What does Biden’s Armenia statement mean for the region?

April 27, 2021

This article appeared in The Washington Examiner on April 26, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
April 26, 2021

Despite the headlines, President Joe Biden is not the first United States president to declare that the Ottoman Empire’s mass killings of Armenians, beginning on April 24, 1915, constitute genocide. President Ronald Reagan did so in his April 22, 1981, proclamation of “days of remembrance” for the Nazi Holocaust.

He emphasized that “like the genocide of the Armenians before it and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it, and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples, the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.” Whether Biden’s announcement marks a significant departure from the reticence of other presidents remains to be seen. Although the gruesome historical reality is undisputed, even Reagan’s administration was reluctant to highlight his statement, fearing disruption of relations with Turkey, a key NATO ally.

The pundits immediately characterized Biden’s remarks as merely symbolic, which may prove to be correct. Biden supporters contend that he was underlining the importance of human rights in his foreign policy, but that misses the critical point: ignoring the imperative need, and opportunity, we now have for strategic realignment in the Caucasus. Rewriting history, even to correct it, is too transient an exercise of governmental authority unless more substance follows. International political logic explains Washington’s past hesitations. Turkey’s Cold War role in NATO was critical for immutable geographic reasons, such as anchoring NATO’s line in Europe against the Warsaw Pact and controlling the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. Thereafter, of course, the Soviet Union broke apart, almost all for the better, radical Islamist terrorism arose, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took power in Turkey, almost all for the worse.

In the Caucasus, three small states, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, are sandwiched between three large, incompatible ones, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, whose interests quite often run counter to the U.S. We cannot unpack the region’s political complexity here, but the key point about Armenia since independence from the Soviet Union is its too-tenacious loyalty to Russia. Locked in a desperate territorial, ethnoreligious struggle with Azerbaijan, deeply fearful of conflict with Turkey, and justifiably wary of Iran, Yerevan looked to Moscow for support. Doing so resulted in an Armenian foreign policy that is otherwise totally inexplicable. For example, on April 21, at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Armenia, along with the likes of Russia, China, and Iran, voted unsuccessfully against a resolution stripping Syria of its vote in the organization for using chemical weapons against its own people. Three decades of pro-Moscow policy has been wholly misguided.

Armenia’s highest international priority, the conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, is an outgrowth of Moscow’s Soviet-era internal boundary drawing, yet another failed effort to answer what Marxists called “the nationalities question.” When its most threatening recent crisis arose, the 2020 flare-up with Azerbaijan, which was aided by Turkey, Armenia’s dependence on Russia proved almost entirely worthless. Armenia suffered significant military reversals, but contrary to Yerevan’s expectations, Moscow essentially imposed a cease-fire that nearly collapsed Armenia’s government and acknowledged its territorial losses. With friends like that…

Armenia’s attachment to Russia has been tragic, especially given the large number of Armenian Americans who could have focused Washington’s attention on the plight of their ancestral homeland. During a 2018 visit to Yerevan, I asked Armenian analysts why this had not happened. Several pointed to the Armenian American focus on getting U.S. recognition of the genocide rather than on contemporary realities. Whether right or wrong, Biden nonetheless has an opportunity to place a higher U.S. priority on Armenia’s plight. The Armenian American community should now focus on the negative consequences of Yerevan relying on Moscow, and Washington should worry more about bringing peace and stability to all three Caucasus countries. We have no interest in any of them aligning with, or being exploited by, the regimes in Iran, Russia, and Turkey.

Certainly, Erdogan’s Turkey is dangerous for Armenia, but grounds for hope exist. Dissatisfaction with Erdogan is rising, reflected in his party’s defeat in key 2019 local elections, such as Istanbul and Ankara, making Turkey’s looming 2023 presidential race critical for its future direction. It is premature to dismiss Turkey as a NATO ally, at least until we see if Erdogan permits free and fair national elections, which will happen only under Western pressure and scrutiny. Turkey itself should long ago have recognized the Armenian tragedy, but its internal politics have made that impossible. Washington should not underestimate the difficulties of change even now, but Erdogan’s departure opens many possibilities for Turkey to rehabilitate itself.

No one seriously believes that Caucasus politics is anything but complex. Inadequate U.S. attention for three decades after the Soviet Union’s dissolution, however, has not made it any easier. If Biden’s genocide statement is more than domestic U.S. politics, an increase in awareness can only bolster Washington’s position in the region.

‘Bring the Troops Home’ Is a Dream, Not a Strategy

April 27, 2021

A full withdrawal from Afghanistan is a costly blunder and failure of leadership.

This article appeared in Foreign Policy on April 19, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
April 19, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw the United States’ remaining military forces from Afghanistan rests far more on domestic politics than on national security strategy. In 2020, he campaigned on the issue. He said last week, “It’s time to end the forever war.” We should “be focused on the reason we went in the first place: to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again. We did that. We accomplished that objective.”

Biden sounds like his predecessor, Donald Trump, whom I served as national security advisor. That’s no surprise, as Biden is carrying out Trump’s policy with only slight modifications. Media coverage of Biden’s April 14 announcement has noted widespread public support for bringing the troops home. The American people are tired of foreign military engagements, or so the pundits tell us; they’re tired of Afghanistan, tired of Iraq, tired of Syria, tired of terrorism, tired of the Middle East—just plain tired. The chattering classes agree, academics agree, Democrats almost unanimously agree, and even some Republicans agree.

They are all wrong.

The basic national security goal that all U.S. leaders must pursue is to define their country’s strategic interests and how to protect them. Politicians must then justify how they propose to defend the country against external threats and to muster the necessary resources. When leaders do not explain hard realities, the public’s resolve flags, which politicians then use to justify their own hesitancy to make hard decisions. In effect, weak politicians switch cause for effect, levying responsibility on the people instead of themselves. Under Trump and former President Barack Obama, and now perhaps Biden, it wasn’t the public that was weak but its leaders, who were unwilling or unable to do their job.

Afghanistan proves the point. If the Taliban return to power in all or most of the country, the almost universal view in Washington today is the near certainty that al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and others will resume using Afghanistan as a base of operations. On April 14, Biden said that terrorism had evolved since the 2001 assault on the Taliban and that “the threat has become more dispersed, metastasizing around the globe.” Of course it has. That’s because the United States and its NATO allies have substantially denied al Qaeda its preferred safe haven for 20 years. Terrorists had to go elsewhere, seeking Middle Eastern or African zones of anarchy, because they had no choice. But make no mistake: Afghanistan, more remote particularly from the United States, is their preferred staging ground.

Washington didn’t create the threats, and the withdrawal won’t make them disappear.

In Biden’s own words, the United States obviously cannot “ensure” that terrorists will not again use a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan as a base to strike the U.S. homeland. Biden recognizes this danger by saying the United States will maintain “our counterterrorism capabilities and the substantial assets in the region” to guard against a future strike. Blunt geography, however, shows Biden is wrong to think that the United States can have comparably effective counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering assets after departing Afghanistan. After all, Osama bin Laden settled there after being expelled from other countries precisely because its remoteness made it attractive. The map hasn’t changed.

And what exactly is the United States doing today in Afghanistan? To the proponents of withdrawal, it has been 20 years of endless, daily, bloody combat. But this narrative is false, especially during the last seven years following the transition of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force into Operation Resolute Support. Afghanistan remains extraordinarily dangerous, and there have been casualties, but the last U.S. combat death occurred in February 2020. Moreover, there is no proof of real financial savings from withdrawing the approximately 3,500 remaining U.S. military personnel; the costs for Washington may well increase after the withdrawal because of the greater distances that must be overcome for any future operations.

Moreover, U.S. allies are performing a key mission in Afghanistan: training, advising, and assisting the Afghan National Army and other security forces. This is not combat. The roughly 10,000 troops from NATO members and nonmembers deployed as part of Resolute Support are a much-reduced presence from the International Security Assistance Force’s peak of 130,000. Their departure alongside that of U.S. troops is a severe blow to a free Afghanistan.

Concededly, the United States has spent enormous sums on so-called nation-building activities in Afghanistan, with precious little to show for it. It never should have been the United States’ objective to create a Central Asian Switzerland, even if it had the ability to do so, which it does not. But it is an even graver mistake to conclude that because Washington wasted resources on the wrong objective before, withdrawal is now justified. The United States hasn’t engaged in nation-building for many years and has long moved beyond these costly mistakes.

Supporters of withdrawal assert that the United States has tried long enough to enable the Afghans to defend themselves and that U.S. responsibilities are over. Those making this argument miss the key point that it is U.S. security that is at stake, not Afghan military competence. Washington and its allies are not there to protect Afghans against Taliban solely for their sake but to protect against the terrorist threat to Western nations that has previously emanated from the petri dish of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and would do so again.

To that end, the United States concentrates on gathering information on possible terrorist threats through a variety of mechanisms, not just the military. It is, however, the military presence and a considerable logistical base that enable much of this critical work. And it is in-country U.S. armed forces, which can scale up rapidly, that provide confidence that no sustained terrorist threat can reemerge while the United States remains. Removing the troops removes a key predicate.

Biden, having in effect tacitly admitted that the United States has not achieved its basic objective of safeguarding the homeland, then complains that new objectives have been established. That is true; reality has changed since the initial victory over the Taliban and al Qaeda. But it is hardly a radical departure for the United States to remain overseas for long periods when it has substantial interests there, even if those interests change dramatically. Biden is quick to say he is restoring U.S. leadership in NATO—yet there have been no complaints that the United States has had troops garrisoned in Germany for over 75 years since destroying the Third Reich. The same goes for Japan and South Korea. With U.S. troops remaining in those places, Trump could say that Biden is not following their shared rhetoric to end “forever wars.”

Long-term deployments in dangerous places can be required by long-term threats to the United States. Washington didn’t create the threats, and the withdrawal won’t make them disappear. The war against terrorism is unlike 19th-century conventional warfare not because the United States made it so but because the terrorists did. Even conventional warfare is changing, as we are seeing in cyberspace and the varieties of asymmetric and hybrid warfare being developed and deployed by adversaries hoping to leverage their smaller strengths against Western weaknesses. The war against terrorism is open-ended in the same way the struggle against international communism was open-ended. Many of the same people who disliked having to defend the United States in the Cold War—and their ideological successors—dislike having to defend the country against terrorism. Too bad the United States’ enemies won’t give it a break.

Among other reasons to stay in Afghanistan is keeping watch on the risks emanating from Iran and Pakistan. These are clear cases where geographic proximity has no substitute. Iran’s continuing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs; its unwavering support for terrorist groups such as the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah; and its belligerent conventional military activity around the Middle East all mark it as an aspiring regional hegemon whose near neighbors have become increasingly anxious. Afghanistan is an excellent, proximate location to keep an eye on things inside Iran. Moreover, a Taliban takeover, which could lead to a distinctly fragmented pattern of Afghan government, would undoubtedly increase Iran’s influence in western Afghanistan as before, to the United States’ distinct disadvantage.

Perhaps Biden is turning into a modern-day George McGovern, the Vietnam-era Democratic presidential nominee who made “come home, America” his mantra.

A U.S. withdrawal may be even riskier with respect to Pakistan. If the Taliban resume control in Kabul, this can only encourage the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamist radicals, including within the Pakistani intelligence services. Since Partition in 1947, Pakistan has never had a reliably stable government. Instead, to paraphrase the famous jibe against Prussia: Where some states have an army, the Pakistan Army has a state. If Islamabad’s government fell to the radicals, terrorists would possess a significant number of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, not only threatening India and others but also risking the proliferation of nuclear weapons to terrorists worldwide. For Washington, this is perhaps the most dangerous consequence of the Taliban retaking power in Afghanistan, yet it rarely receives significant attention.

Moreover, ignoring the follow-on effects of a U.S. Afghanistan withdrawal on Iran and Pakistan does not augur well for Biden administration’s national security policies globally. The United States’ continuing and probably growing strategic struggle with China and Russia, the critical need to prevent the further accumulation of weapons of mass destruction by North Korea and Iran, and the threat of proliferation more broadly should be matters of enormous concern. Weakness and self-congratulation are often contagious.

Recently, media commentators have breathlessly proclaimed that Biden is governing much further to the left in domestic affairs than most people predicted. Perhaps the same is coming true in the international arena—and Biden is turning into a modern-day George McGovern, the Vietnam-era Democratic presidential nominee who made “come home, America” his mantra. Unfortunately, that call is a dream, not a strategy. It is not a dream that ends well.

Shehrazad’s Twilight

April 23, 2021

By Dr. David Wurmser
April 26, 2021

It has been a month since Nowruz, the Persian holiday marking the beginning of Farvardin and turn of the new year, which this year is 1400. This was a welcome turnover for the Iranian regime. 1399 was a miserable year. Iran suffered not only a divinely inflicted plague in COVID-19, but also a manmade exacerbation by breakdown and extreme governmental mismanagement of the epidemic. Iran’s external adventures proved no quarter for diversion or respite either. Its proxy, Hizballah, suffered a devasting blow politically when one of its storage depots in Lebanon accidentally exploded and destroyed the center of Beirut on August 4, killing hundreds. The regime started 1399 reeling from the humiliating demise of the RGC al-Qods Corps commander, Ghassan Soleimani, at the hands of a US drone. Later in the year, Brigadier General Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who led the IRGC’s nuclear program, was also assassinated by unknown assailants. Both deaths of these high-profile humiliations remain glaringly unavenged, despite shrill rhetoric by Iran’s leaders promising to visit the gates of hell on the perpetrators. Instead of inflicting revenge, Iran found itself even further humiliated when its strategic programs suffered a long series of incidents, accidents and unrest in the summer and fall that damaged many Iranian facilities suspected of being involved in some way with its nuclear or ballistic programs.

Along the way, Iran’s economy continued its collapse and its currency continues to plunge at faster rates than gravity can pull it. And the inevitable constant underlying din of riots and demonstrations persisted. Iran’s regime indeed faced a miserable year, perhaps the most miserable since its inception in 1979.

Now that Iran is about a month into 1400, it is apparent this year has thus far failed to turn around last year’s misery. COVID-19 rages at astronomical rates, vaccinations having barely started, the economy continues to sink, and the mysterious accidents and incidents at key strategic facilities carry on. On the high seas, after having attempted to environmentally destroy Israel’s Mediterranean coast, Iran’s floating IRGC ships conducting strategic activities in critical sea lanes have now too begin suffering such incidents and sit still now dead in the water.

In short, while the Biden administration seems determined to restore the JCPOA lift sanctions on Iran, and halt the clandestine activities – whom leaking US officials attribute to Israel – thus far the economy continues to sink, the mysterious actions against strategic targets continue and the Israelis openly vow to continue to do whatever they need to do to stop Iran’s regional, nuclear and ballistic ambitions. And whether by the hand of God or man, top IRGC officials continue to die under obscure circumstances, the latest being Mohammed Hejazi, the head of the IRGC ballistic programs and liaison with Lebanese Hizballah and the Yemeni Houthis. The regime – including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei himself — at first said he “died suddenly after a long illness” – itself a rather curious phrase. But by the next day, many Iranian senior officials, not just bloggers, openly questioned the honesty of the reports, and instead said he was martyred. One senior official, Amir Moghadam, said his death was connected to the attack attributed to Israel by US officials on the Iranian IRGC operations ship last month in the Red Sea. Others now say that he was killed in the Marib Governate in Yemen in an attack, while some papers in Kuwait, citing Iranian sources, believe he had been murdered by poison in his last trip to Iraq or Syria. What really happened with General Hejazi will remain a mystery, but the bottom line is that the Iranian regime ends the year with its own senior officials unwilling to buy anything as truthful said by any other official of the regime. Everyone is scrambling into the safety of his own self-serving conspiracy theory du jour to cope with the undigestible reality that the enemies of Iran’s regime, likely Israel, operate devastatingly at will within Iran’s most sensitive facilities and most important people.

In the end, Iran is facing five extremely dangerous but inescapable realities with which it must cope:

• Iran’s economy is in freefall;
• Its strategic programs (nuclear, missiles, regional proxy warfare) are constantly and apparently largely successfully battered by Israeli actions;
• It has faced a years-long diet of serial humiliations at the hands of the Israelis and US under the previous administration that created a climate of malaise, penetration and impotence – all fatal reputations for a regime that survives trafficking in their brutality and internal terror to cower the domestic population;
• All of its attempts at revenge or escalation have met with further high-profile, humiliating setbacks, having fizzled, been preempted, or answered; and
• The fundamental dishonesty of the regime, which was necessary to avoid admitting failure and projecting weakness, has become so pervasive that it has led to a widespread expectation of dishonesty, both in the population and even among elites. This has created an ironic, but very dangerous, condition where even when the regime tells the truth, it is not believed and instead everyone descends into conspiratorial speculations about the “real” story. These developments lead to the fundamental breakdown of the very stability and public stature that the regime hoped to solidify by employing dishonesty to begin with. For example, the deputy head of the IRGC may indeed have died of a heart attack on April 18, but nobody believes it. Instead, Iranian elites are descending into wild speculations that this was yet another assassination – thus further destabilizing the regime and deepening its reputation of impotence.

These conditions have led to several realizations in Tehran:

• Despite relentless effort, Iran’s regional strategy is thus far still frustrated.
• While Iran does have escalatory actions against Israel it can take, some of which can be painful, it also realizes it will pay an even heavier, perhaps fatal, price for any escalation against Israel.
• While the leadership externally evinces bluster, the economic pressures and constant frustration and assault from outside has internally led various leadership cliques to descend into internecine bickering against each other, which could even lead to internal violence and collapse.

So where does the Iranian government go forward from here?

The current crop of Iranian leaders are if nothing else excellent students of manipulation. They are the modern inheritors of Shehrazad, the doomed woman who used her storytelling acumen to transform her position of absolute weakness and imminent execution ultimately into a position of unfettered control of the soul of her would be executioner and the man who became her husband, the ruler Shariyar. She transformed her reality of passive weakness into absolute power.

The strategy of the modern Sherazads in Tehran is already coming into focus. There is nothing the regime wants and needs more than:

• Have sanctions lifted and cash flowing into their coffers
• Have the Israelis stymied or tethered in pursuing their relentless shadow war against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic programs, against Iran’s regional attempts at strategic advance, and against Iran’s international structure of land and maritime terrorism.

To these ends, the Iranian government is painfully aware that China can deliver nothing. Russia is both unwilling and unable to stop the Israelis, and it may in fact be increasingly suspicious of Iran for its own reasons. Europe is altogether of marginal relevance. Only the United States can deliver the coin and calm that the regime needs to regain its footing and strategic initiative., or so Tehran believes.

As such, Iran’s strategy ultimately boils down to manipulating Washington into opening the spigot of funds to Tehran and into leaning so heavily on its ally, Israel, that the latter retreats into acquiescence and strategic passivity. In other words, Iran’s strategy is to get money and to cause so deep a rift between Jerusalem and Washington that it leaves Jerusalem paralyzed.

In this context, Iran is once again employing its apologists overtime in an effort to pray on the fears so often raised in Western capitals of some sort of apocalyptic upheaval were to ensue were Israel to seriously wound Iran. Added to this is the strategy – a modification of the “good vs bad” cop interrogation model to diplomacy — first employed by the Nazi propagandist, the Harvard-educated Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, perfected by the Soviets during the arms control talks by Andrei Gromyko, and embraced finally wholeheartedly by Palestinian negotiators in the seasonal assortments of Arab-Israeli peace processes: namely, that the West must concede to validate and empower the other side’s moderates while tethering its own hawks in order to discredit the other side’s eternally looming threating hardliners. It was a strategy which has worked far too often to manipulate Western leaders and their diplomats into preemptive concessions.

The current urgency in Washington to reach a new JCPOA, at all costs it appears, is a framed into this context. Iran has national elections in June. Tehran is happily encouraging its apologists in the West to emphasize that a tough Western negotiating position would not only render a deal impossible – and the much-threatened quasi-apocalyptical escalation ensue – but would lead to the election of hardliners and the defeat of ostensible moderates, such as Rouhani.
As such, Iran is holding the upcoming June elections as a convenient venue to hold fire to the heels of Western diplomats’ feet. A deal must be reached in weeks, or the “window of opportunity” supposedly closes and the region will descend into an unimaginably horrific convulsion.

In-the-know senior Iranian officials in their energy and nuclear bureaucracies have emphasized in unguarded moments that the incident at Natanz in early April destroyed thousands of centrifuges and was a blow around which Iran cannot easily work for quite some time – having essentially shut down large-scale enrichment. Incidents last summer similarly hampered their strategic programs. And yet, because of its strategy, Tehran must downplay the setbacks it so often suffered, and instead needs at all costs to put on a Potemkin-like display of its strength, prowess, and escalatory capabilities by enriching a small amount of uranium apparently to 60% and firing a missile large enough to be nuclear-capable. Like one of the last Qajar Shahs who upon death (by assassination) was paraded around the capital for days with a mechanical waiving arm to show the realm that he was not dead, when in fact he was, Iran needs to project an invincible capability to threaten.

This is all a charade to create an international climate of acute crisis and extreme danger of escalation as part of its strategy to press the West into making the necessary concessions to return to a weakened JCPOA, which in turn would unlock finds and cause serious tensions between Washington and Jerusalem. Sadly, it appears likely that Washington will plunge headlong into this trap.

However, Iran will find that the last four years have changed much. Four years ago, the Israelis suspected that the constant threat of escalation to apocalyptic levels from Tehran was overblown. Iran clearly has means to inflict great pain on Israel – hundreds of thousands of missiles in Lebanon – but when Israeli strategists gamed out the scenarios in exercise after exercise, it was consistently Iran, not Israel, that came up with the short straw in the escalatory cycle. But even then, these were theories of how Iran would and could respond; there was not hard evidence.

But the last four years have shown us that when challenged and resolutely confronted, Iran’s options are indeed far more limited than Tehran projects. It has tried for years to escalate in Syria, but both its senior officers and its forces lay dead on Syrian soil and its assets smoldering. It is no closer to consolidating its grip on Syria than it was several years ago. Moreover, since last summer, its grip on Lebanon was rattled. Neither could it deliver its Houthi allies to victory in Saudi Arabia, nor even bring down one of its main targets in the Gulf: Bahrain. And every time it attempted to launch a retaliation against Israel, it only wound up facing an even more deeply embarrassing failure.

To be sure, Iran is a threat, and a very dangerous one. If its ambitions are realized, it would be catastrophic. Even in its still weakened state, it has killed thousands of Americans and Israelis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It sends drones through proxies into Saudi Arabia and paralyzes parts of its oil production, and has left several nations, such as Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon crippled at will. It is currently the greatest threat the United States and its allies face in the region.

But by last summer, the costs of Iran’s regional adventures and the wages of embarrassment it accumulated caused the regime to lose the Iranian street. Demonstrators often took to the streets demanding an end to sacrifice for Gaza, for Palestine, for Lebanon, and that Iranian assets and sacrifice must instead be for Iranians. The Iranian government knows that in a confrontation with the West and Israel, the Iranian street has had enough and are no longer willing to mortgage their reputation and their future on failed adventures. The rulers of Tehran cannot count on their own street anymore. As such, their escalatory hand – already burdened by limited means – is stayed by fear of the Iranian street. While Western elites consistently assume Iranian will rally around their regime if beleaguered, the historical record of the last four years proves otherwise. In a confrontation, Iran’s regime is afraid of its street more than we should be.

As such, the real threat Israel sees is not from acting, but rather from not acting to stop Iran from advancing strategic programs and regional campaigns. A such, while Washington may gallop to a deal with Tehran, all it will likely achieve is not calm, but an escalated shadow war that leaves the United States weakened, untrusted, and looking increasingly as marginalized in real terms as its EU partners have been for quite some time in the region. And our allies – the genuine ones, like Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and others – will look stronger and at each other to carry the burden of protecting our and their interests until such time as we return to ourselves. Because while Washington may fall prey to Shehrazad’s charms, Jerusalem, Abu Dhabi, Manama and the rest will not and are no mood for further tales of 1001 nights. Eventually, the feared morning will come for the Islamic Republic.

How to confront China on Hong Kong

April 07, 2021

This article appeared in The Daily News on April 7, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
April 7, 2021

The recent conviction of seven prominent advocates of Hong Kong autonomy for participating in peaceful protests is yet another milestone in China’s campaign to bury freedom of speech and conscience. The authorities are suppressing not just student protesters, but the leaders of China’s most important freedom movement since Sun Yat-sen. Martin Lee, Jimmy Lai and others fought for decades to expand political freedoms, and now face lengthy jail terms.

How should the United States respond to these convictions, and the growing list of other acts of internal repression? Opening the March 18 Alaska encounter with senior Chinese diplomats, Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised Hong Kong as an issue concerning America. Shortly thereafter, the State Department’s 2020 human-rights report explicitly described extensive Chinese abuses, and the annual Hong Kong report to Congress confirmed that Beijing was systematically dismantling the territory’s separate status.

Recent administrations, including President Biden’s, have imposed economic sanctions on Chinese leaders. In retaliation, on Jan. 20, Beijing sanctioned 28 Americans (full disclosure: myself included), and later imposed travel bans on members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

But is that it? Are salvos of economic sanctions effective, or are we Americans simply engaging in virtue signaling? Most importantly, how should human rights fit into U.S. national-security policy?

Despite considerable disagreement and confusion, a realistic approach is readily apparent. How China or other authoritarian states treat their own people speaks volumes about how they will treat us. Great-power authoritarians repress their citizens and threaten foreigners with hegemonic subordination. Rogue states like Iran and North Korea repress their citizens while seeking weapons of mass destruction and supporting international terrorism. None of them are trustworthy.

There are, of course, repressive regimes friendly to America. During World War II and the Cold War, we allied with such regimes, and often had their support in confrontations with regional authoritarian powers, as in the Middle East, which Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships and Double Standards” championed. This is neither immoral nor insincere, since Washington cannot cure all the world’s human-rights ills. Morality is boundless, whereas both state interests and material resources are finite.

The human-rights sins of friendly states have not threatened U.S. interests or values significantly, and are addressable through forceful but quiet diplomacy, not public breast-beating. Virtue signaling is for political show horses, but unbecoming for America.

As state policy, Washington’s opposition to Beijing’s repression or genocide is not abstract moralizing, but a legitimate concern for the implications of China’s domestic conduct on its behavior abroad. While not America’s job to mend the world’s ills, it is most certainly our job to protect ourselves. Thus, when China violates its 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration obligation to “a high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong, it demonstrates graphically how it regards international treaties. It has not chosen to withdraw from the deal, but to violate it.

That demonstrates, not that we need further proof, Beijing’s true priorities. Chinese genocide against Uighurs, or repression of Falun Gong believers, Christians and Tibetan Buddhists, reveals how Beijing is prepared to resolve disputes with its near neighbors and beyond.

We should aggressively highlight China’s internal authoritarianism in our information statecraft, an aspect of U.S. diplomacy that needs enormous improvement. As during the Cold War, we need not fear a debate with China on human-rights issues. We should welcome it.

Rhetoric and individual sanctions alone, however, are not only inadequate but sometimes counterproductive, giving the appearance of “doing something,” when we are actually just being self-indulgent, not damaging our authoritarian adversaries.

Semiotic warfare should be left to academicians. The real way to make human-rights policy effective is by linking it with other bilateral priorities. How, for example, can we take trade agreements seriously when Beijing is prepared to sacrifice a choice economic asset like Hong Kong for overriding internal political considerations? Just how long will a Chinese pledge to buy more American soybeans last as compared to snuffing out internal dissent?

Economic complications were missing during the Cold War because U.S.-Soviet economic interaction was so limited. Of course, China’s massive penetration of Western economies makes it a far more dangerous adversary, but at the same time one more vulnerable to criticism and punishment for human-rights transgressions.

Washington still does not understand how to integrate human-rights issues effectively into foreign policy. Certainly, however, treating them in a silo separate from all other disputes with Beijing will only ensure their second-tier status. Advocates of an aggressive human-rights posture should recognize that trade-offs with other national-security priorities will be required. Accepting less-than-perfect outcomes means success, not defeat, because it means human rights are an integral part of U.S. policy, not an isolated, hot-house flower.

Reflections on Israel’s Recent Elections

April 06, 2021

By Dr. David Wurmser
April 6, 2021

The value of elections is not just that they produce a winner and loser in determining who runs the nation. Elections are also diagnostic tools ascertaining societal trends and ideas. While Israel has been deadlocked in stalemate with almost no movement in terms of delivering a winner and loser in the last four elections cycles, those cycles have nevertheless with clarity and richness exposed tremendous effervescence and movement in Israeli society.

On winners and losers

In terms of deciding who will rule Israel in the coming four years, each round of elections has resulted in deadlock. However, in terms of how the two blocs are defined, and around what set of questions coalitions are to be formed, the nature of the two blocs has changed. The first campaign in 2018 was defined around traditional security, economic and social questions. The previous government had collapsed over its handling of inconclusive fighting in Gaza, and the public debate was in part dominated by this question, especially within the inter-right debates. Only two years later, in the fourth round of elections just concluded, all these questions were almost entirely absent. Blocs divided up almost to the complete exclusion of all substantive issues around the question of whether Netanyahu should, or could, be reelected. There was almost no mention of Gaza, of COVID-19, of Iran, of the new Biden administration, or any other issue of gravity. This election was almost entirely a personal verdict on Netanyahu. Even the election returns graphics on the news on election night divided the columns of parliamentary seats between the “camp against Netanyahu” or “camp to replace Netanyahu” versus the “Netanyahu camp.”

Ironically, the ones who have had the greatest confidence that Netanyahu can continue to lead the conservative camp in Israel are actually the traditional leftist leadership that started the “rak Lo Bibi” (“Anyone but Bibi” — Netanyahu’s nickname) movement. One of the central assumptions of the “Anyone but Bibi” campaign was that Netanyahu represents the center of gravity, the indispensable pillar, for the right. He was the standard bearer for slow erosion of power of the left, and thus personally represented the greatest threat to that establishment. His removal, thus, is seen by this camp on the left as a sine qua non of breaking the iron grip the right has had on Israeli national politics for most of the last three, or even five, decades.

And yet, the left simply could not muster the numbers to break that grip. The elections of 2015 involved the considerable intervention of the U.S. under the Obama administration in money and operatives. Still, it failed to tear Netanyahu down. Indeed, it was the final highwater mark of the left although it was not a high enough mark to succeed.

As such, in its attempt to tear Netanyahu down, the left realized that it would have to find allies on the right whose aspirations ran up against the ceiling of Netanyahu’s continued tenure. The maneuver for these strategists on the left is to convince those on the conservative side that Netanyahu is too politically weak or morally tainted to lead the right while at the same time to pursue a strategy which in contrast emanates from frustrating confidence the left holds in Netanyahu’s ability to lead the right. This is tension — which externally portrays Netanyahu as an albatross while internally believing he remains the irreducible pillar of the right — cannot be long maintained.

But this may be one of those times of where one must be careful of what one wishes, for it may come true. The recent additions to the “Anyone but Bibi” camp are reading the sentiments of their own more right-leaning constituents. They are not listening to arguments from the left about Bibi’s being an albatross, and they do not believe they need the left as an ally. They believe that about two years ago – around 2019 – Netanyahu reached the tipping point from being an asset for the right to being a drain. Namely that while he retains a strong following in a good section of the right side of the spectrum, he is no longer able to deliver for the right the full spectrum of votes he needs to stand up a government, and even if he does, he is increasingly embarking on policies of political survival, maneuver and navigation rather than seize the moment – especially following the 2014 war with Hamas and under the Trump administration to fundamentally alter the underlying strategic reality. In other words, while there remains deep appreciation for Netanyahu’s historical achievements in the economy, and in his tactical skill in navigating the hostile Obama administration, there is disappointment that he did not capitalize strategically more aggressively during the Trump years. Settlement was tepid, absorption under Israeli law of areas has followed America’s lead and has not been followed up with actions on the ground, Hamas remains a constant problem and sets the agenda on the border of Gaza, and Iran is obstructed but not defeated – the IDF is still defensive. As such, there is frustration on the right not only that he cannot deliver a government in the last two years but that even before that, he was operating tactically rather than strategically to change the terms of debate in favor of the right, on defense, social and foreign policy issues.

The evidence this community of right-leaning politicians highlights to support this electoral and strategic outlook is that the right side of the Israeli spectrum – defined around party positions on both security and social issues — has been inexorably growing for years. And based on examining the platforms of the left-leaning parties, some of them, as well, seem to be drifting away from many of the hard-charging leftist positions of the past. In short, not only has the right-bloc portion within the spectrum continued to grow, but the whole spectrum has shifted altogether. There is thus a growing community on the right that argues the inability of the right to translate the electoral shift to the right with a solid right-wing governing coalition is attributable personally to the lingering presence of Netanyahu as the camp’s leadership.

Beneath all the sound and fury, thus, there seems to be a consensus that the balance of the Israeli electorate is not only to the right but is moving more so in that direction. The left, however, believes that it is because Netanyahu continues to be the insurmountably capable politician whom they cannot overcome, while a community on the right believes it is despite Netanyahu’s being an albatross weighing them down both electorally and strategically.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters essentially agree with the left camp on his role. They continue to see him as the standard bearer of the right who, if toppled, will reverse the political tides and allow for a resurrection of the left. In particular, this camp sees the attack on Netanyahu to be a manifestation of the overall attack of the elites and founding “Mayflower” generation on the panoply of communities largely ignored and underrepresented since Israel’s creation by a socialist, secular European (particularly Russian and Polish) establishment. These communities – later immigrants, liberal-nationalists, settlers, religious, religious-nationalist, oriental Jews, non-socialists (including recent Russian immigrants) – found an unlikely home under the archetypical Polish Jew, Prime Minister Menahem Begin, and his Likud Party in 1977, and they have never parted ways since. Prime Minister Begin was the epitome of the anti-establishment, his identity was deeply traditionally Jewish, not secular-socialist, and he was thus their leader. So these “outsider” communities — especially those for whom traditionally respect or adherence to Judaism, or for whom a more “Jewish” rather than “Israeli” sense of identity mattered such as the religious, religious-nationalist, recently-immigrated and the Sephardi Jews — the epically Polish Begin was their salvation. These followers still clearly form the critical mass of the right. For them, the attack on Netanyahu is just the latest rendition of the establishment nemesis they had faced all along, and any surrender to the assault on him would be tantamount to surrendering their effort to demand enfranchisement and respect.

A broader community of support for Netanyahu also includes those who feel the economic, security and social stresses and challenges Israel faces going forward – especially rehabilitating the economy after COVID-19, dealing with Iran growing as an acute threat, and navigating the Biden administration as it takes office with an anticipated distancing from Israel. All these challenges demand a seasoned, proven leader. Netanyahu’s many years in office and his generally acknowledged success stand in contrast to the complete absence of executive experience of his opponents.

Important shifts underneath the deadlock

The numbers in each round of elections – which reflect impressive stability in terms of the question of anointing a new leader – also reflect that the left camp continues its slow decline. Its votes seem to be bleeding to the right-camp’s community of Netanyahu skeptics. The right camp that supports Netanyahu seems to be slightly changing its internal composition but has remained rather consistently hovering around 59 seats. A flashing warning sign for Netanyahu, is that the Likud lost a lot of ground in core communities, such as Dimona, Beer Sheva, Jerusalem and Bet Shemesh. Additionally, Naftali Bennett’s Yemina (Rightward) party – which is wavering between the pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu camp on the right – and grew considerably, signaling that the unquestioned support for Netanyahu is beginning to seriously wobble even if it still holds to some extent. Essentially, Yemina voters knew they were voting for Netanyahu as prime minister indirectly (since Bennett signaled before the voting began that he would align with Netanyahu), but had taken the first stride on the psychological bridge away from Netanyahu by voting for Bennett. This trend shows every sign of accelerating in the next months.

While still needing a magnifying glass to discern, there was a highly significant shift in the recent election in the Arab community – part of it began voting as the latest “outsider” group finding a home in Likud against the establishment they see failing them. While one should withhold long-term judgment on whether this continues, voting in the Arab sector for Likud grew between four and ten-fold (for example, from 1% to 4% in partly Christian Nazareth, and from a half percent to 6 percent in all-Muslim Rahat). The Arab community understands it is in crisis, that it needs the help of the state, and that its traditional allies in the Jewish establishment have proven useless. These establishment parties’ leaders appeared to ever more Arabs as focusing more on theoretical expressions and demonstrations of Arab rights than in pursuing practical policies which allowed them to realize their rights.

More dramatic was the transformation of one of the main Arab parties, Raam (Reshima Aravit Meuhedet – the United Arab List) under Abbas Mansour. Originally an Islamist, Mansour sensed this shift in the Arab community and campaigned on participating in Israeli government – all other Arab parties had focused on using their parliamentary power as a platform to stage a display of support for national identity and rights – and inviting the Israeli state into their community to address the rising list of severe problems afflicting it. In the course of the campaign, Mansour developed a close relationship with a key Likud strategist and Netanyahu ally, Yaron Levine, laying the groundwork for a potential earthquake: a Likud governing coalition building a majority on an Arab party. While the success of standing this coalition up may still be unlikely, it does show the Arab community is the latest “outsider” community that rejects its establishment leadership and seeks an entry ticket into the heart of Israeli politics, and sees the “outsider” Likud as the path, or ally, to get there. Social issues, and communal interests emanating from those social issues, are beginning to define coalitions and alliances. The Raam party is on the more traditional side of the Arab political spectrum, with an Islamist pedigree. And yet, it sees the threat represented by socialism and secularism to be great enough to drive them into alliance with more traditional Jewish parties.

Indeed, the low Arab voter turnout and the drift, however limited, away from the parties for which the Arab community have traditionally voted, toward the “outsider” Arab party and even the “outsider” Jewish party, such as Likud, reveals a deep frustration among Arabs with the traditional societal and political leadership. More Arabs voted for Likud (21,500) than for Meretz (15,000), which focused its campaign heavily on equal rights for Arabs, and Yesh Atid (8,000), which is that standard-bearer party for the left. Another right-leaning party, the anti-Netanyahu Avigdor Liberman’s Israel Our Home party also gain about 13,000 votes – nearly as many as Meretz. In earlier rounds, as many as 35,000 had voted for Meretz, and at one point long ago up to 150,000 for the Labor party, while Likud measured imperceptibly. As far as Arab parties go, the Joint List Party led by Ayman Oudeh – essentially the “establishment” party of the Arab community, got 207,000 votes (6 seats) as opposed to its high water mark in 2015 with two and a half times that number. The Arab establishment and the aligned Jewish left-leaning establishment are both losing the following of the Arab community.

Another relatively subtle, but potentially significant shift appearing in these elections was in the Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox Jewish) community. There has been a growing frustration with the stagnant leadership of the Haredi community, especially the European (Ashkenazi) Haredi community – in contrast to the Oriental (Sephardi) community which tends to be more flexible – among the community’s youth. Specifically, there is a palpable desire among the youth to participate in Israeli life as Israelis, rather than continue their rarified, separated life in the Haredi “ghettos” in Israel where they were strongly discouraged, and at times prevented, from serving in the Israeli army, which is generally a pathway to participation in Jewish Israeli life. A sign of the change had already come through language: Haredi youth increasingly spoke Hebrew, not Yiddish.

This trend among Haredi youth led to a shift in this election from voting for the Haredi leadership to voting for a right-wing religious-nationalist party, the Religious-Zionist party under Bezalel Smotrich, which accounts for that party’s unexpected success, let alone its survival (it had been expected to fail to cross the electoral threshold). This shift was quite evident in voting patterns in bastions of Haredi support, such as in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and Bet Shemesh. About 25,000 votes were taken away from United Torah Judaism (UTJ), the Ashkenazi Haredi party and the larger Shas, the Sephardi Haredi party, lost 37,000 votes. The leader of the UTJ was so angry about the drift of youth from his community toward the religious-nationalist camp that he refused over the last week to commit to a government led by Likud that included the religious nationalists. He certainly will join any government under Netanyahu, and its leader, Moshe Gaffney, even says so, but his formal balking for a few days is symbolically meant as an overt demonstration of pique and protest.

Finally, the elections highlighted another trend. The path to top political leadership in the past, especially from the 1970s onward, led through being a general in the IDF earlier in one’s career. Even after the period in which the Likud started dominating the scene, the effort to reverse the tide against the left was almost always led by a general. Because of the restrictive ways in which the Labor party, which ran the state and all its affiliated institutions, monopolistically until 1977, almost all former generals were affiliated with the Labor party movement. Thus, the security elites until recently were almost entirely secular, socialist, and European Jews. Since the right campaigned on the issue of security, especially in the wake of the disastrous Oslo Accords in 1993, the left saw it as its best strategy to try to turn the tide against Likud by handing a former general their standard. In essence, by bedecking themselves with a mantle of generals, the left banked on the reputation of the IDF in Israeli society to parry Likud’s accusations of their being soft on security. Ehud Barak was the highwater mark of this effort, although he managed to become prime minister for only a short time. The final effort in this regard was the rise of the Blue-White party of the last three years, led by three generals – Benny Gantz, Gabi Ashkenazi and Moshe Yaalon. Moreover, going forward, more and more of the retiring senior officers are themselves from the “second Israel,” namely, the communities that were largely unrepresented in elite institutions prior to 1977.

Not only did the left finally abandon this formula in the last round of the elections and turn instead to a “split the right” strategy – since the Blue-White “generals” effort had failed to deliver – but the shift in the Knesset away from former generals toward settlers continued. This Knesset election returned fewer former generals (only six – Gantz from Blue-White, Yair Golan from Meretz, Yoav Galant and Miri Regev from Likud, and Orna Barbibai and Elazar Stern from Yesh Atid) and more “settlers” (18 from the Jerusalem area and 7 from Judean and Samarian settlements). And to note, a third of the generals in Knesset now are themselves from the right-bloc parties.

Conclusion

The recent round of national elections in Israel failed to produce a winner, and instead delivered the fourth deadlock in two years. The current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who fell short of a majority in terms of his natural coalition, now has a narrow, if not unlikely, path to a narrow right coalition with some untraditional allies. The left has almost no path at all since too many of the anti-Netanyahu block are themselves on the right side of the political spectrum. They agree in opposing Netanyahu, but nothing else around which an opposition-based government could be formed.

This deadlock raises the specter of a fifth election cycle two years, the third in 18 months. The gradual decline of the left, and the failure of the Netanyahu bloc to finally cross the 61-vote threshold, however, suggests pressure to avoid a fifth round. For the left, each cycle returns a slightly more right-leaning parliament. For Netanyahu, the bump he enjoyed driven by the Abraham Accords peace treaty, the masterful handling of the COVID-19 crisis, and several other substantial successes in the last months still failed to deliver victory. It would not be easier in a fifth-round, and if no new government is installed by November, opposition leader Benny Gantz would assume office and become the incumbent as a result of the rotation agreement Netanyahu and Gantz signed last year to form the caretaker national unity government currently governing Israel. In other words, time works against, not for, PM Netanyahu.

And yet, despite this deadlock, the underlying trends revealed by this round of elections suggest that Israeli politics are actually entering a period of great, if not bewildering, change.

Biden must confront North Korea via Beijing

March 29, 2021

This article appeared in The Washington Examiner on March 29, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
March 29, 2021

North Korea’s first ballistic-missiles launches during Joe Biden’s presidency triggered the usual flurry of speculation about Kim Jong Un’s intentions, Biden’s possible responses, and whether to resume Washington-Pyongyang negotiations.

But before we yet again commence a diplomatic minuet of semiotics and process, two questions demand answers. First, how close is North Korea to nuclear weapons and delivery systems that can accurately target America? Second, does Biden really intend to stop the North from achieving these objectives?

On capabilities, the Kim family dynasty has made slow but steady progress for decades. The best bet, although not certain, is that its nuclear-warhead stockpile has steadily increased. Pyongyang likely now has the ability to put a warhead over North America, and it is pursuing systems beyond land-based ballistic missiles. There is, however, no certainty among observers that the North can target accurately or that its warheads can survive the difficult atmospheric reentry process. Critically, therefore, enough time remains (albeit not much) to stop North Korea before it directly threatens the United States.

That said, important U.S. allies like Japan are already vulnerable. Accordingly, Tokyo has long pressed Washington to stand firm against both Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missiles (whatever their range), stressing correctly that technological advances at shorter ranges also benefit longer-range missile developments.

Biden’s intentions remain unclear. The administration scoffed at North Korea’s March 21 launches of two anti-ship cruise missiles, describing them as “normal missile activity.” Whereupon Pyongyang fired two nuclear-capable ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. On March 25, Biden said plainly that these latter launches violated U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, thereby reversing his predecessor’s unwarranted insouciance about such activity. Biden acknowledged that North Korea was “the top foreign policy issue that he was watching” and that America’s Pyongyang diplomacy “has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization.” If Biden is serious, he has rejected the idea, advocated by the international left, that we accept Kim’s regime as a nuclear power and instead try merely to constrain it. And hopefully, Biden won’t be the second president to fall in love with Kim.

These positions are necessary but hardly sufficient conditions for realistic U.S. policy. Biden said further, “we’re consulting with our allies and partners” about the launches. This is simply common sense (in all except the last administration). Biden added, “If they choose to escalate, we will respond accordingly.”

The problem: Pyongyang has already escalated, and Washington is not responding.

To the contrary, U.S. officials admit they made several unrequited efforts to open discussions with Pyongyang, thereby potentially looking desperate for a deal. Nor has Biden restored joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises to levels necessary for true readiness against North Korean conventional attacks. Doing so would be not just a “signal,” but an important, long-overdue correction in its own right. Congress should demand it. Next week, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will be the first foreign leader to visit Biden’s White House. Suga has stressed his intention to “thoroughly discuss” North Korea’s threat, meaning Biden will surely hear, prior to completion of the National Security Council’s ongoing policy review, a strong, realistic message about the grave risks of conventional diplomacy with Kim.

Tokyo and Washington should both understand, however, that the real target of their efforts must be Beijing, not Pyongyang. History has proven clearly that North Korea has never made the strategic decision to give up its nuclear goals. It is always willing to trade promises of denuclearization for financial assistance and sanctions relief. That route has been tried and failed for 30-plus years. Pyongyang gets the financial benefits upfront, but mysteriously to some, never fulfills its denuclearization commitments. It is time for the U.S. to focus on China.

Over 70 years, Beijing has provided North Korea with enormous military assistance and, while denying recent support for nuclear-related programs, undoubtedly provided considerable help previously (as did Moscow). Politically, Beijing flies protective cover for Pyongyang at the United Nations Security Council. This is no casual activity: Beijing and Pyongyang’s respective communist parties once proclaimed themselves “as close as lips and teeth.” Economically, North Korea would collapse quickly if China suspended energy transfers, which constitute 90%-plus of its supplies, not to mention massive subsidies and humanitarian assistance. Indisputably, China made and sustains North Korea. Beijing must now own up to its responsibility.

Either Xi Jinping takes serious measures to help terminate Kim’s nuclear ambitions, or he risks dramatically raising the level of disagreement between China and America. Will this approach offend Xi? Possibly, but his sensitivities are hardly a useful metric of American interests. For too long, Washington has meekly accepted Beijing’s line that it too wants to “solve” the North Korea nuclear problem. That was likely never true, and it is certainly not true today. Until we accept and act on that reality, Pyongyang will only continue to progress toward deliverable nuclear weapons.

Suez Crisis Will Become Unstuck. The Real Security Crisis Will Remain.

March 29, 2021

Countries and companies should wake up to new political risks to shipping and supply chains.

This article appeared on Bloomberg.com on March 29, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
March 29, 2021

The Suez Canal Crisis of 2021 is upon us. The canal is closed, and maritime traffic jams extend into the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The reopening date is uncertain, supply chains are stressing, and executives are nervous.

“Crisis” may strike some as the wrong word. After all, there are no Cold War tensions as there were during the 1956 Suez Crisis, which closed the canal for six months, as the USSR simultaneously crushed the Hungarian Revolution. Nor are there Arab-Israeli military hostilities as during 1967’s Six-Day War, which (along with the 1973 Yom Kippur War) closed the Suez Canal for eight years.

The current blockage apparently arose from adverse weather conditions. But no one should underestimate the geostrategic warning it sends about the potential for political sabotage. As nature inspires art, so too does it inspire malevolence. This is not merely about geography, but also about today’s broader political risks to world commerce, ranging from one errant ship at Suez to confronting China’s enormous political, military and economic challenge.

Indisputably, political risks are now rising from sources not previously perceived. The coronavirus pandemic, for one, has alerted terrorist groups, rogue states and major powers alike that biological (and chemical) weapons have far more coercive power than once recognized. Such weapons are comparatively easier to make than nuclear devices.

New political risks have come on little cat feet, almost unnoticed. For decades, foreign investment in and reliance on supply sources in China expanded as if political risk were irrelevant. No longer. Former President Donald Trump’s tussle with Beijing, hardly amounting to a “trade war,” simply underscored the emerging political risks of dealing with China. Looking to hedge their bets, some foreign companies were already shifting capital allocations and supply chains to Southeast Asian countries, India and elsewhere. That trend is accelerating.

And the aggregate China risk factor will only increase. Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and the city’s melancholy demise as a “rule-of-law” international enclave in China is all but certain. Computer-driven industrial and financial espionage, outright theft of intellectual property, discrimination against foreign firms, and internal political and religious oppression all make China an increasingly risky place to be. And as political conflicts between China and the West continue to escalate, it becomes more dangerous to rely on Chinese supply sources.

Many Europeans, favored Wall Street investors and well-paid pundits argue that rising tensions are not inevitable. Perhaps. Certainly, the risks of relying on China don’t rule out having any presence whatever in the country. There are innumerable intermediate options. Yet in virtually every line of business, the intermediate options cry out for estimating a higher risk to any material supply-chain investment in China.

Moreover, China is creating its own geostrategic choke points, by building naval and air bases on islands, rocks and reefs it claims in the South China Sea, and declaring the region a Chinese province. In the East China Sea, Beijing is threatening Taiwan and challenging Japan on the sovereignty of the islands called the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyus in China. This menacing behavior leaves the economies of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries in danger.

Clearly, geopolitical risks are rising sharply. And to mitigate disruption, governments and businesses must diversify their supply chains and methods of shipping, and avoid geographic or political chokepoints, man-made or natural.

The United Arab Emirates has shown foresight by building an oil pipeline bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. The East-West Petroline, running from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province to Yanbu on the Red Sea, was also designed to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Nevertheless, shipments must traverse either the Suez Canal or the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the Red Sea’s southern end, now threatened by Yemen’s Houthi rebels (who have also attacked the Petroline itself). Today’s Middle East might consider building pipelines and other shipment methods through Jordan to Israel’s Mediterranean coast. Iran may well have had such an alternative route in mind for its (and Iraq’s) oil in extending its military dominance through Lebanon and Syria to the Mediterranean.

By the same token, why shouldn’t American and European companies concentrate more investment and manufacturing in the Western Hemisphere (or at home) rather than in China? As long as they avoid the likes of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, their political risk would be drastically lower, not to mention their transportation costs and possible losses during shipping. Perhaps the 2021 Suez Canal Crisis will have a silver lining after all, impelling governments and companies to come to terms with the new global security dangers they face.

Britain’s expanded nuclear arsenal has a vital role to play in reining in China

March 23, 2021

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

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

By John Bolton
March 23, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s at stake in the first big meeting of top Biden administration and Chinese officials

March 15, 2021

This article appeared in The Washington Post on March 15, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
March 15, 2021

On Thursday, the Biden administration will conduct its first high-level meeting with China. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will confer with senior Communist Party Politburo member Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Anchorage. Sullivan has said he and Blinken will explain how the new team “intends to proceed at a strategic level,” conveying its interests and values, and its concerns with Chinese activities.

President Biden issued an “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance” earlier this month, “as we begin work on a National Security Strategy.” That leaves the administration’s preparedness for the meeting unclear, but even “guidance” in the absence of a full strategy is a start.

Biden has spoken once with Chinese President Xi Jinping, although China’s readout of the conversation portrays Xi as doing most of the talking about what he expects from Washington. Last week, Biden held the first summit (virtually) of the “Quad” (Japan, India, Australia and the United States), a unique, still-evolving forum to foster a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” Just before Anchorage, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet their South Korean and Japanese counterparts.

This is elemental choreography, reassuring allies and signaling that “regular order” in diplomatic process is back in Washington.

But process is not substance, and certainly not a strategy for dealing with unacceptable Chinese behavior. A by-no-means-comprehensive list of Beijing’s transgressions that require U.S. attention would include: meddling, blatant and subtle, with U.S. public opinion; building military bases in the disputed South China Sea; menacing Taiwan, Vietnam and India; increasing strategic nuclear forces and egregious global cyberwarfare; empowering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program; concealing the origins of covid-19; stealing intellectual property and forcing technology transfers; and genocide against Uyghurs and the repression of Hong Kong.

But listing points of friction is also not strategy. Considerable risk lies ahead if Biden’s most important China objective, however understated, is to “explore whether there are other avenues for cooperation,” as Blinken recently testified. This is equivalent to saying, “Let me tell you what our weak points are.”

Despite the administration’s denials, zeal for a climate deal may be first on the list.

Even if “other avenues for cooperation” is only a diplomatic nicety, Blinken and Sullivan must stress to the Chinese that Biden’s policy will differ fundamentally from his predecessors’. U.S. public opinion, as in many industrial democracies, has turned decidedly negative toward Beijing because of its conduct regarding covid. China’s manifold noxious actions, noted above, have also increased public disapproval.

That ought to tee up the most important point Blinken and Sullivan should make: This is not the Obama era. The good times (for China) are not going to roll again without massive changes in Beijing’s behavior — and not just by making promises, as was so often the case in years past. The United States today cannot afford to revive former president Barack Obama’s blinkered acquiescence in China’s conduct.

Given Biden’s few campaign pronouncements on foreign policy, his eight years as Obama’s vice president and a new administration overflowing with Obama alumni, Beijing could be excused for hoping that (his criticism of the Uyghur genocide notwithstanding) Biden will be the successor to Obama that Xi had expected Hillary Clinton to be in 2017. Biden would do well to disabuse Beijing of that idea.

Distinguishing himself from Obama may be hard for Biden. Ironically, distinguishing himself from Donald Trump’s transactional propensity for short time horizons and splashy deals may also prove difficult. If reaching climate change agreements with Beijing is as urgent as the vibes emanating from Biden’s special envoy John F. Kerry suggest, it could be impossible. Trump’s unpredictable gyrations are gone, but his fascination with big deals regardless of the cost to the nation may unfortunately remain.

Blinken and Sullivan must be clear, if they can be, that Biden, unlike Obama, recognizes China as at least an adversary, if not an enemy — and that the United States will tailor its policies accordingly. And that, unlike Trump, Biden will think and act strategically.

In Anchorage, the U.S. officials need not be bellicose in making these points, but they must be as confident and assertive as their Chinese counterparts will undoubtedly be in advancing Beijing’s interests. If Blinken and Sullivan fail to press hard for, say, less-belligerent Chinese behavior in the South China Sea to avoid jeopardizing what appear to be higher-priority objectives on climate change, Yang and Wang will sense it instantly. And Xi will not hesitate to try to exploit any opportunity presented.

This first high-level Washington-Beijing encounter will not resolve any major issues, and no one expects it to. If Blinken and Sullivan emphasize that Biden is developing a coherent strategy to resolutely oppose China’s objectionable behavior, that alone would be a vital difference from the past 12 years. If not, however, the China question will become an increasingly important focus of America’s domestic political debate, and one where Biden is unlikely to fare well.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and l’Affair Khashoggi: Part 1

March 10, 2021

By Dr. David Wurmser
March 10, 2021

Ever since September 2001, when 19 hijackers, the vast majority of which had connections to Saudi Arabia, killed over 3000 Americans, the unquestioned relationship with Saudi Arabia established during World War II has come under duress. It was not without reason. The Saudi role has neither ever been fully examined nor have significant Saudi leaders ever been held to account for their carelessness, even entanglement, in dealing with al-Qaida before the attack. And yet, two decades have changed the Middle East. The dangers posed by Iran are no less, and the new danger posed by Turkey’s leader, Tayyip Erdogan, the Muslim Brotherhood movement over which he increasingly exercises full control, and his alliance with Qatar swells every day. In the ensuing inter-Sunni cold war to seize the banner of Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia is not just a key player, but also a major battleground.

Whatever reservations the United States may have either over the past, or over its war in Yemen, or the Khashoggi affair – all of which legitimately should result in harsh demarches and warnings to Riyadh – they must be tempered by the context of this dangerous rivalry. In this context, a Saudi collapse is potentially so catastrophic that it would lead to multiple 9-11s, a much worse crop of wars than Yemen, multiple external killings, internal sectarian bloodletting and likely a collapse into a horrific civil war the contours of which we have already seen in Syria. And it would launch not only Iran, but Turkey as well, into becoming regional superpowers challenged inside only by Israel and outside by the only superpower with the ability to project regional power, namely the United States. For those concerned with human rights, the collapse of Saudi Arabia should be of greater concern than the limited singular actions hitherto taken by Saudi Arabia to survive. It would be a repeat conceivably with far greater implications of the fall of the Shah and rise of Khomeini since ultimately Iran was a Shiite country in a Sunni sea, but the Muslim Brotherhood led Khaliphate of Turkey under Erdogan, who seeks to supercede and perhaps even control Saudi Arabia, is a Sunni nation in a sea of Sunnis. In this context, the Biden administration’s emerging hostility to Riyadh raises serious concerns about Saudi stability, and even more serious questions about whose side Washington is taking in the inter-Sunni cold war.

Saudi Arabia in 9-11
Let us be clear; Saudi Arabia has never fully cleared its account on al-Qaida and the 9-11 attacks. At the core, the point man of the Balkan cell from which sprang the Hamburg cell that executed the 9-11 attacks, was Muhammad Daroug, a man who spent many years abroad in Latin America and elsewhere, but always maintaining a strange relationship with powerful elements of the Saudi regime. An investigation of the relationship between Daroug, the Saudi Red Crescent and senior royals was never genuinely pursued. Indeed, at one point, so nervous was Serbia over the activities of the Saudi Red Crescent in this regard that they declared then-prince Salman (now King) a persona non-grata. And then there is the difficult connection between Turki al-Faisal’s intelligence agency where Saudi intelligence’s point man on al-Qaida was the brother of the Saudi point man in al-Qaida. In short, first for the sake of closure for the victims and second for the historical record, there must one day be an accounting of the highest level involvement in Saudi royal structures with the al Qaida structure.
And yet, although Saudi Arabia stalled any real accounting for what had happened before 9-11, in the years that followed it did understand the challenge that stood before it and worked aggressively to shut down the threat not only of al-Qaida, or even of the Salafi-based thought behind movements like al-Qaida, but even of the Muslim brotherhood. This effort was led by Muhammad bin Nayif (MbN), who became crown prince in 2015 but had led the security services long before that.

The rise of the inter-Sunni cold war
One of the most important moves that MbN made was in Syria and Egypt. During the years after the 9-11 attacks it seemed as if the Kingdom had reasserted its authority over the religious establishment and began to bring matters back under control, but the Arab Spring, and in particular the Syrian civil war’s eruption, unraveled that notion.

Signs emerged early in the Syrian conflict that regional Salafis encouraged by the Kingdom over the last half-century and their allies in Saudi clerical establishment – especially a powerful group dubbed the “Awakening Sheikhs” – had recovered from their suppression following 9-11 attacks and were again amassing power while at the same time disagreeing with several of the monarchy’s key strategic choices.

The Saudi family became particularly concerned that the Syrian issue – and support for the Salafi movement among Syrian oppositionists – was being leveraged by the remnants and new followers of the Awakening Sheikhs to act on their own in foreign policy (which is usually preserved within the authority of the leader the state), increase their following, and expand their base of power. Not only does this tread dangerously close to rearranging the balance between the leader of state (Saud) and leader of religious affairs (Wahhab) outlined under the 1744 pact, but such power could be used by the clerics to launch their own pro-Salafi “Arab Spring” in the Kingdom.

The Saudi government, thus, warned the clerics to stand down on Syria, and then took action. As early May 2012, the Kingdom banned fundraising activities for Syria, especially at the Bawardi Mosque in Riyadh which stood at the epicenter of these efforts, as well as blocked the “Ulema Committee to Support Syria” from functioning. Many of the clerics involved were summoned by Saudi authorities and warned to cease acting independently, even though the crisis in Syria was still an area in which there was a general convergence of views between the monarchy and these Sheikhs.

It was during this period as well that it became clear the Turkish leader, Tayyip Erdogan, had aligned with Qatar, assumed the mantel of leadership of the region’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, and sought to seize for himself the control of the banner of Sunni Islam. And an area where Erdogan and his Qatari allies saw greatest opportunity was in becoming the patron of the Sunni Islamists in Syria. Indeed, Qatar had long been a rival of the Saudi regime, and Turkey, imagining itself the new Khaliphate, was inherently on a collision course with Riyadh, which as the guardian of the two mosques (Mecca and Medina), laid claim to Sunni leadership.

In essence, the inter-Sunni Cold War found a fertile battlefield in which to play out. Saudi Arabia had tried to weaken and neutralize elements of its clerical establishment, the Ulema, who sought to leverage the war in Syria to build their power and influence not only independent of but adversarial to the monarchy. At first succeeded, but it was not long before Turkey and Qatar saw an opportunity to intervene and exploit these fissures between the Saudi royal family and the clerical establishment that ensured.

Moreover, events soon again spun out of control in Syria, partly because of Iranian efforts and partly because Qatar and Turkey began to prop up the worst Islamist tendencies in the Syrian opposition, including the troublesome Saudi clerics who worried Riyadh. Hezbollah’s overt intervention on behalf of the Assad regime in the battle of Qusayr in late May 2013 precipitated the sudden increase in Saudi foreign fighters in Syria. It was such a dramatic expression of Shiite/Alawite sectarian action against Sunni actions that it served as the clarion call for a new reinvigorated Sunni campaign across the Sunni Islamist universe. Less than a week later, in response, mainstream clerics such as the Qatari-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi called Sunnis to arms and fight in Syria: “anyone who has the ability, who is trained to fight…has to go; I call on Muslims to go and support their brothers in Syria.”

Most worrisome for Saudi authorities was that Qaradawi’s statement was later praised by Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Shaykh. Two weeks after al-Qaradawi’s announcement, Saud al-Shuraym, a Saudi cleric at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, proclaimed that Sunni Muslims had a duty to support the Syrian rebels “by all means.” Before Qusayr, Saudi religious scholars supported helping the Syrian rebels through financial means, but were not overt in terms of foreign fighting. Hezbollah’s joining the conflict, the sectarianism that is intertwined in Saudi Arabia’s state religion and education, the clerical framing of the conflict as wajib (duty), campaigns of support for the rebels, as well as the summer months coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan all helped catalyze efforts to send Saudi fighters to Syria.

Combining its wealth and Wahhabi credentials, Qatar had assumed theological control over Hamas, the broader regional Muslim Brotherhood movements, and the Salafi world across the region. Even some al-Qaida linked Sheikhs – such the Saudi Sheikh, Dr. `Abd Allah bin Muhammad bin Sulayman al-Muhaysini, who is a theological force behind the Syrian Jabat al-Nusra movement – by 2014 expressed frustration over their loss of control of that end of the spectrum to Sheikhs funded and encouraged by Qatar (such as Sheikh Hajaj al-Ajmi).

But the rise of the Qatari-Turkish challenge again had the gravest implications not only for the Saudi royal family in Syria, but in the entire region. and the Saudi state it controlled. If the contours of the inter-Sunni Cold War – and the threat Qatar and Turkey sought to pose to the Saudi regime — had come into focus already over Syria, but then it escalated exponentially over Egypt. When Muhammad Morsi seized power from Hosni Mubarak in 2011, he aligned his regime heavily with the Hamas movement in Gaza, which by 2012 formally announced it was the Gaza chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood movement of Egypt. Moreover, he realigned Egypt as a whole to become one of Erdogan’s closest allies. Egypt had always been part of the inner circle of strategic concern for Saudi Arabia, and indeed, a hostile Egypt had before threatened the Saudi monarchy. Having Cairo aligned with the two primary rivals to Saudi Arabia, brandishing the banner of Sunni Islam under the banner of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were already threatening the Saudi monarchy from within through the rising “awakening Shaykhs,” was a threat Saudi Arabia could hardly countenance. Saudi Arabia, thus, dramatically in 2012 moved to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and all but overtly sided with Israel during its mini-war with Hamas that year. Indeed, two years later, Saudi Arabia threw caution to the wind and more or less did overtly side with Israel against Hamas.

Prince Nayif understood thus that, bringing about the end of the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime of Muhammad Morsi was a vital national interest. Saudi Arabia’s rising ally, the UAE and Riyadh accomplished this effort on July 3, 2013, when they helped General Muhammad al-Sisi seize power for Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies. Beginning in summer 2013, the Awakening Sheikhs expressed publicly (or tweeted electronically) a critique of the monarchy’s overt support for Egypt’s coup. At first, Egypt’s Salafis and their Saudi comrades – both the royal family and the Awakening Sheikhs – had supported the crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood, largely because they viewed the Brotherhood as rival claimants to the standard of Islamist authenticity. From the start, the relationship between the Saudi Kingdom and Egypt under Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood had been tense. Apart from some theological differences, the Egyptian Brotherhood was working in close cooperation with the Turkish government under the AKP Islamist party and Qatar – a rival Wahhabi regime to the Saudis – to assert a leading regional role and define the nature of the emerging Arab Spring, often to the detriment of Saudi Arabia, which had invested great coin and effort for over 40 years into trying to crown its Salafis as the leaders of “authentic” Islam.

In contrast, the destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood by the military junta in July offered the Saudis a stalling if not even taming of the Arab Spring, and lent the Salafis and the Saudi colleagues the promise of monopoly over the Islamist camp. Understanding that the Salafis would be one of the benefactors of the coup, the Saudis thus calculated minimally, if at all, the possibility of a Salafi problem emerging from it. Indeed, if there was a concern at all, it was that the coup would stall and fail, and the Muslim Brotherhood would be left seizing the banner of the Islamist camp across the region – in cooperation with Turkey’s government – at the Salafis’ expense. It was, thus reasonable for the Saudi government to suppose the Egyptian coup would represent a convergence of interests between the Saud royals, the Awakening Sheikh clerics and the broader Salafi world.

Once the Brotherhood was removed from power, however, the Salafi camp moved to capitalize on discomfort surrounding the inherent brutality which the junta required to prevail in its crackdown. Tapping the chaotic and almost anarchic populist tendencies defining the politics of Tahrir square, and the still salient appeal of the authenticity of Islam, the Salafi camp drifted toward opposing the regime.

The emerging divergence of outlook and interests between the Salafi establishment – and their colleagues among Saudi “Awakening Sheikhs” – and the Saudi monarchy reverberates within the core of the Saudi state. Several key clerics have already split with the monarchy over its support for the Egyptian junta. Indeed, two prominent Sheikhs, Salman al-Awdah (who had been arrested and incarcerated before until 1999, but since has been viewed as loyal to the Saud) and Muhammad al-Urayfi have been silenced following twitter posts criticizing support for the Egyptian coup. Sheikh al-Awda’s internet journal, Islam Today, has been removed from the internet. Another popular cleric, Muhsin al-Awaji has been arrested; there were reports over the last year that Sheikh al-Urayfi (who has the highest number of internet-based followers in the Kingdom) has also been arrested.

Other key clerics – Nasser al-Omar, Hassan Hamid, Abd al-Aziz bin Marzuq al Tarayfi, and Abd al-Rahman Salah Mahmud – have also been detained, threatened or harassed by the Kingdom’s police. Given how nervous the al-Saud family is over the increased power of the Awakening Sheikhs in the context of Syrian policy – over which they are in agreement – one can only imagine how dangerous the monarchy regards increasing vociferousness among these clerics on the issue of Egypt – over which they disagree.

In the end, torn between its geostrategic interest in supporting the Egyptian coup and its governing interest in avoiding a rupture with elements of its clerical core, the monarchy suppressed the most vocal Sheikhs but simultaneously negotiated with the broader clerical establishment to reconcile their conflicting interests.

And yet, all was not well in the Kingdom. Oil prices were plunging, and it was increasingly obvious that Saudi Arabia’s economy as constituted was too distorted by oil wealth to survive in the long run, and Saudi society was woefully unprepared to deal with the sort of modernity an effective economic transformation would demand.

In the next part of this essay, we will examine how the conflict between Turkey and Qatar on one hand, and the Saudis on the other moved to the center of the Saudi regime and threatened its very survival, with Adnan Khashoggi’s assuming a critical role in the Turkish strategic campaign.

i HTTPS://WWW.CTC.USMA.EDU/POSTS/THE-SAUDI-FOREIGN-FIGHTER-PRESENCE-IN-SYRIA
ii ACCORDING TO AL-MUHAYSINI’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, HE WAS BORN IN BURAYDAH (QASSIM REGION) IN NORTH-CENTRAL SAUDI ARABIA. HE BECAME A HAFIZ (ONE WHO HAS MEMORIZED THE ENTIRE QUR’AN) BY THE AGE OF 15. FOR HIS BACHELORS STUDIES, HE MAJORED IN SHARI`A AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UMM AL-QURA IN MECCA. HE LATER COMPLETED HIS MASTER’S AND DOCTORATE IN COMPARATIVE FIQH (ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE) AT AL-IMAM MUHAMMAD IBN SAUD ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY IN RIYADH, WRITING HIS DISSERTATION ON LEGAL PROVISIONS AFFECTING WAR REFUGEES IN ISLAMIC FIQH. HE STUDIED UNDER A NUMBER OF SHAYKHS, INCLUDING THE CONTROVERSIAL SHAYKH SULAYMAN AL-ULWAN WHO WAS ARRESTED BY SAUDI AUTHORITIES IN 2004 FOR SUPPORTING AL-QA`IDA.