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

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

By John Bolton
April 19, 2021

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

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

They are all wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton
April 7, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton
March 29, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton
March 15, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton

March 1, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton
February 23, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Bolton
February 18, 2021

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

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

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

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

Continue reading the full article on The Telegraph by clicking here.

This article appeared in The Washington Post on January 25, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 24, 2021

China honored me with an Inauguration Day surprise, sanctioning 28 former Trump administration officials, myself included, for being generally unkind to its authoritarian rulers. China’s real target, though, was the minutes-old Biden administration — a hint of things to come if it doesn’t dance to Beijing’s tune.

President Biden now has an evanescent opportunity to think strategically about China-U.S. relations across the full range of politico-military and economic issues. Chart the wrong course, and the negative consequences for America and the West generally could be crippling.

In 1989, George H.W. Bush conducted an analogous review of U.S.-Soviet relations. Criticized for dawdling and initially being too skeptical, Bush nonetheless got it right. His calibrated response to Eastern European unrest hastened the Warsaw Pact’s collapse, and his 1991 support for Boris Yeltsin led inexorably to the U.S.S.R.’s breakup. Freedom found an opening only a few believed possible.

Stressing the need for strategic planning shouldn’t be necessary, but after former president Donald Trump, even simple things need restating. The media usually focus on discrete decisions, but the primal question is whether his successor will think, and then act, strategically. Trump did neither. He didn’t read the fine strategy papers set before him, or else didn’t absorb them. His chaotic “decision-making” led from a bromance (in his mind at least) with Chinese President Xi Jinping to a trade war.

If Trump had won a second term, he might have careened back to bromance and a disastrous trade deal, just for starters. His pre-Nov. 3 “hard line” sought to reap the perceived political benefits of attacking “the China virus.” The post-election tsunami of sanctions and other diplomatic gambits from the administration reflected the reality that he was just no longer paying attention.

In policy terms, these measures were largely correct and should have been taken years ago. As presented, however, they were not strategically coherent, but simply additions to the archipelago of dots constituting Trump decision-making. Beijing clearly sees this, and by thus striking preemptively at the outset of Biden’s term, hopes to roll back as much as possible.

Of course, it matters enormously whether the administration pursues the correct strategy. Precisely because I both reject Trump’s strategic incoherence and fear that Biden represents merely a warmed-over version of President Barack Obama’s limp China policy, there must be real debate, both in public and in Congress, on the substance of Biden’s China strategy. That should not be too much to ask.

Brief op-eds are inadequate for the hard strategic task of matching U.S. resources to its China policy objectives, but here are several key markers. Once Deng Xiaoping broke from orthodox Marxism in the late 1970s, America’s China policy rested on the premise that economic reform would produce increased domestic freedom, and that internationally China would be a “responsible stakeholder” engaged in “a peaceful rise.” Both predictions have proven false, as Secretary of State-designate Antony Blinken tacitly acknowledged in his recent confirmation hearing.

We need to know whether Biden shares this conclusion and what flows from it, because the stakes are high. For example, China can no longer be seen as just a normal trading partner. Trump had it backward, typically, when he frequently described the European Union as like China, only worse. The E.U. often out-bargains U.S. trade negotiators, a legitimate concern; China seeks not just trade advantages but also hegemony in the Indo-Pacific and then globally. This is a far more serious cause for alarm than E.U. auto tariffs. China’s theft of intellectual property alone is a paramount national-security threat, not an obscure trade issue.

Similarly, China’s military belligerence in the East and South China seas, its designs on Taiwan, its enormous buildup across the full spectrum of military capabilities and its bullying of benign powers (such as abusing Canada for arresting Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in 2018 at the U.S. government’s request) all belie any notion of a peaceful rise. Faced with such Chinese provocations, a substantial reduction in the U.S. defense budget sought by some Democrats would hardly bespeak resolve. Instead, a major increase is needed, and not just because of China.

Understanding the nature of Beijing’s threat is also critical. This is not an ideological, Cold War struggle. China is not pursuing Marxist theory, although its domestic policies certainly have nothing to recommend them. Xi is not only crushing Uighurs and other non-Han minorities, but also extinguishing religious freedom and crushing Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. American minds do not take kindly to “civil-military fusion,” or “social credit scores,” whereby Beijing measures the worthiness of its own citizens. This is not Communism at work, but authoritarianism, pure and simple. Misreading it as Marxism 2.0 will impede strategic clarity, not enhance it.

Finally, a process point. Debate about the United States’ China strategy must be … strategic. We exacerbate political partisanship if policy debates are about personalities rather than substance. Because Trump didn’t “get” policy, he saw criticism from his political foes as a personal affront and lashed out. His opponents responded in kind, and partisanship worsened. Trump is now yesterday’s news, as his style of politics should be, especially in national-security affairs.

An expiring arms-control deal is a chance to address hypersonics and make China come to the table.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on January 17, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 17, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden’s advisers have been signaling that they will rely on arms-control agreements with Russia to reduce the Defense Department budget. This is no surprise from a new, liberal administration promising dramatically increased domestic spending. Yet a second Trump term might have been little better. Eager to indulge in Covid-19 stimulus spending and convinced of Pentagon mismanagement, even under his own appointees, Mr. Trump was easy prey for Senator Rand Paul.

But reliance on arms-control deals with Russia is a fool’s paradise. Whatever relatively small near-term fiscal savings might accrue will be outweighed in the long term by increased threats not only from Moscow, but also from Beijing and rogue states aspiring to become nuclear powers.

Mr. Biden’s first arms-control decision will be whether and for how long to extend the New Start treaty. It expires Feb. 5, but can be extended for up to five more years, in whole or in part. The threat of the treaty’s expiration should be negotiating leverage for the U.S., but Mr. Biden appears certain to extend it in some form. Vladimir Putin recently proposed a one-year extension, perhaps worried he had received no signals from the president-elect. Mr. Biden should offer six months, thus keeping the heat on, and showing that his team will be more than stenographers for Moscow’s diplomats.

The hard policy questions are still the ones Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and I discussed in August 2018, continued by Marshall Billingslea until the 2020 election rendered Mr. Trump a lame duck. Whether and how seriously Mr. Biden’s negotiators address these issues will determine whether a revised New Start agreement has any chance of being approved by the constitutionally required two-thirds Senate majority.

The existing deal doesn’t cover tactical nuclear weapons—those generally intended for battlefield use, as opposed to strategic nuclear weapons, typically more powerful and longer-range, intended for targets in the enemy’s homeland or other essential locations. During the 2010 ratification debate, this omission persuaded two-thirds of Republican senators to vote against the treaty. The global tactical-weapons threat has not eased in the intervening 10 years. Further Russian deployments, typically associated with violations of other treaty constraints on delivery vehicles, and significant increases in China’s tactical nuclear arsenals are serious and continuing.

Even Russian officials acknowledge that capabilities such as hypersonic glide-missile technology weren’t contemplated in New Start and should be addressed. Moscow and Beijing are both ahead of Washington in operational deployment of hypersonics and other advanced technologies. It would be strategic and budgetary malpractice if Mr. Biden believed he could count on Russia’s treaty compliance, let alone China’s, to prevent the U.S. from falling even further behind in this vital field.

Russia is willing to include China in negotiations about New Start’s successor, but Moscow has nonetheless so far accepted Beijing’s demurral that its current strategic nuclear arsenal is too small to warrant participating. But that is precisely the point: Is the U.S. supposed to wait until China reaches its comfort level of strategic warheads, and only then commence negotiations about reducing its capabilities? Contemporary arms control isn’t a serious effort if China is a bystander. To assuage Beijing’s concerns, the administration should invite Paris and London to join the talks. All five legitimate nuclear-weapons states would thus be involved, depriving China of ground to complain.

Mr. Biden’s advisers also seem open to Russia’s desire to revive the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, from which America withdrew in 2019. Whether through a new agreement or by incorporation into a revised Start framework, resurrecting the INF is dangerous. Russian overtures and promises to resolve compliance issues, worth as much as earlier Russian pledges, may appeal to those focused on Europe. But Europe is a secondary consideration. The impetus for INF withdrawal was that it didn’t bind China—the bulk of whose ballistic-missile inventory would violate the treaty—nor the likes of Iran and North Korea. Russia’s noncompliance, China’s absence, and the rogue-state proliferators meant that the U.S. was the only country in the world actually complying with INF limits. Beijing’s surging rearmament won’t stop because of resumed U.S.-Russian constraints on launchers, but that reinforces why China must be included in any follow-on New Start.

These are heavy-duty questions. This is not Mr. Biden’s first arms-control rodeo, but what he does and how he does it could define both his presidency’s ideological direction and its competence.