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

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

By John Bolton
March 23, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton
February 3, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton
January 18, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article appeared in the Boston Globe on January 30, 2017. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 30, 2017

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s just-completed visit to Philadelphia and Washington came at a critical time for both her country and the United States, and particularly for the one-week old Trump administration. Rarely in peacetime have two national leaders faced a more consequential opportunity to redirect, dramatically and swiftly, the course of international affairs.

The prospects here lie at the core of the alliance structures America has created since 1945 to protect its vital global interests. Strong and lasting alliances are not merely transactional. They do not rest on accounting examinations of recent debits and credits. Instead, they rest on profoundly important shared values and interests, foundations that endure transitory political and economic bumps in the relationship. This is how the US-UK “special relationship” was built over the years since it was forged in World War II.

May and Trump made it clear in their public remarks that they intend to rejuvenate the “special relationship,” in both economic and political affairs. That does not mean they will necessarily agree on everything, exemplified by their likely conflicting views on sanctions imposed on Russia for its military adventurism across international borders in Ukraine. Nonetheless, a newly independent Britain and a new Trump administration have far more uniting than dividing them.

May’s government is currently undertaking the unprecedented task of unwinding itself from the cumbersome, bureaucratic and regulatory morass of the European Union. The Brexit decision, made last June 23 in a referendum, confounded trans-Atlantic business and political elites, who could not imagine that the desire for mere self-government could overcome the secular theology reflected in their conception of Europe’s “ever closer union.” May herself opposed Brexit, but now leads a government whose place in history will be determined by whether it succeeds or fails in exiting the EU on terms advantageous to Britain.

In America, Trump’s victory upended decades of belief in multilateral trade deals essentially for their own sake. The new president has said he believes in free trade, insisting correctly that true free trade is not reflected in the dirigiste, “managed trade” provisions that characterize so many so-called free trade agreements. Perhaps even more importantly, Trump has said emphatically that he will follow a revolutionary principle in administering trade treaties: He will expect the other parties to adhere to their obligations, and will not conceal or ignore their violations.

The potential for a dramatically different trade and investment agreement between America and Britain, despite obvious risks and difficulties, should be the highest and most immediate priority. Both countries can shed layers of stifling government regulations in the process, and London and New York could sustain and enhance their reputations as the financial capitals of the world, while competitors in Europe and Asia lag behind.

US businesses could reach UK markets all but closed-off for decades because of high EU external barriers to trade. In short order, Canada could join this new bilateral trade relationship, with other non-EU nations in Europe coming on board in due course. Not only would the prospect of a US-UK agreement strengthen London’s hand in the exit negotiations with Brussels, it would encourage nations remaining within the EU to demand that the lords of Brussels wake up to what is happening in the wider world.

Politically, with Britain freeing itself from the EU’s common foreign and defense policy, it will resume its role as a full leader of NATO. For far too long, NATO’s European members (with some notable exceptions) have simply not adequately attended to threats to international peace and security. Sustained, disciplined thinking on global threats like nuclear proliferation and international terrorism, and threats on the Continent itself from a belligerent Kremlin, has been lacking, also for far too long.

As Britain once again demonstrates a broader perspective, the possibility of making NATO a global organization, as suggested by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose-Maria Aznar, can receive careful attention. Admitting Australia, Singapore, Japan and Israel, to name just a few, could contribute significantly to international stability if they thought NATO capable of resuming a vibrant existence.

Especially in Europe, there is misplaced concern that Trump will work actively for the collapse of the EU. He doesn’t have to; the Europeans themselves are doing quite a job of demonstrating the EU’s manifold internal problems. The new White House should simply cease propping up the EU’s mercantilist, anti-democratic, inward-looking proclivities, and nature will take its course.

And although May and Trump appear to differ on the Russia sanctions issue, this is neither new nor unusual in US-UK relations. Tony Blair was accused in Britain of being George W. Bush’s poodle during the second Iraq war, a charge that was unfair and untrue from the outset. Neither Theresa May nor Donald Trump are anyone’s poodles, and a new special relationship will be the stronger for it.

John R. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was the US ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006.

The former U.S. ambassador discussed out-going Secretary of State John Kerry’s anti-Israel speech delivered Wednesday:

“Just as a matter of empirical reality, the two-state solution is dead. That’s about the only thing John Kerry came close to getting right yesterday.”

“The notion that this is simply consistent with prior U.S. policy, which is the Obama administration line, is flatly incorrect.”

“The failure to veto this Resolution 2334 reverses fifty years of American policy, ever since the 1967 war between Israel and the surrounding Arab states, which ended in the iconic Resolution 242, the so-called Land for Peace Resolution.”

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.