How to Protect NATO and Other Alliances From Trump

Responsible advisers and GOP lawmakers should redirect his focus to other targets, especially the EU.

Last week’s Trump-Vance-Zelensky train wreck proved that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is on increasingly shaky ground. Starting with Donald Trump’s Feb. 12 phone call with Vladimir Putin about the Ukraine war, things got worse when Mr. Trump called Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and the war’s instigator. Vice President JD Vance’s neocon-like complaints that Western Europeans were insufficiently democratic, without comparable analysis of Russia, eased Mr. Putin away from diplomatic purdah. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to consider massive cuts in defense spending foreshadows even worse consequences. The Oval Office grudge match finished the picture, and all now points to trashing history’s most successful politico-military alliance. Mr. Trump hasn’t formally withdrawn from NATO, but he is so gravely weakening it that leaving would simply be the final insult.

NATO isn’t America’s only alliance in jeopardy. In his first term, Mr. Trump’s assault on NATO arrived alongside his criticism of other allies, albeit not as publicly as today. The Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, the Australia-U.K.-U.S. consortium to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, and the export-control rules designed to keep rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction—are all at risk. Even bilateral ties with Japan and South Korea are in question. Taiwan should be very worried.

Israel may escape for now, but Israelis should recall Martin Niemöller’s poem, which concludes: “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Two complementary political counterattacks are needed—to save Ukraine from Russia and to salvage NATO. Although the evidence is tenuous, there may still be enough alliance supporters among Mr. Trump’s advisers to change course. If so, they must advise the president on what he should be doing, not just responding “yes, sir” to his ill-informed statements.

I’ve been through this myself, as have others, and can attest it will be unpleasant for those showing loyalty to our country and its Constitution. But at some point, principles must rise above job security and ambition. Resignation becomes the only honorable course. Each adviser will have to make his own decision. But they need to start making them.

House and Senate Republicans must also stand up against dismantling our alliances and gutting the defense budget. Some lawmakers are asserting themselves on Ukraine and NATO, and more must follow. They will find allies among Democrats, and together they could constitute majorities in both chambers. Vocal congressional support for bolstering our alliances and substantially increasing defense spending is important in its own right—and for the reassurance it will give like-minded Trump administration officials. There is no argument more powerful to Mr. Trump than his own political well-being.

Alliance supporters should also persuade Mr. Trump to focus on his well-known disdain for the European Union, thereby easing the assault on NATO. Mr. Trump’s distaste for the EU reflects European weakness and inadequate defense spending, as well as his criticism of trade terms negotiated by previous U.S. administrations. Some of that dissatisfaction is justified but not enough to dismantle broader American security interests.

Here, Europeans must reject EU dogmatism, especially espoused by France, which insisted, even before the EU’s creation, on Europe’s separateness from America. Long reflected in calls for a “European pillar” within NATO, this groupthink has corroded the alliance’s cohesion. Ironically, and potentially fatally, if France’s EU ideology prevails and the EU tries to substitute itself for NATO, that would provide support for Mr. Trump’s view that America should withdraw. Not all of Europe suffers from this kind of thinking. Much of Donald Rumsfeld’s “new Europe” in the east and some “old Europeans,” like the U.K. and Nordic NATO members, have always emphasized Atlanticism. It is “old Europeans” such as France and Germany that are the main problem.

Europe’s first reaction to Mr. Trump’s fusillade, predictably led by French President Emmanuel Macron, was to assume Washington was irretrievably departing. Instead, to protect the West’s overall security and shared concerns about rising global threats, NATO advocates on both sides of the Atlantic must resist the misimpression that Mr. Trump’s position is enduring. Whether Europeans can stand alone against the China-Russia axis, the real overarching menace, is doubtful. Europeans should prize being part of the West more highly than being part of the EU, and act on that basis. Unfortunately, incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz moved immediately in the wrong direction, saying he would seek “independence” from the U.S. Saying that “the free world needs a new leader,” as EU official Kaja Kallas did, also doesn’t help.

Mr. Trump never appreciated Winston Churchill’s insight that “there is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” Accordingly, advancing U.S. national-security interests under Mr. Trump, and saving our admittedly imperfect alliances, requires enduring before prevailing. One answer is to outlast him, distract him and find him other targets. But the most important course is to tell the truth to the American people, starting now.

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on March 3, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

After the Oval Office Debacle

Vladimir Putin was the only winner in last week’s Oval Office grudge match between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.  Trump harmed US national security by ignoring our profound, long-standing interest in European stability, which we learned through the 20th Century’s two hot world wars and one Cold War.  Ensuring our enemies do not control the European landmass, and having extensive trans-Atlantic economic, political, cultural and familial relations are palpably important to our way of life.  All this is at risk.  Trump has not merely gone neutral in the Russo-Ukraine war, he is objectively on Moscow’s side.

Likely now to be abandoned by Washington, its largest single source of military and economic aid, Kyiv’s problems are even worse.  Ukraine still faces the implacable Russian enemy, whose leadership is determined to recreate the Czars’ empire, especially by absorbing “little Russia” as they patronizingly call it.  The Europeans, for all their bluster, are woefully inadequate substitutes, especially if Washington moves even further into Russia’s camp, perhaps lifting economic sanctions and seeking investments in Russian mineral resources.

The instant analysis of Friday’s debacle, pitting Trump supporters against Zelensky supporters, largely turned on questions of etiquette.  This is seriously wrong.  What is at stake is not an Emily Post-style assessment of who blew up the meeting, who was rude or disrespectful, or judging “where the meeting went wrong.”  Almost certainly, everything the three principals said with the press watching, they would have said while meeting privately after the Oval Office photo opportunity.  The issue is US national security, not whose behavior was more juvenile.  

Trump argued that Zelensky was not serious about peace, and that his comments made it harder to persuade Putin to come to the negotiating table.  But Putin is hardly a snowflake, wounded by unkind Zelensky remarks.  In fact, Putin is one of the most cold-blooded leaders in today’s world.  He knows exactly what he wants.  Even though his logic, especially regarding the value of human life, does not correspond to ours, he has relentlessly pursued his objective of restoring “greater Russia.”  Ukrainians object to this outcome not because they have bad manners but because they insist on freedom and independence (should be familiar words for Americans) from foreign oppressors.

Indeed, it is precisely Washington’s massive shift toward Moscow that moving legitimate discussions between Kyiv and Moscow into the future.  As Trump hands the Kremlin one concession after another, Russia’s incentive to negotiate diminishes.  Why seek compromise through negotiations when obtaining precisely what they want by direct US intervention?  

Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev wrote prior to the Oval Office disaster, “if you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the U.S. president, I would have laughed out loud(https://nypost.com/2025/02/20/world-news/russia-praises-trump-after-he-ripped-ukraines-zelensky/).”  He was referring not just to Trump calling Zelensky a “dictator” but to abandoning US and NATO positions that Ukraine must reobtain full sovereignty and territorial integrity;  that Ukraine could ultimately join NATO;  and that America or NATO itself would give Kyiv security guarantees under a comprehensive peace deal.  Such retreats clearly evidence that Trump is now siding with Moscow rather than Kyiv and America’s own security.

Trump’s insistence that he wants “peace,” while carefully phrased for its political benefits, is in fact the most dangerous outcome of the Oval Office meeting.  Peace can always be obtained by surrender.  “Peace at any price” is always on offer.  Russia’s unprovoked aggression put Ukraine at risk, not its desire to join NATO.  That has been America’s official position since at least 2008 under George W. Bush.  Russia did not strike against Ukraine until 2014, and then waited eight years to attack again in 2022.  By adopting the Kremlin’s view that Ukraine and NATO precipitated the war, Trump is repeating Russian propaganda.  Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called this notion “Orwellian”:  “you might as well say that the swimmers were responsible for attacking the shark in Jaws or the United States were responsible for attacking Japan at Pearl Harbor( https://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/uk-politics/boris-johnson-on-trumps-ukraine-comments/).”

Whether Ukraine and America can find a way back from the precipice remains to be seen.  The real threat for the United States, however, is that we now have a President who can’t tell our friends from our enemies.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on March 3, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Dark days lie ahead with Trump on the world stage once more

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Soon to be cast adrift by President-elect Trump, Ukraine’s likely future is bleak. Let’s not make it worse by a feckless peace deal
Donald Trump’s looming inauguration bodes poorly for vital Western security interests, and Ukraine in particular. Trump’s hostility to NATO is palpable, and his feelings about Ukraine follow close behind. After January 20, US military and economic assistance will likely drop significantly, and negotiations with Russia begin quickly. In turn, European financial support for Ukraine will diminish, as EU members rush to revive now-defunct commercial ties with Moscow. Despite contrary press reports, Trump has not yet spoken to Vladimir Putin. When they do, Trump’s desire to put this “Biden war” behind him could, at worst, mean capitulation to maximalist Russian demands. After all, if assisting Ukraine’s defence against unprovoked aggression is unimportant to Washington, why worry about Kyiv’s terms of surrender?

In fact, core America national interests remain. Since 1945, European peace and stability have been vital to advancing US economic and political security. The ripple effects of perceived American and NATO failure in Europe’s centre will embolden Beijing to act aggressively toward Taiwan and the East China Sea; the South China Sea; and along its land borders. These aren’t abstract, diaphanous worries at the periphery of our interests, but hard threats to US physical security, trade, travel and communications globally.

Biden put these interests at risk by bungling implementation of nearly three years of aid to Kyiv. He never developed a winning strategy. His administration helped create the current battlefield gridlock, deterred by constant but idle Kremlin threats of a “wider war.” Parcelling out weapons only after long public debates prevented their most effective use. Biden failed to explain clearly Russia’s threat to key Western interests, thereby fanning the belief there are no such interests, and abetting the Trump-inspired isolationism spreading nationally.

What to do? Aiding Ukraine is in NATO’s vital interest. That interest does not diminish because of persistent Biden administration poor performance. Do we ignore the continuing reality that Russia’s aggression threatens Alliance security? Does Ukraine simply give way to Trumpian capitulationism?

Certainly not. In the coming negotiations, certain points are essential to any potential agreement. The following suggestions, which are hardly my preferred outcome, are the absolute minimum we must obtain. They are only indicative, not exhaustive, and certainly not NATO’s opening position.

Any agreement must be explicitly provisional to keep Ukraine’s future open. Moscow will treat any deal that way regardless. For the Kremlin, nothing is permanent until its empire is fully restored, by their lights. Putin needs time to restore Russia’s military capabilities, and believing any “commitment” to forswear future aggression against Ukraine is dreaming.

A ceasefire along existing military frontlines during negotiations may be inevitable. Nonetheless, we should insist that any ultimate agreement explicitly state that the lines eventually drawn have no political import whatever, but merely reflect existing military dispositions. Russia may later disregard such disclaimers, but such claims must be rendered clearly invalid in advance.

Similarly, the agreement should not create demilitarised zones between Ukrainian and Russian forces inside Ukraine, or along the two countries’ formal border elsewhere. The surest way for a ceasefire line to become a permanent border is to make it half-a-mile wide, extending endlessly through contested territory. A DMZ inures solely to Moscow’s benefit.

Deployments of UN peacekeepers have an unhappy history of freezing the status quo, not helping to resolve the underlying conflict. Consider the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) which has partitioned the island since 1964. The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has patrolled the Golan Heights since 1974, and may last forever, but did not prevent Israel from annexing the Golan. The list goes on. In Ukraine, a disengagement force could mean permanent cession of twenty percent of Ukraine to Russia.

The problem is not mitigated if the peacekeepers are under NATO rather than UN auspices. It is not the quality of the military that makes a difference, but the intentions of the parties to the conflict. Does anyone doubt what Russia’s long-term aims are? Or Ukraine’s for that matter? My guess is that the Kremlin won’t agree to NATO peacekeepers anyway, at least not unless augmented by thousands of North Korean troops.

Finally, Ukraine should not be constrained in its future options to join or cooperate with NATO. What’s left of Ukraine will still be a sovereign country, striving for representative government, and free to pick its allies on its own. We should not acquiesce in enforced neutralisation, what in the Cold War was called “Finlandisation”. Even Finland turned out not to like it, finally joining NATO in 2023. And if some hardy nations want to provide security guarantees to Free Ukraine, they should be able to do so, not subject to Russian vetoes.

Soon to be cast adrift by President-elect Trump, Ukraine’s likely future is bleak. Let’s not make it worse by a feckless peace deal.

This article was first published in The Telegraph on November 30, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

North Korea comes to Europe: How will the next president respond? ​

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The threat of North Korea fighting alongside Russia in Ukraine is no longer a nightmare, but a real possibility. Two weeks ago, Kyiv said Pyongyang’s soldiers were already in Ukraine and had sustained casualties. Now the Biden administration has confirmed that 10,000 North Korean troops are training in Russia, adding that they will be “fair game” if deployed to Ukraine.

As Election Day approaches, voters should worry whether either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump are awake to and able to handle this immediate danger and its longer-term implications.

Having Pyongyang’s forces fighting in Ukraine would both bolster Moscow tactically and provide those troops with battlefield experience, greatly benefitting them in future conflicts on the Korean Peninsula. Moreover, the risk that, in return, the Kremlin supplies Kim Jong Un with nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile technology — if it hasn’t already — directly imperils South Korea, Japan and deployed U.S. forces in the region.

By contrast, in 2018, Trump canceled regular U.S.-South Korean “war games” to please Kim, thus compromising allied combat readiness. In a tense environment, where the U.S.-South Korean troops’ preparedness mantra is “Fight Tonight,” this is crucial.

There is no sign that Trump understands his mistake. And Harris’s thoughts on Pyongyang’s menace appear to be a blank slate.

South Korea is hardly standing idly by. Having previously sold tanks, artillery and ammunition to Poland, President Yoon Suk Yeol is currently considering selling weapons to Ukraine. Additionally, Pyongyang’s growing closeness to Moscow, and fears of Washington’s fecklessness, will only increase Seoul’s ongoing debate about whether to acquire an independent nuclear-weapons capability. We are well into uncharted territory.

The broader threat is not just North Korea but the emerging China-Russia axis, now widely understood as a reality, not a prediction. While similar in appearance to the Cold War’s Sino-Soviet alliance, today’s version differs dramatically: China this time is inarguably the dominant partner. The axis is far from fully formed. Disagreements and tensions clearly exist, notably over Pyongyang’s increasing affinity for Russia, as Kim emulates his grandfather Kim Il Sung’s uncanny ability to play Moscow off against Beijing.

Contemporaneously with Kim and Vladimir Putin locking step, the Kremlin is also reportedly supplying Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis with targeting data, thereby augmenting its campaign to effectively close the Suez Canal-Red Sea maritime passage (other than to “friendly” vessels like Russian tankers). Thus, notwithstanding its problems and quirks, the axis and its outriders are rolling along.

Worryingly, however, one variety of America’s contemporary isolationist virus, epitomized by vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), holds that the Middle East and Europe should be downgraded as U.S. priorities in order to focus on China’s threat in Asia, particularly against Taiwan. This menace is indeed real, but far wider than just endangering Taiwan or East Asia generally. While not yet comprehensive or entirely consistent internally, the Beijing-Moscow hazard is worldwide.

Worst of all, the latest manifestation of Beijing’s sustained, aggressive military buildup is the new projection that China’s nuclear-weapons arsenal will reach 1,000 warheads by 2030, much earlier than previous predictions. Increasing Chinese nuclear capabilities portend a tripolar nuclear world, one radically different and inherently riskier and more uncertain that the Cold War’s bipolar U.S.-USSR faceoff.

This is not simply a new U.S.-China problem. All our assessments about appropriately sizing America’s nuclear deterrent, allocating it within the nuclear triad (land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, plus long-range bombers), along with all our theories of deterrence and arms control, were founded on the basic reality of bipolarity. Impending tripolarity means that all those issues need to be reconceptualized for America’s security, not to mention the extended deterrence we provide our allies.

Do we face one combined China-Russia nuclear threat, or two separate threats? Or both? The questions only get harder. This is not an Asia-based risk, but a global one, inevitably implying substantial budget increases for new or rehabilitated nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

Responding to North Korea with yet another four years of “strategic patience” — the Obama and Biden do-nothing policy — is both wrongheaded and increasingly dangerous. As for China, focusing on securing bilateral climate-change agreements, Biden’s highest priority, is wholly inadequate. Even where his administration acted strategically — enhancing the Asian Security Quad, endorsing the AUKUS nuclear-submarine project, agreeing to trilateral military activity with Japan and South Korea — Biden demonstrated little sense of urgency or focus.

Surely the image of Pyongyang fighting Kyiv should jar both the simplistic premises of “East Asia only” theorists and the quietude of Biden-Harris supporters. We must immediately overcome any remaining French and German objections to increasing NATO coordination with Japan, South Korea and others, including ultimately joining NATO, as former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar suggested years ago. Existing Asia-based initiatives like the Quad, AUKUS and closer military cooperation among America’s allies need to be rocket-boosted.

We need a president who understands the importance of American leadership and has the resolve to pursue it. Let’s pray we get one.

This article was first published in The Hill on October 30, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

A Biden-Starmer Giveaway Helps China

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As a one-term president, Joe Biden appears eager to take actions he might not have taken if he had to worry about getting re-elected. The latest example: He apparently pushed the U.K. to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to the island country of Mauritius. The Chagos archipelago is unremarkable but for one key fact: Diego Garcia, its largest island, houses a critical U.S.-U.K. military base near the Indian Ocean’s geographic center point.

British media report that U.S. officials, fearing that existing International Court of Justice rulings and a potential push in the United Nations General Assembly would pose political problems, pressured British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to cede them on Oct. 3. Whatever Mr. Starmer’s motivation—whether to appease Mr. Biden or lessen guilty feelings about imperial history—the decision was utterly misguided.

The Chagos “problem” hasn’t figured prominently in British politics before now, except in certain Labour Party circles. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader before Mr. Starmer, obsessed over the issue, long a priority for Labour’s Trotskyite wing. Worried about disapprobation by biased global courts, the White House and State Department during Mr. Biden’s term fell in sync with Britain’s Corbynites.

Under the deal, Diego Garcia will remain under British jurisdiction for at least 99 years. The site is home to a critical U.S. military facility, fittingly nicknamed the “footprint of freedom.” The island will only become more important to U.S. resistance against China’s efforts to achieve hegemony in the Indo-Pacific.

Mauritius, meantime, is increasingly China-friendly. China is its top trading partner, and Beijing has used debt-trap diplomacy—lending with strings attached—to ensnare the island nation. If the British Parliament approves transferring the Chagos to Mauritius, China will be able to maneuver ships and planes near Diego Garcia for intelligence-gathering and military operations. Given Beijing’s history of militarizing comparable tiny landmasses in the South China Sea, the threat is clear.

China has long conducted extensive undersea surveys of the Indian Ocean, ostensibly for commercial reasons but obviously in pursuit of maritime dominance. A Beijing presence in the Chagos will facilitate these efforts, posing a direct threat to India, which it appears wasn’t consulted by either Whitehall or Foggy Bottom.

There’s no compelling logic for ceding the islands to Mauritius. That the Chagos are associated with Mauritius is actually a fluke of colonial administration: France was Mauritius’s first colonial European power, governing the islands from the larger chain after taking control in the early 1700s. Britain acquired Mauritius after victory in the Napoleonic Wars and continued France’s governing mode. Many alternative solutions for the islands are available, but neither Washington nor London have shown an appetite for considering them.

The U.S. faced analogous challenges in ending its administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, or TTPI, during the 1980s and ’90s. Once German colonies, the islands became a Japanese mandate under the League of Nations, and, after 1945, a U.N. trusteeship under U.S. control. One part of the TTPI, the Northern Marianas, became an American commonwealth. Three others—Palau, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia—chose independence but entered into Compacts of Free Association with the U.S., giving Washington authority over their foreign and security policies.

For all the overblown rhetoric about a British “diplomatic success,” it seems no one bothered to ask Chagossians their views. Given Mauritius’s prior poor treatment of Chagossians, Chagossians might have preferred to have become a U.S. commonwealth.

China has already tried to take advantage of Washington’s inattention in the former TTPI by aggressively pressing its interests and intentions and using debt-diplomacy tactics. Although Washington is now pressing back against Beijing, we can’t afford to make similar mistakes in the Chagos or the broader Indian Ocean.

Messrs. Biden and Starmer have checked the Chagos Islands off Mr. Corbyn’s to-do list. Let’s hope there aren’t any other foreign-policy surprises in Mr. Biden’s remaining lame-duck period.

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

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on October 16, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Biden rewards Russia on Storm Shadow missiles

Keir Starmer’s first visit to Washington as Britain’s prime minister last Friday did not go well. 

His meeting with President Joe Biden failed to resolve U.K.-U.S. disputes over whether Britain could transfer its Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine for use inside Russia. Kyiv has repeatedly asked that such restrictions on munitions like Storm Shadows be lifted.

Last week’s Starmer-Biden meeting did not change the status quo, to Ukraine’s dismay. The United Kingdom needs Washington’s approval because Storm Shadows contain technology from the United States and rely on our intelligence. Although there were other topics on the agenda, this first meeting since Starmer took office provided an opportunity to affirm the “special relationship” and the shared objective of defeating Moscow’s unprovoked aggression. Instead, Starmer was unceremoniously rebuffed. Worse, the Biden administration showed that, even in its last months, it remained wavering, hesitant, and uncertain on Ukraine 2 1/2 years since the war began.

Elaborate preparations preceded the Starmer-Biden meeting, starting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky conferring in Kyiv. Blinken then met with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, reaffirming that “we’re determined to see Ukraine win this war” and “we will adapt, we will adjust, and make sure that Ukraine has what it needs when it needs it to deal with this Russian aggression.” A decision to allow the British to proceed seemed almost assured. But the next day in Washington, that did not happen. There was only silence.

Starmer implied afterward that decisions regarding Storm Shadows had simply been postponed, perhaps until the end of September when Biden and other world leaders address the United Nations General Assembly. Further delay alone, however, is harmful to Ukraine’s self-defense efforts. Delay, unfortunately, encapsulates the essence of Biden’s unwillingness to act decisively not just to prevent Ukraine from being overrun, but to ensure it is restored to its full sovereignty and territorial integrity, NATO’s stated goal.

Although the U.S. and NATO failed to deter Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has consistently deterred Biden from aiding Ukraine in a strategic and well-ordered way. Repeated White House statements indicating fear of “a wider war” explain that Biden has been more worried about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bluffs than about prevailing militarily, thereby not only defeating Moscow’s aggression but unmistakably showing China and other American adversaries that our capabilities and resolve are strong. We should be deterring them, not the other way around.  

Since Russia’s 2022 attack, with each painfully slow additional delivery of advanced armaments to Ukraine, Putin has threatened dire consequences, including last week against NATO itself. But there has never been evidence of a credible threat of a “wider war” with conventional forces. If the Kremlin had such capacity, why hasn’t it already been deployed to Ukraine to overcome Russia’s poor offensive performance, including recently against Ukraine’s so-far-successful incursion into the Kursk region?

The Kremlin’s nuclear threats, including the most recent, deserve to be taken seriously, given the stakes involved. But taking a nuclear threat seriously does not mean believing it. When Putin has rattled the nuclear saber before, testimony of U.S. intelligence community officials before Congress has indicated that Russia has not actually redeployed any of its nuclear capabilities to ready them for use.  Each assessment must stand on its own merits, but simply cringing before a Putin threat gives Russia what it wants at no risk and no cost. That is the short road to Ukraine’s defeat.

After meeting with Biden, Starmer downplayed the lack of a decision on Storm Shadows, saying that larger strategic questions were discussed. He is continuing London’s policy, begun by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, making it the strongest advocate within NATO for aiding Ukraine, notably more forcefully than the Biden administration. What should be on Starmer’s mind, however, is what may be coming after the November elections.  

At last Tuesday’s presidential debate, Donald Trump refused to say whether he favored Ukraine winning the war, merely asserting that he wanted to “end” it. Worse, vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance later said Trump’s “peace plan” would separate the parties by a demilitarized zone, with Russia keeping all Ukrainian territory it already holds, and that Ukraine would never join NATO. Putin could hardly ask for more. But if that’s Trump’s opening position, you can bet Putin will.

Biden has very little time left in office.

The least he could do is let allies aid Ukraine in ways that might allow it to prevail against Russia’s invasion, a shot that would definitely be heard round the world.

John Bolton served as national security adviser to then-President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on September 16, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Against the International Criminal Court – Lawless in the Hague

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Since the late 19th century, generally well-meaning idealists have tried to conjure an international judicial system that would transform diplomatic, military, and economic conflicts into legal disputes. Led by sensible legal experts (who, of course, thought as they did), the global rule of law would replace destructive strife. If the rule of law worked within nations, why shouldn’t it work internationally? Whether parading under the banner of “world government,” “global governance,” or “the rules-based international order,” this blinkered, reductionist view of foreign affairs always includes a judicial component.

After World War II, the pace quickened. The United Nations Charter created the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to which nations could bring their disputes, replacing the failed Permanent Court of International Justice (formed by the Treaty of Versailles as an adjunct of the League of Nations). No one noticed the irony. The charter admonished the Security Council “that legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties” to the ICJ (Article 36), and U.N. members agreed to comply with ICJ decisions in cases to which they were parties.

Contemporaneously, the victorious Allies established the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals to try allegations of “crimes against peace,” war crimes, and “gross abuses of human rights” committed by Germany and Japan. These tribunals were controversial even in their day, faulted for trying ex post facto charges (thereby violating the principle Nullum crimen sine lege, “No crime without law”), for being “show trials” with largely predetermined outcomes, and for constituting mere “victors’ justice.”

Advocates of judicializing international affairs wanted more, and in 1998, by the Statute of Rome, established the International Criminal Court (ICC), seated in The Hague near the ICJ. The European Union and Bill Clinton were ardent supporters of the treaty. Clinton signed it in his administration’s waning hours, knowing there was no chance of Senate ratification. His chief negotiator described the ICC as “the ultimate weapon of international judicial intervention” and “a shiny new hammer to swing in the years ahead.” George W. Bush reversed course, ordering the treaty unsigned in 2002, effectively ending any prospect of U.S. membership far into the future. India, Russia, and China, among others, also did not join.

American opposition to both the ICC and the Rome Statute’s substantive provisions (defining four crimes: genocide, aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity) was hardly confined to the Bush administration. Shortly after the statute entered into force, Congress enacted the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, authorizing, among other things, “all means necessary and appropriate” to release Americans held by or on behalf of the ICC. For good reason, it was dubbed the “Hague Invasion Act.” 

Simultaneously, President Bush launched a global campaign under the statute’s Article 98 to prevent U.S. citizens from being turned over to the ICC, in time securing agreements with over 100 nations. The Trump administration made further efforts to protect U.S. interests, although Joe Biden has abandoned many of them.

The ICC’s flaws are too numerous for one brief article. Fundamentally, the very concept of the ICC is illegitimate, an utterly unwarranted derogation of our constitutional, democratic sovereignty by an unaccountable entity operating in an international void. The court is not part of a coherent international-order structure. It is simply “out there” pretending to be a court in a pretend constitutional system that lacks even a pretend legislature to make laws and a pretend executive to enforce them. The ICC combines all three branches of government authority into one body, defying every American concept of separation of powers and the “structural constitutionalism” the Framers believed so critical to protecting our freedoms. Though ICC supporters claim it as vital, it is precisely this consolidating of functions that makes the court most dangerous.

The ICC is not checked anywhere in its jurisdictional reach, its legal conclusions, or its prosecutorial discretion. ICC supporters argue that its member governments ultimately control the judges and the prosecutor, but that is entirely theoretical. So far-reaching is the ICC’s purported jurisdiction that it applies even to nonmembers such as the United States and Israel when alleged crimes are committed on the territory of a state that is party to the Rome Statute. When such nonmembers try to protect themselves against the ICC’s excesses, they are accused of interfering with its independence. While the ICJ decides cases among nations, the ICC purports to exercise jurisdiction directly over individuals, authority no prior international organization ever claimed. Americans fought a revolution against such usurpations.

ICC advocates believe that if they just pretend hard enough, real governments will come to accept the prosecutor’s unaccountable decisions and follow the ICC’s orders. Unfortunately, for over two decades, it has been the court and its prosecutor that have done most of the pretending. Nonetheless, Westerners especially have a childlike capacity to pretend; they see hope in the ICC where potential aggressors see only opportunity. Those whom the threat of prosecution and punishment is supposed to deter have not been impressed, an outcome surprising to ICC partisans but not to history’s hard men. The likes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, and Ayatollah Khamenei couldn’t care less about the threat of “legal” consequences for their actions.

The ICC’s most dangerous component is its essentially unaccountable prosecutor, whose extraordinary leeway makes U.S. “independent counsels” look tame. As with the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, the Rome Statute’s substantive crimes are vaguely stated, written in broad and sweeping diplomatic prose. They do not pass muster by American standards, which require clarity and precision in criminal statutes in order to give citizens notice of what prohibitions and obligations they face. The Supreme Court has long employed the “void for vagueness” doctrine to declare unconstitutional laws that afford too much discretion to prosecutors, impermissibly putting citizens at risk of prosecution for crimes they never understood existed.

Turned loose on the Rome Statute’s definitions of crimes, U.S. courts would not hesitate to declare much of them unacceptably vague. Moreover, the statute’s drafters openly advocated expanding the list of criminal prohibitions as the prosecutor and the ICC confronted new circumstances. Here, of course, the lack of separated powers and checks and balances figures importantly. It is one thing for a popularly elected legislature to enact new criminal laws but quite another for a prosecutor accountable to the ICC alone, and a court accountable to no one, to do so, especially where the ex post facto issue arises every time a new “crime” is detected. Nor are defendants protected by jury trials, as our Sixth Amendment requires; cases are tried instead before panels of the court, juries being so 18th-century to the statute’s drafters.

ICC supporters believe that many of these concerns are overstated because of the doctrine of “complementarity.” Embodied in the statute’s Article 17, complementarity means theoretically that jurisdiction to handle serious international crimes lies primarily in member states, with the ICC involved only rarely. Although reasonable-sounding, complementarity is not some well-settled principle of international law. It is simply an academic theory, carrying about as much force in the real world as most such fantasies. In practice, the ICC decides whether states have sufficiently met their obligations, and if not, the ICC will act. States are subordinated to the ICC’s unreviewable decisions, period. This is as plain a usurpation of sovereignty, especially from constitutional democracies, as one can imagine. What other countries accept is up to them, but America bends its knee to the ICC at its own peril.

Concern about the mirage of complementarity is not hypothetical. The prosecutor’s recent decision to seek arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant, along with two Hamas officials, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza (and other Iranian-backed terrorist threats against Israel) was a fire bell in the night that complementarity was no protection at all. Moreover, by interfering in the heat of battle, the ICC undoubtedly made resolving the war politically more difficult, all the while exhibiting the stench of moral equivalence by seeking arrest warrants against both sides as if they were equally culpable. Similar concerns apply to the prosecutor’s decision to proceed against Vladimir Putin and then–Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu in the ongoing Ukraine conflict. Who holds the ICC to account for these unilateral decisions? The precedent for irresponsible interference in future conflicts is unmistakable.

The solution is to treat questions of whether and when to prosecute internationally as unique to their circumstances. Prosecution über alles is not the answer. Nations should take responsibility for their own citizens’ crimes even if that is impossible until there is regime change in the offending state. That may mean justice delayed, but international probity will ultimately increase only when nations accept responsibility for crimes committed in their names. Merely that the ICC can try cases more immediately is no answer. The hard reality is that many (perhaps most) contemporaneous ICC trials would be in absentia, which simply fuels grievances that provoke future conflicts. Who, for example, believes that trying Putin in absentia would increase global peace and security? The most grievous crimes ultimately require international resolution in broad political terms, not narrow legal ones. The ICC cannot bear that burden.

For Americans, the fundamental question is how to protect ourselves and our allies from this illegitimate court and prosecutor. During two decades of operation, the concerns expressed while the Rome Statute was being negotiated have too frequently become realities. “Fixes” to the ICC, of whatever magnitude, will not suffice. The institution itself is irreparably flawed.

Sporadic U.S. cooperation with ICC investigations is potentially dangerous. Indeed, the most insidious temptation is for Washington to assist the ICC when the likely accused nation is discernibly evil. In George W. Bush’s second term, for example, the United States cooperated with the ICC in the Darfur conflict and more broadly. Barack Obama found numerous opportunities, including in Kenya, Libya, and the former Zaire. Under Joe Biden, with the support of several congressional Republicans, U.S. cooperation with and rhetorical support for the ICC advanced to its highest levels, especially regarding multiple allegations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Although such cooperation has not to date increased the chance that Washington will join, the risk is still real, and the allegation of hypocrisy hard to ignore. The unpleasant reality is that U.S. cooperation with the ICC when it suits us is hypocritical and ultimately damaging to America’s principled case against the ICC’s legitimacy. Biden personally demonstrated the hypocrisy when he criticized the prosecutor’s pursuit of senior Israeli officials while simultaneously supporting the ICC investigation of Russian crimes in Ukraine.

The only safe and conscientious American approach is what I have long called the “three noes”: no U.S. cooperation of any sort with the ICC, no direct or indirect financial contributions to the ICC, and no negotiations with other governments to “improve” the Rome Statute. We should continue and expand our efforts, especially with European Union members, to obtain Article 98 agreements to protect U.S. citizens. And we should continuously reexamine the adequacy of our weapons against ICC efforts to investigate American conduct.

This zombie organization cannot ultimately survive without American support. We shouldn’t give it oxygen.

This article appears as “Lawless in The Hague” in the September 2024 print edition of National Review.

John R. Bolton served as national-security adviser to President Donald Trump and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush. He is the author of The Room Where It Happened.

This article was first published in The National Review on July 25, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

The two-state solution is dead. Israel must achieve total victory

By John Bolton

Foreign Secretary David Cameron recently suggested that the United Kingdom could recognise the state of “Palestine” before waiting for the conclusion of talks between Israel and the Palestinians. He said that recognition “can’t come at the start of the process, but it doesn’t have to be the very end of the process”.

This is dangerous ground for the unwary, including both Cameron and the credulous Biden administration, which is also musing about recognising a nonexistent state. Since the first Oslo Accord, if not before, it has been bedrock peace-process doctrine that both Israel and the Palestinians must agree to any “two-state solution”.  Moreover, Israel is responding to a terrorist attack comparable to al Qaeda’s 9-11 attack on America, while simultaneously menaced by Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. What kind of ally then puts a knife in Israel’s back?

Without agreement by the two most-concerned parties, there is no agreement at all. As former US Secretary of State James Baker often said, “we can’t want peace more than the parties themselves.”

Recognising “statehood” in international affairs is far more consequential than recognising a state of mind. In both treaties and customary international law, statehood has critically important characteristics, including having a defined territory and population, a capital city, and being able to implement normal governmental functions. There is no existing “Palestine” that meets any of these core criteria. Pretending that the Palestinian Authority (or Hamas for that matter) qualifies does not make it so. Indeed, wishing wistfully quite likely inhibits achieving the objectives statehood advocates supposedly want.

Imposing this key potential outcome of contentious negotiations almost certainly reduces Palestinian incentives to deal seriously with the Israeli government, which will in turn reduce Israeli interest in any deal. However much the Foreign Office dislikes Israel or Netanyahu, there is no justification for abandoning a key premise of the international state system.

The origins of the other-worldly notion of recognising a Palestinian state before there is one stem directly from none other than Yasser Arafat. Beginning in 1988-89 and continuing episodically thereafter, Arafat tried to have the Palestine Liberation Organisation admitted as a member of the United Nations and its specialised agencies. Because all UN agency charters limit membership to “states,” Arafat believed that admission would confer state status on the PLO, thus constructing not “facts on the ground” in the Middle East, but in the corridors of the UN.

President George H. W. Bush strongly objected to this fantasy, threatening to withhold all American contributions to any UN component that admitted “Palestine,” a threat ultimately embodied in statutory law by overwhelming House and Senate votes.

This is of far more than just historical interest. The threat worked until American resolve collapsed under Obama, allowing the Palestinian Authority to gain admittance to Unesco (from which Ronald Reagan had earlier withdrawn, with George W. Bush later returning). Obama’s mistake led to President Trump’s decision to withdraw. Biden rejoined. Should Trump win in November, count on a third withdrawal in short order.

Obsessively imagining a Palestinian state has thus caused real damage to the United Nations, which doesn’t matter that much except to the very types of people in the Foreign Office and State Department who also advocate early recognition of Palestine.

Rishi Sunak walked back Cameron’s frolic, saying the remarks had been “over-interpreted”. During Prime Minister’s Questions, however, he said Britain would recognise a Palestinian state when it was most conducive to the peace process, and stressed his commitment to a two-state solution. Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, any prospect that Israel would agree, already close to nonexistent, died along with over 1,200 Israelis killed in Hamas’s barbaric October 7 attack.

If further proof were required, consider Biden’s embarrassing efforts to negotiate a second cease-fire and the release of remaining Israeli hostages brutally kidnapped by Hamas. It was not Israel, but Hamas which effectively scuttled this gambit, by adding conditions guaranteed to provoke Israel’s rejection, which they did

Netanyahu made clear that Israel wants, as it should, “total victory” over Hamas. In World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt insisted that Germany and Japan agree to unconditional surrender. There is no reason Israel should not demand the same from Hamas. We can then turn to other Middle Eastern threats facing Israel and the wider West, nearly all of which emanate from Iran. 

This article was first published in The Telegraph on February 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Trump Is a Danger to U.S. Security

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His isolationist views and erratic thinking and style would post even greater risks in a second term.

When I became President Trump’s national security adviser in 2018, I assumed the gravity of his responsibilities would discipline even him. I was wrong. His erratic approach to governance and his dangerous ideas gravely threaten American security. Republican primary voters should take note.

Mr. Trump’s only consistent focus is on himself. He invariably equated good personal relations with foreign leaders to good relations between countries. Personal relations are important, but the notion that they sway Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and their ilk is perilously wrong.

Mr. Trump’s most dangerous legacy is the spread of the isolationist virus in the Republican Party. The Democrats long ago adopted an incoherent melding of isolationism with indiscriminate multilateralism. If isolationism becomes the dominant view among Republicans, America is in deep trouble.

The most immediate crisis involves Ukraine. Barack Obama’s limp-wristed response to Moscow’s 2014 aggression contributed substantially to Mr. Putin’s 2022 attack. But Mr. Trump’s conduct was also a factor. He accused Ukraine of colluding with Democrats against him in 2016 and demanded answers. No answers were forthcoming, since none existed. President Biden’s aid to Ukraine has been piecemeal and nonstrategic, but it is almost inevitable that a second-term Trump policy on Ukraine would favor Moscow.

Mr. Trump’s assertions that he was “tougher” on Russia than earlier presidents are inaccurate. His administration imposed major sanctions, but they were urged by advisers and carried out only after he protested vigorously. His assertions that Mr. Putin would never have invaded Ukraine had he been re-elected are wishful thinking. Mr. Putin’s flattery pleases Mr. Trump. When Mr. Putin welcomed Mr. Trump’s talk last year of ending the Ukraine war, Mr. Trump gushed: “I like that he said that. Because that means what I’m saying is right.” Mr. Putin knows his mark and would relish a second Trump term.

An even greater danger is that Mr. Trump will act on his desire to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He came precariously close in 2018. The Supreme Court has never ruled authoritatively whether the president can abrogate Senate-ratified treaties, but presidents have regularly done so. Recently enacted legislation to stop Mr. Trump from withdrawing without congressional consent likely wouldn’t survive a court challenge. It could precipitate a constitutional crisis and years of litigation.

Mr. Trump is unlikely to thwart the Beijing-Moscow axis. While he did draw attention to China’s growing threat, his limited conceptual reach led to simple-minded formulas (trade surpluses good, deficits bad). His tough talk allowed others to emphasize greater Chinese misdeeds, including massive theft of Western intellectual property, mercantilist trade policies, manipulation of the World Trade Organization, and “debt diplomacy,” which puts unwary countries in hock to Beijing. These are all real threats, but whether Mr. Trump is capable of countering them is highly doubtful.

Ultimately, Beijing’s obduracy and Mr. Trump’s impulse for personal publicity precluded whatever slim chances existed to eliminate China’s economic abuses. In a second term, Mr. Trump would likely continue seeking “the deal of the century” with China, while his protectionism, in addition to being bad economic policy, would make it harder to stand up to Beijing. The trade fights he picked with Japan, Europe and others impaired our ability to increase pressure against China’s broader transgressions.

The near-term risks of China manufacturing a crisis over Taiwan would rise dramatically. Mr. Xi is watching Ukraine and may be emboldened by Western failure there. A physical invasion is unlikely, but China’s navy could blockade the island and perhaps seize Taiwanese islands near the mainland. The loss of Taiwan’s independence, which would soon follow a U.S. failure to resist Beijing’s blockade, could persuade countries near China to appease Beijing by declaring neutrality.

Taiwan’s fall would encourage Beijing to finalize its asserted annexation of almost all the South China Sea. Littoral states like Vietnam and the Philippines would cease resistance. Commerce with Japan and South Korea, especially of Middle Eastern oil, would be subjected to Chinese control, and Beijing would have nearly unfettered access to the Indian Ocean, endangering India.

And imagine Mr. Trump’s euphoria at resuming contact with North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, about whom he famously boasted that “we fell in love.” Mr. Trump almost gave away the store to Pyongyang, and he could try again. A reckless nuclear deal would alienate Japan and South Korea, extend China’s influence, and strengthen the Beijing-Moscow axis.

Israel’s security might seem an issue on which Mr. Trump’s first-term decisions and rhetoric should comfort even his opponents. But he has harshly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the Oct. 7 attacks, and there is no foreign-policy area in which the absence of electoral constraints could liberate Mr. Trump as much as in the Middle East. There is even a danger of a new deal with Tehran. Mr. Trump almost succumbed to French President Emmanuel Macron’s pleading to meet Iran’s foreign minister in August 2019.

Mr. Trump negotiated the catastrophic withdrawal deal with the Taliban, which Mr. Biden further bungled. The overlap between Messrs. Trump’s and Biden’s views on Afghanistan demonstrate the absence of any Trump national-security philosophy. Even in the Western Hemisphere, Mr. Trump didn’t carry through on reversing Obama administration policies on Cuba and Venezuela. His affinity for strongmen may lead to deals with Nicolás Maduro and whatever apparatchik rules in Havana.

Given Mr. Trump’s isolationism and disconnected thinking, there is every reason to doubt his support for the defense buildup we urgently need. He initially believed he could cut defense spending simply because his skills as a negotiator could reduce procurement costs. Even as he increased defense budgets, he showed acute discomfort, largely under the influence of isolationist lawmakers. He once tweeted that his own military budget was “crazy” and that he, Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi should confer to prevent a new arms race. Mr. Trump is no friend of the military. In private, he was confounded that anyone would put himself in danger by joining.

A second Trump term would bring erratic policy and uncertain leadership, which the China-Russia axis would be only too eager to exploit.

This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

America’s Arms-Control Restraints No Longer Make Sense

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Our enemies are proliferating, so we must adapt

On June 18, 1935, the United Kingdom and Germany entered “a permanent and definite agreement” that limited Germany’s total warship tonnage to 35 percent of the British Commonwealth’s. This was a major concession from Great Britain, since agreements at the Washington (1921–22) and London (1930) naval conferences had already significantly reduced its own fleet. Hitler defined “permanent and definite” to mean lasting less than four years: He abrogated the treaty on April 28, 1939, four convenient months before the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact carved up Poland and started World War II. Arms control at work.

After 1945, America concluded a series of treaties that were, when signed or shortly thereafter, almost uniformly disadvantageous to us. Considerable efforts to eliminate these restraints have been made, but significant risk remains of reverting to the old ways or not extracting ourselves from the remaining harmful treaties. Whoever next wins the presidency should seek the effective end of the usual arms-control theology before the tide turns again.

To have any chance of bolstering U.S. national security, arms control must fit into larger strategic frameworks, which it has not done well in the last century. Even if they made sense in their day, many arms-control treaties have not withstood changing circumstances. Preserving them is even less viable as we enter a new phase of international affairs: the era after the post–Cold War era. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s ongoing “ring of fire” strategy against Israel, China’s aspirations for regional and then global hegemony, and the Beijing–Moscow axis augur trying times. We need a post–post–Cold War strategy avowedly skeptical of both the theoretical and the operational aspects of the usual approaches to arms control.

Rethinking arms-control doctrine down to its foundations began with Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative and resumed with George W. Bush. The partisan and philosophical debates they launched have continued ever since, but the next president will confront foreign- and defense-policy decisions that cannot be postponed or ignored. Best to do some advance thinking now.

Bush’s aspirations were more limited than what liberals derided as Reagan’s “Star Wars.” Bush worried about American vulnerability to the prospect of “handfuls, not hundreds,” of ballistic missiles launched against us by rogue states. Providing even limited national missile defense, however, required withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, as Bush did in December 2001. Arms control’s high priests and priestesses, and key senators such as Joe Biden and John Kerry, were apoplectic. Missile defense was provocative, they said. Leaving the ABM Treaty meant abandoning “the cornerstone of international strategic stability” (a phrase commonly used by politicians, diplomats, and arms controllers) and upsetting the premise of mutual assured destruction, they said.

But Bush persisted and withdrew. As the saying goes, the dogs barked and the caravan moved on. In 2002, Bush turned to a new kind of strategic-arms agreement with Vladimir Putin, the Treaty of Moscow, which set asymmetric limits on deployed strategic nuclear warheads and was structured in ways very different from earlier or later nuclear-weapons treaties. We abandoned the complex, highly dubious counting and attribution metrics of prior strategic-weapons deals, as well as verification procedures that Russia had perfected means to evade. The Treaty of Moscow was sufficiently reviled by the arms-control theocracy that Barack Obama replaced it in 2010 with the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), reverting to failed earlier approaches, more on which below.

During Bush’s first term, we also blocked efforts in the United Nations at international gun control. We established the G-8 Global Partnership — to increase funding for the destruction of Russia’s “excess” nuclear and chemical weapons and delivery systems — and launched the Proliferation Security Initiative to combat international trafficking in weapons and materials of mass destruction. Neither effort required treaties or international bureaucracies. We unsigned the Rome Statute, the treaty that had created the International Criminal Court, to protect U.S. service members from the threat of criminal action by unaccountable global prosecutors.

Finally, the Bush administration scotched a proposed “verification” protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) that risked intellectual-property piracy against U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers but did not enhance the verification of breaches. The BWC and the Chemical Weapons Convention express aspirations not to use these weapons of mass destruction, but it is almost impossible to verify compliance with them. Moreover, arms controllers forget that the BWC sprang from Richard Nixon’s unilateral decision to eliminate American biological munitions, which proved that we could abjure undesirable weapons systems on our own.

The Bush administration went a long way toward ending arms control, but the true believers returned to power under Obama. Eager to ditch the heretical Treaty of Moscow, his negotiators produced New START — the lineal descendant of two earlier SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) and three START agreements — which entered into force in February 2011 for ten years, extendable once for five more. The Senate should never have ratified this execrable deal, as I explained in these pages (“A Treaty for Utopia,” May 2010). Nonetheless, with a Democratic majority it did so in a late-2010 lame-duck session, by 71 votes (all 56 Democrats, two independents, and 13 Republicans) to 26. While the vote seems lopsided, there were three nonvoters — retiring anti-treaty Republicans who opposed ratification — and the Senate secured the constitutionally required two-thirds ratification majority by only five votes. Today, given a possible Republican majority ahead and the unlikelihood that so many Republicans would defect again, ratifying a successor treaty is a dubious prospect at best.

The Trump administration resumed untying Gulliver, exiting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. While the INF Treaty may have made sense in the 1980s, by the time of withdrawal only the United States was abiding by its provisions. The likes of China and Iran, not treaty parties, were accumulating substantial numbers of intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and Russia was systematically violating INF Treaty limits. That left America as the only country abiding by the treaty, an obviously self-inflicted handicap that withdrawal corrected. Then, in 2020, the U.S. withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty because Russia had abused its overflight privileges and because our national technical assets made overflight to obtain information obsolete. Russia subsequently withdrew from Open Skies.

But the arms-control theology still has powerful adherents. On January 26, 2021, newly inaugurated Joe Biden sent his first signal of weakness to Putin by unconditionally extending New START for five years without seeking modifications to it. This critical capitulation was utterly unwarranted by New START’s merits or by developments since its ratification. The treaty was fatally defective in that it did not address tactical nuclear weapons, in which Russia had clear superiority. It remains true that no new deal would be sensible for the United States unless it included tactical as well as strategic warheads.

In addition, technological threats that postdate New START (which deals with the Cold War triad of land-based ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers) need to be confronted, especially cruise missiles, which can now reach hypersonic speeds.

Most important, China has made substantial progress since 2010 toward becoming a peer nuclear power. Beijing may not yet have the deliverable-weapons capacity of Washington or Moscow, but the trajectory is clear.

A tripolar U.S.–Russian–Chinese nuclear world (no other power has or will have rates of warhead production comparable to China’s) would be almost inexpressibly more dangerous than a bipolar U.S.–USSR world. The most critical threat that China’s growing strategic-weapons arsenal poses is to the United States. How will it manifest? Will we face periodic, independent risks of nuclear conflict with either China or Russia? Or a combined threat simultaneously? Or serial threats? Or all of the above? Answers to these questions will dictate the nuclear-force levels necessary to deter first-strike launches by either Beijing or Moscow or by both, and to defeat them no matter how nuclear-conflict scenarios may unfold.

None of this is pleasant to contemplate, but, as Herman Kahn advised, thinking about the unthinkable is necessary in a nuclear world. These existential issues must be addressed before we can safely enter trilateral nuclear-arms-control negotiations. Beijing is refusing to negotiate until it achieves rough numerical parity with Washington and Moscow. There is little room for diplomacy anyway, since in February 2023 Russia suspended its participation in New START. Further strategic-weapons agreements with Russia alone would be suicidal: Bilateral nuclear treaties may be sensible in a bipolar nuclear world, but they make no sense in a tripolar world. Russia and China surely grasp this. We can only hope Joe Biden does as well. Next January, our president will have just one year to decide how to handle New START’s impending expiration. We should assess now which candidates understand the stakes and are likely to avoid being encumbered by agreements not just outmoded but dangerous for America.

A closely related challenge is the issue of U.S. nuclear testing. Unarguably, if we do not soon resume underground testing, the safety and reliability of our aging nuclear arsenal will be increasingly at risk, as America’s Strategic Posture, a recent congressionally mandated report, shows. Since 1992, Washington has faced a self-imposed ban on underground nuclear testing even though no international treaty in force prohibits it. The Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 bars only atmospheric, space, and underwater testing, a gap that the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which would have banned all testing, was intended to close. Because, however, not all five legitimate nuclear powers under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ratified the CTBT, it never entered into force and likely never will. Though the U.S. signed the CTBT in 1996, the Senate rejected its ratification by a vote of 51 to 48 in 1999. Russia recently announced its withdrawal, thereby predictably dismaying Biden’s advisers. The next U.S. president should extinguish the CTBT by unsigning it. As was recently revealed, Beijing seems to be reactivating and upgrading its Lop Nor nuclear-testing facility. We can predict confidently that neither China nor Russia will hesitate to do what it thinks necessary to advance its nuclear-weapons capabilities. We should not be caught short.

Additional unfinished business involves the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, another arms-control “cornerstone,” this one of European security. Effective since 1990, as the Cold War ended, CFE became obsolete almost immediately. The Warsaw Pact disbanded (its members largely joining NATO) and the USSR fragmented. Russia suspended CFE Treaty compliance several times before withdrawing formally in November 2023, having already invaded Ukraine, another CFE Treaty party. In response, the United States and our NATO allies suspended CFE Treaty performance. Like the CTBT, the CFE Treaty is a zombie that the next president should promptly destroy.

The list of arms-control-diplomacy failures goes on. The NPT, for example, has never hindered truly determined proliferators such as North Korea (which now has a second illicit nuclear reactor online) or Iran, much as arms-control agreements have consistently failed to prevent grave violations by determined aggressors.

This long, sad history has given us adequate warning, and the next president should learn from it. The array of threats the United States faces makes it imperative that we initiate substantial, full-spectrum increases in our defense capabilities, from traditional combat arms and cyberspace assets to nuclear weapons. Instead of limiting our capabilities, we must ensure that we know what we need and have it on hand. We are nowhere near that point.

This article was first published in The National Review on January 25, 2024. Click here to read the original article.