily eclipse concessional flows, with the gap growing steadily larger. We should ask why US taxpayers are compelled to provide subsidised interest rates for loans by international development banks that benefit foreign competitors. As US domestic budgets decline over the next several years to reduce the budget deficit and begin whittling away at our enormous national debt, these international expenditures will receive exacting scrutiny.

The United Nations and its vast array of programmes and specialised agencies are ripe for reform. Much of what has marginalised the UN for decades is inherent in the international political system. National interests continue to dominate in UN decision-making and that will never change.

At best, the UN’s chief political bodies, especially the security council, will reflect the larger world. At worst, which is unfortunately all too often, the peculiar cultures of UN enclaves such as Geneva and Turtle Bay in New York make UN deliberations more otherworldly and irrelevant than most outsiders can imagine.

The one reform that might make a difference is financial. Most UN agencies are funded by “assessed” (meaning mandatory) contributions; agency budgets are decided and then each government pays a percentage of the total determined by arcane calculations and intense private bargaining. The assessed-contribution mode is especially grievous for the United States, whose assessment rate is generally 22 per cent of regular budgets, and 25 per cent for UN peacekeeping (under a US statutory cap; it would otherwise be over 28 per cent). Britain’s regular budget share is 4.46 per cent, and 5.8 per cent for peacekeeping.

As with all entitlement programmes, UN agencies funded by assessed contributions underperform, often in dramatic ways. By contrast, agencies funded by voluntary contributions often function far more effectively. Unicef, the World Food Programme and others have tended to be more agile and productive, largely because they understand that failure to perform will motivate funders to direct their money elsewhere.

Voluntary funding is what the UN needs across the board. We should shift all UN agencies from assessed to voluntary contributions as rapidly as possible. This will be exceedingly difficult diplomatically, given the inevitable wailing and gnashing of teeth from UN bureaucracies, and even from member governments.

A European diplomat once told me that his country could not be allowed to decide for itself its level of contributions, but had to be told. That is not a winning argument in America.

So much to do and so little time to do it. Revolutionary moments in international affairs occur but rarely, and many potential eras of sweeping change never materialise because of the timidity of political leaderships.

Neither Britain nor America seems in a timid mood today. Let’s hope we can deliver.

James Comey Should Dare Obama to Fire Him

November 03, 2016

Amb. Bolton on national security and the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server:

“The utter lack of judgment that she displayed,she and her aides, through this entire home server mechanism, it’s just obviously an effort to avoid scrutiny of her documents under the Federal Records Act.”

“One of the principal reasons that one might understand why Hillary created this elaborate non-governmental communications system was to do Clinton Foundation business, without it getting into the State Department’s electronic storage system.”

“I actually think she will be more of that kind of trans-nationalist than Obama was.”

Cracks in the International Criminal Court

October 31, 2016

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on October 31, 2016. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
October 31, 2016

The International Criminal Court—established by an international treaty and operating since 2002 in The Hague—is under assault from within. South Africa, Burundi and Gambia have announced their intent to withdraw from the ICC (the first members to do so), and other African states, such as Kenya, are also on the brink.

When “nonaligned” nations begin deserting any international organization, it surely is in real trouble. But for reasons that have been clear since the Statute of Rome creating the ICC was negotiated, it has never been in America’s interest to see the court succeed. We should hope the African exodus continues.

The ostensible trigger for the withdrawal is that many African nations are unwilling to arrest and remand to the ICC Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, accused of genocide and war crimes, when he enters their sovereign territory. There is hardly a less sympathetic figure on the planet, outside of Islamic State and al Qaeda. However, the issue is emphatically not whether one favors “justice” for international wrongdoers, but whether the ICC—with its inherent illegitimacy—could ever be the right vehicle for the job.

Within the African Union (open to all countries on the continent) the issue is also made more complex by a rising feeling that the ICC is the latest European neocolonial pretext to interfere in their internal affairs. Since the court’s founding, all 39 public ICC indictments have been of Africans.

Given the European Union’s deepening travails, Europe hardly has the time, will or resources to dabble much in neocolonialism. Yet it is also true that the ICC has been the Western human-rights community’s dearest project, pursued with near-religious devotion in much of Europe and the U.S., and much less enthusiastically elsewhere.

Europeans happily embraced this additional effort to reduce their own sovereignty by joining an institution that could severely compromise their own justice systems. Yet only 124 of 193 U.N. members have joined. The U.S. removed its signature from the Rome Statute in 2002, and even Barack Obama never re-signed, knowing that Senate ratification was impossible—Americans up to the president himself remain at risk of ICC prosecution if U.S. personnel are alleged to commit offenses on a member state’s territory.

Russia, China and India are the most prominent among nearly 70 other nations that have not become members, although something called “Palestine” has joined. This is hardly the trajectory of a viable international institution.

What Africa’s simmering discontent really exposes are the fundamental fallacies underlying the ICC project itself. The world is not one civil society, like a real country, within which disputes are resolved peacefully under the rule of law. Pretending that the globe is a nation under construction, and establishing institutions that pretend to perform like national legislatures, courts and executives, won’t make the world a country.

Even characterizing the ICC primarily as a court ignores the real problem. The Rome Statute’s actual danger is less the court than its prosecutor, which, as Americans understand the separation of powers, is not a judicial function but an executive one. Next to the power to wage war, prosecutorial authority is the most-potent, most-feared responsibility in any executive’s arsenal.

In the case of the ICC, its ability to prosecute democratically elected officials and their military commanders for allegations of war crimes or crimes against humanity could undercut the most fundamental responsibility of any government, the power of self-defense. This power, lodged in the ICC’s prosecutor, is what Africans are really protesting, and also why the U.S. will not join the ICC in the imaginable future.

The prosecutor is much like the “independent counsels” created in America by post-Watergate legislation. These prosecutors performed so irresponsibly and oppressively that a bipartisan congressional majority quietly allowed the statute to lapse. Americans now understand that political accountability—in the broad constitutional sense that federal prosecutorial legitimacy stems from the president’s election—is absolutely critical to responsible law-enforcement.

ICC advocates contend that the prosecutor is supervised by the court itself. Yet in the U.S., for instance, our separation of governmental powers specifically rejects judicial supervision of prosecutors—precisely because elected, and therefore politically accountable, officials must be vested with responsibility for prosecutorial decisions. ICC advocates also argue that the prosecutor is supervised by the Rome Statute’s 124 state parties.

This is purest fantasy. Anything supervised by 124 governments isn’t supervised by anyone, as the sprawling U.N. system demonstrates on virtually a daily basis. Particularly from an American perspective, the ICC’s lack of political accountability and dangerous potential to impede resolution of global conflicts proves it is not fit for purpose.

No wonder the ICC is well on the way to becoming yet another embarrassment like the International Court of Justice or the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Can Putin Be Contained?

October 20, 2016

Amb. Bolton on the Russian dictator’s provocations and how the next U.S. President should respond:

“Putin disregards efforts at dialogue and disregards efforts to contain him when he thinks America is led by a weak and feckless leader.”

“We have allowed our structures of deterrence, built up at great costs over many decades, to deteriorate.”

U.N. Bureaucrats Need a Boss, Not a Dreamer

October 11, 2016

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on October 10, 2016. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
October 10, 2016

Surprisingly to many, the ninth United Nations secretary-general will be António Guterres, a former socialist prime minister of Portugal.

One surprise is that the winning candidate is not from the Eastern European regional group, which has never had a secretary-general, while Western Europe gets its fourth. Another surprise is that the winner isn’t a woman, which will be disappointing to proponents of gender-identity politics. Mr. Guterres did serve 10 years as U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and was previously active in the Socialist International, with both positions serving as springboards for his current candidacy.

What should Mr. Guterres know to perform his new job, and how should we judge his performance over the next five (and perhaps 10) years?

First, he must recognize that he owes his position to the Security Council’s five permanent members. This political reality causes gnashing of teeth in the missions of other U.N. members, and it sometimes raises the blood pressure of a secretary-general. But to be effective, Mr. Guterres will have to live in the rickety house the “perm five” have built, not align himself in opposition to it.

These five nations will often be divided, reflecting their national interests in global affairs, and thereby gridlocking the Security Council, as during the Cold War. So be it—Mr. Guterres must adjust. While there are other powerful, rising countries in the U.N., unless they persuade one or more of the perm five to turn on Mr. Guterres, they inevitably are lesser factors.

Second, across the sprawling U.N. agencies and programs more broadly, Mr. Guterres should recognize that member governments set policy, and the multiple U.N. bureaucracies must implement it. Neither the secretary-general nor U.N. secretariats have any independent policy-making roles, although long years of acting as if they do have created a troublesome institutional culture.

Mr. Guterres will be more productive if he concentrates on his limited turf, such as by reforming the U.N. secretariat’s bureaucratic morass. As Article 97 of the U.N. Charter says, the secretary-general is merely the organization’s “chief administrative officer.” If Mr. Gutteres fancies being this century’s Dag Hammarskjold, floating above the mundane world of nation-states, this may earn him points among the world’s high-minded, but he will accomplish little.

This is where Mr. Guterres’s European Union experience is worrying. Just as they have become accustomed to ceding national sovereignty to EU institutions in Brussels, many European diplomats in New York are perfectly comfortable doing the same with the U.N. Such an attitude regarding already too-independent-minded U.N. staffs is definitely something Washington should oppose. (A reminder for Mr. Guterres: With Britain exiting the EU, that organization will soon have only one Security Council permanent member.)

If member governments cannot agree on policy, then the U.N. should do nothing. Disagreement among the members isn’t an excuse for either the secretary-general (or the secretariat) to freelance, as former Secretary-General Kofi Annan was wont to do throughout his tenure. So doing will invariably lead to conflict with significant U.N. voting blocs and distract from other urgent tasks. Joe Biden likes to quote his mother saying disapprovingly of people who act beyond their bounds: “Who died and made you king?” Mr. Guterres should listen to Mr. Biden’s mother.

Third, when the U.N. does act, especially in matters of international peace and security, the secretary-general must focus diligently on the problem at hand. In particular, U.N. peacekeeping needs urgent attention. These efforts now total (according to current U.N. statistics) 16 operations, nearly 119,000 deployed personnel and a $7.87 billion annual budget. Allegations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers, spreading cholera in Haiti and mismanagement dog U.N. peacekeeping forces, whose halos have slipped since they received their collective Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.

U.N. peacekeeping history is packed with operations that were launched to end conflicts (or at least bring cease-fires) but never actually resolved them. In effect, U.N. military or political involvement becomes part of the conflict battle space, not a catalyst for ending it. Some disputes, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, are insoluble under existing circumstances. In such cases, withdrawing or substantially downsizing U.N. involvement until conditions are more propitious may, with the U.N. crutch removed, force the parties to take greater responsibility.

But where conflicts are resolvable, an international player of Mr. Guterres’s experience can make a difference, if he puts in the time and effort. It is not his job to appoint special representatives for peacekeeping or political missions, and then sit back and watch how they do. Active management and involvement by the secretary-general—which was the style of early secretaries general—is more likely to achieve concrete results, assuming the secretary-general carefully follows Security Council direction.

Given the problems endemic in the U.N. bureaucracy, and a world in flames—although many of the world’s problems are beyond the U.N.’s competence to solve—Mr. Guterres has more managerial work before him than his predecessors have been willing to undertake. If he sticks to that and whatever else U.N. members assign him in coming years, he will be fully occupied. If he strays beyond his remit, there is trouble ahead.

Hostile Foreign Governments Will Use Obama’s Internet Surrender to Their Advantage

September 30, 2016

Amb. Bolton on the Obama policy that has devastating long-term consequences- the surrender of American control over Internet registration:

“I understand why Barack Obama wants to take it out of the control of the United States and give it to the rest of the world. That’s consistent with the way he’s handled foreign policy for the last eight years – and, by the way, consistent with the way Hillary Clinton will handle it.”

“It’s completely understandable that Clinton will try to avoid blaming Obama because she desperately needs to recreate the Obama coalition on November the 8th.”

“The Internet as we have known it is about to disappear, and I think that has national security implications. It certainly has implications for freedom of communication internationally.”

“Obama has long believed the United States is too strong, too powerful, too assertive, too successful…he wants to spread the power around. This is going to be a key part of his legacy.”

Together a Trump-led US and Brexit Britain can restore Nato and the West

September 28, 2016

This article appeared in The Telegraph on September 28, 2016. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
September 28, 2016

Three months after the Brexit vote, it’s time for the UK’s leaders to “get this country moving again,” as JFK once exhorted Americans. Or “make Britain great again,” per Donald Trump, if you prefer.

Brexit was undeniably a revolution in human affairs, opening up vistas for Britain once buried in European Union bureaucracy. Both economically and politically, London has a unique opportunity to rewrite the international conventional wisdom.

Margaret Thatcher foresaw exactly what Britain needs today: “Don’t follow the crowd. Let the crowd follow you.” On Britain’s relationship with the EU, for example, commentators dissecting the “Norway model” or the “Swiss model” are missing the point. Create a British model suited to Britain’s needs, and press ahead.

Negotiations with Brussels’ bitter-enders will be difficult; no one who has ever dealt with the EU could imagine anything else. But do not approach the EU true believers as supplicants. Their businesses and consumers want access to UK markets, products and services just as their British counterparts want the reverse.

Within the EU and within individual European governments, particularly Germany, Britain’s negotiators should seek allies to outflank recalcitrant politicians, many of whom are already severely stressed because of mistakes on other fronts, notably the terrorist attacks and refugee floods sweeping the continent. Divide and conquer has long been a winning strategy, and can be again in the exit negotiations.

On those security issues, Brexit affords the UK the opportunity to be an independent world power once again. No longer drowning in the molasses of EU decision-making, London can act as an equal partner with Washington regarding threats to the West globally.

True, there are those in America, as well as Britain, who have long held that it is in America’s interest to have Britain inside the EU arguing the US case. On this theory, the UK’s role is to be the US barrister before the high court of Germany and France.

This has always been nonsense. It hasn’t worked for the United States, but more to the point here, neither has it worked for Britain. You lose nothing by abandoning the role. The notion that Britain must have “a seat at the table” in the EU appeals primarily to those whose sole objective is having a seat at the table. (This means you, Whitehall mandarins.) Actually getting things done requires rising from a table and doing it, precisely what Brexit now allows.

EU politico-military decision-making invariably produces a smoothie – appetising perhaps, but hardly durable. Recent French and German efforts to move (yet again) toward more robust EU military capabilities may achieve rhetorical success, but little else. From the St Malo declaration forward, the EU collectively has been long on defence talk and short on action. A fully independent UK can now be more effective with Nato’s central and eastern European members by not having to temper its security posture to suit Berlin and Paris. For example, Britain’s view of resurgent Russian militarism within the former Soviet Union has consistently been more clear-eyed than many of its continental partners.

Now, London will once more have its own voice to say so.

Whether, after the US presidential election on November 8, America will again have the political leadership it needs to complement renewed British assertiveness is presently unknowable.

The election is tightening, however, as Trump’s support solidifies and as Clinton’s manifest inadequacies become more evident. But whatever happens in November, Britain must still make her own way.

History’s opportunities do not last forever. The Brexit decision should not be squandered through indecisiveness and inaction. If Britain proceeds confidently, the ripples of Brexit in Europe and beyond will force reforms that could remake the European political landscape to the advantage of both the UK and its soon-to-be-former EU partners. The same is true for Nato, which needs to become more agile and less bureaucratic.

Britain’s actions over the next few months will be more important for itself and the wider West than anything London has done since 1945.

North Korea’s latest nuke test exposes another failed Obama approach

September 12, 2016

This article appeared in the New York Post on September 11, 2016. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
September 11, 2016

North Korea’s fifth nuclear test signals continuing progress and sophistication in its decades-long effort to possess deliverable nuclear weapons. Moreover, both US and South Korean military experts assess that the increasing range of Pyongyang’s ballistic missiles, and its ability to miniaturize nuclear devices in order to mate them with its missiles, means targets across America will be vulnerable in just a few years.

The North’s weapons program perfectly embodies Winston Churchill’s warning about “perverted science,” where humanity’s highest intellectual achievements fall into the wrong hands.

The test is yet another fire bell in the night. North Korea’s leaders may have been trying to get President Obama’s attention, but their odds of success are small. For nearly eight years, his resolute indifference to Kim Jung-un’s advances demonstrated that nuclear proliferation is just not one of his priorities.

While Obama’s rhetorical response to the North’s evident progress is sometimes vigorous, it never extends to meaningfully tightening sanctions or anything more robust. And Pyongyang doesn’t even slow down.

Why should it, given Obama’s lack of interest? Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also been thoroughly indifferent, although her rhetoric, especially as she runs for president herself, tends to torque somewhat higher than Obama’s. Nonetheless, if humor is permitted in these dire circumstances, Clinton’s just deserts will be having to deal with the consequences of their mutually failed North Korea policy if she wins.

Conversely, Japan and South Korea need little incentive to worry about Pyongyang’s growing threat. Their intense interest in missile-defense technology is less about China’s aggressive investment in nuclear and ballistic-missile programs than the North’s ongoing menace. In stark contrast, Obama and Clinton have consistently opposed vigorous national missile defenses for America — a mistake Donald Trump should emphasize.

Obama’s defenders argue the Iran nuclear deal demonstrates his nonproliferation bona fides. Instead, the Iran accord proves the opposite. New information emerges daily about the agreement’s inadequacies, both in its own right and in side arrangements like the cash-for-hostages ransom debacle. Plus, there’s increasing evidence of clear Iranian violations of the deal itself, which its verification mechanisms are insufficient to detect, especially considering that major Iranian cheating may be underway in hidden facilities in North Korea.

The unfortunately long, bipartisan history of negotiations with Iran and North Korea contains important lessons for the next president.

First, once launched on the path to nuclear weapons, Tehran and Pyongyang both demonstrated they had made irreversible strategic decisions. These were not lightly taken, nor the potential consequences ignored. Accordingly, once they were underway, negotiations to induce them to abandon their nuclear objectives were inevitably doomed to failure.

Gaining nukes had become essential not just for military purposes but for regime political survival. And just as diplomacy could never succeed, no “agreement” reached with the proliferators ever had serious prospects of being adhered to. Cheating was always central to the rogue states’ strategies. Once they had fixed on acquiring nuclear weapons, duplicity was an automatic reflex.

Second, our intelligence on North Korea has been negligible for so long, and obviously so to the rest of the world, that Tehran would’ve been foolish not to explore the possibility of cooperating with Pyongyang on developing nuclear weapons. We’ve known for at least 20 years of their extensive collaboration on ballistic missiles; why wouldn’t they also collaborate on nuclear weapons, the intended payloads of such delivery systems?

We should’ve long ago stopped “stove-piping” the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats as if they were unrelated. We need dramatically improved intelligence about the North, in considerable measure for what it could reveal about cooperation with Iran and other possible nuclear proliferators. Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others might well pay Pyongyang handsome premiums to counter the potentially existential threat of a nuclear Iran.

Quite rightly, the threat of radical Islamic terrorism is a central issue in the 2016 campaign. Nuclear proliferation and other national-security issues should be as well.

Candidates who demonstrate mastery over these matters, and persuasively explain their strategic thinking, would be tapping a rich, politically helpful and widespread concern among American voters.

They are looking for leaders who truly understand that our government’s most important job is keeping their fellow citizens secure from foreign threats.