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

By John Bolton
October 10, 2021

Washington’s conventional wisdom held in recent years that Americans wanted to “end endless wars” around the world, particularly in Afghanistan. Public-opinion polling repeatedly found at least plurality support for withdrawing U.S. forces from “our longest war,” seconded by Presidents Trump and Biden, among others.

It was hardly a subject of debate among media commentators and Washington insiders. Who could disagree, except a few irreconcilables? Democrats certainly didn’t question this received truth, nor did many Republicans, bending to Trump’s influence.

The conventional wisdom and its arguments were simple: Why did we invade 20 years ago, wasting lives and treasure? The Afghans should defend themselves. The Taliban has moderated, craving acceptance by “the international community.” The global terrorist threat has receded. Our obsession with the Middle East should end so we can “pivot” to Asia. Time to focus on “nation building” at home, and on climate change.

Then came the actual withdrawal. The swift collapse of the Afghan government and its national army, the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul and riveting scenes of death and terror amid frantic efforts to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghans who had worked with us for two decades were too stunning to ignore. Washington’s conventional wisdom encountered reality — and dissolved as quickly as the Afghan military.

But conventional wisdom is nothing if not resilient. It quickly concluded that while Americans overwhelming disapproved of how the withdrawal was executed, they nonetheless still concurred with Biden and Trump on the underlying withdrawal decision.

There is, however, strong reason to believe that conventional wisdom has stumbled again, as Americans begin to realize that withdrawal has more profound strategic consequences than simply removing U.S. troops.

Recent congressional hearings, with more coming, have informed the rethinking prompted by millions of television screens portraying our withdrawal’s fully predictable results. For starters, the Taliban provided ample evidence that it had neither modernized nor moderated, naming no women to its new government. Al Qaeda proved to be more numerous and more integrated into the Taliban than even the worst-case United Nations and other studies indicated. Terrorists across the Middle East took heart from the Taliban’s “victory,” and foreign jihadists began returning to Afghanistan. Reports of retaliation and barbarism by Taliban fighters emerged from the few Western journalists still in-country.

For years, presidents in both parties (Obama, Trump, Biden) failed to make the case for remaining in Afghanistan. They apparently did not believe we were safer deploying forces there rather than merely defending against renewed terrorist attacks in the streets and skies over America.

It stands to reason that when citizens weren’t hearing leaders advocate and adequately explain “forward defense,” they didn’t support it. Yet this was the basic logic underlying the Pentagon’s long-standing view that America’s military presence in Afghanistan was a critical insurance policy for sustained protection of the homeland. It was not just the military capabilities deployed there – and NATO’s complementary train-and-assist mission – but the intelligence-gathering program that relied upon the military’s infrastructure and protective capacity to do critical work on terrorism in Afghanistan and the dangers emanating from Pakistan and Iran on its borders.

These were arguments repeatedly put to both Trump and Biden. Contrary to Biden’s glib assertions, senior U.S. military leaders almost unanimously opposed withdrawing all American forces. Equally important, the destructive consequences of the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban, producing the February 2020 Doha agreement, were not well-understood among even Washington policymakers, let alone the general public.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and CENTCOM Commander Gen. Frank McKenzie have now testified before Congress that the U.S.-Taliban agreement had a devastating impact on the spirit of both the Afghan military and the civilian government. Trump’s policy, adopted by Biden, over time demoralized and delegitimized the very Afghan government which America had been instrumental in creating two decades ago. By effectively de-recognizing that government, we caused the collapse in morale that swept away years of training and equipping of Afghan forces.

Thus, while many withdrawal advocates point to the rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s government as buttressing their argument to leave, the collapse was, in fact, a self-inflicted wound by American presidents desperate to reap the perceived political benefits of pulling out.

Looking ahead, now that America’s military departure from Afghanistan is a fact and not just a hypothetical, the key political question is whether public opinion grasps the renewed threats from terrorism thereby created. To be sure, U.S. national-security policy must be based on our fundamental interests, not on domestic U.S. politics, and certainly not on the vagaries of public-opinion polling. Polling commissioned by my Super PAC, however, points to significant shifts in public attitudes after watching and debating the withdrawal and its aftermath in real time. (The polling was conducted September 16-18, covering 1,000 likely voters, with a margin of error of +/- 3.1% at a 95 percent confidence level.)

Asked whether pulling out our forces made the United States more or less safe from terrorism, 52 percent said, “less safe,” 6 percent said “safer” and 37 percent said “no difference.” By more than a two-to-one majority (56 percent to 26 percent), Americans agreed that “withdrawal from Afghanistan wasn’t a good idea that was botched, it was a bad idea” because the Taliban could provide al Qaeda and other terrorists with bases of operations. A 52 percent majority believed we should have left some troops behind or not withdrawn any at all, compared to 33 percent who said all troops should have been withdrawn. And 61 percent believed our failure in Afghanistan would encourage jihadists around the world, making them more likely to attack the United States, compared to 29 percent who disagreed.

These are sobering numbers and, if sustained, represent a thorough rejection of the previous conventional wisdom. Trump himself seemed to grasp this new direction of public opinion; at a Sept. 25 rally in Perry, Ga., referring to his own “plans” had he been reelected, Trump said “we were going to occupy Bagram [air force base] for a long time to come, and it would’ve been so good.” Typically, Trump either ignored or did not understand that staying at Bagram “for a long time” meant not fully withdrawing. But Bagram was a good applause line at the Perry rally.

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The key conclusion today is that the consequences of the Afghanistan withdrawal are far from over, and events there and in the miasma of global terrorism will continue to command our attention. Biden will not be able to take a victory lap in the 2022 or 2024 elections for having ended one of the endless wars; instead, he will be explaining why America is once again more vulnerable to terrorism.

We may have left Afghanistan, but it has not left us. And neither have the terrorists.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and held senior State Department posts in 2001-2005 and 1985-1989. His most recent book is “The Room Where It Happened” (2020). He is the founder of John Bolton Super PAC, a political action committee supporting candidates who believe in a strong U.S. foreign policy.

This article appeared in Newsmax on September 27, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
September 27, 2021

President Joe Biden’s failures to protect U.S. national interests, evidenced most recently by his tragic military withdrawal from Afghanistan, are coming to a head over Iran.

For decades, Iran, along with North Korea, has posed the world’s most serious nuclear proliferation threat. The Biden administration will soon have to decide whether to abandon its dangerous, Obama-era approach to Tehran’s menace, or further endanger America and its allies.

Since his inauguration, Biden has obsessed about rejoining former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). Flawed from the start, the JCPOA enabled Iran’s cynical rulers to continue pursuing their nuclear weapons objectives, escape the burden of international economic sanctions, and receive a bonus of between $120-150 billion in unfrozen Iranian assets.

The JCPOA rests on Iran’s lie that it never had a nuclear weapons program and did not seek such weapons. Israel’s clandestine 2018 raid on Tehran produced conclusive proof of exactly the opposite. Iran never renounced its nuclear ambitions. By permitting uranium enrichment to reactor-grade levels, the JCPOA allowed Iran to continue making substantial progress toward weaponization, and its verification provisions were inadequate and ignored.

Tehran has also persisted in supporting terrorism and pursuing Middle East hegemony through conventional military means. Using its newly unfrozen assets (including billions in cash), Iran increased its supply of weapons and equipment to Shia militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and Houthi rebels in Yemen. Moreover, freed from sanctions, Iran’s economy began to recover, increasing its resources to engage in provocative, hostile behavior across the full spectrum of capabilities.

Thus, when the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018, Iran was stunned and unprepared for the consequences. Despite critics who said unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran would not be effective, Washington’s efforts quickly drove Iran’s oil exports close to zero and actually imposed greater pressure on Tehran than the international sanctions lifted by the JCPOA. Nonetheless, Iran’s regional aggression, both direct and through surrogates, expanded.

Had the “maximum pressure” campaign continued and strengthened, and had we assisted the growing anti-regime sentiment across Iran, there is good reason to think the 1979 Islamic Revolution could finally have been reversed and the ayatollahs overthrown. That outcome, however, is far from Biden’s mind. In fact, his administration has rescinded several sanctions, allowing the impression to spread globally that Biden’s sanctions enforcement will be less strict than under Trump.

During Biden’s 2020 campaign and from his Inauguration, he has relentlessly sought to have America rejoin the JCPOA. Seeing this obvious neediness as a political opportunity, Iran consistently increased its demands during negotiations in Vienna, rejecting U.S. efforts to require Iran to resume compliance with JCPOA restrictions. Even more boldly, Iran has insisted Washington end economic sanctions imposed on Iran for terrorist activities, not just the sanctions against its nuclear program. Iran also demanded Biden commit that no future administration would withdraw from the deal, which even Biden has found hard to swallow.

During Biden’s presidency, Iran and its surrogates have ramped up the nuclear efforts; increased terrorist attacks against oil infrastructure targets in the region; continued to direct Shia militia groups attacking U.S. bases in Iraq; and supplied more weapons to Syria’s Assad regime, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. With Ebrahim Raisi’s recent election as president, leaders determined to achieve deliverable nuclear weapons now thoroughly control Iran. Raisi, the likely successor as Supreme Leader when Ali Khamenei dies or resigns, showed no moderation or flexibility in his remotely delivered Sept. 21 speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

Because of Iran’s intransigence and Biden’s weakness, Biden will soon confront some hard choices. He reiterated in his U.N. address (delivered the same day as Raisi’s) that if Iran returned to “full compliance” with the JCPOA, the U.S. would also do so. Of course, Iran has never been close to full compliance, and there is no sign it ever will be.
Accordingly, Biden faces one of three basic alternatives:

· Cave in entirely, return to the misbegotten JCPOA, and embrace the illusion of a deal that cannot accomplish its stated objectives.
· Reject the JCPOA, reimpose sanctions, and begin new negotiations with Iran.
· Revitalize the “maximum pressure” campaign, and, along with Israel and the Gulf Arabs, implement new means to apply pressure and disable or eliminate Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile efforts.

These are the essential options, although there are innumerable variations.

Ideologically, Biden undoubtedly prefers option 1, hoping he can somehow justify returning to the flawed JCPOA and claim victory. Despite the dangers and pitfalls of this choice, it remains not merely viable, but the White House’s first preference. If even Biden balks at indulging in this delusion, the administration will select option 2. Unless, however, sanctions enforcement is pursued vigorously, which Biden seems reluctant to do, the second option will, as a practical matter, look a lot like the first. New negotiations with Iran will go nowhere. Option 2 will neither stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, nor even measurably slow it down.

Which brings us to the third option, the one most likely to be effective but least likely for Biden to choose. Iran’s threat, now over forty years old, has not diminished with time. To the contrary, its radical ideology has stiffened, and its aggressive capabilities have substantially increased. The longer Washington allows this danger to metastasize, the greater the ultimate difficulty of neutralizing it. In May, for example, Iran and China signed a major framework deal (valued at approximately $400 billion) for China to invest in Iran in exchange for guaranteed oil supplies. Iran wants to sell oil free from sanctions pressures, and China’s domestic energy assets are nowhere near sufficient to fuel its economy. The Iran-China deal benefits both countries, enhances China’s influence in the Middle East, and funds Iran’s nuclear and terrorist threats.

Notwithstanding Biden’s aversion to option 3, it warrants further elaboration and debate. Israel is now discussing with the administration a “Plan B” for when, as Israel fully expects, the JCPOA collapses of its own weight. Whether or not Biden is serious in these discussions, America as a whole should be. Returning to the JCPOA would be a U.S. surrender to the ayatollahs, increasing the risks to us and our allies. Simply limping along with sanctions without a longer-term strategy to eliminate Iran’s threat is no answer either.

We should be urgently developing policies designed to protect America’s interests and those of its Middle East allies. Focusing on China, this century’s existential threat to the West, cannot be an excuse to ignore other current and future threats, especially from terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. “Pivoting to Asia” does not mean ignoring dangers elsewhere. Enhancing our national security remains a powerful political argument for those who see the world realistically and can have a profound political appeal in the 2024 presidential elections, whether against Biden or another weak Democrat. A word to the wise.

This article appeared in 1945 on September 7, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
September 7, 2021

Debates about America’s exit from Afghanistan, both the underlying withdrawal decision and its execution, will, with good reason, roil U.S. politics for years. Starting now, however, the critical question is: are we more secure today than before the departure became fait accompli.

The immediate danger is Afghanistan itself, where Biden Administration policies are enabling the victors and increasing threat levels. Secretary of State Blinken wants a Taliban government of “real inclusivity,” as if the presence of other Afghan factions will somehow dilute the impact of Taliban rule. The terrorists’ media charmers have surely learned from post-World War II “coalition” governments in Soviet-dominated Europe how to conceal political reality with make-believe “inclusivity.” If Taliban deigns to play this game, their siloviki will control the key security agencies, such as defense, police, and intelligence.  The rest is window-dressing, mere pretense for a White House reluctant to face the consequences of its own mistakes.

So too for repeated White House assertions that it will “marshal the international community” to influence Taliban decisions. From what alternative universe does such language come? The “international community” for the Taliban consists of Russia and China, abstainers on the Security Council’s recent toothless resolution on Afghanistan, a clear signal of coming vetoes on anything beyond UN pablum. Pakistan’s head of Inter-Services Intelligence, Taliban’s long-time paymaster, just visited Kabul.  More international community.  This list will not get shorter, even as terrorists worldwide seek to establish sanctuaries in Taliban-led Afghanistan, and confirms why we should provide no political or economic sustenance to the terrorist regime.

The legitimate opposition to the Taliban is now fighting for survival in the Panjshir Valley, reminiscent of earlier battles against the Red Army and Taliban itself in the 1990s. We should assist this opposition to help provide at least an indirect U.S. presence in-country, to monitor and hinder the establishment of terrorist basecamps. Of course, much more is needed against a newly resurgent terrorist threat, and Biden’s blithe assurances about the efficacy of “over the horizon” capabilities should fool no one. U.S. operatives will do what they can from remote locations, but those efforts cannot suffice without on-the-ground capabilities.

Security threats to America post-withdrawal extend well beyond the direct consequences in Afghanistan. The risk of a full terrorist takeover in Pakistan has significantly increased. China and Russia will move aggressively to enhance their positions in Central Asia and the Middle East, where Iran will also pursue new opportunities. In short, our adversaries will see withdrawal as a signal of U.S. weakness and proceed accordingly.

But Washington’s friends are the most surprised and most disconcerted, starting with NATO. After the Trump-era chaos, allies believed Joe Biden’s soothing bromides indicated a kind of “normalcy” in U.S. attitudes toward NATO, perhaps not too warm but certainly not too cold. Then, he blindsided them, without prior notice, saying publicly the U.S. was indeed exiting Afghanistan. For well or ill, this is nothing new in NATO, as members often asked America, “are we being consulted or being informed?” This time, however, the response was stronger than usual.  European Union leaders raised yet again the notion that the EU itself needed independent military capabilities.

Such EU-based blustering about no longer depending on NATO or the United States is also nothing new;  the current furor may be purely for domestic political effect. But if, this time, a line has been crossed, it is potentially quite serious. Few Europeans realize how the idea of an independent EU force (or even an EU “pillar” within NATO) constitutes a dagger pointed at NATO’s heart.  If Europeans still want collective-defense relations with the United States, questioning their reliance on NATO is a severe mistake, dangerous for all the parties involved.

Europe should have learned more from the Trump experience. There is a strain in American politics fully content immediately to “let Europe take care of itself.” And below that, there is a potentially even stronger current, resenting constant European carping about U.S. policy, that could without much further provocation transform itself into a more-fully unilateralist policy approach. Obviously, those most deeply threatened by Russia, particularly in central and eastern Europe, want no part of undercutting NATO. They need to speak up now, loudly, and effectively.

The broad scope of ramifications flowing from America’s Afghanistan withdrawal is only starting to surface in the media, although the consequences were always there for policymakers and analysts to see and understand. Are we more secure today than before withdrawal? The final results are not yet in, but the early returns are decidedly negative.

Beijing will push for more sway in Pakistan; Moscow will try in Central Asia’s former Soviet republics.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on August 30, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton

August 30, 2021

America’s retreat from Afghanistan is ending tragically—and that has sweeping strategic implications. One major misjudgment underlying the “ending endless wars” mantra was that withdrawing affected only Afghanistan. To the contrary, the departure constitutes a major, and deeply regrettable, U.S. strategic realignment. China and Russia, our main global adversaries, are already seeking to reap advantages.

They and many others judge Afghanistan’s abandonment not simply on its direct consequences for global terrorist threats, but also for what it says about U.S. objectives, capabilities and resolve world-wide.

In the near term, responding to both menaces and opportunities emanating from Afghanistan, China will seek to increase its already considerable influence in Pakistan; Russia will do the same in Central Asia’s former Soviet republics; and both will expand their Middle East initiatives, often along with Iran. There is little evidence that the White House is ready to respond to any of these threats.

Over the longer term, Beijing and Moscow enjoy a natural division of labor in threatening America and its allies, in three distinct theaters: China on its periphery’s long arc from Japan across Southeast Asia out to India and Pakistan; Russia in Eastern and Central Europe; and the Russian-Iranian-Chinese entente cordiale in the Middle East. U.S. planning must contemplate many threats arising simultaneously across these and other theaters.

This underscores how strained our defense capabilities are to protect our far-flung interests, especially given the unprecedented domestic spending demands President Biden is now making. Washington’s most important task, therefore, is somehow to secure significant increases in defense budgets across the full threat spectrum, from terrorism to cyberwar. Diplomacy alone is no substitute.

Xi Jinping will be unimpressed by Mr. Biden’s assertion that America needs to end military activities in Afghanistan to counter China more effectively. Instead, Beijing has new opportunities: shoring up its interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan; protecting against the spread of Islamic terror into China; and increasing efforts to establish hegemony along its periphery, especially regarding Taiwan, the South China Sea and India.

These initiatives fit seamlessly into Beijing’s existential threat to the West, extending well beyond our Afghan debacle. By contrast, Washington is floundering in tactical maneuvering and improvisational responses to particular Chinese ploys. Afghanistan is the urgent impetus to marshal our deeper conceptual and strategic thinking; while doing so, we can immediately seize several points of policy high ground. To eliminate ambiguity about our Taiwan defense commitment, for example, we should station military forces there. Theaterwide, we need those budget increases to boost our naval presence in the East and South China seas, thereby establishing deterrence and countering Chinese sovereignty claims.

Our defense relations with India, Vietnam and others must intensify. The scope of the “Quad” (India, Japan, Australia and the U.S.) should expand dramatically to include collective-defense issues and the Quad itself should consider expanding. We also must increasingly hold China accountable for its dangerous policy of proliferating ballistic-missile and nuclear technology to the likes of Pakistan and North Korea.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin was undoubtedly heartened by seeing a weak, flagging U.S. president at their June summit, recalling Khrushchev after meeting John F. Kennedy in 1961. Mr. Biden’s subsequent capitulations on Nord Stream 2 and Afghanistan now surely have Mr. Putin smiling broadly. He will act aggressively in Central Asia to stanch any resurgent Islamic terrorism, but his long-term focus remains Russia’s European neighbors.

Mr. Putin sees disarray in Europe, which fears the resurrection of endemic conflict, largely because it fears America faltering, even substantially withdrawing from world affairs. Although Presidents Trump and Biden don’t constitute a trend—the former was an aberration; the latter is merely a typical Democrat—Mr. Biden’s failure to warn North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies of his Afghan exit shattered already weak confidence levels. The inevitable calls for a larger “European” politico-military role will meet the fate of previous efforts. The European Union can never be a global geostrategic player because it habitually deploys more rhetoric than resources.

That leaves NATO, which Mr. Biden had eased back toward complacency, only to jilt the allies over Afghanistan. Instead of blaming Washington for being too interventionist and then for not being interventionist enough, Europe needs to decide whether it prizes collective self-defense in NATO seriously, or merely prizes dabbling in it. When Germany and others match their defense capabilities with their economies, their opinions will matter. While waiting, the U.S. should work with sub-NATO coalitions, mostly Central and Eastern Europeans, and threatened non-NATO countries just beyond, to counter Mr. Putin’s imperial instincts. Our force posture in Europe can be adjusted accordingly.

In the Middle East, Iran is China’s oil supplier of choice and Russia’s partner in bolstering Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. For Beijing and Moscow, Tehran is a surrogate for destabilization work and a foil to expand their influence throughout the region, recently demonstrated by the military-cooperation agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is hedging against U.S. disapproval and a possible Obama-style alignment with Tehran. Gulf Arabs fear America’s Afghan withdrawal could foreshadow the same in Iraq, or even from major U.S. air and naval bases in their countries. Who wouldn’t hedge?

Washington should emphatically not rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. That part is easy, although the Biden administration still doesn’t get it. The key lies in recognizing that Iran’s objectives are fundamentally contrary to America’s, Israel’s and most of the Arab world’s. Only changing Tehran’s government stands a chance of reducing threats across the region, which is the last thing China and Russia want.

Sadly for those believing withdrawal from Afghanistan was a one-off decision with limited consequences, the world is far more complicated. The results are already deeply negative, and China and Russia are invested in making them worse. Over to us.

This article appeared in The Washington Post on August 24, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton

August 24, 2021

Many profound ramifications of America’s exodus from Afghanistan are competing for attention. Among the top challenges, Pakistan’s future stands out. For decades, Islamabad has recklessly pursued nuclear weapons and aided Islamist terrorism — threats that U.S. policymakers have consistently underestimated or mishandled. With Kabul’s fall, the time for neglect or equivocation is over.

The Taliban’s takeover next door immediately poses the sharply higher risk that Pakistani extremists will increase their already sizable influence in Islamabad, threatening at some point to seize full control.

A description once applied to Prussia — where some states possess an army, the Prussian army possesses a state — is equally apt for Pakistan. Islamabad’s “steel skeleton” is the real government on national security issues, the civilian veneer notwithstanding. Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, has long been a hotbed of radicalism, which has spread throughout the military, to higher and higher ranks. Prime Minister Imran Khan, like many prior elected leaders, is essentially just another pretty face.

During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, ISI extensively supported Afghanistan’s mujahideen against the Soviet military, for religious and national security reasons. Washington made the mistake of funneling much of its assistance to “the muj” through Pakistan, thereby relinquishing control over which politicians and fighters actually received the aid. Pakistan also enabled terrorist groups targeting India, its main regional rival, over Kashmir, a continuing flash point emanating from the 1947 partition and independence from Britain.

After Moscow exited Afghanistan in 1989, ISI unsurprisingly pirouetted to support the Taliban and others who subjugated the country in 1996. Pakistani military doctrine holds that a friendly Kabul regime ensures “strategic depth” against India, which Pakistani leaders believed the Taliban provided. When the U.S. coalition overthrew the Taliban in 2001, ISI provided sanctuaries, arms and supplies inside Pakistan, although Islamabad routinely denied it.

Now, again in power, the Taliban can return the sanctuary favor to Pakistani Taliban — the Pakistani counterpart of the Afghan Taliban — and other radicals. Obviously, the world doesn’t need another terrorist regime, but the risk in Pakistan is of an entirely different order of magnitude, even compared with the menace of al-Qaeda or the Islamic State gaining secure bases in Afghanistan.
While Iran still aspires only to nuclear weapons, Pakistan already has dozens, perhaps more than 150, according to public sources. Such weapons in the hands of an extremist Pakistan would dramatically imperil India, raising tensions in the region to unprecedented levels, especially given China’s central role in Islamabad’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. Moreover, the prospect that Pakistan could slip individual warheads to terrorist groups to detonate anywhere in the world would make a new 9/11 incomparably more deadly.

These dangers provided compelling reasons to sustain the U.S. and NATO military presence in Afghanistan. We could have continued overwatch not just of potential new terrorist threats in-country but also observed what was happening across the borders in Pakistan and Iran. Sadly, the Trump-Biden withdrawal policy canceled that insurance policy.

From Cold War conflict against the Soviets in Afghanistan to our own efforts since 9/11, Pakistani-U.S. cooperation has been essential. It led Washington to temper vigorous criticism of Islamabad’s nuclear and pro-terrorist polices. Now, after Kabul’s surrender, America is less dependent on Pakistan’s good will and logistical support. Acknowledging the enormous uncertainty, given Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities, the United States must now come down hard on Islamabad if it continues supporting the Taliban and other terrorists. It has been said that Pakistan is the only government consisting simultaneously of arsonists and firefighters. The firefighters need to step up their game. They must convince their fellow countrymen that the government’s recent path has made Pakistan less secure, not more.

Absent clear evidence that Pakistan has terminated assistance to the Taliban, the United States should eliminate its own aid to Islamabad; strike Pakistan from the list of “major non-NATO allies”; impose anti-terrorist sanctions; and more. Our tilt toward India should accelerate.

Most important, we must devote maximum attention to Pakistan’s nuclear stockpiles and weapons-production facilities. If a future terrorist regime in Islamabad (or even today’s government or like-minded successors) appears ready to transfer nuclear capabilities to terrorists, we should take preventive action. This is highly unpalatable, but the alternative of allowing these weapons’ use is far worse. China must be made very aware of our intentions and seriousness, including that Beijing’s long-standing, vital assistance to Islamabad’s nuclear efforts makes China responsible for any misuse.

Is President Biden sufficiently resolute to do the necessary? Probably not. In George Packer’s recent biography of diplomat Richard Holbrooke, he quotes from Holbrooke’s notes taken during an Obama administration Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan. “Among his notes were private interjections,” Packer writes. “Vice President Joe Biden said that every one of Pakistan’s interests was also America’s interest: ‘HUH?’”

Biden’s assertion was wrong when made and would be dangerously wrong today; Holbrooke was correct, and eloquent in his brevity. Let’s hope Biden has changed his mind.
John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump and is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

Declinists should think long and hard about the implications of a real “coming home” of American power

This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on August 18, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton

August 18, 2021

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan have left many wondering whether the “20 year war” was worth the blood spilt. Here, John Bolton, former National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump, gives his view

Using military force to destroy al Qaeda’s Afghan bases and oust the Taliban from power was necessary, legitimate and beneficial to the United States, not to mention Afghanistan and the world at large. No subsequent terrorist attacks have come close to matching the lethality and complexity of 9/11’s terrorism, a point nearly forgotten not twenty years after the dies irae.

An almost-unthinkable but very real tragedy, however, is that too many wrongly concluded thereby that radical Islamic terrorism had been defeated, not to rise again as a threat either in remote south-central Asia or globally. They are dangerously wrong.

America has not been “at war” in Afghanistan in any meaningful sense for many years, no more than it has been “at war” in Germany, Japan or other countries where U.S. forces remained after World War II until now. Rhetoric about “ending endless wars” and “war weariness”; the fantasy lure of “nation building” that rested on inaccurate and ahistorical analogies to the Marshall Plan; and the sequence of Donald Trump’s aberrational presidency, followed by Joe Biden, who never understood the strategic importance of a significant U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, have all wrought this unhappy moment.

Withdrawing U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan is causing even greater tragedies: enabling a Taliban return to power, with globally-threatening terrorist bases likely flourishing there once again soon; shielding and thereby enhancing Iran’s nuclear menace; and threatening the radicalization of a nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Countless foreigners (and Americans) hope Washington’s withdrawal from Afghanistan encourages other U.S. drawdowns in the Middle East (already underway) and worldwide. Those declinists should think long and hard about the implications of a real “coming home” of American power. They’re going to miss us when we’re gone. So will we.

There was an alternative to following Trump’s policy. Now our enemies will look to exploit our weakness

This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on August 16, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton

August 16, 2021

The rapidity with which the Taliban has effectively seized control of Afghanistan has stunned and embarrassed the Biden administration. Already a tragedy for the Afghan people, the situation will worsen, quite possibly catastrophically so. The Taliban has captured every major city, and President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country. The Afghan collapse is either a major intelligence failure or proof of congenital wishful thinking by Joe Biden and his advisers, probably both.

Worse, the collapse of Afghanistan’s national military is a debacle for America, Britain and our allies, posing a potential new world-wide threat. If, as now seems certain, al Qaeda, Isil and other terrorist groups take sanctuary in the country, we will have effectively returned to a pre-9/11 terrorist environment. 9/11’s twentieth anniversary was already heavy on our minds, and the confluence of events only makes the memories starker.

Observers had suggested ways to mitigate the damage caused by Biden’s withdrawal decision, or partially reverse it. They are now dreams. There was no chance Biden would reverse course, and now it is impossible. Iacta alea est.

Ironically, Biden’s withdrawal policy is virtually indistinguishable from Donald Trump’s, which was well underway when he left office. On Saturday, Biden himself admitted he was finishing the implementation of what Trump started. Biden claimed he had only two options: follow Trump’s blueprint or else considerably increase US combat forces in Afghanistan. This is a strawman argument, palpably false.

By August 2019, Trump was determined to leave this “endless war”. He hoped to exit before the 2020 elections, but he failed because of his perpetual intellectual disarray. So desperate was Trump to gain credit for the withdrawal, he wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David to seal the deal, which his advisers viewed as near sacrilege. Trump was diverted from this theatre only because of a Taliban attack on a Nato convoy in Kabul.

Hoping to salvage his reputation from Trump’s ashes, former secretary of state Michael Pompeo has tried to distinguish Trump’s performance from Biden’s. Pompeo defends Trump’s withdrawal decision while criticising Biden for poorly executing it. Arguing that Trump’s plan was “conditions based”, Pompeo contends that US and Nato forces would have responded forcefully had the Taliban violated the deal.

Maybe. Maybe not. In the end, Biden, like Trump, had wanted to withdraw, and he did. History will label the US withdrawal “the Trump-Biden policy”.

Sadly, there is further irony here, and cruel irony indeed. After the US-led coalition overthrew the Taliban in 2001, Americans and others launched, mistakenly, a massive nation-building campaign. Today, this effort to show selflessness has been turned against the necessity of remaining in-country for strategic reasons. Many ask, reasonably, why we have spent so much to reshape Afghan society and construct a viable military, but have so plainly failed.

Others complain that the Afghan army folded without a fight. Kabul’s army was well-equipped and trained, but its morale was destroyed by the Trump-Biden withdrawal decisions, all of which was entirely predictable. In Afghanistan, we needed merely a partner military that could keep the Taliban sufficiently under control that Isil and al Qaeda did not obtain secure-enough sanctuaries to threaten us with renewed attacks. We didn’t need military perfection; a strong central government; or Afghanistan converted into a central Asian Switzerland. Today, this realisation comes too late.

The most fundamental mistake, which Biden reiterated on Saturday, is the notion we have been fighting in an Afghan civil war. To the contrary, we have been fighting a Western war against terrorists who happen to be in Afghanistan. Did Biden really believe we could leave it to Afghan surrogates to defend our vital interests? If our surrogates fail, as they have done, do we simply suffer the consequences of al Qaeda, Isil, and others conducting renewed attacks against us? We should certainly have others, like the Afghans, fight with us against the terrorists, and we did. But their inadequacy does not mean we throw up our hands and depart, giving the terrorists free rein.

Finally, we hear constantly that we have “been there for 20 years,” it is America’s “longest war,” and “the endless wars must end”. This is simple-minded, albeit politically appealing. We have believed correctly that “forward defence” against the Taliban in Afghanistan is better than waiting to defend against terrorists in our own streets and skies. Unfortunately, our leaders have failed to explain why “forward defence” is the best way to protect our innocent civilians, although the process may take a very, very long time. Constantly predicting it will be over in a year or two has been counter-productive. Our side doesn’t get to decide when the terrorists give up. Our publics would understand this cost-benefit analysis if leaders properly explained it. They have before, in the Cold War, not for merely 20 years, but for over 45 years before the Soviet Union collapsed.

Proponents of withdrawal missed the point. We entered Afghanistan for core strategic reasons: to remove the Taliban government and destroy al Qaeda. We had substantial but incomplete success. We remained for equally compelling reasons: to prevent a recurrence of terrorist capabilities to strike America and its allies, and to watch more carefully developments in Pakistan and Iran. We do not want Pakistan to succumb to extremists similar to the Taliban, which would put an arsenal of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. In Iran we worry about the terrorist ayatollahs still avidly pursuing that same nuclear capability.

For the West more broadly, the Afghan withdrawal dangerously impugns our worldwide resolve. After four aberrant years of Trump, Biden pledged that “America is back” and would provide competent leadership. Having followed Trump’s erroneous exit policy, and then bungled it, Biden’s credibility also lies in tatters. Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran, are fully alert, looking for every opportunity to exploit US weakness. Doing good by the Afghans was a substantial collateral benefit of America, Britain and others pursuing our strategic interests, but it was not central to why we were there. Now our departure will imperil us all. This is a strategic lesson, which, I fear, we will learn at great cost.

The UK is in a unique position to unite the anti-Iran coalition around new expanded sanctions

This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on August 10, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton

August 10, 2021

Boris Johnson is facing critical decisions on Iran. On July 30, an Iranian drone attacked the tanker Mercer Street, off Oman, murdering a British citizen. UK and US forces nearby, on high alert, subsequently foiled an Iranian attempted tanker hijacking. Last week, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei installed his protégé, torturer and executioner Ebrahim Raisi, as Iran’s new president, thereby reaffirming that its Islamic Revolution has not moderated.

Concomitantly, Joe Biden’s efforts to beg the US’s way back into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”, are imploding. Biden has his own hard decisions to make. Not only is the JCPOA at death’s door, he has done little to counter Tehran’s conventional military aggression and support for terrorism. So fixed was his administration on resurrecting the flawed deal, it has no apparent Plan B.

The ayatollahs are on the move, and the West is spectating. Johnson, however, can play a key role; among the leaders of Europe’s three JCPOA signatories, he faces the fewest political constraints. Germany’s Angela Merkel ends her long chancellorship in just months, and France’s Emmanuel Macron faces stiff challenges in next year’s presidential elections. By contrast, Johnson’s majority would support a harder Iran line than what he inherited in 2016 as foreign secretary.

Biden has assured America’s friends he wants to strengthen alliance ties, not weaken them, Trump-style. But on the Iran issue, competing alliances have been at odds. Washington’s Middle East partners (Israel and the Gulf Arab states) are deeply threatened by Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programmes, as well as by its support for terrorism and its belligerent Quds Force. On the diplomatic scoreboard so far, European allies have done better under Biden than those in the Middle East, which Biden prefers to downplay.

No such luck. Iran is not going away, and neither are the Taliban, al Qaeda or Isis. The central strategic objective, therefore, remains, as for decades, preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Conveniently, this has been the declared objective of all concerned, although mostly rhetorically for some given that the JCPOA was never going to achieve that goal. By bending their knee to Iran’s insistence that it retain and expand its uranium-enrichment capabilities, the “EU-3” (before the UK Brexited) guaranteed failure.

What Western leaders must do, and where Johnson could be pivotal, is reconcile the disparate approaches among the governments determined to prevent a nuclear Iran. Israel will not watch idly as its nuclear and missile programmes advance. A litany of fires, explosions, inconvenient accidents and more, which may or may not be Israel’s work, is already slowing Iran down, albeit not enough. With or without Bibi Netanyahu as prime minister, Israel’s vigorous strategy is unlikely to subside.

The ayatollahs deserve no moral equivalence in attacking civilian shipping because Israel is trying to eviscerate Iran’s nuclear-weapons programme, one of whose objectives is a nuclear holocaust for “the Little Satan”. If Israel’s critics have trouble getting this point, they should note that Gulf Arab states are granting Israel full diplomatic recognition while Jerusalem shreds Tehran’s nuclear establishment.

Iran’s real threat is not just its parade of malign activities, but the regime itself. Waiting for the Islamic Revolution to cool has proven a fool’s errand. Moreover, no Western state can afford to pretend that the Middle East must take a back seat because we need to deal more extensively with the 21st century’s existential threat, China. In fact, Beijing’s menace is now palpably interwoven with the Iran threat, given China’s enormous energy needs and its willingness to satisfy them from Iran.

The answer is for the anti-Iran coalition to agree that US and Israeli economic sanctions must remain in place, and be enlarged to, and be more strictly enforced by, European and Arab states. Acting unilaterally, Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign for three-plus years has had huge economic and political impacts. Anti-regime forces inside Iran are increasingly active and effective, despite brutal repression. Discreetly assisting the opposition and exploiting the fissures among the ayatollahs, who have not been so vulnerable since 1979, could precipitate their fall.

The alternatives have failed. Ready for something new, Boris?