Gradual Sanctions Against Russia are a Loser

February 27, 2022

This article appeared in The New York Post on February 27th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

The Biden Administration has been explicit that it is pursuing a strategy of “graduated escalation” in imposing sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine. This approach is virtually certain to be less effective in imposing economic hardship on Russia than a more robust effort, thereby prolonging Ukraine’s agony and postponing Russia’s isolation. Gradual escalation in economic warfare carries precisely the same risks as in kinetic warfare; the enemy has a say in both cases. Biden could be introducing us to to the Vietnam of economic sanctions.

Indeed, to all outwards appearances, Biden’s graduated-escalation policy is motivated largely by domestic American political considerations, especially regarding Russia’s energy sector. With U.S. inflation high and rising, economic pain at home is the last thing the White House wants, especially soaring oil and gas prices. Consumers feel the squeeze not only when they fill their gas tanks, but in their other purchases that require transporting good to stores or front porches, especially food.

A little history on sanctions and recent U.S. foreign policy. It says something about today’s Democratic Party that Woodrow Wilson’s views are too hard-line to contemplate. Wilson, amidst his prolonged reveries about the League of Nations, strongly advocated using economic sanctions in lieu of military force to resolve international disputes. He called sanctions “a peaceful, silent deadly remedy,” and “a hand upon the throat of the offending nation.” Too much for the Biden Administration.

America’s experience with sanctions has been mixed, and suggests several conditions for effectiveness. First, sanctions should be imposed swiftly and by surprise if possible, to prevent targets from taking precautionary or protective steps to mitigate the sanctions’ impact. That obviously did not happen with Russia, international sanctions having been threatened for months, and even if not known in precise detail, easily imaginable. If Russia is not prepared for the measures already imposed so far, the Kremlin is guilty of governance malpractice.

Second, sanctions should be as sweeping and comprehensive as possible, since no sanctions will be completely effective. Lesser measures produce lesser results. Phrases like “targeted sanctions” sound good in diplomatic communiques, but broad-gauge sanctions are far more likely to cause sustained pain. Even history’s most-extensive sanctions, the UN Security Council measures against Iraq after invading Kuwait, did not ultimately succeed in forcing Saddam Hussein out. Concern for second-order impacts of sanctions on America’s economy is warranted, but sanctions should maximize harm to the target, with other measures separately protecting the domestic economy. Dialing down sanctions to protect the sanction-imposer does far more to shield the target than Biden realizes.

Finally, sanctions should go for the jugular. With Russia, its very existence as a major threat relies on the revenues from its oil and gas production and exports. As some wags have said, it’s more a big gas station than a real national economy. Russian earnings from hydrocarbon sales internationally totaled 60% of its export revenues in 2019, and forty percent of its national-government budget. Russia’s dependence on oil and gas revenues has grown steadily over the last eight years.

The Biden Administration argues that blocking Russian hydrocarbon sales would not immediately damage Russia because of currency reserves accumulated in anticipation of just such sanctions. Of course, many more non-hydrocarbon sanctions are also required than currently announced, also hastening expending the reserves. The aggregate effect of more robust and comprehensive sanctions, including particularly oil-and-gas sanctions, would strangle Russia’s government and broader economy.

The Administration’s misguided graduated-escalation strategy and failure to strike Russia’s energy sector unfortunately reinforce one another, providing Putin a lifeline. Postponing any sanctions now, especially against energy, only sustains Moscow’s war machine. If Biden wants to keep U.S. hydrocarbon prices down for political reasons, he should consider the supply side: U.S. production increases, quickly available through already-existing horizontal-drilling and fracking infrastructure, could substantially mitigate price rises on American consumers.

Europeans may have a harder time, entirely through their own fault, and contrary to U.S. warnings dating to Ronald Reagan against depending on Russian energy sources. And what better opportunity or higher motive for Germany and other governments to force their economies toward green energy than supporting the courageous Ukrainian people. No one is asking for unnecessary sacrifice, but no anti-aggression policy in Ukraine is cost free. That is the reality of a globalized economy. Otherwise, the West’s policy is simply, “we support Ukraine, but not when it is inconvenient.”

It’s time to squeeze the Kremlin hard, not engage in semiotic warfare, gradual escalation, and pearl clutching. Drive a stake through Russia’s energy sector. Now.

The battle for the soul of the Republican Party has just begun 

February 11, 2022
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This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on February 11th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

‘President Trump is wrong.” With these words last Friday, former vice president Mike Pence drew an unambiguous red line in the fight for the Republican Party’s future. Although the battle began well before January 6 last year, when Pence rejected Trump’s direction to subvert the Constitution when counting the Electoral College’s vote, Pence’s steadfastness and clarity come at a critical moment.  

As the conservative-libertarian Federalist Society was applauding Pence, the Republican National Committee tragically voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in a House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 riots. This self-inflicted wound evokes the remark attributed to the Marquis de Talleyrand: “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake.” 

Pence’s words mean inevitably that Republicans must choose sides between supporting Trump’s dangerous effort, in his own recent words, to “overturn the election,” or Pence’s adherence to the clear Constitutional text. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s sharp criticism of the Cheney-Kinzinger censure on Tuesday underlines the importance of Pence’s stance. This issue will now play out in two ways: constitutionally, as people align with either Trump’s view or Pence’s, between which there is no compromise; and politically, in the race for 2024’s Republican presidential nomination.6 sec 

On the substance of the Constitutional issue, the merits are entirely with Pence. Neither the original Constitution nor the Twelfth Amendment give Congress or the vice president anything other than a clerical role. Pence said it eloquently on Friday: “I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American President.” 

No “constitutional conservative” can seriously argue the Framers intended Congress to do more than tabulate the respective States’ electoral certificates. The Framers wanted a system of separated powers, with President and Congress elected by different methods and constituencies, thus establishing the independence of government’s two elected branches. The Electoral College’s sole purpose is electing the President and Vice President; it was created precisely to exclude Congress from that function. And in America’s federal system, each State determines who its valid electors are, not Congress. Trump’s assertion that Congress has a larger role subverts the most fundamental premise of America’s national government. It is not a parliamentary system. 

Politically, therefore, aligning with Pence or Trump is a flat, either-or choice. Pence, in the early maneuvering for what will blossom into a fully-fledged presidential campaign, has tried hard not to alienate Trump or his supporters. To maintain his own unquestioned integrity, however, he cannot bend on the correctness of his January 6 conduct. Party leaders and members were always going to have to choose sides, and that moment has arrived. 

Moreover, other prospective Republican candidates, currently numbering between 15 and 20, must also now declare themselves one way or the other. In the campaign’s current “testing-the-waters” stage, most candidates are seeking the best of both worlds: separating themselves from Trump’s worst excesses without incurring Trump’s wrath. Good luck with that minuet. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who does very well in public opinion polls even with Trump included as an alternative nominee, has consistently refused to state publicly that he will not seek the nomination if Trump runs. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has already said he is in whatever Trump does. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who may run, will have no trouble aligning clearly with Pence. 

By contrast, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has clung to Trump like a limpet, now faces his worst nightmare. Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Rick Scott, and more now have the same dilemma. To exemplify the dangers in Trump-world, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has said she won’t run if Trump does, but he nonetheless castigates her mercilessly for her inconsistencies (which will likely doom her campaign in any case). 

Some commentators say the issue is philosophical, with more-conservative Republicans supporting Trump, while moderates oppose him. This is false. Donald Trump has no philosophy or policy other than Donald Trump’s greater glory. That is why the debate Pence has created is so important for the party’s future. It can either be a conservative party or a Trump party. It cannot be both. My bet is that philosophy, which ultimately brings electoral victory, will prevail. 

Putin’s playing chess in Ukraine and Biden steps in as pawn

January 25, 2022
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This article appeared in The New York Post on January 23th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

President Biden’s first press conference in 10 months, on the eve of his inauguration’s anniversary, made news. But not the kind he wanted. Asked about Russia’s possible invasion of Ukraine, NATO’s lack of unity and the likely failure of economic sanctions to deter Vladimir Putin, Biden answered that “the idea that NATO is not going to be united, I don’t buy . . . It depends on what [Russia] does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”

In a stroke, Biden demonstrated he didn’t understand his own Ukraine policy, undercut Kiev’s government and people, and handed Moscow an engraved invitation to make a “minor incursion” into Ukraine.

That was bad enough, but further answers made his position even more unintelligible. He said, “and so, I got to make sure everybody is on the same page as we move along . . . But it depends on what [Putin] does, as to the exact — to what extent we’re going to be able to get total unity on the Rus — on the NATO front.”

Biden was correct that Putin “was calculating what the immediate . . . and the long-term consequences of [sic] Russia will be.” Right now, Putin has the initiative and a broad range of options. America and the West are reactive and disunited, as Biden all but admitted. Putin is following a strategic playbook encompassing the entire former Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact “allies,” grounded on his 2005 precept that “the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” The United States and NATO are answering this strategic threat only tactically. The West focuses on avoiding imminent hostilities, whereas Putin is seeking enduring hegemony over former Soviet territories. The White House still fails to comprehend that Putin need not conduct all-out invasion of Ukraine to win significant new advantages. Seizing “pro-Russian” areas, leaving a rump independent Ukraine or installing a Moscow-friendly government might be Putin’s real goal. Or he may make political or military moves elsewhere, in Belarus, Georgia or Kazakhstan for example, for which the alliance seems completely unprepared.

Even worse, Moscow is now suckering Washington into negotiations over “security guarantees” that weaken and divide NATO itself. Biden said, “NATO is not going to take in Ukraine anytime in the next few decades,” an astonishing unforced error. George W. Bush was ready in April 2008 to fast-track Ukraine and Georgia as NATO members, but Germany and France objected. Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia and in 2014 invaded Ukraine, annexing Crimea and seizing control over the Donbas. NATO has never admitted a country with unwanted foreign troops on its soil because that would effectively put NATO in a state of war with the occupying country. Of course, Russia is the aggressor in every case, with its “minor incursions” not just in Georgia and Ukraine but many others.

Russia creates an artificial crisis, then graciously accedes to resolve it by “accepting” precisely the objective it sought in the first place. Biden’s response is totally backwards, signaling willingness to discuss restrictions on Ukraine’s NATO candidacy and limitations on missile and troop dispositions near Russia’s borders, all key Kremlin demands. This is a major error, which will only prompt further demands. Russia, a consistent violator of international commitments, is the aggressor, not NATO, which has always been a purely defensive alliance. Geographic restrictions on NATO deployments endanger its members and benefit Russia, as Poland, the Baltics and other central Europeans fully grasp, even if Germany and France don’t. Russia has always feared violating a NATO member’s border, but weakening NATO resolve undermines even its historically successful defensive purpose, as Moscow clearly understands.

Playing small ball with Putin, as Biden is doing, will not durably protect Ukraine or other endangered states. Biden’s inadequate and now incoherent policy is not deterring Russian military action, and timidity simply incentivizes Putin to increase his demands. We risk a downward spiral of NATO concessions to avoid military conflict today, but which will only increase its likelihood soon thereafter.

Indeed, the situation may be so far gone Putin inevitably emerges the winner. The last hope is that Biden immediately reverses course and seizes the initiative and insist the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline never operate until Russian troops leave any country that does not want them. Urgently required are more weapons and more NATO troops, not to fight but to train and exercise with Ukrainians, thereby increasing Moscow’s uncertainty and risk. So doing, of course, requires strength from the Europeans, especially France and Germany, that they may well lack.

This is Putin’s calculus, which Biden’s statements and last week’s negotiations did not change.

Time is on Putin’s side.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Donald Trump from 2018 to 2019 and US ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006.

John Bolton’s Guide for Containing Russia and China

December 20, 2021
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Drop the virtue signaling on democracy and put some boots on the ground in Ukraine. A Q&A with Trump’s former national security adviser.
By Tobin Harshaw

This article appeared in Bloomberg on December 18, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

Last month, I was in Honduras for its watershed presidential election. (OK, I was actually there to scuba dive, but it was during the watershed presidential election.) The result wasn’t a shock: The wife of a leftist former president with antidemocratic leanings beat the candidate of the right-wing ruling party with antidemocratic leanings. What was remarkable was how smoothly things went. The New York Times called it a “largely peaceful, orderly election” and reported that “the chief of the Organization of American States’s electoral observation mission, former President Luis Guillermo Solís of Costa Rica, called the vote ‘a beautiful example of citizen participation,’ noting the high turnout.”

Two weeks later, U.S. President Joe Biden held his Summit for Democracy, pledging “to set forth an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle the greatest threats faced by democracies today through collective action.” Guess who wasn’t invited: Honduras. And guess who was: Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq, all of which are rated “not free” in Freedom House’s annual democracy scorecard.

Political liberty, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder. To make sense of the contradictions, I talked with somebody who has beheld many of them: John Bolton. Before his tempestuous tenure as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser — details of which can be found in his memoir, “The Room Where It Happened” — Bolton spent four decades in public service, including as U.S. representative to the United Nations under President George W. Bush. Here is a lightly edited transcript of our discussion:

Tobin Harshaw: Let’s start with Biden’s democracy summit, which I assume you don’t think was a smash success. What about the administration’s stated effort to put democracy promotion back at the center of foreign policy?

John Bolton: I would start from a different conceptual perspective. What we should be fostering in the world is not the abstraction of democracy, we should be fostering freedom, and those two things are not the same. Democracy has come to mean all things bright and beautiful, and that just obscures the meaning of what we’re after. What we want are constitutional representative governments, and, by definition, all constitutional governments are limited governments, which means they’re not fully democratic. People can live in freedom with different kinds of governments.

TH: It’s hard to understand why some countries were invited — Congo and Pakistan — and others weren’t, like Hungary and Bangladesh.

JB: When you get to summits like this, you inevitably end up making distinctions that are somewhat arbitrary. What we really ought to focus on is the threats to free government in the world, and invite people who may not meet a standard of perfection.

One reason not to hold this particular summit was the fact that it was virtual. Anybody who has ever been to major international meetings — the general debate at the United Nations every September, G-20 summits — will tell you that what’s important is not the plenary meeting, the speeches that all the leaders read and that nobody listens to, but the bilaterals, the pull-asides, the informal meetings. That’s where you can get into real substance. So the whole thing strikes me as an exercise in symbolism. I don’t believe in virtue-signaling.

TH: I like your distinction between democracy and freedom. Isn’t it true that many if not most nations exist in some sort of gray area between being free and being unfree?

JB: Trying to make this into a contest between democracies and non-democracies misses the point. The biggest threats we face are authoritarian governments, and you’re going to have governments that can be important allies but don’t live up to the standards that we live by. That may be unpleasant, but it’s the reality we live in.

TH: That was certainly a reality that we lived in during the Cold War.

JB: As Winston Churchill put it: If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. That’s not to say we don’t hope that these friendly nations will become better representative governments, and in some respects that has happened. We had Spain as a member of NATO while Franco was still the authoritarian leader, and yet now we have a functioning representative government in Spain and in Portugal. I think that shows progress.

TH: If we are in a new Cold War with China, what are the countries we should be looking for as allies, even if they don’t measure up to our highest ideals?

JB: I don’t think it’s a Cold War with China. Because it’s not ideological like it was during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. It’s two different systems for sure, but the authoritarian party that runs China now is not communist, except in name. It’s classic authoritarian, domestically and internationally.

The point we tried to make during the Trump administration was that we wanted a free and open Indo-Pacific, and we’re happy to band together with anybody who opposes countries that try to make it less than free and open. Vietnam is hardly a free democratic society, but it’s on the border with China and has longstanding historical concerns about Chinese hegemonic ambitions. I have no hesitation whatever to work with the government of Vietnam; one day they may decide to adopt a more representative government, and that would be great.

TH: There are people who feel that Chinese authoritarianism is an ideology — and that Beijing is trying to promote similar authoritarian states in its image through the Belt and Road Initiative and other things.

JB: I think the Chinese are less concerned about transforming foreign regimes than about dominating their own people. It’s a powerful argument against their system when you have social credit scores, where they judge the performance of their own citizens. That’s something a free society should reject. But I hardly put it in the category of communism or fascism or the more identifiable 20th-century ideologies.

TH: Weaker countries are finding themselves more and more dependent on Chinese investment and economic help through Belt and Road and other things. Do you think that they are in danger of becoming a string of vassal states, or do you think they will react against efforts by China to bring them into the net?

JB: In many cases they are already reacting against the circumstances they find themselves in. Because their previous governments did not scrutinize the terms of Belt and Road projects, they didn’t see the debt trap that they were walking into. That’s one thing that we ought to try to work with like-minded countries globally to help prevent. The West believes in free and open economic transactions, and the Chinese have a completely different model that they have worked with enormous success, in part by subverting and undercutting things like the World Trade Organization.

TH: Many people feel that one of those opportunities was tTrans-Pacific Partnership, yet the Trump administration pulled out before it was finalized, and the Biden administration doesn’t seem any warmer to it. Do you think that’s a mistake?

JB: The trouble with TPP was not its concept — to use an economic organization to help combat Chinese hegemonic aspirations. The problem with TPP was it didn’t do very much; it just wasn’t a very impressive deal. Now we should re-look at how you take a notion that’s correct conceptually and make it more effective. The whole Indo-Pacific today is more receptive to doing something than it was before.

TH: How can you have another project with these friends and allies who feel that the U.S. snubbed them in the end?

JB: They are very concerned about an American retreat from the region as a whole, and would welcome other initiatives. I think this is true really on a global basis. Part of the problem, starting with Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and now Biden doing the same thing, is that every other region thinks we’re lessening our attention to them. We’re a global power, and the idea that pulling out of Afghanistan or the Middle East is somehow necessary to better deal with China is a completely fallacious argument. As we pull out of these regions, the Chinese move in.

TH: The question of the moment: Is Vladimir Putin about to start the largest land war in Europe since World War II, by invading Ukraine?

JB: I think Putin is doing cost-benefit analysis in real time, 24/7, and his objective is to get more and more hegemony in the space of the former Soviet Union — which may or may not include more annexation, a la Crimea — and to do it at a minimal cost.

Our threatened sanctions aren’t enough to deter him, and I think the U.S. and Europe have both suffered from a lack of strategic thinking. It’s not just a Ukraine question, it’s a question of what you do with the gray-zone countries: Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova in one clump, and then Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the other. NATO expanded east but it didn’t think through the logical end point: How much more are we going to expand and who are we consciously going to leave in a gray zone? So now Putin is forcing us to answer that question.

TH: The cliche is that he plays a weak hand well.

JB: I say that all the time.

TH: Like most cliches, it’s true. So how does the West play its stronger hand more effectively? Should NATO expansion be seriously on the table?

JB: Sure. President George W. Bush put it seriously on the table in April 2008, with respect to Georgia and Ukraine, and the Germans and the French said no. And four months later, the Russians invaded Georgia. You don’t get many laboratory experiments in foreign affairs, but there’s one of them right there, and I’m afraid we’re seeing another one here.

I would put more American and other NATO forces into Ukraine, exercising and training with the Ukrainians. Not because I expect them to fight, but because I want every Russian commander looking at that border to think, good grief, if I’m ordered to go across, there are going to be Americans a few miles away. I would send Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Kyiv right now to talk about greater cooperation. I would airlift more weapons into Ukraine, and into NATO countries that border on it, to say to Putin: Your cost-benefit analysis is changing right in front of you.

TH: Finally, let’s talk nonproliferation. You had an op-ed column the other day that did a good job of highlighting all the flaws in the 2015 Iran Nuclear Pact, but I don’t see much progress from arguing about the past. Biden and Trump both promised that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. Is that even possible?

JB: Sure it is, but the problem is for 25 years we’ve had politicians of both parties who say it’s unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons, it’s unacceptable for North Korea to have nuclear weapons. I always took it to mean that if something is unacceptable, we wouldn’t accept it. And that means you have to take steps to stop it, including military force.

On Iran, I’m not sure the U.S. is going to have to do that, because Israel is prepared to act. North Korea remains a problem that successive American governments have failed on, and there’s nobody else in the world to blame for the success of the proliferators. We were the only ones who could stop them.

TH: What does success look like?

JB: You’ve got options for regime change in both North Korea and Iran. The idea that if we just negotiate a little bit harder, we’ll find a way to solve the problem, has been wrong for 20 years. It’s not just the threat that they might use the weapons, it’s that they would sell them or give them to others: to terrorist groups in the case of Iran, to anybody with hard currency in the case of North Korea.

TH: China, which long had a small and not particularly fearsome nuclear arsenal, has been expanding it like crazy. It’s building underground silos, it’s tested out this wacky space missile, and so forth: What happens if China really achieves nuclear parity with the U.S.?

JB: Then we’ve got a three-way nuclear standoff. During the Cold War, we were really in a bipolar nuclear environment with the Soviets, even if the U.K. and France and later China and other countries had some weapons. I think we’re past that bipolar point already, whatever China’s capability, because there’s no doubt they could scale up to the levels that Russia and the U.S. have under the New Start treaty. One of the things I said in the Trump administration was that any negotiation over New Start extension or replacement must include China.

TH: But there were good reasons that the USSR came to the table with President Ronald Reagan, and later Russia as well: The U.S. held all sorts of advantages. What reason would the Chinese have to come to the three-way table today?

JB: They feel they don’t have to, because the U.S. government through successive presidencies has failed to recognize the nature of the threat. We have far too long believed that the consequence of Deng Xiaoping moving toward more market-oriented domestic policies would mean a more democratic China internally, and a more responsible China externally. Those hypotheses have been proven completely wrong. I don’t think the Chinese fear us, and I don’t think they believe there will be any consequences for them becoming the third major nuclear power.

TH: So what is the strategy to bring them into talks?

JB: People have to wake up to the issue of how you want to deal with China overall. I think we’ve got to start imposing some economic costs. I’m not suggesting any military action, but because China’s approach is a whole of government, whole of society approach, we’ve got to respond in part the same way. It’s going to be economic retaliation with things we should have done already anyway — for example, penalize China for the theft of our intellectual property for the last three or four decades.

TH: Finally, you had a second op-ed piece this week on some of China’s other bad behavior — decrying its influence on international organizations such as the UN Human Rights Council. You were the American representative to the UN: Is there any chance of making it a useful tool in spreading the freedom you described earlier?

JB: No, I don’t think so. But it’s a place where you have to conduct the battle, to make the case. What happened with respect to the World Health Organization and coronavirus, what China has done to keep Taiwan outside the international system, what it has done to pervert the whole concept of human rights in the Human Rights Council, shows how it pretends to participate constructively in the international system. You have to expose that kind of behavior. It is part of the persuasion war that we are losing all around the world today.

 

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Offering Lukashenko a graceful exit could be the best way to stop a Putin land grab in Belarus

November 15, 2021
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Western lassitude is enabling Russia’s possible total reabsorption of the former Soviet republic

This article appeared in The Telegraph on November 13, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
November 13, 2021

Short attention spans, willful ignorance, wishful thinking, and no strategic planning have preceded international debacles throughout history. That brings us to Belarus.

Thirty years after the Soviet Union lost the Cold War and dissolved, Western lassitude is enabling Russia’s possible total reabsorption of Belarus, the first former Soviet republic so endangered. Although Moscow’s goal elsewhere may be suzerainty rather than sovereignty, Vladimir Putin did annex Crimea from Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics are wavering under his relentless efforts to reverse three decades of their independence.

From Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia, Moscow had waged an increasingly successful campaign to assert hegemony. Books will be written about the West’s collectively feeble response.

Indeed, in present circumstances, both Belarus and Ukraine may be under assault simultaneously, although in different ways and for different reasons. Russia’s latest military build-up along Ukraine’s border, if it is a serious threat, could well be a precursor for annexing a significant part of the Donbas region, currently under the control of Russian-backed paramilitaries.

Belarus, by contrast, is now the schwerpunkt of Kremlin activity that might involve a total re-amalgamation of the entire country. Obviously by foreshadowing possible conflict in two theatres, Russia has expanded its possible options and confused its adversaries.

In Minsk, President Alexander Lukashenko is not yet fully under Russian control, and his unfolding efforts to flood Poland and the Baltic countries with imported Middle Eastern refugees (and threaten natural gas cutoffs) may be entirely his own plan.

Unfortunately, Turkey’s earlier success in transferring Syrian refugees into Europe (abetted by Germany’s unilateral open-borders decision) is being repeated, as the European Union loses sight of the forced Russia-Belarus reunion while it scrambles to handle a potential new influx of migrants. Incredibly, Warsaw is actually being criticised for violating the “refugees’ human rights” by not considering them for asylum, as if they trekked to Poland on their own.

Whether Minsk’s idea or Moscow’s, this artificial refugee crisis, a form of “hybrid warfare” Putin has used adroitly, provides the distraction needed to justify both increased repression within Belarus and more serious provocations by Russia throughout its “near abroad”. Putin’s renewed troop build-ups and maneuvers along the Ukrainian border may be part of such a larger strategy.

Neither Washington nor Brussels has responded adequately to Belarus developments in recent years. America’s excuses for failure are Trump and Biden. Europe’s excuse is that the EU is still less than the sum of its parts; its primitive politico-military capabilities don’t match its rhetorical pipe organ.

No Western country responded strategically to the extensive protests against the regime in Belarus in 2020, nor to Lukashenko’s kidnapping earlier this year of the opposition leader Roman Protasevich, an act of air piracy indicating that “hybrid warfare” was already under way. Biden missed significant opportunities to confront Putin on Belarus at their June 16 Geneva summit, and over September’s quadrennial Zapad joint-military exercises in Belarus. Putin may think he has a green light.

Lukashenko’s clear preference is retaining authority in an independent Belarus. His Plan B is keeping power even if only as a Russian protectorate. The West’s problem is that sanctioning Minsk for suppressing its political opposition may not topple Lukashenko, but it may allow Putin in.

To paraphrase Lord Ismay, Nato’s first secretary general, our key objectives in Belarus should be to keep Russia out, a free Belarus government in, and Lukashenko down. Unfortunately, however, we are long past the point where we should have developed a coherent strategy to achieve these goals. Prudence therefore dictates being willing to accept what is probably the most we can get: a free, independent Belarus. At a minimum, we must avoid the worst-case outcome, with Russian bayonets keeping Lukashenko in power.

Virtue signalers in Europe and America would prize a successful “colour revolution” in Belarus, with Lukashenko and his fellow miscreants humiliated in court and ultimately imprisoned, but that is likely impossible. Menacingly, an entirely plausible scenario is that the opposition stages larger and larger protests; Lukashenko panics and requests Russian military support; and Putin all too happily complies, with Belarus suppressed not under Lukashenko but under Putin, followed by reabsorption into Russia.

If events took this turn, which might happen with sudden speed, Western capitals could do very little, other than engage in more useless virtue signaling about how unacceptable it all was.

Instead, we should find ways to make it attractive for Lukashenko, his family and top advisors to hand over power in exchange for a good life in exile (perhaps in a Gulf Arab country) and immunity from prosecution in Belarus.

Western threats have not succeeded with Lukashenko, sadly, because the threats are not credible. A golden parachute for Lukashenko is credible if Western leaders recognize the unpleasant correlation of forces they face.

If circumstances permit, Lukashenko can even be allowed to leave gracefully, pretending that his departure was his own plan. The key is getting him out of Minsk before Moscow can pretend to have heard an invitation to intervene.

In America, we call such a scenario “winning ugly”. But it beats losing, especially for the citizens of Belarus, not to mention Ukraine and the others.

John Bolton is a former United States national security adviser

India’s S-400 missile system problem

November 10, 2021
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This article appeared in The Hill on November 10, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
November 10, 2021

India’s nearly completed, $5.43 billion purchase of Russian S-400 air-defense systems raises serious obstacles to closer politico-military relations between Washington and New Delhi. It requires rigorous strategic thinking to avoid hampering deeper policy relationships within the Asian “Quad” (the U.S., India, Japan and Australia), compromising America’s stealth technology or jeopardizing seemingly mundane but often critical issues of interoperability among national militaries. Finding mutually acceptable solutions has enormous implications; so does failure. Undoubtedly, India needs advanced air defenses. It has long, difficult-to-defend borders with China.; Beijing’s growing navy is increasingly menacing, as are Pakistan’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, fostered by China.

But India’s S-400 purchase, formalized in October 2018, was a mistake, even from its own strategic perspective. New Delhi directly challenged earlier U.S. legislation intended to block significant Russian weapons sales, and which provided very limited presidential waiver authority. Especially unfathomable in why India would acquire the same system China was buying, risking that Beijing’s cyber warriors, perhaps exploiting Moscow-inserted back doors, could cripple their defenses in a crisis. Turkey’s similar purchase of S-400s, and the dynamics among the three transactions, bear particularly on the current campaign to waive sanctions against India.

Washington sanctioned Beijing in September 2018 with broad U.S. domestic support. Turkey’s acquisition provoked considerable controversy, coming as it did from a NATO ally. S-400s are, not surprisingly, completely incompatible with NATO-wide air defense capabilities, leaving the alliance’s southeastern flank potentially vulnerable. (A humorous contemporaneous remark was that Turkish President Recep Erdogan wanted the S-400s to defend himself against Ankara’s own air force.)

In addition, Turkey co-produced components of the stealthy F-35 and had ordered 100 of them. Significant exposure of F-35s to S-400 radars would give the air-defense operator a clear advantage in detecting F-35s despite their stealth, thereby possibly fatally compromising the entire F-35 program. After extended debate, President Trump reluctantly and belatedly ejected Turkey from the F-35 program in 2020 and imposed economic sanctions. To this day, the potential proximity of U.S. F-35s and Russian S-400s in Turkey arouses concern.

Perhaps bolstered by Trump’s evident reluctance to punish Turkey and equally evident divisions among Trump’s advisers, India’s decision to proceed nonetheless reflects a backward-looking dependence on Russia for sophisticated aerospace and weapons technology. Now, with deliveries imminent, Indian sources still argue that the deal shouldn’t be cancelled: The actual agreement was in 2016 (before the sanctions legislation), India is dependent on Russia for spare parts and maintenance under previous weapons-systems contracts and imposing sanctions would push New Delhi back toward Moscow.

These are arguments of inertia and complacency, and they should carry no weight for the U.S. Vague assertions about future conduct, even accompanied by reduced reliance on major purchases from Russia, are insufficient to risk undermining our global efforts to counter the spread of Kremlin arms sales. Having New Delhi and Washington grow closer means just that, not equivocating or reversing field.

In fact, India’s direction in foreign arms purchases is decidedly unclear. Last week, its ambassador to Russia, Bala Venktash Varma, said that “there has been a fundamental change in how our defense relationship has moved in the last three years. Russia has moved back again as the top defense partner of India.” Still worse are reports that, even before the initial S-400 purchases are fully deployed, India and China are considering upgrading to the new S-500 system.

Skeptics might say New Delhi is playing Washington. Even viewed benignly, India is sending contradictory signals, likely due to competing views inside its government and body politic. Whatever Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reasons, the other Quad members have compelling reasons for New Delhi to articulate its future defense-procurement strategies more precisely. No one need commit to a full-blown, politico-military alliance to see the importance of striving for interoperability among like-minded states before things go further, if they ever do. NATO struggled with interoperability problems for decades, thereby leaving the alliance less effective, operationally and as a deterrent. There is no reason to engender potential problems, which prudent planning could avoid.

In such circumstances, any U.S. waiver for India’s S-400 purchases must come with clear conditions and requirements. Pending legislation in Congress says merely that the president may not impose sanctions upon a Quad member unless he “certifies … that that government is not participating in quadrilateral cooperation … on security matters that are critical to the United States’ strategic interests.” That is no condition at all; if those were the facts, it would mean there was no Quad, but merely a Trio.

Developing U.S. conditions for the waiver is an urgent priority. Washington should at least require an agreed-upon timeline and metrics to reduce Indian purchases of sophisticated Russian weapons systems, regular Quad consultations on meeting these targets and more extensive politico-military planning for Indo-Pacific threats, thereby shaping future procurement requirements.

We need not insist that India acquire all its future high-end weapons systems from the U.S., although it would obviously be helpful to see larger purchases than at present. Many Western countries are capable of supplying Indian needs, further highlighting the advantages of breaking the Russian mold. America, Japan, Australia and others also could offer opportunities for defense cooperation with India along the lines of the AUKUS project on nuclear-powered submarines, to enhance India’s own domestic weapons productions.

This model is important not only for the Indo-U.S. relationship but for many others, including Turkey. If sanctions waivers or general lassitude regarding Russian weapons sales and their consequences for regional balances of power become commonplace in Washington, the problem will continue to grow. It is entirely certain that an Indian waiver will trigger instant demands for like treatment from Turkey and other prospective purchasers, while enabling Rosoboronexport, Russia’s foreign-military-sales agency, to exploit our lack of willpower. Ironically, Turkey might warrant a waiver, with appropriate conditions, if the Turks remove Erdogan from office in upcoming elections, so resolving the India problem could well be precedential.

Decisions of this magnitude require Washington to pursue a conscious strategic approach, rather than simply treating an Indian waiver (or any other) as a one-off. Time is short.

How Biden’s Afghan blunder is already endangering U.S. security

November 02, 2021
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This article appeared in The Washington Post on November 2, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
November 2, 2021

After overthrowing the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001, U.S. and NATO forces stayed in the country primarily to preclude the Taliban from regaining power and again providing sanctuary for terrorists threatening worldwide attacks. U.S. presidents voiced other reasons to remain, some important, some not. Mistakes were made and money wasted. The undeniable human cost was almost entirely caused by the terrorists’ continued barbarity.

For 20 years, no terrorist attacks against the United States emanated from Afghanistan. Tragically, this central reality became obscured by simplistic political sloganeering. Presidents either didn’t grasp or were unwilling to advocate a limited U.S. military presence to buttress Kabul’s elected government and keep the Taliban at bay. Those advocating withdrawal simply assumed the terrorist threat was immaterial, or preventable through unproven “over the horizon” strategies.

Before Congress last week, the Biden administration conceded that one rhetorical Maginot Line supporting withdrawal had fallen. Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, testified that both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State faction in Afghanistan known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, have the “intent” to conduct terrorist attacks against the West. “We could see ISIS-K generate that capability in somewhere between six or 12 months. I think the current assessments by the intelligence community is that al-Qaeda would take a year or two to reconstitute that capability.” So much for the Taliban’s credibility, having promised to prevent precisely this.

And so much for confidence in the threat’s immateriality, exemplified when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asserted late last year that there was no “significant worldwide terrorist threat coming from Afghanistan.” The Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS-K must not have seen this news, or been aware of Donald Trump’s frequent insistence, as president, that they were far from America. Just two months after the departure of U.S. troops, new terrorist attacks in the United States could be only six months away.

Did the speed of the threat’s rise stem from the terrorists’ resilience or erroneous U.S. estimates of how much damage they had incurred? The question deserves close scrutiny. Whatever the explanation, the result is the same: The United States may not face another 9/11-scale attack immediately, but the terrorist threat has not moderated, and certainly not disappeared.

The Biden administration deserves credit for surprising candor, although Kahl’s testimony echoed the warnings that President Biden received before proceeding to withdraw, as Trump and President Barack Obama were similarly warned. Now, however, these troubling assessments are publicly buttressed by Biden’s own political appointee.

Biden’s long-standing over-the-horizon theory that we can mount successful counterterrorism operations from far distant platforms, with essentially no in-country presence, will now be tested. Unfortunately, this conjecture is likely to be merely a second rhetorical Maginot Line.

Without even a bare-bones U.S. counterterrorism platform in Afghanistan, intelligence on threatening activities will be enormously difficult to come by. Much of our superb technical capability for surveillance will be irrelevant. Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K will not be excavating deep silos to house nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, like China, visible from space. Nor is eavesdropping possible when terrorists transmit truly sensitive information via the ancient but durable channel of couriers. Working with human agents, the best method against tightly knit organizations, requires in-person handling, not video conferences from Langley.

Obviously, inadequate intelligence makes long-distance strikes far more problematic, especially in remote, mountainous Afghan terrain. Pakistani help is a mixed blessing, as it has been for two decades, given the country’s Janus-like relationship with the Taliban and other terrorists. Nor is Moscow cooperating. Speaking virtually to a recent Tehran conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “We call on Afghanistan’s neighboring countries not to allow a military presence of U.S. and NATO forces that plan to move there after leaving Afghanistan’s territory.”

As we moved out, ostensibly to focus more intensely on China, China is moving in: by offering at Tehran to host next year’s ministerial meeting of Kabul’s neighbors, and by expanding investments and fostering mutually beneficial political understandings with the Taliban.

Nor should anyone believe that the current animosities between ISIS-K and the Taliban (joined by al-Qaeda, now deeply intertwined with the Taliban), are permanent. The Islamic State emerged from al-Qaeda, and the taxonomy of Islamist terrorists is not so rigid that alliances of convenience or even firm partnerships won’t emerge against the common enemy, namely the United States. Accordingly, a notion now circulating among some in the U.S. national security community supporting the Taliban against ISIS-K should be sharply rejected. The terrorists understand their own capacity for shifting affiliations, and so should we. They are all our enemies.

Today, post-withdrawal, Americans are unmistakably more vulnerable to terrorism’s threat. Adversaries and allies alike regard the abandonment of Afghanistan as a surrender, auguring how muted a U.S. response might be to crises far from Kabul. We can reverse this slide, but doing so requires recognizing that leaving Afghanistan was a major strategic blunder.

Taiwan Must Be Included In Joe Biden’s China Strategy

October 25, 2021
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This article appeared in 1945 on October 25, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
October 25, 2021

Last week, the White House yet again corrected President Joe Biden for misstating his own Taiwan policy. The day after saying America had a “commitment” to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, thereby reversing the long-standing (and badly misguided) “strategic ambiguity” approach, his aides hurriedly said the policy had not changed. “Ironic” doesn’t come close to describing Biden’s misstep. In a 2001 Washington Post op-ed, Biden lambasted George W. Bush for exactly the same thing. Entitled “Not So Deft On Taiwan,” the op-ed ended with “Words matter.”

Indeed. Even Kissengerian words like “strategic ambiguity” can outlive their utility. Taiwan’s central vulnerability today is that it stands isolated by decades of Chinese pressure and propaganda. The conceptual answer is to enmesh Taiwan as a key element of the overall U.S. and allied response to the full array of China’s threats, diplomatically, militarily, and economically. Focusing primarily on bolstering Taiwan’s military power underlines its isolation rather than reducing it. China’s recent improvements to military bases in Fujian province show the cross-Strait arms race is a central fixture of their relations, not a decisive answer for either.

Treating Taiwan separately obscures its significance in America’s policy debates, and fails to generate the domestic political support required to successfully deter China. In fact, given Biden’s priority on reaching agreements with Beijing on climate-change issues, China’s palpable threat to Taiwan is likely being downplayed, not to mention broader dangers. Thus, for example, when Biden met in August with Israeli Prime Minister Bennett, Israeli officials were surprised China received only passing mention.

China poses an extraordinarily wide range of threats. Understanding that Taiwan is part of that spectrum doesn’t diminish its importance, but instead ensures it is not treated as a “one-off” issue susceptible to being traded away. We didn’t trade off NATO allies to the Soviet Union one-by-one, and while we are far distant from an Indo-Pacific NATO, looking at the big picture helps us with Taiwan. Paraphrasing Eisenhower, enlarging a problem can help solve it.

Beijing’s offensive posture on its periphery is clear and growing, as its neighbors see plainly. Taiwan is hardly the alpha and omega of China’s hegemonic aspirations. Deterring Beijing from attacking Taiwan thus fits readily into a strategy both offensive and defensive all along China’s landmass. Beijing needs to hear that Washington holds it accountable for North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile programs, not as simply one more concerned state in the failed Six-Party Talks.

President Biden should strongly reaffirm that the Senkaku Islands lie within Washington’s defense commitments to Tokyo, as Obama and Trump did. In the South China Sea, tightening politico-military relations with the littoral states; explicitly rejecting China’s territorial claims and finally resolving the other nations’ competing claims (including Taiwan’s);  expanding freedom-of-navigation operations and the number of navies participating;  and continued growth in military cooperation with others on China’s periphery like India and Vietnam, including greater cooperation in cyber-security with “neutral” states, are all of a strategic piece.

At the apex of the pyramid are nuclear weapons, the ultimate means for China to prevent others from adequately engaging in collective defense with Taiwan.  STRATCOM Commander Charles Richard has described China’s increases in nuclear weapons delivery capabilities as “breathtaking”, no understatement. Enhanced ballistic-missile inventories, reflected by substantial new missile-silo construction, plus Beijing’s progress in hypersonic cruise-missile technology, all indicate it must be a participant in any future strategic weapons negotiations. Bilateral talks between Russia and America reflect merely a bygone era of nuclear threats, not the one growing before our eyes now. China’s complaint that its nuclear inventory is too small to participate would simply give it a license to build up to Russian and American levels, and only then participate. This is unacceptable. Beijing’s nuclear importance should also be plain to Russia, but apparently not yet.  Notwithstanding its current closeness to Beijing, Moscow must understand that Greater China’s territory may well include Far Eastern Russia and more by 2100. All those natural resources and tiny population may be too tempting to resist.

This is far from a complete list even of China’s politico-military threats, let alone the economic and social menace it embodies. In the immediate future, different potential partners will agree in different respects about the nature of Beijing’s dangers. Accordingly, Washington needs a “variable geometry” to involve its potential allies until perceptions of the struggle ahead are better defined and more widely shared. Taiwan is far safer nested within this process than standing apart from it. That is how Washington’s strategic thinking should proceed.

It’ll Take More than American Military Might to Shore Up Taiwan

October 21, 2021
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Team Biden needs a fuller strategy that includes international recognition and new regional alliances.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on October 21, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
October 21, 2021

China’s threat to Taiwan is real, not hypothetical, as recent incursions into the island’s air-defense zone demonstrate. To counter Beijing’s renewed belligerence, a successful strategy must go beyond eliminating the “strategic ambiguity” over whether the U.S. will come to the island’s defense. A successful strategy will require clarifying Taiwan’s status, its critical place in Indo-Pacific politics, and its economic importance globally. The U.S. military contribution to Taiwan’s security is crucial, but it requires strong political support here and abroad.

It begins by affirming that Taiwan is a sovereign, self-governing country, not a disputed Chinese province. It meets international law’s criteria of statehood, such as defined territory, stable population and the performance of normal governmental functions such as viable currency and law enforcement. Washington, Tokyo and others would be entirely justified to extend diplomatic recognition, and its attendant legitimacy, to Taipei.

The 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, the foundational statement of current U.S.-China relations, is effectively dead. The communiqué says that “the United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” and “doesn’t challenge that position.” Beijing warped these words to mean “one China run by Beijing,” a formulation the U.S. never accepted.

The reality the U.S. acknowledged in 1972 no longer exists. Taiwan’s National Chengchi University has polled the island’s people about their identity for 30 years. Between 1992 and 2021, those identifying as Taiwanese rose to 63.3% from 17.6%; those identifying as Chinese fell to 2.7% from 25.5%; those identifying as both Taiwanese and Chinese fell to 31.4% from 46.4%. (Some 2.7% didn’t respond, down from 10.5%.) The “silent artillery of time,” as Abraham Lincoln called it, will likely continue these trends. Taiwan’s citizens have made up their own minds: There is no longer “one China” but “one China, one Taiwan,” as Beijing has feared for decades.

Broader recognition of Taiwan’s status as an independent state would be extremely helpful in expanding politico-military alliances to buttress the island’s defenses against China. Yet Washington’s support may be insufficient to deter Beijing from attempting to subjugate Taiwan (or near-offshore islands like Quemoy and Matsu). Formal or informal alliances that include Taipei would show Beijing that the costs of belligerence toward Taiwan are significantly higher than China may expect.

One step would be forming an East Asia Quad, consisting of Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and America, complementing the existing Japan-India-Australia-U.S. Quad. Japan should welcome this development. Its decision makers increasingly understand that a Chinese attack on Taiwan is an attack on Japan. Both are part of “the first island chain” separating the mainland from the broader Pacific, and their mutual security is inextricable.

It would be harder to persuade South Korea to join in such an effort due to historical animosities toward Japan and other factors, but its people are nonetheless aware of the consequences of Taiwan falling to China. The 2022 presidential election is an opportunity to debate whether to stand with its neighbors or risk eventually living under Greater China’s suzerainty. Vietnam, Singapore, Australia and Canada could join this Taiwan-centric grouping in due course.

Taipei’s residual South China Sea territorial claims could be bargaining chips for closer relations with other partners, especially littoral states like Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore. At this southern end of the first island chain, Taiwan’s navy could make material contributions to freedom-of-navigation missions. Taiwan is also developing increasingly important cyberwarfare capabilities and artificial intelligence.

Similar cooperation with Pacific island states would also enhance Taiwan’s reputation as a good neighbor. In addition, American and Taiwanese information statecraft in the Indo-Pacific and globally should expose China’s hypocritical behavior on climate change and Covid and its repression of Uyghurs, Hong Kong and religious freedom. Failure to counter Beijing’s extensive influence operations hamstrings efforts to constrain China and protect Taiwan.

Few Americans appreciate how critical an economic partner Taiwan is, especially its semiconductor manufacturing industry and its extensive trade links throughout the Indo-Pacific, all of which could support enhanced politico-military ties. Economic issues are important for regional countries and Europeans, who may be less willing to engage in military action. These countries should be reminded of China’s threat, including Beijing’s weaponizing telecommunications companies like Huawei and ZTE and its brutality in taking Canadians hostage in retaliation for the legitimate arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.

More military assets supporting Taiwan are critical but potentially futile without a fuller American strategic vision, with buy-in from citizens and other like-minded countries. That vision must be broad, persuasive and implemented without delay, to ensure the sustained popular support needed to prevail.

Arms Control Is Not an End unto Itself

October 11, 2021
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Instead, the Biden administration must pursue it as a component of a comprehensive national-security strategy to advance American interests.

This article appeared in The National Review on October 11, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton and Robert Joseph
October 11, 2021

The Biden administration has ambitions to re-establish America’s “credibility as a leader in arms control,” according to its Interim National Security Strategy released this past March. While we reject the suggestion that U.S. credibility has been lost, as national-security professionals, we both understand the importance of effective arms control. But we also know that all too often, arms control has been seen as an end unto itself, instead of what it should be: a component of a comprehensive national-security strategy to advance American interests.

Recently, the administration met in Geneva for the second round of “Strategic Stability Dialogues” with the Russian Federation. One outcome was an agreement to create a bilateral arms-control working group. This working group is not itself a problem.

The question for the Biden administration is whether it will want a deal with Russia so badly that it agrees to a bad deal. Judging by the preemptive concession to Moscow in extending the New START treaty by five years, something even senior members of the administration cautioned against, we have reason to be concerned.

Yet negotiating a deal is, in some ways, the easy part. The hard work comes once a deal is in place. That’s especially true when dealing with a country like Russia, which has violated basically every arms-control treaty it has ever signed, according to the United States government.

One of the most important examples of how this process should work is when the Obama and Trump administrations had to respond to Russian violations of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.

The INF treaty, the only arms-control agreement that actually eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons, led to the destruction of twice as many Soviet weapons as American (unlike more recent treaties such as the Obama-era New START treaty that required only the United States to reduce nuclear weapons while Russia was allowed to build up). In the Cold War context, the INF treaty advanced U.S. security interests and those of our allies in Europe and Asia.

The problem was twofold: Russia was cheating and the treaty did not prevent the People’s Republic of China from fielding hundreds of nuclear missiles at intermediate-range. The result was that only the United States was limited from developing intermediate-range ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles. For some in the arms-control community, even these undeniable facts were not enough to mean the United States was justified in leaving a treaty that had outlived its usefulness and had ceased to make any sense.

One of the most important tools the United States government had to begin to push back on Russia’s violation was the annual report of the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments.” This congressionally mandated report — the so-called compliance report — brings together all of the information available to the intelligence community, with State Department diplomats and international-law experts, and the Defense Department experts who are best able to assess the military implications of a given violation.

And the Obama administration used it to good effect. Starting in July 2014 when the unclassified compliance report first stated that Russia was violating the INF treaty, the United States was able to build pressure on the Putin regime for its conduct. It was able to do this, moreover, all while protecting intelligence sources and methods. One way this was done was by releasing the compliance report in both unclassified and classified forms. And the fact that the violation was publicly announced allowed the United States to engage in an open campaign with our allies to build a unified diplomatic front.

Imagine the following: The United States never disclosed the violation in the unclassified report and had only confronted Russia about its violation in confidential bilateral sessions. For many in the arms-control community, for whom the fact of the treaty is as important as whether both sides are complying with it, this would be just fine. But for those of us who believe that a treaty only contributes to national security when both sides adhere to it, this would be to the disadvantage of the United States, which always lives up to the treaties it ratifies.

In the case of the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, the Trump administration had to confront Russian and Chinese nuclear-weapons testing in violation of that agreement, to which the U.S. scrupulously adheres even though the U.S. Senate rejected ratification with 51 votes — including one from Senator Lugar (R., Ind.), a longtime arms-control advocate. The previous administration called out that illicit testing in the unclassified report, even though it couldn’t prove the allegation solely with unclassified information.

In the coming weeks, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the full Senate will consider the Biden administration’s nomination for the post of assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance. Senators should determine whether the administration will distance itself from both of its predecessors and act to conceal evidence of violations just because they can’t be entirely proven in the unclassified report.

If the nominee for the AVC Bureau will not pledge to keep confronting these two countries in each subsequent unclassified report, the committee should be rightly concerned that this nominee will not meet the basic responsibility of the job: “Trust but verify.”