Trump will draw up hitlist of ‘traitors’ to blame – I fully expect to be on it JOHN BOLTON

November 15, 2020

THE 2020 US election is over. Welcome to another uniquely American institution, the “transition” to the Biden Administration.

This article appeared in The Daily Express on November 15, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
November 15, 2020

We have perhaps the longest transition of any democracy, inherited from the Constitution’s first days, because of the geographic reach and limited transport capabilities among the 13 newly united states. Today, with presidential Inaugurations fixed for January 20, the transition is over a month shorter than originally. America’s most important presidential transition followed the 1800 election, when John Adams, the defeated Federalist incumbent, handed over to his Republican challenger, Thomas Jefferson.

In 1797, George Washington left office graciously, succeeded by Adams, his own Vice President. For Adams to accept defeat by the opposition party, however, was a big deal.

Jefferson said memorably in a brief inaugural address “we are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.”

He was sworn in by the new Chief Justice, John Marshall, nominated by Adams after his defeat, and confirmed by the last Federalist Senate majority after their defeat; so much for the supposed “inappropriateness” of nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court before the 2020 election.

Marshall was serving contemporaneously as Adams’ Secretary of State, and also served under Jefferson for approximately a month, a practice now unthinkable.

The 1800-01 transition was not free from rancour. Adams left town before Jefferson’s swearing-in, something we may also see on January 20.

But in their later years, Jefferson and Adams renewed their friendship from the time they crafted the Declaration of Independence.

They both died on July 4, 1826, the Declaration’s fiftieth anniversary. You can’t make it up.

Can anyone imagine Trump playing the roles of the Founding Fathers? Of course not. He will not leave graciously like Washington; so far, he has made Adams look like a man of noblesse oblige; and, unlike Jefferson, he is incapable of saying “we are all Republicans, we are all Democrats.”

So, what is likely in the two months before Joe Biden is sworn in?

At present, Trump has not only not conceded, he continues to insist the election was rigged.

He has unleashed Rudy Giuliani and other surrogates to “litigate” his legal challenges through news conferences and interviews, rather than in State and Federal courts.

Press reports indicate that lawyers previously recruited by the Trump campaign are now making themselves unavailable to join the legal efforts, and new recruits are scarce.

Judicial results for Trump so far are dismal, and little or no probative evidence or new legal arguments seem to be forthcoming.

The likely outcome is that Trump’s badly-faltering legal offensive will continue to collapse, perhaps ending with a whimper within the week. That doesn’t mean Trump will concede, gracefully or otherwise. Instead, he will proclaim “stab in the back” theories about why he lost: list the many “traitors” in his Administration and campaign who undercut him (I expect to be on that list, and in very good company indeed); and attack the always unpopular news media, political pollsters, and left-wing activists now poised to destroy the country.

Make no mistake, unless Republican leaders speak out against this fantasy, Trump will convince many people that the 2020 election was stolen.

Commentators left and right argue that any effort to present the truth to Republican base voters will inevitably fail, so loyal are they to Trump. Ironically, this theory’s most ardent advocates are leftist Democrats, who hope to tie the Trump albatross around Republicans’ necks forever. The stakes are high.

Ultimately, of course, if truth cannot prevail, the future would indeed be dire.

But all that is really required is for Republican leaders other than Trump to do some leading.

If more speak out, the Trump fantasy can be exposed, and his supporters will reconcile themselves with his defeat while remaining loyal to what will hopefully be a revived, Reaganite Republican party.

In the meantime, the current controversy over whether Biden and his team can formally begin the transition process will also be resolved.

Growing numbers of congressional Republicans are pressing for Biden and his senior staff to receive intelligence briefings; others have concluded what should now be obvious, namely that the formal transition itself should get underway.

There need be no admission or concession by Trump that he has lost in order to make the prudent management point that whoever wins needs to be fully prepared on January 20.

Trump obviously doesn’t need a transition, but Biden does, and the sooner it begins, the better.

Forecasting what happens after January 20 remains difficult until the results of two runoff elections for Georgia’s Senate seats are held on January 5.

Peculiarities of Georgia election law require the runoffs, which will be hotly fought. If Republicans prevail in just one, they will retain control of the Senate; if they win both, they will have come through a difficult 2020 campaign losing just one seat net.

Effectively, therefore, anything Biden wants will require dealing with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, who will be the second most powerful man in Washington.

Somewhat under-reported is the success story for Republicans in the House of Representatives, where they are already projected to gain six-to-seven seats from their pre-November 3 totals, and probably more.

A majority of the House is 218 members, and Republicans could be just around 212. If House Democrats maintain their unity, they can still work their will, but the possibility of splitting their slender majority present numerous opportunities for Republicans.

Even more troubling for Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are the upcoming 2022 elections; in US history the incumbent President’s congressional party almost always suffers losses, sometime quite significant, in the midterms.

This shadow alone will diminish the Democrats’ maneuvering room for the next two years.

In short, the 2020 election was a loss for Trump, but a surprising success for Republicans in the House and Senate, and also in the States, where they picked up one additional governership, and several state legislative houses, crucial in the redistricting required by the 2020 census results. Stay tuned!

Time is running out for Trump — and Republicans who coddle him

November 11, 2020

This article appeared in The Washington Post on November 11, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
November 11, 2020

As of this writing, the Republican Party has not suffered permanent damage to its integrity and reputation because of President Trump’s post-election rampaging. This will not be true much longer.

Trump has so far failed to do so, and there is no indication he can. If he can’t, his “right” to contest the election is beside the point. The real issue is the grievous harm he is causing to public trust in America’s constitutional system. Trump’s time is running out, even as his rhetoric continues escalating. And time is running out for Republicans who hope to maintain the party’s credibility, starting with Georgia’s two Senate runoffs in January. Here is the cold political reality: Trump is enhancing his own brand (in his mind) while harming the Republican brand. The party needs a long internal conversation about the post-Trump era, but first it needs to get there honorably.

Consider the competing interests. Donald Trump’s is simple and straightforward: Donald Trump. The near-term Republican interest is winning the Georgia runoffs. The long-term Republican interest emphatically involves winning those Senate seats, but it also involves rejecting Trump’s personalized, erratic, uncivil, unpresidential and ultimately less-than-effective politics and governance.

One approach holds that coddling Trump while he trashes the U.S. electoral system will help him get over the loss, thereby making it easier to reconcile him to leaving the Oval Office. But this coddling strategy is exactly backward. The more Republican leaders kowtow, the more Trump believes he is still in control and the less likely he will do what normal presidents do: make a gracious concession speech; fully cooperate with the president-elect in a smooth transition process; and validate the election process itself by joining his successor at the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Coddling proponents plead that an enraged Trump will jeopardize the chances of victory in the Georgia runoffs. But that is true only if party leaders do not speak up, explaining to voters what the real facts are. Do we in the GOP not trust our own base enough to absorb the truth? They will find out in due course anyway if Trump’s election litigation indeed crashes into reality. Once in court, state or federal, before judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats, actual witnesses will have to raise their right hands and tell the truth, and then face gale-force cross-examination from lawyers for President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign. It’s one thing to tweet; it’s another thing to testify.

Who is going to explain that to Georgia’s voters? Republican leaders should lay that groundwork now and not cede the field to a president whose interests directly contradict the party’s. Otherwise, they will rue the day they stood silent.

In the meantime, the litigation swirls on, risking, if it is ultimately exposed as unfounded, even more destructive consequences to public trust in the electoral process. Trump says he wants the truth. Surely, therefore, his lawyers will not engage in frivolous arguments, obfuscation, pettifoggery or dilatory tactics that would complicate uncovering the truth, right? Sadly, that has never been Trump’s style during a long career of litigation as a lifestyle.

Republican passivity risks additional negative consequences for the country. Trump is engaging in what could well be a systematic purge of his own administration, starting with the utterly unjustified firing of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper this week and continuing through high- and mid-level civilian offices in the department. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, head of the National Nuclear Safety Administration, was forced to resign. Washington is filled with rumors that the CIA and FBI directors are next.

This is being done with just 10 weeks left in the administration. All transitions bring uncertainty, but to decapitate substantial parts of the national-security apparatus during such a period for no reason other than personal pique is irresponsible and dangerous. Republicans know this.

Simultaneously, Trump is frustrating Biden’s transition, based on the 2000 precedent, when George W. Bush’s transition was delayed for 37 days by Al Gore’s contesting the Florida results. Two wrongs don’t make a right. It implies no acknowledgment of Biden’s legitimacy as president-elect for Trump to facilitate prudent transition planning, certainly in the national-security field, nor in finalizing distribution plans for a coronavirus vaccine, which will largely occur next year. At least, that’s how a confident, mature, responsible president would see it.

For the good of America, the 2020 election needs to be brought expeditiously to the conclusion that all logic tells us is coming. National security requires that the transition get underway effectively. These are Republican values. We will acknowledge reality sooner or later. For the good of the party as well as the country, let’s make it sooner.

Donald Trump’s disgraceful behaviour risks doing lasting damage

November 09, 2020

This article appeared in The Sunday Telegraph on November 7, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
November 7, 2020

The US presidential race has now widely been called for Joe Biden. The counting has been slower than we’d like, and legal challenges to the process are under way. But if things end as now seems likely, whatever damage the electoral process and the nation’s institutions have suffered in recent days is easily repairable. After the 2000 election, Democratic nominee Al Gore precipitated a contentious recount in Florida – I spent 33 days there on George W Bush’s legal team – and America recovered in due course. We will recover from this, too.

There is, however, one significant caveat: if the Leader of the Free World continues to claim, with essentially no supportive evidence, that the election was stolen through fraud, we will have far more serious problems than merely reconciling disappointed partisans to the reality of defeat.

In the early hours of Wednesday, and again on Thursday evening, Donald Trump asserted unambiguously that he had won the election. He argued that Democrats, in league with corrupt, dishonest or incompetent election officials in six or seven states, were dumping out hundreds of thousands of fake ballots, thereby producing fraudulent majorities affording Biden an Electoral College victory. His surrogates made equally exaggerated claims in multiple state and federal lawsuits, not one of which has brought the Trump campaign any significant vindication, or done the slightest thing to change the results.

This disgraceful performance by the US president is deeply troubling. Any candidate is entitled to express disappointment when he or she loses, complain that life is unfair, and trigger all legitimately available election-law remedies to seek redress for alleged improprieties. Of course, raising claims, however permissible, is not the same as proving them, or showing that even validated claims have had an actual, let alone dispositive, effect on the election itself.
Responsible politicians know that, ultimately, they will pay a price if they go too far, even rhetorically. Apparently, no one ever explained this to Trump, or if they did, he didn’t pay any more attention to it than he usually pays to good advice.

The result is that the Republican Party now faces a character test. The party’s leaders can either reject Trump’s false claims and insist that he provide actual evidence in court, or join in his fantasia and forever tar their own reputations, and that of the party. To date, only a small number of elected Republican officials have commented publicly, evenly divided between these two possibilities. Many more need to speak out, and soon.

There is also a larger question ahead once the election is well and truly behind us, quite possibly once the Electoral College votes, which this year will be on Dec 14. The Republican Party must begin a serious conversation about its new direction going forward, which I hope will return it to a Reaganite approach. It is profoundly wrong to contend, as many commentators already are, that Trump has an iron grip on the party, and will dictate its strategy and determine its candidates from exile at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, perhaps plotting a 2024 Trump presidential campaign.

In fact, Trump’s influence will drop precipitously once he leaves the Oval Office. He will be, in a word he hates, a loser, and the whole world will know it. Only one defeated incumbent president has ever regained the office, and that was, in 1892, Grover Cleveland (who was both the 22nd and 24th president), hardly a compelling precedent. Dozens of prospective 2024 Republican presidential candidates are already lining up. Trump the man will certainly remain a factor, but there is no “Trumpism”; his administration has had no coherent philosophy, certainly not on national security matters. And after Jan 20, the world will no longer hang on every new Trump tweet.

In Washington, attention will shift rapidly to the new Biden administration and its plans, and how well (or poorly) they will fare in a Congress where Republicans probably still control the Senate and Democrats have a diminished majority in the House. Biden faces an angry Left wing in his own party, and his relations with Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, could well be the big political story ahead.

Not all of Trump’s legacy is bad. Millions of blue-collar voters have rejected the Democratic Party’s radicals. Even more inconveniently for the Left, Hispanic support for Republican candidates has swelled nationwide. Without Trump, we can now seek the return of voters whom his behaviour repulsed, and build a long-term Republican governing majority.

Soon again, we will elect a real conservative Republican president.

China Needs to Answer for Its North Korea Policy

October 06, 2020

Beijing has long avoided paying any kind of price for its acquiescence to the Kim regime’s games.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on September 29, 2020. Click here to view the original article.
By John Bolton
September 29, 2020

For weeks, North Korea observers have speculated that Pyongyang was preparing an election surprise for the U.S., perhaps testing a submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile. So far there’s been no launch, but the strange shooting death this weekend of a South Korean official who might have been looking to enter the North by boat nonetheless highlights the hair trigger on which the Peninsula still rests.

While Donald Trump has pursued the bright lights and glitter of international “summits” with Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang has relentlessly improved and expanded its nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities. After almost four years of U.S. showmanship—but insufficient, inconsistent economic and political pressure—it is clear as Nov. 3 approaches that North Korea has again outperformed an American administration. A fourth Trump-Kim encounter might still emerge as an “October surprise” to aid Mr. Trump’s flagging re-election campaign, but participating in such a circus would be an act of self-abasement for the president.

Keeping the world guessing about his intentions has allowed Mr. Kim to divert attention from conditions in the North. “We’re not seeing any sign of regime instability,” said Gen. Robert Abrams, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, on Sept. 10. But little is known about how North Korea has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Pyongyang claims to have successfully sealed off its long border with China, but for all anyone knows North Korea’s primitive medical system is on the verge of collapse.

For decades Washington has accepted Beijing’s claim that it opposes Pyongyang’s ambitions because a nuclear North Korea would destabilize the region and impede China’s economic development. Successive American administrations accepted China as a middleman in negotiations. When North Korea repeatedly broke its commitments to renounce nuclear weapons, China helped enforce economic sanctions.

Those days are gone. China should no longer be treated as part of the solution on the Korean Peninsula. Beijing is—and likely always was—part of the problem. Rather than helping to denuclearize North Korea, Beijing has been content to let the U.S. and Japan focus on that threat as a distraction from China’s own growing menace. It’s clear now that Beijing sees a nuclear-capable Pyongyang as a “wild card” useful for keeping the West off balance.

Whether in a second Trump term or a Biden administration, simply pursuing variations on existing policy themes is almost certain to fail. Instead, the U.S. should make China’s continuing acquiescence to Mr. Kim’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs a priority of the bilateral agenda. Biological and chemical weapons must also be included, since another unfortunate consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic is the proof it offers of the novel coronavirus’s potential as a weapon. Not without reason have these threats long been called “the poor man’s nuke.”

Other countries should take the same approach, as well as deepen their mutual politico-military cooperation. Not that India, Japan or Australia needs much encouragement. Tokyo’s increased willingness to invest in its military stems from its fear of China, not North Korea.

Beijing’s economic lifeline keeps the Kim dynasty in power. China should pay a price for its acquiescence. Additional economic sanctions aren’t enough. It’s time to revive the Cold War concept of linkage and make North Korea an issue for negotiations across the board in Washington’s bilateral relations with Beijing. China has been employing a “whole of government” approach to international affairs, and so should the U.S., raising Pyongyang’s nuclear threats along with existing issues like trade, theft of intellectual property, industrial espionage, forced technology transfer, spying, territorial claims, arms control and military expansion. A linkage policy will require broad international support, and it won’t happen through the United Nations, where China’s Security Council veto would stop the most important measures.

North Korea hasn’t pursued nuclear weapons in a vacuum. China knows it, and it needs to understand that the U.S. knows it too.

Abe will be missed, not least because he tethered Trump somewhere close to reality

September 07, 2020

This article appeared in The Washington Post on August 28, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
August 28, 2020

The resignation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — Japan’s most consequential leader since World War II — is a major loss for both Japan and the United States. His unprecedented longevity as prime minister (since 2012, and earlier in 2006-2007) brought the country stability and, therefore, increased Tokyo’s influence in world affairs. Though his successor remains to be chosen, Abe’s main international policy directions are unlikely to shift measurably.

As prime minister, he significantly advanced the proposition, first debated in the 1990s, that Japan was a “normal country,” and thus taking major responsibility for its own defense would be perfectly appropriate. Given Japan’s history of aggression during the first half of the 20th century, that conclusion might not have sat well in much of Asia, but it is now widely understood and accepted. Abe may have failed in amending Japan’s post-World War II constitution to make the change formal, but he likely rendered the need for such amendment far less important.

During the Trump administration, almost alone among U.S. allies and major trading partners, Abe kept economic issues down to a low roar. By preventing trade and investment controversies (inevitable between any two large, interconnected economies) from assuming disproportionate significance in Tokyo and Washington, Abe worked a kind of magic with President Trump. Other U.S. allies were not so successful, repeatedly finding themselves locked in arguments about tariffs, trade barriers and preferential treatment. All important issues to be sure, but not the kind that should distort critical bilateral relationships.

Always armed with charts and graphs about Japanese corporate investment in the United States, and Japan’s purchases of major U.S.-manufactured weapons systems, Abe kept the initiative in meeting after meeting with Trump. Unobtrusively, therefore, he safeguarded the time necessary to discuss with Trump key geostrategic issues of the highest importance to both countries. And he did so with stoic patience, persistent attention to his (and our) ultimate objectives, and endless repetition (so necessary, given his audience).

Abe’s views have been especially important on two key issues: the long-term strategic threats posed by China, and the near-term proliferation threat of North Korea’s efforts to develop deliverable nuclear weapons.

On China, Abe is the real progenitor of the concept underlying Washington’s “free and open Indo-Pacific” mantra, opposing China’s efforts to achieve hegemony in the region and beyond. He has been a major actor trying to foster cooperation among Japan, India, Australia and the United States, a process now underway but with considerably more work to be done. The scope of China’s economic, political and military challenge, and the reality that, for long decades, the United States and others simply ignored what Beijing was up to, means the appropriate answering strategy will not emerge overnight. But Abe has understood plainly that neither can it take forever.

China’s treatment of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and its June clashes with Indian forces along their disputed border in the Ladakh region, are not distant concerns in Japan, as they are to too many Americans. Belligerent Chinese action in the Senkaku Islands, claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing, is even more high-profile for the Japanese, and should be for Washington as well, since it implicates the U.S.-Japan defense alliance. With so much at stake, even as he tends to the chronic health concerns that prompted his resignation, Abe can be an important voice explaining China’s threat across the region.

On North Korea, Abe has unremittingly pursued the elimination of its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, along with its ballistic-missile capabilities. Since his early days in politics, he has emphasized Pyongyang’s menace, as well as its barbaric kidnapping of Japanese citizens, holding them for decades without ever providing a satisfactory accounting of their whereabouts or ultimate fate. I first met Abe in August 2002, in Tokyo, when he was deputy chief cabinet secretary, and the “hostage issue” was even then shaping his political career.

He has never been afraid to be clear about the importance of reining in North Korea’s efforts. In September 2017, he wrote in the New York Times that “more dialogue with North Korea would be a dead end.” He added, “I firmly support the United States position that all options are on the table,” meaning that military force was one such option, an extraordinarily forward — but entirely justifiable — position for a Japanese politician.

During the Trump administration, Abe’s disciplined diplomacy was important. He was like a heavy metal chain tethering the president somewhere proximate to reality, rather than getting lost in the Trump-Kim Jong Un rapture. Abe’s successor will have his hands full in either a second Trump term or a Joe Biden presidency, ensuring that we keep our focus on denuclearizing North Korea, and not accepting it as a nuclear power.

Abe’s efforts undeniably strengthened the sometimes-fractious Japan-U.S. alliance. He demonstrated why alliances are not simply disconnected, transactional encounters. Tokyo’s next prime minister needs to remember that as well.

Iran ‘Snapback’ Isn’t Worth the Risk

September 07, 2020

It would weaken the Security Council veto, which serves U.S. interests at the U.N.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on August 16, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
August 16, 2020

For the U.S., there is one point of high principle worth dying in a ditch for at the United Nations: Never impair the Security Council veto. That’s what President Trump is preparing to do, exacerbating President Obama’s mistakes in negotiating the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Mr. Trump rightly withdrew from that agreement in May 2018. The attendant renewal of U.S. sanctions, although imperfectly implemented, brought crushing economic pressure against Tehran. Even so, despite Iran’s continuing violations of the agreement and its widespread belligerent and terrorist-supporting activities, this diplomatic zombie still lurks in the minds of its progenitors, threatening a return next year. Iran Deal 2.0 could come in a Biden administration or even in a second Trump term. The president confidently predicted he could negotiate one in four weeks.

Among the 2015 agreement’s many grievous mistakes was setting a 2020 expiration date on a broad Security Council arms embargo against Iran that specifically enumerates several categories of sophisticated and heavy weapons systems, especially ballistic missiles and their components. There was no reason for Mr. Obama to make this concession except his zeal to make a deal. On Friday the Trump administration tried to extend the council’s embargo, but failed devastatingly; the vote was 2-2 with 11 abstentions; both Russia and China voted no. Approval required nine votes and no vetoes.

The administration had threatened, if the extension failed, to invoke the deal’s “snapback” mechanism and renew all suspended sanctions. Paragraph 11 of Security Council Resolution 2231 provides that a “participant state” in the nuclear deal, asserting “significant non-performance of commitments” thereunder, can force a Security Council vote on snapback within 30 days. That entails a new resolution authorizing the continued suspension of the sanctions, which the U.S. would veto, ensuring that they come back into effect.

The agreement’s backers argue that Washington, having withdrawn from the deal, has no standing to invoke its provisions. They’re right. It’s too cute by half to say we’re in the nuclear deal for purposes we want but not for those we don’t. That alone is sufficient reason not to trigger the snapback process. Why afford any American legitimacy to this misbegotten creature? Further, the U.N. Charter allows no vetoes to decide “procedural” questions, and that is how between nine and 13 members may categorize, and thereby stymie, Mr. Trump’s ploy.

But the real injury is done when a second U.S. administration in five years even attempts, successfully or not, to take actions that undercut America’s veto. The damage here is potentially permanent.

The veto wasn’t widely popular in 1945 when the U.N. Charter was adopted. The idea of eliminating or curtailing it never died. Eleanor Roosevelt and others repeatedly urged against exercising the veto, saying such forbearance demonstrated “moral superiority.” So powerful was this mindset that not until 1970 did Washington first use the power. Thereafter, America has wielded the veto forcefully, largely to protect Israel and other allies.

The U.S. has risked endangering the veto before, notably by introducing the 1950 Uniting for Peace resolution in the General Assembly. Because Moscow had boycotted the Security Council after North Korea invaded the South, Washington was able to obtain the council’s authorization to repel the attack. When the Soviets ended the boycott and threatened vetoes of further Korea measures, America proposed vesting the General Assembly, which had a large pro-U.S. majority, with greater responsibility for international peace and security.

Britain saw the trap immediately. As Dean Acheson wrote, London “wisely forecast the dangers of the idea in the future if the then-majority in the United Nations should give way to one holding contrary views.” He confessed, however, that “present difficulties outweighed possible future ones, and we pressed on.” Sidestepping Russia’s veto seemed attractive, but Uniting for Peace was a potential disaster—averted only because the General Assembly’s own increasing impotence and irrelevance saved the Security Council from political collapse, the fate that befell the assembly.

The snapback concept could be substantially more threatening, enervating the council under the ironic guise of making it more effective. The next time it proves useful to some or all of the permanent members to propose a snap back or similar device to avoid the veto, pressure to acquiesce so as to avoid unnecessary disputes at the U.N. will mushroom. The process may be gradual, but it is nonetheless threatening, either under U.S. administrations that look for temporary deals rather than long-term strategy or ones that overvalue multilateral approbation and tranquility at the U.N. We should skip this experiment.

Trump’s China Toughness Myth

September 07, 2020

John Bolton says the president is not principled but transactional

This article appeared in The New York Daily News on July 28, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
July 28, 2020

As November’s election approaches, philosophical conservatives and Republican stalwarts alike increasingly find themselves in an uncomfortable position. They understand with growing clarity that Donald Trump does not share their philosophy (or any other) and is palpably failing at implementing his own signature policies, let alone guiding the wider government. Instead of acting on policy or principles, he concentrates essentially only on getting himself reelected.

Nonetheless, conservatives and Republicans fear that a Joe Biden presidency, combined with Democratic control of both houses of Congress, will pose grave dangers, especially given the left-wing’s raging fantasies. Trump’s best argument, therefore, is that he’s better than the alternative.

For an incumbent president, this is an astonishing admission of failure. But Trump’s fumbling of the coronavirus pandemic, which alone could sink his re-election, leaves him few options. Typically, therefore, he is trying to change the subject, hoping his faults will be overlooked compared to the dangers a Biden administration would pose.

What Trump omits, but which the rest of us must understand, is that on critical, indeed existential, issues facing America, he offers precious little to warrant another term.

Take China policy. In the administration’s first three years, Trump relentlessly pursued “the deal of the century” to solve America’s longstanding trade deficits with China. Whether China would ever renounce the trade imbalance’s underlying causes, such as massive theft of U.S. intellectual property, was questionable. Nonetheless, Trump wanted a deal.

Pursuing it, Trump sneered at concerns about Beijing’s belligerence in the South China Sea; its intentions to subjugate Taiwan; repression of the Uighurs; the shredding of China’s pledge to maintain Hong Kong’s separate status after the “handover” from Great Britain; and more.

Then came COVID-19. At first, Trump simply ignored Beijing’s culpability. China’s disinformation, concealment and willful misrepresentation went unanswered. Instead, Trump strove to keep the trade negotiations alive, rejecting any implication that the U.S. economy, his prized ticket to re-election, would suffer. On Jan. 24, for example, Trump tweeted cravenly: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

Six months later, Washington’s rhetoric against China is harshly critical on political, economic and social issues. Strong measures, from economic sanctions to closing China’s Houston consulate, have been taken. And the Trump campaign is working overtime to present Biden and his party as “soft on China.”

I am delighted by both the administration’s rhetoric and its actions against China. Too bad it all didn’t start in January 2017.

Don’t count on it lasting beyond Nov. 3 if Trump wins. His transactional, non-philosophical (indeed, anti-philosophical) approach to governing will almost certainly re-emerge. This has happened repeatedly, as with North Korea’s nuclear-weapons threat: from “fire and fury” rhetoric to three unprecedented, failed summits with Kim Jong Un, to no meetings at all. Can anyone doubt that this year’s “October surprise” might be a fourth Trump-Kim meeting?

With China, most of the recent anti-Beijing rhetoric has actually come from Trump’s subordinates. It can be easily thrown over the side, along with the Uighurs, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Sanctions and other punitive measures can be jettisoned just as tariffs and massive civil and criminal penalties against Huawei and ZTE and Chinese belligerence along its periphery were ignored. A congratulatory call from Xi Jinping would provide the perfect pivot for Trump to urge resuming trade negotiations for “the deal of the century.” We’ll be back on the Trump Train, not planning U.S. grand strategy.

Indeed, if Trump prevails, right-of-center political pressure on his China policy will need to be strong and unrelenting. So too if Biden wins, which shows how little Trump has to offer here. Conservatives, Republicans and independents can legitimately reject Trump, however unhappy they are with Biden. Far better to face the perils of opposition than to risk irreversibly tarnishing the philosophy of conservatism and its party with Trump’s brand.

China’s Hostage Diplomacy

September 07, 2020

Prominent Canadians urge the government to agree to a feckless and dangerous prisoner swap.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on July 7, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
July 7, 2020

Important structural changes in international affairs are often encapsulated in discrete incidents, easy to grasp even if somewhat oversimplified. The War of Jenkins’ Ear, for example, had more to do with competing British and Spanish ambitions in the Caribbean than the severing of Capt. Robert Jenkins’s appendage in 1731.

Similarly, America’s request that Canada extradite Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to face criminal charges personifies the escalating economic conflict between China and the world’s industrial democracies. It poses a test of Western resolve that Beijing honor the rule of law in its commercial dealings; abandon statist, mercantilist policies in fact, not only in rhetoric; and stop weaponizing “commercial” companies in telecommunications, computing and artificial intelligence.

The immediate issue, now much debated in Canada, is whether China’s belligerent reaction to Ms. Meng’s arrest and possible extradition will disrupt the West’s nascent efforts to coalesce against China’s unacceptable behavior. Ms. Meng was arrested on Dec. 1, 2018, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Within weeks, Chinese authorities arbitrarily seized and imprisoned two Canadian citizens; they were formally charged last month with fictional allegations of espionage. Ottawa fears more of its citizens are at risk, a concern other U.S. allies share regarding their nationals.

In an open letter, 19 former officials and other prominent Canadians recently urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to suspend the extradition proceedings and in effect swap Ms. Meng for Beijing’s two hostages. Because of President Trump’s transactional view of the case—as another bargaining chip to seal the elusive “big” China trade deal—some argue the U.S. case is “political,” and therefore illegitimate. Mr. Trudeau has so far rightly resisted domestic pressure, but the mood in Canada is increasingly febrile.

China’s and Huawei’s threats to the West are undoubtedly wide-ranging, but the sheer scope of their transgressions hardly justifies giving them a pass on “mere” financial fraud. The original indictment against Huawei and Ms. Meng alleged violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran and subsequent bank fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice in misstating financial records to conceal those breaches. A later, superseding indictment added charges of stealing intellectual property and falsifying and misrepresenting these actions to financial institutions and others. Huawei and Ms. Meng deny all the charges.

The underlying Iran sanctions violations, perhaps misunderstood by some Canadians, triggered the initial opposition to Ms. Meng’s extradition, based on opposition to America’s Iran policy. Canada’s judiciary had no such trouble. Six weeks ago a Canadian judge ruled that the U.S. had satisfied the “dual criminality” requirement of the Canada-U.S. extradition treaty, namely that the conduct on which extradition is sought is criminal under the laws of both countries. This decision means extradition proceedings will continue, weighing Ms. Meng’s many other objections.

While the additional allegations of Huawei’s intellectual-property theft have received less attention, they will almost certainly prove more important in the long run. Over the past four decades, China’s persistent efforts to steal intellectual property and require forced transfers of foreign technology constitute the foundation for much of its economic success. Huawei, ZTE and other tech companies have been principal beneficiaries, and it’s unlikely China has ever been serious in its trade negotiations with the U.S. on these issues. Criminal prosecutions and massive civil cases against China and its firms for their wrongdoing may be the only way to get their attention.

If so, there is plenty of raw material. Such “structural issues,” as they are characterized in trade talks, are part of a larger, systematic Chinese strategy of mercantilism. China offers its companies enormous subsidies. Its debt-laden diplomacy with a range of countries similarly demonstrates that China isn’t playing by the same rules as the industrial democracies.

In a fine irony for Canadians seeking to appease Beijing, Bloomberg reported last week that the collapse of Canadian telecom champion Nortel might have been largely caused by China stealing Nortel’s once-cutting-edge technology.

Moreover, China’s economic brigandage is only part of the larger military and intelligence strategy. Huawei and ZTE are key actors in Beijing’s global effort to dominate fifth-generation telecom networks and thereby gain access to vital information from 5G networks’ information flows. Accordingly, the Federal Communications Commission had more than ample reason last week to designate both firms as national-security threats. This step also helps create space for truly commercial firms, U.S. or foreign, to compete in the 5G world. It goes without saying how dangerous unimpeded Chinese access to, and potential control over, Western communication networks would be in time of actual war.

Canada’s concern for its citizen-hostages is understandable, but Beijing’s ruthlessness should be seen in the context of the broader struggle it has long been waging while the West, in typical form, wasn’t paying attention. There are many more fronts in the struggle: China’s suppression of Hong Kong, violating its commitments to the U.K. in the 1984 handover agreement; its genocidal campaign against the Uighurs in Xinjiang; and the unilateral annexation of much of the South China Sea.

This is how China behaves now. Imagine how it will behave in the not-so-distant future if its belligerence continues unchallenged. If Canada lets Ms. Meng return to China, it would be a miscarriage of justice. There is no moral equivalency between Ms. Meng and the innocent Canadians Beijing holds hostage. Canada can’t afford such foreign-policy shortsightedness. With isolationist tendencies stronger than at any time since the 1930s, neither can the U.S.

No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there.

March 19, 2020

By Tim Morrison

This article appeared on washingtonpost.com on March 16, 2020. Click here to view the original page.

Tim Morrison is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council.

President Trump gets his share of criticism — some warranted, much not. But recently the president’s critics have chosen curious ground to question his response to the coronavirus outbreak since it began spreading from Wuhan, China, in December.

It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, “dissolved the office” at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness. Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious.

Now, I’m not naive. This is Washington. It’s an election year. Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations.

When I joined the National Security Council staff in 2018, I inherited a strong and skilled staff in the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate. This team of national experts together drafted the National Biodefense Strategy of 2018 and an accompanying national security presidential memorandum to implement it; an executive order to modernize influenza vaccines; and coordinated the United States’ response to the Ebola epidemic in Congo, which was ultimately defeated in 2020.

It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.

One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.

Opinion | Trump fans believe him over the media on coronavirus. This is dangerous.
Trump may think he can sugarcoat coronavirus, but media critic Erik Wemple says it is time for the government to speak with one clear voice about public health. (Video: Erik Wemple/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected — perhaps a recognition of the importance of that mission to the president, who, after all, in 2018 issued a presidential memorandum to finally create real accountability in the federal government’s expansive biodefense system.

The NSC is really the only place in government where there is a staff that ensures the commander in chief gets all the options he needs to make a decision, and then makes sure that decision is actually implemented. I worry that further reductions at the NSC could impair its capabilities, but the current staffing level is fully up to the job.

You might ask: Why does all this matter? Won’t it just be a historical footnote?

It matters because when people play politics in the middle of a crisis, we are all less safe.

We are less safe because public servants are distracted when they are dragged into politics.

We’re less safe because the American people have been recklessly scared into doubting the competence of their government to help keep them safe, secure and healthy.

And we’re less safe because when we’re focused on political gamesmanship, we’re not paying enough attention to the real issues. For example, we should be united behind ensuring that, in a future congressional appropriations package, U.S. companies are encouraged to return to our shores from China the production of everything from medical face masks and personal protective equipment to vitamin C and penicillin.

And we should be united in demanding to know why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was aware of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan early in December, maybe even November, and didn’t tell the rest of the world, when stopping the deadly spread might have been possible.

The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.

Just as the United States has fought against fake information aimed at our elections, we should fight back against CCP propagandists. They are not only campaigning against the use of the term “Wuhan virus” (a more geographically accurate description than “Spanish flu” ever was about the 1918 pandemic) but now also promoting the false claim that covid-19 was created by the U.S. Army. Public health officials have pinpointed a wild-animal market in Wuhan as the outbreak’s origin.

There are real threats emanating from this pandemic. We need to focus on getting our response right and save the finger-pointing for what comes after. This is the United States — we will get through this. And for the love of God, wash your hands.

Russian assault on ‘American idea’ enables Trump to take tough action

February 19, 2018

This article appeared in The Hill on February 19, 2018. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
February 19, 2018

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts are far from over, and definitive conclusions about his work must still abide the day. Even so, Friday’s announcement that a federal grand jury in Washington had indicted 13 Russian citizens and three Russian entities for interfering in the 2016 elections and thereafter is highly significant, domestically and internationally. Mueller must still prove his wire fraud, identity fraud and other charges beyond a reasonable doubt, but the indictment alone powerfully reflects a wide-ranging investigation.

Domestically, the political ramifications for Donald Trump are clearly beneficial. After more than a year of public accusations, uninformed speculation and prodigious leaking by members of Congress and the media, the indictment contains no Trump-related allegations of knowing involvement in or support for Moscow’s pernicious activities. Both the indictment itself and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s accompanying press conference describe the Americans manipulated by the Russian saboteurs as “unwitting” or “unknowing.”

Nor does the indictment allege that Russia’s machinations, which began in 2014, well before any announced Republican or Democratic candidates for the presidency, influenced the election’s outcome. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) previously put Moscow’s social media spending in proper perspective: The known $100,000 of Russian expenditures amounted to a mere 0.005 percent of the approximately $81,000,000 of total social-media outlays by the Clinton and Trump campaigns. Facebook vice president Rob Goldman himself tweeted that the majority of Moscow’s spending occurred after the election.

The safest conclusion based on currently available public information is that Russia did not intend to advantage or disadvantage any particular candidate and that Russia was not “supporting” anyone for president. Instead, its saboteurs sought to sow discord and mistrust among U.S. citizens, undermining our constitutional processes and faith in the integrity of our elections. Advertising or demonstrations for or against Trump or any other candidate were means to the Russian end of corroding public trust, not ends themselves.

Mueller’s indictment, while likely not his last, nonetheless undercuts both ends of the logic chain that many Trump opponents hoped would lead to impeachment. There is, to date, no evidence of collusion, express or implied, nor can it honestly be said that Russia was “pro-Trump.” What Trump rightly feared earlier, based on his political instincts, was that the notion of clandestine Kremlin support for his campaign would morph into the conclusion that his campaign must have colluded with Moscow.

Such cooperation has yet to find anything like real evidence to support it, but the danger of people jumping to that conclusion was both obvious and continuously stoked by anti-Trump media reporting, asserting or implying repeatedly what Russia and Trump were purportedly up to. Typically, the media’s ideological excess is their own worst enemy. They would rather play “gotcha” on Trump’s skepticism of Russian involvement than recognize that their fantasies of bringing down his administration are now undermined.

Accordingly, Mueller has afforded Trump a not-to-be-missed opportunity to pivot from worrying about unfair efforts to tar his campaign with the “collusion” allegation, toward the broader growing danger of Russian subversion. What happened in the 2016 campaign was graver even than the “information warfare” alleged in Friday’s indictment. This is, pure and simple, war against the American idea itself.

Hence, the international ramifications of the special counsel’s indictment: The White House can and should now pivot to the real task ahead, which is dealing strategically and comprehensively with Russia’s global efforts to enhance its influence. Interference in America’s election, much as it necessarily focuses our attention, is only a part of Moscow’s disinformation operations. Russian agents have repeatedly interfered in European elections, although the exact scope remains uncertain.

The Kremlin has conducted cyberwarfare against the Baltic republics, and old-fashioned conventional aggression against Georgia and Ukraine, including annexing Crimea. In the Middle East, during the Obama administration, Russia cemented a de facto alliance with Iran, built and expanded military facilities in Syria, sold weapons to U.S. allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and propped up Bashar Assad’s dictatorship in Syria.

Moscow has blatantly violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, while rapidly modernizing and expanding its strategic nuclear capability. Heretofore under President Obama, Vladimir Putin hardly had reason to fear that anyone would push back on anything. Finally, because of the overhang of the “Trump collusion” heavy breathing by his political opposition and the media, the Trump administration has neither developed nor deployed a coherent Russia policy.

But it’s never too late to start. Putin’s global aspirations are not friendly to America, and the sooner he knows we know it, the better. It is not enough, however, to file criminal charges against Russian citizens, nor are economic sanctions anywhere near sufficient to prove our displeasure. We need to create structures of deterrence in cyberspace, as we did with nuclear weapons, to prevent future Russian attacks or attacks by others who threaten our interests.

One way to do that is to engage in a retaliatory cyber campaign against Russia. This effort should not be proportional to what we have just experienced. It should be decidedly disproportionate. The lesson we want Russia (or anyone else) to learn is that the costs to them from future cyberattacks against the United States will be so high that they will simply consign all their cyberwarfare plans to their computer memories to gather electronic dust.

In Eastern and Central Europe, the White House needs to expand its efforts to strengthen NATO’s hand by persuading all its members to spend the bare minimum necessary for the alliance’s military resources. At the Munich Security Conference this past weekend, for example, a luncheon discussion on Ukraine produced many solemn pronouncements on Russia’s “violations of the rules-based international order.”

This was music to Moscow’s ears. Let Putin instead hear the rumble of artillery and NATO tank tracks conducting more joint field exercises with Ukraine’s military. That, and much more, will get his attention. An analogous response is warranted in the Middle East, where the White House is already laying a foundation for more robust responses to Russia’s probes. At rare moments in politics, unexpected events produce opportunities which must be seized before they disappear. The Russia indictment is one of them.