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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time is on Putin’s side.

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

A World without Rules

January 21, 2022
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This article appeared in The National Review on January 20th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

MUCH like Covid-19, some bad ideas never disappear. One misbegotten, potentially dangerous idea holds that we live in a “rules-based international order,” or should at least aspire to. At first glance, this notion seems innocuous. In the domestic law of consti¬tutional republics, don’t we have “rules-based order”? Why not internationally?

References to the “order” are now ubiquitous, but its meaning remains unclear. Possible definitions abound, since Western diplomats seem determined to mention “rules-based international order” everywhere, in G-7, G-20, U.N., EU, OECD, OSCE — even NATO — communiqués and speeches. It’s as if intoning the words often enough, as in religious ceremonies, will make them true. But as Ben Scott, an analyst writing in the Interpreter, observed, “although the ‘rules-based international order’ is central to Australian strategy, what exactly this concept means remains a work very much in progress.” In a 2017 speech, Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland offered her take: “Canada has a huge interest in an international order based on rules. One in which might is not always right. One in which more powerful countries are constrained in their treatment of smaller ones by standards that are internationally respected, enforced, and upheld.”

Whatever the “order” is, the Biden administration is for it. The president endorsed it in addressing the U.N. General Assembly last September, in his 2021 U.N. Day proclamation in October, and in his first talk with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi after becoming president. Secretary of State Antony Blinken invoked the “order” to open his and National-Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s embarrassing March 18, 2021, Alaska meeting with their Chinese counterparts.

Commentators, too, are for it. Fareed Zakaria, as he wrote in the Washington Post, supports a “liberal, rules-based international order” but also endorses Sullivan saying that “the object of the Biden administration is to shape the international environment so that it is more favorable to the interest and values of the United States and its allies and partners to like-minded democracies” (sic). That sounds like vintage Barry Goldwater, thus highlighting a problem that arises when the “order” flubs one of America’s priorities, which happens more frequently than its acolytes like to admit. Whose “order” are we talking about?

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov opined on this oratorical flood in 2019: “There have been attempts . . . to replace the universal norms of international law with a ‘rules-based order.’ This term was recently coined to camouflage a striving to invent rules depending on changes in the political situation so as to be able to put pressure on disagreeable states and often even on allies.” Ironically, devotees of “international law” (another vague, shape-shifting term) worry that the “order” is so much broader than “law” that the former may undermine the latter.

WHAT should we make of all this? Cynical politicians likely think: “Why not endorse the ‘rules-based international order’? It means everything and anything, so what’s the harm?” Unfortunately, however, severe con¬sequences can flow from national-security policies based on illusions. To the extent the “order” possesses any coherence, its implications for countries that prize their constitutional sovereignty, as America still does, are troubling.
History provides context and a better understanding of the lineage of the “rules-based international order.” Starting in 1945, with the United Nations replacing the failed League of Nations, there was a burst of support for “world government,” through either enhancing the U.N. or other means. Some en¬visioned a “world federation,” although it was, like “world (or global) government,” ill defined. In 1949, otherwise sensible young congressmen such as Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, and Gerald Ford endorsed resolutions embracing these concepts in various ways. Even Ronald Reagan was a member, albeit briefly, of the United World Federalists. Despite its initial appeal, “global government” didn’t fare well in America and the less toxic brand “world federalism” quickly replaced it, but they traveled in the same direction. The Cold War froze debate about global government for almost four decades. Other ideas for “international order” nonetheless still abounded.

As Europe’s empires decolonized, many newly independent states used the U.N. system to increase concessional assistance flows from the “first world” to the less developed “third world.” (The Communist “second world” offered ideology and armaments but had little wealth to share.) Gossamer concepts like the “new international economic order” and the parallel “new world information and communications order” envisioned global wealth redistribution and regulation. Third-world diplomats and their Western advocates weaponized entities such as the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, to oppose the free-trade-oriented General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to transfer intellectual property and other assets of “the common heritage of mankind” from developed to less developed countries. These efforts ultimately foundered during the Reagan administration, which flatly re¬fused to play the game, pursuing American interests unashamedly and ignoring the unrealistic leftist ideologies embodied in the sundry “orders.” Other ploys to redistribute “the common heritage of mankind” and simultaneously undermine sovereignty, such as the Law of the Sea Treaty, remain afloat, but Washing¬ton never ratified that one and hopefully never will.

Nonetheless, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR’s dissolution unleashed a revival of post–World War II euphoria for supranational institutions. Even President George H. W. Bush endorsed a coming “new world order” after the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War and communism’s collapse. Others, however, including even nominal American allies, focused, typically under the radar, on constraining Washington, the “sole superpower,” or, in French foreign minister Hubert Védrine’s more pejorative term, the hyperpuissance.

Rebranding was again required, and “global governance” became the prevailing buzzword. The lineal descendant of “global government,” this new variant sounded less all-embracing and therefore less threatening; but its ultimate (perhaps hazier) objective was essentially identical because of the reductions in national sovereignties that both required for implementation. A Commission on Global Governance, no less, comprising self-appointed luminaries and embraced by the U.N., informed us in 1995 that “the development of global governance is part of the evolution of human efforts to organize life on the planet, and that process will always be going on.”

For its supporters, the European Union was the apotheosis of the global-governance trend, with European leaders gleefully transferring “competencies” to the growing mega-state. Not surprisingly, European enthusiasts were eager to help the United States give away its sovereignty to global institutions as well.

Along with the EU’s seemingly inevitable greater glory (Brexit not even a cloud on the horizon), in 1999 came the International Criminal Court (ICC), purportedly exercising jurisdiction even over citizens of nonmember states and second-guessing whether states dealt adequately with war crimes or crimes against humanity. Other international courts, such as the Law of the Sea Treaty’s tribunal, seemed intent on ex-panding their jurisdiction to extend global governance. Multiple efforts by these bodies to restrict national decisions on the international use of force, often under “human rights” cover, included arguing that any use of force without express Security Council approval was illegitimate.

Even the Clinton administration rejected certain of these initiatives; for example, it didn’t sign the International Land Mines Convention. In 1999 the Senate unexpectedly but decisively rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, intended to ban all nuclear testing. During George W. Bush’s administration, global governance lost momentum. America “unsigned” the ICC’s founding treaty, withdrew from the 1972 Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty, blocked U.N. efforts to impose inter¬national gun control, and tanked a hopelessly ineffectual, counterproductive draft verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention.

During Obama’s presidency, however, the “rules-based international order” emerged. Underground during the Trump years, the “order” was resurrected by Biden’s arrival, and it is once again “game on.” The most benign effect of incessant incan¬tations about the “order” would be irrelevance. Much like the endless repetition of the U.N. Charter phrase “international peace and security,” it doesn’t bring either notion closer to reality. Simple indifference, therefore, is an appealing response.

UNFORTUNATELY, whether political leaders believe or even understand what they say, their statements have consequences. Westerners who worship “international order” may not realize that the idea has an unsavory history, long predating 1945, where we began above, and much of it shocking. In the most hateful and extreme forms, Nazism was an aspiring world order, and Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was similarly motivated. In more palatable variants, the Roman and British empires were proto–world orders, as were successive Russian and Chinese empires and many others. Americans have long been skeptical of inter¬national orders. Napoleon’s ambitions prompted Thomas Jefferson to say, “It cannot be in our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy.” Not just any “international order” will do.

So, does the appeal turn instead on the phrase “rules-based”? Certainly not, because “rules” can also be objectionable, some of them savagely so. In fact, “rules-based” is only one aspect of “order” itself, making for a definition both repetitive and incomplete. One of Minister Freeland’s sub-rules, that “might is not always right,” doesn’t solve the problem; might is very frequently employed precisely because countries can’t decide peacefully what is right. Nor does her view that rules should be “internationally respected, enforced, and upheld” help, since historically the only truly effective means to uphold and enforce rules is through force or the threat of force. As for “international respect,” force has always war¬ranted more respect than incantations, unpleasant though that reality may be.

Advocates of the “rules-based international order” make the same fundamental mistake as their “global government”/“global governance” predecessors, trying to equate managing global disputes with managing domestic disputes. International affairs are ultimately about power and politics, not law. The historical absence of international institutions, such as courts, prosecutors, and jails, that actually “enforce and uphold” rules is not accidental. Creating them ex nihilo, without the pre¬requisites that exist within countries, where citizens have renounced the use of force to settle disputes, does not change that reality. The manifest ineffectiveness of the International Court of Justice has made it a joke. The Inter¬national Criminal Court, after just over 20 years, is nearly there. U.N. peacekeeping forces are deployed almost uniformly in conflicts where the concrete stakes for the great powers are trivial, insufficient to energize them to attempt some kind of lasting dispute resolution. Even nation-states that believed they had renounced using force internally have found themselves engaged in bloody civil wars. We live in one. Pretending to play at law-and-order internationally has come nowhere close to making it so but, sadly, has likely deluded many people into believing that they need not take more-effective steps to ensure their peace and safety.

One example of an ineffectual “rules-based international order” was the 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact, an attempt to outlaw war. It failed (although Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg did get a Nobel Peace Prize). As noted on the State Department’s Office of the Historian website, the pact “did little to prevent World War II or any of the conflicts that followed. Its legacy remains as a statement of the idealism expressed by advocates for peace in the interwar period.” Kellogg–Briand’s real-world impact effectively ended before the ink on the treaty dried, subsequent Nuremberg convictions producing no deterrent effect. So much for renouncing force as an instrument of national power.
OPTIMISTIC advocates of the “rules-based international order,” conveniently disregarding millennia of earlier human history, would respond that drawing conclusions from Kellogg–Briand ignores how times and conditions have changed. But consider how incantations about the “order” might affect today’s crises. The “rules” against changing Europe’s borders through force apparently never made it to Moscow. Russia illegally annexed Crimea and successfully used force in the Donbas, creating another “frozen conflict,” as in several other former Soviet republics. Vladimir Putin has ignored sanctions and other reprisals and appears fully prepared to ignore them again. As recently as New Year’s Eve, he threatened a complete rupture in Moscow–Washington relations, which he knows is the one thing, other than military force, most likely to rattle the State Department.

China is playing a similar cat-and-mouse game with Taiwan and is ignoring international judicial rejection of its territorial claims in the South China Sea. Beijing is violating, without consequences, its treaty with the United Kingdom that returned Hong Kong to full Chinese sovereignty. The “rules-based international order” is meeting cultural genocide against China’s Uyghurs with symbolic diplomatic boycotts of the Winter Olympics. Beijing, like Moscow, has its own ideas about what the right “order” is, visited upon two of Freeland’s fellow citizens. In 2018, China seized two Canadians as hostages to exchange for a senior Huawei official arrested in Canada for extradition to the United States. Ultimately, the Biden administration broke down and agreed to a swap.

Neither Russia’s nor China’s belligerence will be resolved in the Security Council, where their vetoes ensure inaction. Nor will the threat from Iran, which has torn up the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As the U.S. and others beg Tehran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal, its obstruction of International Atomic Energy Agency officials remains in full swing. Iran also continues arming and funding Houthi rebels in Yemen’s grinding conflict, which long ago passed from civil strife to surrogate international war. North Korea violated the NPT, then withdrew from it, and is closer to having deliverable nuclear weapons than ever before. The “rules-based international order” is clutch¬ing its pearls but doing very little else in either case.

Biden accepted Trump’s deal with the Taliban (but not the legitimate Afghan government) and withdrew U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan. His “rules-based international order” adherents watched the country descend into chaos and brutality, as the capability to carry out terrorist attacks against America, by the Pentagon’s own admission, is now less than six months away. More pearl-clutching.

It is never prudent to base national-security decisions on delusion, but that is the palpable risk of taking seriously notions of a “rules-based international order.” What order exists in the world today results from American military, political, and economic strength and the alliance structures we created globally post-1945. No other nation or combination of nations could do what we have done, nor could any international organization. We did all this not out of altruism but because it was in our national interest, and we have benefited enormously in economic terms alone but also politically and militarily. Our allies too often fail to meet the mutual obligations they have agreed to shoulder, about which we should vigorously remind them. But we made these commitments not for their benefit, but for our own. No other country will safeguard our interests or our jury-rigged order better than we will. When we exit some area on the globe, as Afghanistan is proving before our eyes, no better order emerges.

Until lions lie down with lambs, a “rules-based international order” is a fantasy. The world will see only partial orders, such as ours, facing vigorous resistance from competing visions and philosophies. Today, the partial order that suits America best is the one we created and sustain. We “respect, uphold, and enforce” it, along with willing allies, whom we should not abandon. There is no better alternative.

JOHN R. BOLTON, who served as national-security adviser to President Trump and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is the author of The Room Where It Happened.

Will Biden’s 2021 foreign policy failures reverberate in 2022?

January 03, 2022
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This article appeared in The Hill on January 1st, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

From a national security perspective, Americans will not remember 2021 fondly. Self-inflicted wounds, delusional policy objectives, underestimated strategic menaces and impotence against immediate threats unfortunately characterized the Biden administration’s approach.

Good news was sparse. But continuing a 61-year bipartisan tradition, Congress passed this year’s $768-billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), $25 billion above the president’s request. Of course, we still need a comparable, full-year appropriations bill to avoid limping along with underfunded continuing resolutions. We also still need to overcome President Obama’s eight years of inadequate resources, and rising inflation, which is eroding this year’s small increase. Since it could be worse, just passing the NDAA warrants celebration.

Turning to the bad news, America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a strategic debacle, a national embarrassment, a rolling catastrophe for the Afghan people, a tonic for our adversaries and a downer for our friends. Both Presidents Biden and Trump contributed to this blunder. Although the global humiliation of the decision’s bungled execution, watched live by hundreds of millions of people, is largely Biden’s to bear, Trump’s indefensible predicate deal with the Taliban meant the tragedy would likely have unfolded the same under either president.

White House sources anonymously hoped Americans would largely forget the shame and sadness. Unfortunately, however, the hits just keep on coming. The White House conceded just months after withdrawal that ISIS-K was capable of mounting terrorist attacks against the United States in 6-12 months, and al Qaeda in 12-24 months.

In early December, CENTCOM’s commander grudgingly acknowledged that, contrary to Taliban commitments and Biden administration assurances, al Qaeda’s support had “probably slightly increased” and that “we should expect a resurgent ISIS” in Afghanistan. Hundreds of U.S. citizens and over 60,000 Afghans who worked with America (not counting their families) still seek asylum. Humanitarian disaster looms.

Finally, the media report a large influx of Pakistani sympathizers to Afghanistan to join the Taliban, thereby inevitably raising the risks of Pakistan and its substantial stock of nuclear weapons also falling to terrorists.

Speaking of nuclear-proliferation failures, Iran and North Korea were 2021 standouts.  Since his inauguration, Biden has abjectly pleaded with Iran to revitalize the 2015 nuclear deal. Leaving aside that the deal itself is hopelessly flawed, and even assuming, contrary to fact, that Iran strictly complied with its provisions, Biden has irretrievably lost nearly a full year pursuing an illusion.

Of course, Tehran wants release from U.S. economic pressure, as does Pyongyang, but neither wants it enough to make the strategic decision to abandon pursuing deliverable nuclear weapons.

Biden seems unable to absorb this point. After a year of frenetic diplomacy and public optimism on Iran, and a year of frenetically doing essentially nothing on North Korea, the result in both cases is identical. Tehran and Pyongyang are one year closer to perfecting their nuclear and ballistic-missile technology, and for North Korea perhaps hypersonic cruise missiles. Time is always on asset for the proliferator, needed to overcome the complex scientific and technological obstacles to becoming a nuclear-weapons state. Iran and North Korea have both made good use of 2021. The United States stood idly by.

Before Christmas, the media again speculated about a U.S.-Israeli “Plan B,” implying the use of force to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, presumably well above the low-level sabotage and disruption already inflicted on Tehran. Whether Israel has the will to use military force depends on its uneasy governing coalition, which clearly has the will to stay in office despite widespread policy differences.

Some coalition members seem unlikely ever to favor dispositive pre-emptive force against Iran, despite Israel facing what former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called a prospective “nuclear holocaust” launched by Tehran. As for America, its rhetoric and real deterrence capabilities seem less persuasive than ever. Iran likely believes it can defy the U.S. without consequences for at least three more years. Israel needs to act accordingly.

Which brings us to Russia and China, which appear to believe they either never lost parity with the U.S. or have now achieved it. Russian President Vladimir Putin had extensive discussions with Biden, including three hours in-person on June 17 in Geneva. By then, Biden had already gratuitously agreed to a five-year extension of the badly flawed New START nuclear-weapons agreement, wasting significant diplomatic leverage, since Putin had earlier been willing to accept a one-year increase.

Moreover, Biden had been rumored to be willing to concede that the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline was so close to completion that the U.S. would no longer try to stop it; an agreement with Germany to that effect was announced just a month after Geneva.

After the summit, Biden said “all foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships.” Amtrak Joe, like Donald Trump, may believe foreign policy is about personal relationships, but Putin knows it is about power, resolve and raison d’etat.

Putin has marked his man, and trouble lies ahead, most imminently in Ukraine. Biden’s reaction to the Kremlin’s pressure has been completely predictable: strong rhetoric about Russia’s belligerence, paeons to NATO’s importance, threats of economic sanctions and little else. Moscow has heard it all before and responded by formally annexing Crimea and taking effective control of substantial parts of eastern Ukraine.

If Biden has nothing new or different to offer, the crisis for Ukraine and other former USSR republics left in the “grey zone” between NATO and Russia will only grow in 2022. The risk of a Russian military incursion was unabated as 2021 ended.

Meanwhile, Beijing’s growing strategic threat should be paramount for Washington.  Biden’s aimlessness on China is therefore not just troublesome, but dangerous. His lack of direction has one of two causes. Either he fails to understand the enormous scope of China’s threat, which spans the full spectrum of economic and politico-military affairs (which would be bad enough), or he is holding back, hoping desperately for Chinese cooperation on climate-change issues (which would be even worse).

Although Biden has not spoken definitively, at least some of his diplomacy is constructive. He has strengthened the nascent India-Japan-Australia-U.S. Quad, holding its first in-person summit and advancing a potentially critical strategic partnership. He agreed to the joint Australia-U.K.-U.S. effort to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, a major advance in allied military cooperation. And, mirroring a 2020 U.S.-Palau deal, the U.S., Australia and Japan agreed to finance undersea communications cables to three Pacific island states, countering China’s relentless efforts to extend its influence.

Whether these agreements are only sui generis or form elements of an urgently needed, long-term strategy is unclear. But they manifestly do not address more pressing Indo-Pacific problems. Despite tough 2020 campaign talk about China, which was popular across America’s political spectrum, Biden’s concrete follow-through has been noticeably lacking, especially regarding Taiwan.

The Afghan withdrawal and Biden’s emphasis on climate change reverberate worryingly in Taipei as signals of Washington’s willingness to abandon Taiwan or trade it for something Biden deems more worthwhile. Throughout the Indo-Pacific, Taiwan is seen as a synecdoche for regional security. If China prevails there, whether militarily or diplomatically, America’s position in this vast region will be irretrievably weakened.

America ends 2021 pointed in the wrong direction on national security. On this record, and given the rising challenges globally, 2022 could be grim indeed.

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

Now Is The Time For NATO To Stand Up To Russia

December 30, 2021
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This article appeared in 19FortyFive on December 28, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

Thirty years after the Soviet Union dissolved on December 31, 1991, events in its former space seem headed in the opposite direction. Despite initially remaining passive as the USSR split into fifteen independent states, Moscow has more recently steadily pursued a hegemonic agenda, increasingly bold and increasingly successful. It provoked hostilities (notably Ukraine) and exploited weaknesses (as in Belarus) possibly leading to outright re-annexation. Existing “frozen conflicts” (Armenia versus Azerbaijan, Moldova/Transnistria, and Georgia) remained frozen or became more severe. Less-visible Kremlin economic and political initiatives are afoot across Central Asia, and in Tajikistan, Moscow’s largest military base in the former USSR outside Russia itself, its border forces never left.

How and why the West misjudged what was brewing inside Russia following the USSR’s demise is already vigorously debated. After a widespread but sadly erroneous 1990’s optimism Russia would embrace Western institutions and values, hopes for constitutional, representative government are in retreat. Despite the collapse of Europe’s Communist regimes, communism and its ways persisted.  The Cold War’s winners could not impose anything comparable to post-World War II denazification, so authoritarian memories, habits, and methods endured even without their prior ideological veneer. Outsiders collectively failed to appreciate that profoundly deep Russian sentiments of revanchism and irredentism persisted below the surface, seeking opportunities to make Russia’s “near abroad” much less “abroad.” History had not ended, notwithstanding the “peace dividend” bled from the U.S. and other NATO militaries.

We can’t say, however, we weren’t put on notice. Vladimir Putin said in 2005, “the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.  As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.” Just days ago, Putin called the breakup “a tragedy as for the vast majority of the country’s citizens. After all, what is the collapse of the USSR?  That’s the collapse of historical Russia called the Soviet Union.”

The West made two fundamental mistakes in the years since Russia’s new flag was first raised over the Kremlin. In an understandable rush to add to NATO states escaping the defunct Warsaw Pact and resuming their rightful places in the West, America, in particular, failed to delineate where the expansion would end. One can debate where that endpoint should be, but by failing to decide the question explicitly, we created a “grey zone,” an ambiguity Russia is now exploiting. Today, we and grey-zone nations like Ukraine, are paying the price.

Moreover, too many Europeans believe the continent’s relative post-1945 peace is due to the European Union rather than NATO. “This is the hour of Europe, not the hour of the Americans,” said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jacques Poos in 1991, as the EU presided over Yugoslavia’s catastrophic breakup and continuing Balkan instability. Intense EU navel-gazing, such as focusing on “deeper” rather than “broader” European integration, implicitly downgraded the concerns of “New European” members and aspirants. The EU’s bizarre apotheosis came in winning the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. But this is all fantasy. Europe was bound together for security purposes by NATO. Germany’s political readmission to the West came via NATO long before an EU superstate appealed to anyone but its theologians and altar boys.  There was no remilitarization, as after World War I, because from 1945 forward, not a sparrow has fallen in Europe’s military-industrial complex unknown to NATO. The EU did not win the Cold War, and its disproportionate role in dealing with Russia today hinders the West’s resolve.

Unfortunately, NATO’s inadequate end-state planning and EU delusions have hindered developing a coherent strategy against a resurgent Russia.  The Kremlin has suffered no such disability and now demands multiple security guarantees from NATO and the United States, embracing not just Eastern Europe, the current crisis epicenter, but also the Central Asian republics.  Moscow wants an agreement that NATO to not admit Ukraine or other non-members into the alliance; not deploy “offensive weapons” in countries (NATO members or not) adjacent to Russia; and not conduct military exercises near Russia’s borders above brigade levels. China has essentially endorsed Russia’s demand.

Despite a Putin-Biden virtual summit and threats of economic sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine, the Kremlin appears unimpressed.  That does not mean hostilities are imminent; Putin is likely doing a continuous, real-time, cost-benefit analysis to decide what he can get away with at what cost. Today’s crisis remains volatile and unlikely to recede meaningfully in the foreseeable future.  Yet again, Putin is outmaneuvering his Western counterparts.

So, as Lenin once asked, what is to be done?

Beyond doubt, NATO must finally decide which grey-zone countries it is prepared to admit, and which it isn’t. NATO should also reaffirm that all former republics, in Central Asia (since Russia has dragged them into the discussion) as well as Europe and the Caucasus, must be free to make their own decisions about their allegiances. While they decide, NATO should give Russia a general “hands-off” notice regarding them all.

The EU needs to get serious about Russia’s renewed threat which, after all, is on their border, not America’s. Nord Stream II should be canceled, with no prospect of resurrection until Russia withdraws its troops behind its borders, absent specific requests by grey-zone countries. European NATO members should meet their Cardiff commitments to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense by 2024. Additional allied weapons should immediately be surged into Ukraine, and nearby NATO members as Bill Schneider has suggested. U.S. and other NATO countries should increase troop rotations into Ukraine for joint training and exercising, not to engage in combat, but so Russian generals can contemplate the karma of being ordered to invade Ukraine in close proximity to new NATO deployments. Western ministers of defense and their joint staffs’ chairmen should be converging on Kyiv, Chisinau, Tbilisi, and even Minsk for consultations.

NATO has been history’s strongest defensive alliance. Neither the USSR nor Russia has ever dared confront it directly, which means its deterrent capabilities are as tested and proven as anyone could conceive. With this record and the enormous internal weaknesses of Russia in mind, this is no time for Washington, let alone the great capitals of Europe, to fear putting NATO front and center.

Ambassador John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald J. Trump. He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” You can follow him on Twitter: @AmbJohnBolton.

John Bolton’s Guide for Containing Russia and China

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JB: I say that all the time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

TH: What does success look like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

How China uses the UN and WHO for its own nefarious ends

December 14, 2021
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This article appeared in the New York Post on December 13, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

One unforeseen consequence of the pandemic was seeing the World Health Organization perform like China’s puppet. 

WHO’s ponderous bureaucracy repeatedly accepted Beijing’s version of the pandemic’s origins; yielded to crippling restrictions on independent epidemiological experts trying to assess the virus, and resisted Taiwan’s efforts to share its successful early-stage efforts against the spreading disease. 

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. WHO’s director-general, Ethiopian scientist Dr. Tedros Adhanom, had won election with China’s enthusiastic support, prevailing in 2017 over a US-backed candidate. Tedros succeeded China’s Margaret Chan, who as director-general spent considerable time placing Chinese and China-sympathetic personnel into key positions. Chan’s 2006 selection (and later re-election) was a visible but far-from-only sign of Beijing’s campaign to increase its senior-level influence across the vast United Nations system, especially in the specialized agencies, which should be nonpolitical. 

Qu Dongyu, over US opposition, became director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2019, like Chan the first Chinese national to head his agency. China’s Houlin Zhao has led the International Telecommunications Union since 2015, as did Fang Liu the International Civil Aviation Organization until earlier this year. 

Fortunately, Beijing’s candidates do not always prevail. In 2020, in a contested race for director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, a Washington-backed Singaporean citizen defeated a Chinese candidate. 

WIPO has a critical role in protecting intellectual property from global pirates, of which, for decades, China has been undeniably the largest. Had Beijing taken WIPO’s top position, the economic and political implications would have been enormous. 

Pursuing high-level executive positions is in turn only part of China’s effort to dominate the UN system for its own ends, recalling Soviet Union tactics from Cold War days. Moscow famously inserted KGB agents as Russian “interpreters” into secretariats throughout the UN, with predictable results. Who knows if China is doing the same? 

Beijing is systematically pursuing several critical priorities. Most important is excluding Taiwan from significant participation in UN affairs, part of a relentless campaign underway since Beijing replaced Taipei as holder of the “China” seat in 1971. 

Blocked to this day by China from reapplying for membership in the UN itself, Taiwan sought membership in several specialized agencies as a stepping stone to, ultimately, full UN membership. This was anathema to China, which was determined to snuff out any Taiwanese efforts at their first appearance. 

For three decades, Taiwan tried repeatedly to increase its participation in WHO to demonstrate its responsibility and capabilities as a representative, independent state. Paradoxically, humanitarian efforts to demonstrate Taipei’s medical competence, and its specific willingness to aid the international response against the coronavirus, threatened Beijing. 

Because of China’s longtime efforts to increase its influence within WHO, it was no accident Xi Jinping was fully prepared to unleash its bureaucracy to discredit Taiwan’s efforts and manipulate WHO to frustrate any meaningful understanding of China’s role in the pandemic’s origins. Tedros went so far as to accuse Taiwan, without foundation, of originating or condoning racist attacks and even death threats against him, which Taiwan emphatically denied. 

Beijing’s second major focus is subverting the UN’s Human Rights Council. China is always alert to block any UN investigation of its abysmal human-rights record, including the ongoing genocide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang; the broad repression of religious freedom throughout China, and the crushing of Hong Kong’s political rights, in violation of its international commitments (and a model of Taiwan’s fate if Beijing ever gets the chance). 

With publisher Jimmy Lai languishing in prison and many other Hong Kong voices silenced, one searches in vain at the United Nations for criticism of China analogous to what inevitably follows actions by Israel or the United States that displease our adversaries. It is not just the UN’s institutional hypocrisy at work here, but China’s silent, assiduous and unfortunately successful efforts to stifle any unwelcome activity within the UN. 

Washington should not tolerate Beijing’s UN obstructionism, however manifested. Faced with a worldwide pandemic it could have helped mitigate, China acted irresponsibly, blocking scientific inquiry and engaging in its continuing political vendetta against Taiwan. Similarly, while China is not the only UN member trying to conceal its human-rights record, it stands head and shoulders above the other miscreants. 

Although President Joe Biden wants America to remain a WHO member and rejoin the Human Rights Council, he has done nothing to reverse China’s malign influence in the United Nations. We will suffer for this failure of US leadership. 

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

Biden is losing contest of wills with Iran over nukes

December 13, 2021
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This article appeared in The Hill on December 12, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

Finally, the last whimper seems at hand for President Biden’s effort to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Inherently flawed, with grievously inadequate verification provisions, and now overtaken by events, the deal’s demise comes not a moment too soon.

We face two closely related, urgent questions: Why has America failed to stop Iran’s nuclear-weapons program? And, with time running out, how does Washington avoid final defeat?

Biden’s advisers, sensing their Holy Grail is unattainable, blame America’s 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), thereby signaling their continuing cluelessness that the deal itself was mistaken, not the withdrawal. The JCPOA was riddled with flaws, but one original sin doomed the entire enterprise to failure. If Biden acknowledged this reality, we might be able to craft a new, broadly agreed U.S. policy. If not, get ready for “Groundhog Day”-style failure.

That central error was allowing Iran any uranium enrichment capability, a bright red line until the Obama administration. In seven resolutions from 2006 to 2010, the United Nations’ Security Council demanded that Iran halt all uranium enrichment, the physical work necessary to raise the concentration of uranium’s fissile isotope, U235, to increasingly higher levels relative to non-fissile U238. (In natural uranium, U235 occurs 0.7 percent of the time, while U238 is 99.3 percent.)

Earlier negotiators, following the Security Council’s resolutions, rejected all Iranian demands to continue enrichment activity. During 2012, however, President Obama bent his knee; the U.S. ultimately accepted Iran’s continued uranium enrichment to reactor-grade levels (3-to-5 percent of U235) if Tehran would stop enrichment to 20 percent (allegedly needed to fuel an aging research reactor). This concession rested on fundamental misperceptions of what varying enrichment levels mean. Obama’s negotiators feared that 20 percent enrichment was too close to weapons-grade levels (typically, 90 percent U235), but asserted that limiting Iran to reactor-grade enrichment would minimize the risks of “breaking out” to nuclear weapons.

This was a critical mistake, one we must not repeat in a post-JCPOA world. Enriching “merely” to reactor-grade levels accomplishes 70 percent of the work required to reach weapons-grade uranium. Enriching from reactor-grade to 20 percent U235 means completing roughly 20 percent of the remaining work to reach weapons-grade levels, by definition, therefore, closer to the danger point.

Far more important, however, and obvious except to Obama’s negotiators, is that 70 percent of the work is greater than 20 percent. If Iran were forbidden to undertake the first 70 percent (i.e., to reactor-grade levels), the subsequent 20 percent would be irrelevant, as would be any higher U235 percentages.

Obama’s negotiators were blind to this point. They thus won a small negotiating victory but lost the diplomatic war. By allowing reactor-grade enrichment, Obama ensured Tehran would always be just baby steps from weapons-grade capabilities, a lethal concession. His negotiators were wholly wrong, moreover, in believing that reactor-grade levels (specifically, 3.5 percent in the JCPOA) were far enough from weapons-grade that monitoring and constraints on production and stockpiling would permit an effective international response before Iran could break out to actual weapons.

But any possibility of restraining Iran by agreement requires effective verification, which the JCPOA never supplied, demonstrated by Iran’s restrictions on International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring. Equally important, the additional time needed to reach weapons-grade levels from 3.5 percent rather than 20 percent enrichment is a matter of weeks, and depends more on the number of centrifuges spinning than the variance between these starting points. Moreover, in negotiating the JCPOA, Obama abandoned efforts to ascertain the “prior military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program, contrary to French and other public statements about needing to do just that.

Iran got what it wanted: No real disclosure of its prior military programs, later revealed by a daring Israeli intelligence raid; no effective verification of its JCPOA compliance; and, the jewel in the crown, license to do 70 percent of the work toward weapons-grade uranium.

Looking ahead, Iran will flatly reject any deal not embodying these three points, among others. The inescapable conclusion is that Tehran is so determined to get nuclear weapons, and so practiced in deceit and deception, that the regime cannot be allowed even “peaceful” nuclear programs.

For decades, U.S. presidents have proclaimed it “unacceptable” for Iran to have nuclear weapons. They said the same about North Korea. They largely failed with North Korea, and are poised to fail with Iran, too. Economic sanctions, without more, have failed — and China in particular is poised to buy all the oil Iran can sell, and either veto or ignore future Security Council sanctions.

If a nuclear Iran is truly unacceptable, the only paths open are regime change in Tehran and military/intelligence measures rendering Iran’s nuclear programs harmless. Accordingly, and very late in the day, Washington must decide who will win this contest of wills. Tehran is ahead. Over to you, Mr. President.

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

Russia Has Bigger Plans Beyond Ukraine And Belarus

November 30, 2021
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This article appeared in 19fortyfive on November 26, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, after learning Nikita Khrushchev had broken his commitment not to deploy nuclear-capable ballistic missiles on the island, John F. Kennedy called Khrushchev a “f*cking liar” and an “immoral gangster.” Hours later, JFK told his senior advisors, “we certainly have been wrong about what he’s trying to do in Cuba.”
So too with Vladimir Putin and Ukraine. Despite wide-ranging debate in the West, Russia’s objectives remain obscure, as do Putin’s and Alexander Lukashenko’s goals in next-door Belarus. In fact, Putin is pursuing a macro strategy throughout Russia’s “near abroad,” while the West’s approach is micro. Never forget Putin’s lamentation about the USSR dissolving, or that thirty years ago observers said of now-Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “he’s not a Communist, he’s a czarist.”

Moscow is probing the entire “grey zone” between NATO’s eastern border and Russia’s western border: not just Ukraine and Belarus, but also Moldova and the Caucasus republics. Moldova’s “frozen conflict” with the Russian-created Trans-Dniester Republic; Russia’s ongoing occupation of two Georgian provinces; and Moscow’s recent pro-Azeri intervention in its conflict with Armenia, all demonstrate the Kremlin’s hegemonic or outrightly annexationist policies entangling the six grey-zone states. (The five Central Asian former Soviet republics face their own Russia problems, worthy of separate consideration.) Treating each conflict singly rather than strategically falls into Putin’s trap.

The Kremlin’s wider perspective is exemplified by its increases in Black Sea naval drills, and rising complaints about the U.S. Navy’s “provocative” presence there. Black Sea dominance would threaten not only Ukraine but also Georgia, intimidate NATO members Bulgaria and Romania, and induce angst in Erdogan’s increasingly erratic Turkey. Which of the several Russian threats are imminent and which less so is unclear, as in 1962 when Kennedy feared Khrushchev was holding Berlin hostage to dissuade a strong U.S. response to Russia’s Cuban adventurism.

The West’s collective inability to muster effective opposition policies underscores our nearsightedness. Confronted with widespread Kremlin misbehavior, Washington is responding by agonizing whether NATO exercises are the issue. Coming from Joe Biden, this is ironic, recalling Trumpian solicitude for Kim Jung-Un’s criticism of U.S.-South Korean joint exercises, while belittling Kim’s far more serious threats.

Meanwhile, Europe continues navel-gazing. Berlin’s new governing coalition’s agreement doesn’t mention NATO’s pledge that members spend at least 2% of GDP on defense, but strikingly supports more cooperation among EU militaries, a long-standing European chimera. The new Franco-Italian Quirinale Treaty similarly commits to strengthening EU defense strategy instead of stressing NATO.

This persistent inattention and introversion obviously give Putin substantial maneuvering room for hybrid-warfare tactics suiting Moscow’s interim objectives, particularly on sequence and timing, and setting the stage for future struggles. Today, new provocations may come sooner rather than later not because of Russian strength, but because it fears impending political or economic weakness. An aggressor can conclude it has only temporary advantages, thus encouraging striking before the balance shifts. Even worse, Putin could be coordinating with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with one regime’s rhetoric (say, China on Taiwan) intended to divert attention from the threat in Europe, in exchange for similar reciprocal aid from Putin to Xi later. Or vice versa.
Effective Western responses must recognize Moscow is pursuing a broader, more-interrelated, longer-term agenda than we have heretofore acknowledged. Even if Putin is improvising as he goes, and he almost certainly is, it is to seize targets of opportunity as they arise, manifesting Russia’s nimbleness, unfortunately, not strategic uncertainty. So, while increased military assistance to Ukraine, shutting down Nord Stream II, boycotting Russian oil, and other diplomatic and economic sanctions are all warranted, they will never be enough.

Washington must move beyond reacting to Russian provocations one by one, and through NATO, not the EU. Russia’s game, while whole-of-government in implementation, is far more politico-military than economic. NATO’s central geostrategic question is how to deal with the grey zone as an integrated problem-set. The Alliance’s eastern expansion never adequately considered where to stop, or the consequences for states left beyond NATO’s treaty guarantees, in the grey zone. The immediate task is not levying blame for this history, but deciding now which grey-zone countries are serious NATO candidates, loosening whatever grip the Kremlin has on them, and preventing new constraints from being imposed (such as a potential coup in Ukraine). Moscow must unambiguously hear both our intentions and our will to achieve them.

For those still not making the cut, NATO must decide how to protect our interests and deter Russia, while acknowledging that, by definition, the remaining grey-zone states are more vulnerable than NATO members (as all six are now at risk from unrelenting Kremlin efforts). While we grapple with these fateful decisions, NATO should tell Russia (yet again) that military changes to the status quo are unacceptable. After years of similar rhetoric, whether Putin will believe us is uncertain.

Once decided, NATO should begin unraveling the “frozen conflicts” and other entanglements Russia has imposed on prospective new NATO members. One case that should be a priority is eliminating the Trans-Dniester Republic, an artificial entity entirely dependent politically on Russia. Pressuring Moscow for the full reunification of Moldova would divert Putin’s attention from Ukraine. Another distraction would be increasing international attention to Georgia’s seized provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The West’s failure to stand up to Russia’s 2008 attack on Georgia led directly to Russia’s later seizure of Crimea and the Donbass. Returning the favor to Moscow would alleviate stress on Ukraine, and also highlight the pattern of Russian behavior NATO needs to reverse.

Obviously, there is much more to do. Clearly, merely assuming defensive postures against belligerent Kremlin moves is neither the grey zone’s road to peace and security nor NATO’s. Especially in the wake of the catastrophic U.S.-NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, now is the Alliance’s time to show it is alive and well in its own heartland. The message to Moscow should be: there are no easy days ahead.

Ambassador John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald J. Trump. He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

Congress must not let Biden bungle nuclear posture review

November 22, 2021
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This article appeared in The Washington Examiner on November 22, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

The Biden Administration’s ongoing Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is extraordinarily consequential.  Unlike previous NPRs, which assessed a bipolar Moscow-Washington contest, the 2021 edition must establish nuclear doctrine to confront Beijing’s rising threat and increasingly dangerous Iranian and North Korean capabilities. Moreover, this convoluted scenario is continually evolving, as external threat levels and sources multiply rapidly.

Instead of tackling the challenge of a tripolar-plus nuclear world, however, the White House is reportedly veering toward ideological sloganeering.  Internal debate is concentrated on whether America should adopt a “no first use” policy for nuclear weapons, or its cousin, declaring that the “sole purpose” for such arms is responding to nuclear attacks.

Such decisions would dramatically reverse decades-long American strategy, upending both our own deterrence structures and our “nuclear umbrella,” the extended deterrence that assures our allies, limits nuclear proliferation, and advances global stability.  Given the enormous complexities posed by China’s amped-up nuclear threat alone, “no first use” and “sole purpose” are not only inherently dangerous, but embracing them now is inconceivably bad timing.

“First use,” while no one’s preference, is an option circumstances can justify.  The initial occasion was President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The order was agonizing and complex, but clearly correct.  World War II came to a nearly-immediate halt, avoiding Winston Churchill’s feared “unlimited effusions of American blood,” not to mention Japanese casualties, had we needed to invade Japan’s home islands.

During the Cold War, the Soviet threat of invading Western Europe was deterred not just by the U.S. troop presence in Europe, but by the prospect of “massive retaliation” with atomic arms, first articulated by Secretary of State Dulles in 1954.  It was hardly controversial politically.  In 1961, President Kennedy said, “Of course, in some circumstances we must be prepared to use nuclear weapons at the start, come what may  —  a clear attack on Western Europe, for example.”

Beyond the Soviet menace in Europe, the global risks from chemical and biological weapons were readily deemed sufficient to warrant nuclear first use in response, hopefully thereby serving as an effective deterrent.  After retiring as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell said publicly that if North Korea used chemical or biological assets, the United States would turn the North into a “charcoal briquette.”

George Robertson, former NATO Secretary-General and Tony Blair’s Defence Secretary, wrote recently that, if adopted, “no first use” and “sole purpose” would “undermine deterrence, divide NATO and increase the risk of conflict.”  That’s for starters.  Last week, the Republican ranking members of the House and Senate armed services, foreign relations and intelligence committees sent the White House a sharp message, warning against “the distractions of ideologues,” and insisting the NPR “focus on a dispassionate, objective assessment of the facts.”

Those facts, and the 2021 NPR’s real burden, require careful planning for China’s ever-growing nuclear threat, and the risk of rogue-state nuclear capabilities increasingly close to accurately targeting America.  Developing a “Single Integrated Operational Plan” was hard enough during the Cold War’s bipolar nuclear standoff.   The tripolar-plus nuclear world the Pentagon now confronts is immeasurably more complicated.  Deterring possible Chinese threats is not new, but never before so problematic, given the nuclear assets Beijing will soon possess.

Instead of conceptualizing escalation ladders and contingency plans solely against a Moscow attack, the Pentagon must now consider three paradigms:  (1) a one-on-one confrontation with either Russia or China;  (2)  sequential confrontations, first with Russia or China, then the other;  or (3) contemporaneous confrontation with Russia and China acting together.  Our planners must consider multiple, overlapping targeting options;  make judgments about U.S. requirements, globally and in separate theaters like Europe or the Indo-Pacific, and new classes of weapons like hypersonic cruise missiles;  and recommend what missile defenses are necessary and feasible.

This effort will make prior, exhaustive conceptual efforts  —  justly praised as instrumental in helping Washington avoid a real-world exchange of nuclear salvoes  —  look like child’s play.  With this crushing burden in mind, and with nuclear threats as real as they were in the Cold War, this is no time for fatuous ideological distractions.  If the Biden Administration bungles its NPR, Congress must move swiftly to launch a national debate so our citizens know exactly what the stakes are.

John Bolton served as national security adviser to former President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Biden Has a Summit With Xi, but No Strategy for China

November 19, 2021
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Beijing’s arms buildup and menacing of Taiwan make U.S. directionlessness dangerous for the world.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on November 17, 2021. Click here to view the original article.

America has no China strategy 10 months after President Biden’s inauguration. Monday’s Zoom meeting between Mr. Biden and Xi Jinping only highlighted that void. Dulcet tones and torrents of presidential words are no substitute for clear policies. Beijing could perceive White House emphasis on “cooling tensions” as a green light to continue its assertive behavior. What explains the absence of U.S. direction? Insufficient presidential engagement? Conflicting advice? Indecision?

Whatever the reason, there is a pressing need to articulate a China policy. That’s not only because the White House has to lead a vast U.S. bureaucracy but because the nation faces momentous choices requiring informed public debate. For too long, foreign and defense policy have received inadequate attention. Principally because of China, but also in light of threats from Russia, smaller rogue states and terrorist groups, we no longer have the luxury of playing down these matters. And China is the anvil on which national security debates will inevitably turn.

Mr. Biden’s focus on climate change may partly explain the eclipse of national-security planning. Climate envoy John Kerry has likely spent more time dealing with top Chinese leaders than senior State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council officials combined. From the outset the administration insisted that climate issues would be “compartmentalized” from other problems. This was never realistic, and fear of missing out on global-warming deals with Beijing has overshadowed real national-security issues. If Mr. Biden expected breakthroughs at the Glasgow climate summit, his aspiration proved feckless. The outcome, including the bilateral China-U.S. communiqué, was underwhelming, little more than a reaffirmation of Mr. Kerry’s April agreement.

China strategy doesn’t immediately require a 1,000-page opus. It does require addressing core bilateral issues. Two stand out.

First is the defense of Taiwan, a de facto American ally and important trading partner, an enormously consequential country for Japan, and a key link in the “first island chain,” the geographic defense line between the Chinese mainland and the Pacific Ocean. But many Americans don’t know Taiwan from Thailand. To protect Taiwan, not to mention East and Southeast Asia generally, we need animated and sustained U.S. public support. Mr. Biden didn’t provide it Monday. He simply mouthed longstanding bromides.

The enormous damage caused by withdrawing from Afghanistan would be multiplied if Washington left Taipei to Beijing’s mercies. If Mr. Xi believed U.S. indecision and weakness suggested Washington would yield, he would be encouraged to provoke a crisis, hoping to subjugate Taiwan without a fight. Rather than risk a less feckless president after Mr. Biden, Mr. Xi may feel he has three years to act. How do we deter him during that period? The question is intricate and dangerous, requiring considerable creativity. Mr. Biden has shown precious little.

Second, China’s expensive buildup of strategic weapons and manifold other military capabilities existentially threatens America as well as allies. It may determine whether our 75-year-old global nuclear umbrella, and the international stability it provides, will survive or wither away, succeeded by far wider nuclear proliferation. The pressures on India to increase its own nuclear assets and Japan to acquire nuclear weapons will be considerable, with consequences for Asia and the world. Pentagon planning in a world with two major nuclear adversaries will be akin to multidimensional chess.

Whether China learned anything from the Cold War about prudent political management of a large strategic arsenal is unknown, but the signs are worrying. One telling move:

Beijing refuses to engage in serious arms negotiations while rapidly accumulating such assets. Mr. Biden has so far been unwilling to insist with both Vladimir Putin and Mr. Xi that bilateral Russian-American nuclear deals are relics of the Cold War. No American strategist should consider limiting U.S. nuclear capabilities in a deal with Russia while allowing China unrestrained growth. Even trilateral strategic-weapons arrangements may be insufficient, although broader multilateral nuclear negotiations boast a record only of failure.

Neither Taiwan nor strategic arms are a hot campaign topic, and China is not yet at the forefront of public consciousness. Nonetheless, issues reminiscent of China’s 1958 attacks on Quemoy and Matsu and John F. Kennedy’s 1960 drumbeat about a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union could soon again be top of mind. To ensure America’s eventual strategy is workable, political leaders need to debate the challenges so citizens can appreciate the implications of the choices they will have to make.

If Mr. Biden doesn’t use his Presidency’s bully pulpit to launch that debate, his potential opponents should.

Mr. Bolton is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” He served as the president’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.