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.

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton
September 28, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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