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.

Biden should stay in Afghanistan

March 01, 2021

This article appeared in The Washington Examiner on March 1, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton 
March 1, 2021

America’s 20-year history in Afghanistan inevitably colors debate about the U.S. interests at stake and what to do there next. Unfortunately, the debate often deteriorates into a war of bumper-sticker slogans: “ending endless wars” versus “standing by our commitments.”

Newly-inaugurated, President Biden now has a unique opportunity. Inheriting last year’s deeply flawed withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, Biden faces a May 1 decision whether to completely remove U.S. forces. In theory, earlier U.S. force reductions and the final departure were to be “conditions based.” Coming only in return for the Taliban’s ending of its support for international terrorists, its making peace with Afghanistan’s government, and its action to reduce in-country violence. No one seriously argues these conditions can be met by May 1. Accordingly, Biden has a critical choice.

The congressionally-mandated, bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group recently advocated extending the withdrawal deadline, essentially to buttress the withdrawal agreement’s conditionality. Biden thus has ample political cover to maintain the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, although he would be wrong to believe that the underlying deal requires only modest re-torquing to make it viable. One can certainly doubt that the Taliban will ever honor their commitments. In what is hopefully a renewed era of “normalcy” in policy debates, however, an extension also affords time to recalibrate our basic interests and stop the bumper-sticker bombardment.

Biden should conclude that the Taliban has already so materially breached the peace deal that it no longer binds Washington.

America’s basic interest is not facilitating an abstract Afghan “peace process,” like the Middle East “peace processing” mirage. The United States wants to ensure that Afghanistan is not a base for terrorist operations. “Peace,” as defined in the Afghan context, relates to this objective but does not guarantee it. Global terrorist operations can be organized and launched from states that appear and may well be entirely peaceful. While a stable, peaceful Afghanistan could enhance the possibility of preventing terrorist activities emanating from its territory, it is, bluntly stated, not essential.

Moreover, Washington is not responsible for building stability and peace there or anywhere else, especially when to do so means major changes in the fabric of Afghan society. Afghans can do their own nation-building in their own good time if they so desire. For America, the touchstone is our strategic interests, not complete congruence with Afghanistan’s. If it is fundamentally important for U.S. security to conduct “forward defense” there, and it is, that calculus does not change depending on whether the Afghan government’s military or political performance meets our expectations. We can certainly assist and urge them to do better, but their deficiencies, militarily or in reconciling with the Taliban, only bolster the argument that protecting America requires our continued presence. As Kabul is responsible for its domestic policies, we are responsible for our security.

If, therefore, it is not in our interest to withdraw, we should not, even if the conflict between the Taliban and non-terrorist Afghans continues indefinitely. This is not simply a squabble over nomenclature but over strategic goals. As with all valid long-term objectives, we must be prepared to persist for the long-term in order to achieve them. This is not what the Afghanistan Study Group recommends or what Biden probably prefers, but it is the only approach with a prospect for enduring success. As long as the Taliban are correct when they say, “you have the watches, we have the time,” we are doomed to fail.

There is another key American objective in Afghanistan, afforded by geography, not adequately recognized in previous administrations.

Situated between one nuclear-weapons state, Pakistan, and an aspiring nuclear-weapons state, Iran, Afghanistan provides a forward operating base for close scrutiny and access across its eastern, western, and southern borders. Not all intelligence, even today, is gathered from space by national technical means. Being proximate to two potential nuclear threats is not an asset to discard lightly. For the Biden administration in particular, mistakenly eager to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a continuing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan constitutes an insurance policy not merely against a resurgence of terrorism but against the growing nuclear-proliferation menace in the neighborhood.

U.S. interests in Afghanistan are also priorities for NATO allies, although the counter-proliferation responsibility falls more heavily on Washington. But there is no conflict between these interests that should inhibit continued NATO involvement in counter-terrorism programs, which thereby also support, albeit indirectly, the counter-proliferation programs. At present, NATO allies have roughly twice as many troops in Afghanistan as the U.S., a ratio that would imply a larger NATO presence if America’s deployment rose. Such an increase, possibly with similar enhancements in Iraq, could also have political benefits inside NATO, repairing some of the damage inflicted on alliance cooperation in recent years.

Britain’s Lord Palmerston urged that a statesman’s duty is to follow his country’s interests. The impending May 1 deadline in Afghanistan will test whether President Biden understands that logic.

Military Force Must Remain an Option With North Korea

February 23, 2021

Trump’s personal diplomacy failed, but Biden can’t go back to the Obama approach.

This article appeared in Bloomberg Politics on February 23, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
February 23, 2021

President Joe Biden last week made his most extensive foreign-policy remarks since taking office, speaking virtually to a G-7 meeting and the annual Munich Security Conference. Despite its worldwide proliferation threat, North Korea’s nuclear program went unmentioned, continuing its near invisibility under the new administration.

One reason for Biden’s reticence might be the pressure from the international left and others to reject three decades of bipartisan U.S. policy ostensibly aiming to denuclearize North Korea. While diplomatic tactics, focus and priority varied considerably under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, they all stressed that Pyongyang’s quest for deliverable nuclear weapons was unacceptable.

Unfortunately, they all produced the same result, namely the North’s continued progress toward an arsenal. During these long decades, we repeatedly heard that using force to keep the world’s most dangerous weapons away from the world’s most dangerous regimes was premature, provocative and unnecessary.

Now, some critics assert that because Pyongyang has essentially developed deliverable nukes, we should abandon denuclearization as unrealistic and unfeasible. The U.S. and its allies must instead accept a nuclear North Korea, working to contain its menace, as they say (in a facile analogy) the West did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Force must now be entirely off the table. Parallel recommendations have been made about Iran’s nuclear efforts.

Not surprisingly, many now rejecting denuclearization earlier believed the rogue regimes were either not pursuing nuclear weapons, or (contradictorily) were doing so only defensively. They strenuously opposed military action, or policies of reunification (Korea) or regime change (Iran), at least not without far more extensive negotiations to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully — a la the Obama administration’s North Korea policy of “strategic patience.”

Somehow, using force moved seamlessly from being “too much” to being “too late” without anyone noticing. Skeptics may ask whether this choir of the high-minded wasn’t being disingenuous all along: They never really believed diplomacy aimed at denuclearization would work, and they simply did not worry that rogue states with weapons of mass destruction were all that dangerous. How many of them are now on Biden’s national security team?

The contrast between continuing to strive for denuclearization versus swallowing failure as a fait accompli could not be starker. Japan, South Korea and many others simply cannot accept a nuclear North, with potentially far-reaching implications for their relations with the U.S. Every aspiring nuclear-weapons state or terrorist group watching North Korea could reasonably conclude that the U.S. and its allies lack the fortitude, concentration, attention span and perseverance to stop them from acquiring nuclear capabilities. And anyone understanding the fearful effects of the coronavirus pandemic can also only conclude that seeking the “poor man’s nuclear weapon” — biological and chemical capabilities — cannot be lightly dismissed either.

Biden would make a potentially fatal mistake if he surrenders the goal of denuclearization. Of course, even if he continues espousing a non-nuclear North Korea rhetorically, that would hardly guarantee he knows how to bring it about, any more than his four immediate predecessors did. Weak arms control and nonproliferation diplomacy is a specialty of Democratic presidencies, and there is every reason to fear Biden will follow suit.

Trump’s performance artistry with Pyongyang also weighs heavily on the Biden administration. Three failed photo-opportunity summits, a U.S. president who fell in love with the latest iteration of the Kim family dictatorship, and four years of continued North Korean progress toward deliverable nuclear weapons are enough to create migraines for those who must now pick up the pieces.

Nonetheless, from all the available evidence, North Korea is weaker today than perhaps ever before in its history. For its own opaque reasons, Pyongyang decided to impose even-greater detachment from the rest of the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, almost certainly reducing its already rickety economy to desperate levels. This is hardly the time to relieve the pressure of economic sanctions and international isolation. This is the time to demand concessions from Pyongyang, not reward its obdurate behavior.

Moreover, Biden’s biggest challenge, developing a strategy to contest China’s desire for Asian and ultimately global hegemony, should put North Korea at its center. For too many years, U.S. diplomats argued that China is a constructive actor in trying to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue. This has long since been made demonstrably false.

China has always been Pyongyang’s enabler, politically, economically and scientifically. President Xi Jinping could end the North’s nuclear aspirations in a stroke if he chose, and Washington must stress this reality at every opportunity. This will be the real test of Biden’s North Korea policy.

Boris Johnson holds the future of the fatally flawed Iran Deal in his hands

February 18, 2021

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

By John Bolton
February 18, 2021

News that Iran is fabricating uranium metal, reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s members on February 10, sent shock waves through national-security circles. Uranium metal’s most common use is forming the hollow sphere of highly-enriched uranium at the core of nuclear weapons. When imploded, the compressed uranium reaches critical mass and detonates in an uncontrolled fission chain reaction.

Predictably, Iran concocted various pretenses for its uranium-metal work, which fooled no one. Indeed, this is simply one more opening for Tehran to make public illicit work already undertaken but previously undisclosed. The mullahs are upping the stakes ahead of any negotiations with the Biden Administration, which is overly eager to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA).

The UK’s reaction to Iran’s latest ploy will be critical. The JCPOA was long a Holy Grail for the European Union, which the willfully blind Obama administration was delighted to embrace. Washington’s withdrawal from the deal amounted to sacrilege for the EU and its US arms-control acolytes. But however ambitious to rejoin Biden’s team may be, the world has changed dramatically since America’s departure in 2018.

In particular, the Middle East has shifted tectonically. Israel now has full diplomatic relations with Bahrain and the UAE, and with others likely in the near future. The shared reality that Iran is the greatest threat to regional peace and security is largely driving this Arab-Israeli rapprochement. The former adversaries will not react kindly to efforts to expose them to more imminent danger from Iran.

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