Assaulting Sovereignty and Freedom through Investment and Banking

January 26, 2021

By Dr. David Wurmser
January 26, 2021

Many have recently become aware of the immense distortion posed by the alliance of large social media with government, enshrined in US Section 230, which exempts such firms from liability and undermines anti-trust actions. While this poses an obvious threat to free speech, as was exposed during the presidential campaign when major news stories that could have influenced the campaign were suppressed, this is really only part of a much larger threat not only to our First Amendment rights, but to the integrity of our sovereignty that extends far beyond the social media, or communications sector, altogether.

An emerging triad of large capital, government and international organizations is moving dangerously fast toward subordinating sovereignty to fashionable policies dictated by an emerging unaccountable international aristocracy. Sadly, as evident in the behavior of the social media giants demonstrated, a good bit of this evolution occurred right under the outgoing Trump administration’s nose despite its best efforts to “drain the swamp.”

This threat is materializing fastest in the environmental sphere which John Kerry has been appointed to lord over on behalf of the United States. A few weeks ago, the US Federal Reserve joined the “Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening of Financial Systems” or NSGF for short. So, while the United States is re-entering the Paris Accord, which has no real enforcement mechanism, this body in turn has teeth designed to enforce environmental norms on nations as defined by an unaccountable body representing the interests of the emerging international environmental aristocratic class. At its core, the mechanism upturns the role of fiduciary responsibility – namely that an investor actually can count on his investment manager to base his judgments on trying to make money – and weaponizes it. Fiduciary responsibility has hitherto tempered activist investment being imposed on large investment houses or on credit-lending banks. Retirement accounts, government investment funds, private and institutional investors all invest their money to make money. This bottom line, namely legally enforceable fiduciary responsibility, has thus far guaranteed prioritization of profit, sobriety and focus. It preserved market competition, and ensured that companies with bright new ideas have a shot at thriving based on their ability to deliver goods produced on the basis of such innovation to market.

What the NGSF does is force, through the participation of the central banks, the banking and investment community to raise the priority of environmental considerations into the heart of fiduciary judgments, essentially weaponizing them. Moreover, lest any institution simply attempts to buck the trend, then the full weight of international banking system and government can be used to shut down that effort and put it out of business. In other words, international environmental activists and the monopoly of government can be used to impose distorted investment decisions on large capital, fundamentally upturn what is meant by fiduciary responsibility by prioritizing social credit over profit.

Similarly, the consequences of the immense power government wields to grant tax-breaks, offer protection from the damage that could be done in such distortions, land contracts or extend grants to business large and small will make inevitable the emergence of an alliance between large capital, government and aligned political movements and parties. International structures and sovereign governments grant an undue advantage to favored institutions in exchange for those institutions adhering and advancing the policy aims of the government and international structures and donating to the NGOs advocating for them. Facing such a daunting triad, any potential competitor who tries to buck the fashionable policy aims withers. And small business – dependent on loans and credit – will have to pay the piper in terms of aligning itself on politics and policy with the reigning powers and their international allies.

Our energy sector and its large industries, which are already reeling from the kabosh on the XL pipeline and the suspension of drilling permits on federal lands, will soon feel the full weight of this emerging distortion and the power behind it in the coming months and years. The greatest danger, however, is that we will soon see it play out not only in the energy and social media sectors, but in every sector. The dangerous NGSF structure has now established a precedent that can be extended beyond social media activities and energy sector interests – as much as the former compromises the 1st amendment and the latter can devastate our energy sector, raise energy prices dramatically, and undermine our energy independence. Involving the financial sector in such a triad will ensure all businesses in all sectors will be subordinated.

Moreover, one needs only to look to Europe to see how much the EU elites have already distorted their societies and made their business activity obedient, with the help of activist courts whose mission is moral and social justice rather than constitutional and rule of law adherence. The new trend will force American businesses to align their behavior with the compliant way European businesses operate in coordination with EU elites driven by fashionable social justice ideas.

It is only a matter of time until international juggernauts akin to the NSGF emerge across the board to barrel over national sovereignty in the financial and banking sectors forcing social justice considerations to become widespread. Indeed, one needs only look to UN institutions, the WHO and Davos discussions, to understand the political directions this will take beyond the energy sector. Indeed, the NSGF itself is the brain child of Klaus Schwab, his World Economic Forum (Davos) and his fund, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which its own website claims advances “an approach by individuals, groups, start up companies and entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural or environmental issues.”

As such, not only our industrial policy, but our foreign policy, will be compromised. Policies hitherto serving as profound expressions of the unique American mindset, values and culture, will be exposed to international structures and the domestic allies pursuing their narrow definitions of social justice. Businesses, suppliers, banks and investors internationally will find it increasingly impossible to avoid factoring social justice issues into their activities. That poses a tremendous threat to key allies whom global elites in the international institutions define as “rogue.” Consider for a moment what happens when such an international structure, in which our federal reserve is a member, decides that any Israeli industry that has any presence in territories these elites do not consider part of Israel, such as Jerusalem – even an employee living there – is an investment risk based on a social justice political risk factor index. Any fiduciary advantage in investing in an Israeli company, then, is weighed against the likelihood of the investors (and not just the Israeli company) being written off as a high credit risk by both domestic and international banking and investment structures. One can only imagine how few companies will make a stand at that point because any gain in investing in such an Israeli company would be eclipsed by the devastating loss of denied credit. Every industry that depends on a banking structure – i.e., every industry – will have to accede to this. Microsoft already did last year when it divested from Israeli firms providing facial recognition technologies, since these firms in developing such technologies advanced the “occupation.” Essentially Israeli firms with any presence at all in Jerusalem – or contributing to the “occupation” – or supporting Israel’s defense sector could be cut off not only from the international financial system, but from even doing business with any firm whatsoever.

Israel is not unique in potentially being exposed to this sort of threat. Other nations out of fashion with the progressive EU and other international elites — such as Hungary, Poland and now even the United Kingdom, let alone countries such as Taiwan — could easily find themselves almost invisibly slipping into such a catastrophic purgatory. So, could major religions and their institutions, such as the Vatican.

Thus, foreign policy should be expected to go the way of environmental policy. It will as well likely be subordinated to a triad of capital, government and a fashionable international aristocracy, rather than continuing to be the expression of the values, culture and aspirations of the American people as it largely has been until now. Our foreign relations will approximate much more closely the intersectional campus cancel culture of today, or the surreal debates at the United Nations, than the past geopolitical solidity that informed our pursuit of nation interests and preservation of our sovereignty.

This vision of the future may appear fantastic, but the experience of the last months with social media and the emerging assault on the US energy sector are only a subset of the signs we have seen lately, wherein social activism has made its way to boardrooms and investment managers. The Federal Reserve’s joining the NSGF is a harbinger of what is to come far beyond the energy sector. Business schools are beginning to teach social justice NGO expertise, and business after business – especially faith-oriented CEOs and businesses — are already increasingly subject across America to lawsuits and boycotts, such as bakers, Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A. But these efforts are the minor leagues compared to what is coming down the pike on a level far higher, and less visible than currently imagined by those who would most be affected by it. Lest one have any doubt, just look at the swagger of EU elites toward Brexit to understand the power they

Trump didn’t think, or act, strategically about China. Biden needs to do both.

January 26, 2021

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.

Trump Impeachment 2.0 Is as Flawed as the First

January 25, 2021

I am not saying Trump is innocent. But if his foes really wanted to punish him, they would simply ignore him.

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

By John Bolton
January 25, 2020

I have nothing good to say about Donald Trump’s meretricious argument that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election; or Trump’s trying to steal it for himself by frivolous if not fraudulent litigation and administrative proceedings and intimidating elected officials at all government levels; or his inciting violence on January 6 to preclude Congress from fulfilling its duty to certify the Electoral College vote; or Trump’s sundry efforts to convert the Justice Department into his personal law firm (including trying to suppress my recent book, on the pretext that it contained classified information, which it did not).

Nonetheless, like Impeachment 1.0, the 2021 edition is badly conceived, poorly executed, and likely to produce precisely what the first round did: results 180 degrees contrary to the objectives that impeachment supporters say they want. Last year, Nancy Pelosi said endlessly that Trump was “forever impeached,” somehow never mentioning that he was also “forever acquitted” by the Senate. Instead of deterring and constraining Trump, as Pelosi contends, the failed first effort, if anything, emboldened and enabled him. He got away with it once and could thereby reasonably conclude he could get away with it at will.

Which brings us to Impeachment 2.0. Like the first, it is too narrowly drawn (first Ukraine, now the Capitol desecration) and was rushed through the House on largely partisan lines. Neither scenario is the right way to do impeachments, 50 percent of which in U.S. history have occurred in the past twelve months. Let me be clear: I am not saying Trump is innocent. Or that he has “suffered enough.” Or that we should “turn the page.”

I am saying we should be clear-eyed and cold-blooded about what a Senate trial and conviction would mean. Holding Trump “accountable” is not the only cost-benefit metric, or even the right one. The real measure is whether the country will emerge from the ordeal better than when it entered, not how gravely Trump is damaged. With blood in their eyes, however, impeachment proponents ignore the bigger picture.

A critical unknown is whether the Constitution permits impeachment or trial of a former president. Trump, we know confidently, will contest jurisdiction not only in the Senate but also in court. Endlessly. His great fundraising Wurlitzer will work overtime, as will his followers’ echo chamber, while the litigation plods on long after the Senate’s work is over.

The constitutional debate is already underway, and those arguing that former presidents (and other ex-officers subject to impeachment) cannot be tried have the better argument. In particular, Article II, Section 4 says expressly that such officers “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Trump obviously cannot be removed from office if he no longer holds it, which would render this provision of the Constitution meaningless. So doing would violate a basic principle of contract, statutory, and especially constitutional construction that such writings should be construed so that no provision is rendered meaningless. Was it just a slip of the pen when the Framers wrote “shall be removed from Office”?

But the clause’s real importance is in the light it sheds on the fundamental jurisdictional issue of whether post-incumbency impeachment trials are permissible at all.

If fairness to an impeached incumbent president, in the extraordinary circumstances of a Senate trial, requires the chief justice to preside, why doesn’t fairness also require the chief to preside after a president leaves office? Did the Framers believe that it was acceptable to be less fair to a former president — as many would say if Vice President Kamala Harris or Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy presided? The only logical conclusion we can draw from this dilemma, reinforcing the points made above, is that there is no constitutional warrant here for a Senate trial.

There’s no doubt that the Senate trial will only provide more oxygen to Trump, in his self-absorbed efforts to garner attention. Attention is what Trump lives for. If his foes really wanted to punish him, if they wanted to inflict the most terrible fate possible, they would simply ignore him. They could organize societal “shunning” of Trump, as some religious denominations do.

Nor would a Senate conviction bring closure to the Trump era; instead, it would simply add fuel for the Wurlitzer and the “stab-in-the-back” narrative Trump is already crafting. Perversely, conviction would validate Trump’s basic complaints. On balance, therefore, the country generally and the Republican Party particularly would be better off without the Sturm und Drang that surely lies ahead. If I were cynical, I would say that Democrats believe they benefit by keeping Trump center stage, rather than Republicans. Congressional Democrats benefit from Republican fratricide and Trump’s toxicity (as demonstrated in the January 5 Georgia Senate runoff results), and avoid attention to their own internal strife and leftist policies.

I predict that a sufficient number of Senate Republicans will conclude that their chamber lacks jurisdiction, and Trump will again skate free. Felicitations to all who participate. Let’s not do it again soon.

What’s Wrong with a European Army

January 19, 2021

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

This article appeared in FORUM.EU on January 18, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 18, 2020

The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, now completed at last, is the most consequential event in EU history for its aggregate military power. And it is entirely negative. At a stroke, the EU has lost its second-largest armed force, with no prospect that remaining member states, individually or collectively can fill the gaping hole left by London’s departure. The European Union has long been less than the sum of its parts, and that sum is now considerably smaller. Decades of fantasising about an independent “EU army” should have come to an end on December 31.

That won’t happen, of course, because many Europeans have long-believed, often quietly and in discrete conversations, that Europe was “a state under construction,” and, like all proper states, had to have a proper state’s accoutrements: army, central bank, currency, and more. But some aspects of national sovereignty are almost impossible even for the most fervent Europhiles to relinquish, and military power is understandably the hardest of all.

The fantasising should stop for reasons unrelated to Brexit, notably the existence of Nato. The Atlantic alliance is perfectly capable of doing anything the EU could do, has been doing it for seven decades, and is poised to become even more important in the coming years. Britain’s renewed independence will have a powerfully uplifting effect in Nato’s politico-military decision-making, and more broadly, such as in the UN Security Council, with London now entirely free from the cumbersome, puree-making EU common foreign and security policy.

Some persistent advocates of greater independent EU military capabilities are arguing that Washington is no longer a reliable partner, but that is false. Unquestionably, Donald Trump was no friend of Nato, but Europeans should not draw long-term conclusions from his attitudes toward Nato or international affairs generally. He never proceeded according to coherent philosophical or policy logic, and history will rapidly judge his administration to be an unfortunate aberration. Trump saw problems in narrowly transactional (and largely financial) terms, and through the prism of how events could be made to benefit him personally. Extrapolating future US policy from Trump’s “policies,” therefore, is not only wrong, but dangerous.

That is not to say that European Nato members can now safely ignore the 2014 Cardiff Commitments, especially the pledge to spend two per cent of their GDP’s on defence capabilities by 2024. Trump’s obsession with the need to raise Nato spending may have been expressed in his usual idiosyncratic fashion, but it reflects the consistent view, across America’s political spectrum, that its allies must better understand the array of threats facing the west, and the need for everyone to pull their weight.

In a famous 2016 interview just before leaving office, for example, Barack Obama chastised Britain and France, along with many others, as “free riders” for their inadequate 2011 performance against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Obama Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta repeatedly echoed these complaints. The cost-sharing issue is not going away under Biden, both because he likely agrees with Obama, and because Republicans won’t let it.

Even leaving Brexit and Trump aside, EU efforts on defence matters have been, and are almost certain to remain, long on rhetoric and process and very short on substance and resources. After considerable fanfare and arduous effort almost twenty years ago for example, the “Berlin Plus” agreements have resulted in only two EU peacekeeping operations, both merely taking over from prior Nato forces. While Commission President Ursula von der Leyen may urge the EU to develop “credible military capabilities,” that is far easier said than done. It would be much more persuasive to see Germany raise its defence spending to the Cardiff target, which von der Leyen knows from her tenure as FRG Defence Minister is not going to happen; Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government with the Social Democrats has struggled just to maintain defence spending, let alone increase it. The same is true across Europe. As 2020 ended, Reuters reported that the first EU defence review “found that only 60% of the national troops and weapons nominally available to Nato are in a fit state to be deployed.” Pushing for more “independence” from Washington could leave Europe bereft of America’s presence and continuing inadequate defence spending EU-wide.

Von der Leyen also said, after Brexit, that “our future is made in Europe.” But this too is fantasy. Global threats, from China in particular, but also from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism, are growing, not receding. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s vision of “Global Britain” is considerably more astute than an inwardly-focused “little Europe.” European capitals would be better advised to heed the suggestion made by former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar to expand Nato into a global organisation, including possible new members like Japan, Australia, Singapore and Israel. There is no need to create a “league of democracies,” as some have suggested, to confront increasing threats from authoritarian regimes. We already have one in Nato, which simply needs to be enlarged beyond its birthplace in the North Atlantic area.

The basic reality is that a sustained programme to create a meaningful EU military would constitute a dagger pointed at Nato’s heart. That is undoubtedly what some really hope for, and not just our adversaries, but even many in Europe and America. Let us hope they are disappointed, at least until the lions lie down with the lambs.

Joe Biden’s Early Test From Moscow and Beijing

January 19, 2021

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.

Trump has caused the Republican Party great damage. Here’s what conservatives should do next

January 16, 2021

Trump had no philosophy, no principles and no plan to govern, and yet the GOP supported his rise to power – with distastrous consequences. The party needs to understand how that happened before it can do better

This article appeared in The Globe and Mail on January 16, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 16, 2020

The United States, its Constitution and its civic structures suffered a miserable four years during Donald Trump’s presidency. His duplicity, short attention span, ignorance of history and cluelessness about the actual workings of the very government he headed – among other things – brought to the Oval Office unequalled incompetence. His words and his conduct exacerbated partisan tensions – already too high when he took office – and undermined public faith in the integrity of critical government institutions, particularly the credibility of America’s entire electoral process.

Mr. Trump’s tenure would have dismayed the Founding Fathers – most tragically on Jan. 6, when he incited a mob to enter the Capitol building in Washington, intending to disrupt Congress from fulfilling its constitutional responsibility to certify the 2020 election results. His second impeachment by the House of Representatives, and the general public outrage, show how unhappy Americans are with his conduct.

While the Constitution is fortunately far stronger than the likes of Mr. Trump, we should nonetheless all remember Ronald Reagan’s wise counsel: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States, where men were free.”

Mr. Trump’s departure from office is a relief, but it obviously does not repair the significant damage he has caused. To begin the recovery effort, we must understand fully why Mr. Trump’s appearance on America’s political scene represented an aberration of historical dimensions. Once that phenomenon is better appreciated, the way forward becomes clearer.

Fundamentally, Mr. Trump has no philosophy, does not think in terms of “policy” (as we normally understand that term) and sees essentially everything through the prism of what benefits Donald Trump. Thus, his decisions as President constitute “an archipelago of dots,” as I wrote in my recent book, not a coherent pattern resting on principles and logic. Mr. Trump is not a conservative. He is not a liberal, either. He is simply entirely pro-Trump.

His favourite lawyer, Roy Cohn, once described how former senator Joseph McCarthy (a Republican from Wisconsin) became an anti-Communist: “Joe McCarthy bought anti-communism in much the same way as other people purchase a new automobile. The salesman showed him the model; he looked at it with interest, examined it more closely, kicked the tires, sat at the wheel, squiggled in the seat, asked some questions and bought. It was just as cold as that.”

It is entirely possible that Mr. Cohn taught Mr. Trump this very lesson about “conservatism.” Whatever the background, the contrast between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Trump could not be more vivid.

Mr. Trump’s approach to business in his pre-White House years, which he himself has described, was entirely transactional: buy this property, sell that property and move on to the next deal. Mr. Trump’s final balance sheet has not yet been written, and it may be that his transactional style brought him all that he wanted in private life. For America’s governance, however, it is wholly inadequate – especially in national-security matters.

Without a coherent philosophical framework, Mr. Trump’s decisions (including all those with which I strongly agreed) emerged through discrete deals that he found beneficial to him personally, not because he “believed” in what he was doing. A roulette wheel is more philosophically consistent than Mr. Trump’s decision-making.

This is far from saying, of course, that Mr. Trump made only erroneous substantive decisions as President. Au contraire. During the 2016 campaign, to gain the support of conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, he promised to nominate judges who were originalists in their interpretation of the Constitution and laws. This he did. He endorsed, if elected, lower taxes and less economic regulation – orthodoxy that any Republican presidential nominee would advocate. This he did. He repeatedly stressed opposition to the Obama administration’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and pledged to withdraw from it. This he did. (And, in full disclosure, ramrodding this withdrawal through the bureaucracy was my principal focus during my first 30 days as national security adviser – something in which I take considerable satisfaction.)

On the other hand, Mr. Trump was the most profligate spender in U.S. history, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, when fiscal discipline disappeared from a nominally “Republican” White House. Why should Mr. Trump care? It’s not his money. He supported reversal of criminal sentencing principles that had been hard-fought-for under Mr. Reagan, whose administration sought to limit the federal judiciary’s sentencing discretion, especially to prevent overly lenient sentences.

In the national-security field, Mr. Trump, among other mistakes, blotted his copybook by craving a new deal with Iran’s ayatollahs on their nuclear weapons program; by seeking deals with strongmen Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and so on ad infinitum. I can say with confidence he had little or no idea what the terms of such deals would be. He simply wanted deals he could announce with great fanfare because he saw them as marks of success. Who reads the fine print, anyway?

Worst of all, his erratic, non-strategic, utterly self-centred approach led directly to the disastrous U.S. response to the pandemic. This was a slow-moving crisis, one with terrible human costs. In a fast-moving international crisis – say, a nuclear confrontation with Russia or China – I believe Mr. Trump’s flaws would have almost certainly recurred. Fortunately, we were spared such a scenario, but had one erupted, Mr. Trump might well have simply melted down.

Mr. Trump’s opponents on the left side of the political spectrum routinely group his personal faults together with his decisions as President. In the same breath, for example, opponents list his mendaciousness, his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and his lack of self-discipline as if they were equivalent failings. They are attacking both Mr. Trump and the conservative philosophy as if the two were interchangeable. Doing so may gratify the critics, but it is fundamentally mistaken analytically.

For conservatives at least, it is precisely the important distinction between Mr. Trump’s personal deficiencies and his utter lack of any philosophy that should be our focus looking ahead. In concrete political terms, that means above all fixing conservatism’s chosen political vehicle, the Republican Party. The damage Mr. Trump caused is real, and, from his Mar-a-Lago bunker, he will likely obstruct our repair efforts. But the task is far from insuperable.

What model should Republicans follow? Returning to a Reaganite view of public policy, domestically and internationally, would do just fine. Today’s issues are obviously different from Mr. Reagan’s time, but his principles remain correct, never better explained than in his Oval Office farewell address just days before his second term ended in January, 1989. In those remarks, we also saw Mr. Reagan’s characteristic optimism, so different from Trump’s “American carnage.”

One of Reagan’s anecdotes, embodying both policy and perspective, stands out – he called it “a small story about a big ship, and a refugee and a sailor. It was back in the early eighties, at the height of the boat people, and the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat – and crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship, and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up and called out to him. He yelled, ‘Hello, American sailor – hello, Freedom Man.’”

These are words Mr. Trump is simply incapable of uttering, let alone conceiving.

Returning to Mr. Reagan’s fundamental conservative principles leads some to ask who the “new” Reagan will be. That is the wrong approach. Indeed, it is dangerously close to the mistake many made with Mr. Trump. Politics, at least for conservatives, is about policy, not personalities. One of Mr. Trump’s worst consequences was torquing America’s political discourse around the question whether people agreed with Mr. Trump or not. That is, ultimately, a totally irrelevant question. Loyalty oaths to individuals contravene basic democratic theory – our loyalties should have higher aspirations: the country, the Constitution and our conscience.

There will never be another Ronald Reagan, just as the Democrats will never have another Franklin D. Roosevelt. Instead, looking to the 2022 midterm House and Senate elections and the 2024 presidential race, Republicans should seek candidates who can articulate a conservative philosophy, not fealty to any individual.

In the wake of Mr. Trump, emphasizing character must also be a key factor. Many decent, honourable people agree that Mr. Trump had a hole where his character should have been, but argued nonetheless that Republicans had to overlook this unpleasant reality. We cannot allow ourselves to settle for second-best (or worse). Looking ahead, we should insist that we recruit, nominate and elect candidates who are both philosophically conservative and possessed of real character.

To be successful, therefore, conservatives will need to spend considerable time and effort over the next four years fixing the institutions and structures of the Republican Party. It is essential that party committees and organizations remain strictly neutral as members select nominees at all levels: local, state and federal. Neither Mr. Trump nor anyone else should be allowed to tip the scales in their favour, or in favour of candidates they endorse. Ensuring this neutrality at the Republican National Committee – for example, in allowing fair and equitable access to its enormous amount of voter information, polling data and the like – is crucial. Party structures should not be at anyone’s beck and call – certainly not Mr. Trump’s. Over the next several years, all eyes will be on the RNC leadership, and the state parties, to ensure scrupulous neutrality.

Defeat does not entitle Mr. Trump to further influence – it entitles him to retirement. At noon on Jan. 20, everyone should understand that Mr. Trump moved from the most powerful office in the world to the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago. He will doubtless still have influence, but he does not have power. This is a decisive inflection point, dawning on everyone with increasing clarity. Even before the Jan. 6 tragedy, Mr. Trump’s influence was declining, as reflected in December’s congressional override of his veto of the crucial defence authorization bill. Mr. Trump, of course, is a major contributor to his own decline, by falsely denying the outcome of the 2020 election, and provoking both the congressional efforts to overturn those elections and the mob that entered the Capitol at his behest. This is fitting: Mr. Trump is always the star in his own mind – even when shooting himself in the foot.

Joe Biden’s inauguration reflects not only Mr. Trump’s loss of power, but the dramatic and irreversible shift of the U.S.’s attention to the new administration. I take no joy in this, especially in the national-security domain, because I believe the new president’s likely policy directions will frequently be grievously in error. But it is also inevitable, as new policy lines are drawn and new political battles break out, that the national attention will focus on current events and not the rapidly receding past. In addition to substantive disagreements, in Congress it has ever been true that “the duty of the opposition is to oppose.” More likely than not, therefore, internal Republican disagreements over Mr. Trump – which remain significant – will nonetheless subside over time as Republicans unite to make their shared rejection of Mr. Biden’s policies more effective. Who will cite a disgraced Mr. Trump as support for any policy position? No Republican who expects to succeed over the long term, that is certain.

The Biden administration’s opening years thus represent for Republicans a two-front struggle: repairing their damaged party while simultaneously preventing the new administration, faced with a Congress in both houses divided almost exactly 50-50, from achieving its worst philosophical objectives. There is little time left to worry about what Mr. Trump says or does. He should go play golf. We have better things to do.

One of the saddest days in American history has broken Trump – and deservedly so

January 08, 2021

The sooner the Trump aberration passes, the better

This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on January 8, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
January 8, 2020

January 6 was one of the saddest days in American history. A sitting President incited a mob of his supporters to attack the United States Capitol building, where the Senate and House of Representatives were meeting in the Constitutionally required joint session to count the votes of the Electoral College. Donald Trump’s clear intention in urging this act of violence against the final concluding act of the 2020 presidential election was to disrupt the counting procedure, thereby buying more time to escape the otherwise inevitable outcome of the election.

This is as shameful as it gets, but it is nonetheless only one of a long series of shameful acts by Trump before, during, and after the November election. He has lied repeatedly about what happened in that election, convincing millions of decent, honest people that his opponents committed systematic fraud, in effect conning his own supporters. If there is evidence of this fraud, Trump has yet to provide it to any judicial or administrative tribunal, Federal or state. In his view, the anti-Trump conspiracy is so vast and so successful that it left behind no evidence. Either that, or his campaign had the worst team of lawyers in Anglo-American legal history.

Trump’s charade promulgated the idea that Congress could overturn the duly certified results of the election from the key battleground states, enough to shift the Electoral College majority to his favour. And there was more: that somehow his Vice President, Mike Pence, would ignore the plain words of the Constitution, and impose his own outcome on the election, by deciding which state certificates of the results to count and which to ignore.

The Framers created the Electoral College for the sole purpose of electing the President. It has no other role; like Brigadoon, it comes and goes every four years. Clear logic underlies this approach: to create a true separation of powers, Congress’s role in presidential elections had to be limited to a purely formal duty to declare the results. The Frames rejected a parliamentary system, with a President in any way dependent on Congress for his legitimacy. (In the truly exceptional case where no presidential candidate has an Electoral College majority, the House votes on the rule of one vote per state, not on the basis of individual House members).

In addition, the Constitution left the essentially exclusive responsibility for the “manner” of selecting the Electoral College to the States, not the national government. The certificates of election outcomes are sent by the responsible State official to the Vice President in his capacity as President of the Senate (a dual role that forms a key part of “the checks and balances”). What happens next is plainly stated in the Twelfth Amendment: “The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted.”

That’s it. Nothing more. Trump’s plans for Congress and the Vice President were themselves assaults on the Constitutional order, an effort to replace the state elections with his preferred outcome as dictated by majorities in Congress. It was appalling in its own right, and doomed to fail, which it ultimately did.

Trump and his supporters, therefore, were threatening grievous harm to two pillars of the American constitutional system: the separation of powers (at the national level) and federalism (the division of powers between the national and state governments). Not surprisingly, these two precepts are also foundational to American conservative thought. If proof were ever needed that Trump is not a conservative, there it is.

Realising that his effort at what Washington attorney Chuck Cooper (my long-time friend and colleague at the Reagan Justice Department) called “a congressional coup” was failing, Trump decided to resort to force. At a rally a few hours before Congress convened on January 6, Trump said to his supporters, “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” Key adviser Rudy Giuliani called for “trial by combat.” They knew exactly what they wanted, and so did the supporters.

Fortunately, they failed. They failed in their attempted congressional coup, and they failed in their attempted violent coup. The Constitution was tested, and stood strong. The Trump aberration will pass, the sooner the better. American conservatives have considerable work ahead to repair the damage that Trump has inflicted on our country, our civil discourse, and the Republican Party. But they are only damaged, not broken. Trump is the one who has been broken, and deservedly so.

John Bolton is a former National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump and former US ambassador to the United Nations.

JCPOA 2.0

January 07, 2021

This article appeared in The National Review on January 7, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton and John Yoo
January 7, 2020

The first great conflict of Joseph Biden’s presidency could erupt on the field of national security. In his most significant foreign-policy achievement, President Donald Trump withdrew from Barack Obama’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which traded limits on Iran’s nuclear program for immediate financial relief (an estimated $120–$150 billion) and the lifting of Western economic sanctions. Signaling a knee-jerk return to failed Obama policies, the president-elect has promised he will immediately rejoin the JCPOA in a hopeless quest for a peaceful settlement with Tehran’s mullahs.

New presidents feel the need to score policy wins in the first months of their term. Democratic down-ballot failures in 2020 mean Biden will have little maneuvering room to advance his domestic issues, and will instead have to turn to foreign policy for any early successes. Despite gaining the presidency by a healthy Electoral College margin (and winning the popular vote), the Democrats have seen their advantage in the House of Representatives shrink to a 222–212 majority (depending on two possible challenges), their narrowest since 1942. The Senate outcome is even closer, with the majority turning on the January 5 Georgia runoffs. Biden could be the first new president since George H. W. Bush 32 years ago to enter office without a Senate controlled by his party.

While the executive enjoys vast power in foreign affairs, Republicans can put up a stiff fight through a combination of constitutional strategy, congressional tactics, and political infighting. (We wrote on this subject for NR six years ago, in “Advice on ‘Advice and Consent,’” December 31, 2014, without noticeable effect on the Senate; but we decided to try again under new circumstances.) They should refuse to accept the JCPOA as an international agreement because of its failure to undergo the treaty process required by Article II of the Constitution. If Biden emulates Obama and withholds JCPOA 2.0 from Senate consideration, Congress should deploy its own constitutional powers by imposing mandatory sanctions on Iran, beefing up military spending in the region, withholding appropriations to the State Department and other agencies, and refusing to confirm nominees to national-security positions or cooperate with the White House on other elements of its agenda.

The JCPOA is not the only international agreement the incoming administration intends to revive. “The United States will rejoin the Paris Agreement on day one of my presidency,” Biden promised in December, referring to the global climate-change agreement. Biden also envisions reentering the World Health Organization, from which Trump withdrew for its cover-up of the COVID-19 pandemic’s China origins. The JCPOA, though, raises the most immediate and profound constitutional problems.

The multilateral JCPOA reflected Obama’s misbegotten notion that, with the nuclear-weapon issue “resolved,” Iran under the mullahs would begin behaving like a normal nation. Rather than using Iran’s financial bonanza to benefit its impoverished people, however, the mullahs funded terrorists in Lebanon and Iraq, Assad’s regime in Syria, and Yemeni rebels. President Trump wisely pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in May 2018 and imposed even harsher sanctions that have pushed Iran to the brink of economic collapse. The ability of Iran to foment terrorism and employ conventional forces to undermine our allies in the region, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, has suffered, but it remains deeply threatening.

Nevertheless, Biden announced in December that, “if Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.” So doing would only reward Iranian malevolence. The mullahs have never given up their nuclear ambitions; they lied repeatedly to conceal their covert nuclear-weapons program and greeted European efforts to save the JCPOA by building up Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpiles beyond approved limits. According to media reports, Iran is demanding that the incoming administration immediately rejoin the deal and lift all sanctions unconditionally, without any corresponding freeze in Iranian uranium enrichment. Tehran also intends to seek compensation for the economic losses caused by the Trump-administration sanctions, making Iran the clear favorite for 2020’s “Chutzpah of the Year” award.

Republicans should attempt to thwart Biden’s plan by demanding adherence to the Constitution. In one of many demonstrations of his disregard for the separation of powers, President Obama refused to submit the JCPOA to the Senate as a treaty. Article II of the Constitution, however, recognizes only a single manner in which the United States may enter international agreements: The president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties,” but only if “two thirds of the Senators present concur.” Article II’s plain meaning and history require that any agreement that restricts the nation’s sovereignty must undergo Senate approval by a two-thirds supermajority.

Joe Biden himself used to believe that the Senate’s consent was required for all significant international agreements — at least when Republican presidents made them. “With the exception of the SALT I agreement, every significant arms control agreement during the past three decades has been transmitted to the Senate pursuant to the Treaty Clause of the Constitution,” Senators Biden and Jesse Helms declared about the 2002 Treaty of Moscow, in which the U.S. and Russia agreed to deep reductions in their nuclear arsenals. “No constitutional alternative exists to transmittal of the concluded agreement to the Senate for its advice and consent.” In the 1980s, Biden even attacked President Reagan’s missile-defense programs because they went beyond the terms of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union and therefore required a new amendment to the treaty. He went so far as to pen a scholarly article declaring the treaty power to be “a constitutional partnership” between the president and the Senate.

Unfortunately, the Senate over nearly a century has allowed its treaty role to be frittered away, as “sole executive agreements” have become the overwhelmingly dominant mode of U.S. international agreements. While there is no “bright line” that establishes what must be considered a treaty rather than an executive agreement, JCPOA 2.0 clearly qualifies as a treaty. And for senators seeking to begin the long-term project of restoring their body’s authority, the Iran nuclear deal is an excellent starting point.

Senate Republicans should force President-elect Biden to live up to his own words. The Constitution’s requirement of supermajority consent to treaties was meant to guarantee that they would be backed by the highest levels of political consensus. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 75, “The vast importance of the trust, and the operation of treaties as laws, plead strongly for the participation of the whole, or a portion, of the legislative body in the office of making them.” Allowing a single man to make international agreements, he warned, would not just risk unwise decisions but also invite the possibility of the personal corruption of a president who might be tempted by either avarice or ambition.

The Biden administration is sure to resurrect Obama’s claim that the JCPOA did not amount to a treaty because it did not constitute a legally enforceable agreement. The JCPOA was not even “a signed document,” the Obama State Department under John Kerry explained, but just a series of “political commitments.” But in 2015 congressional hearings, the administration more candidly admitted that it simply could not persuade two-thirds of the Senate. Asked by a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee why the JCPOA was not considered a treaty, Kerry (who will join the incoming administration as Biden’s “climate czar”) replied, “Well, Congressman, I spent quite a few years trying to get a lot of treaties through the United States Senate, and it has become physically impossible.” He went on: “That’s why. Because you can’t pass a treaty anymore.”

Obama refused to submit the JCPOA to the Senate, which meant the Senate had nothing on which to vote. Republicans responded by enacting the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which not only was toothless but unfortunately gave the JCPOA the patina of having survived congressional scrutiny. Reversing the Constitution’s presumption against entering international agreements, INARA required Congress to pass a law to reject the JCPOA, subject to presidential veto. Unsurprisingly, the JCPOA sailed on.

In 2015, senators effectively accepted defeat. This time, if Biden flouts the Senate’s constitutional treaty role, the Senate should retaliate asymmetrically. Most important is Congress’s appropriations power, perhaps its strongest constitutional sword. Threatening to defund large parts of the State Department would certainly get the new administration’s attention. Former Connecticut Republican senator Lowell Weicker, for example, once forced action on a nomination for U.S. attorney by obtaining a rider barring any use of appropriated funds for travel by the attorney general. Talk about getting someone to wake up! The appropriations power also allows Congress to earmark funding in military programs for those it considers priorities, such as increased capabilities to deal with Iran’s threat. Mandatory statutory sanctions against Iran reflect another possible front in the struggle against Biden’s appeasement.

Similarly, if the Senate isn’t afforded an opportunity for advice and consent on JCPOA 2.0, it can easily withhold advice and consent on everything else, starting with the nominee for secretary of state. This is a test of constitutional wills rather than a matter of the Senate’s proper role in confirmations — on that front, both parties have been overdoing it for decades. Fixing the specifics of the confirmation process, now badly out of sync, is a subject for another day.

Make no mistake, we are proposing Senate (and House) hardball here. As in 2015, JCPOA opponents in the legislative branch may not want to play. But if that’s the case, let’s hear no more complaints about the continuing decline of congressional influence in national-security affairs.

Korean Issues Confronting the Biden Administration

January 04, 2021

This article appeared in The KORUS Journal.

By John Bolton
December 2020 Issue

The presidential election is now settled, and the Transition underway. Joe Biden is choosing his White House staff; making nominations for Cabinet and sub-Cabinet positions across the government; and consulting with congressional and other experts about possible legislation, executive orders, and policy initiatives. America watchers are speculating vigorously about what the incoming Administration’s substantive programs will be.

National-security issues were rarely debated during the 2020 campaign. Democrats wanted to make the election a referendum on Donald Trump, and Trump agreed, thus guaranteeing endless discussion of his favorite subject: Donald Trump. For American voters, however, and for foreign observers, the ensuing spectacle provided very little information on the candidates’ policies, especially Biden, the challenger.

Even so, what can we predict for U.S. relations with the two Koreas over the next four years? Possible answers can be found in Biden’s long involvement in American foreign and defense policy; his eight years serving as Barack Obama’s Vice President; and the political state-of-play within the Democratic and Republican parties and the broader American body politic, including the few mentions of Korea during the campaign.

First, while a Senator, Biden was a conventional Democratic politician on national-security issues. He rarely broken new intellectual ground, contenting himself, publicly at least, with staying well within the bounds of his party’s positions. For example, like most Democrats, Biden waffled assiduously in 2002-03 on whether he favored using force to oust Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. He ultimately supported using force, while repeatedly urging that President George W. Bush not actually do so.

When criticism from the Democratic Party’s left wing mounted over time, Biden’s opposition to the war grew correspondingly. He opposed Bush’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, although he later conceded it considerably reduced violence there, thus making Obama feel confident enough to withdraw U.S. forces in 2011. Most observers now believe the U.S. pull-out led to the rise of ISIS, and the near-dissolution of both Iraq and Syria as functioning nation-states.

In 1990, by contrast, Biden, along with the majority of congressional Democrats, had voted against President George H.W. Bush’s decision to roll back Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Ironically, that military action clearly succeeded in its limited objectives. None of this reflects much credit on the consistency or coherence of Biden’s views, but that hardly distinguishes him from the rest of his party. Biden is a mainstream Democrat faute de mieux.

Second, Biden was a cheerleader for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, seen by Obama as the most significant achievement of his second term. As such, Biden has made rejoining the Iran deal a high early priority for his Administration, although neither he nor his surrogates have explained how to rejoin, what the effect of so doing will be, or (just incidentally) whether Iran will change its behavior in the slightest as a result of Biden’s efforts.

Clearly, the Obama years were extremely important in shaping Biden’s thinking on Korea issues. Obama’s “strategic patience” policy is deeply compatible with Biden’s instincts and positions in other foreign-policy disputes. There is every reason, therefore, to think Biden will seek to repeat Obama’s approach. No flashy summits, with glitz and spotlights and hundreds of reporters. Biden has said as much, not ruling out meeting with Kim Jung Un, but insisting there be progress on the denuclearization issue before a “summit” would be appropriate.

Unfortunately, “strategic patience” had the practical effect of giving North Korea eight years in which to make continued progress on its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs. Obama’s passivity in the face of Pyongyang’s evident disinterest in negotiating is deeply troubling, especially since Obama told Trump during the 2016-2017 Transition that North Korea was the most serious foreign policy threat Trump would face. Ironically, Trump’s four years of bombast and showmanship — and no progress on negotiating an end to Pyongyang’s nuclear threat — created exactly the same problem which he will now hand over to Biden.

In 2019, North Korea’s ever-creative media called Biden “a fool of low IQ,” and said he “must be beaten to death,” like a rabid dog. Having myself been called “human scum” by Pyongyang’s propagandists, I can understand what Biden’s reaction might be. On the campaign trail this year, Biden responded politely, merely calling Kim a “dictator” and a “tyrant,” both words having the virtue of being true.

Third, both on Korea matters and generally on American national-security policy, Biden is not a free actor. The Democratic Party’s left wing expects a heavy repayment for standing firmly with him (despite their philosophical differences) in order to ensure defeating Trump, the common enemy. The left now expects appropriate rewards for its loyalty, both in personnel appointments and policy directions.

As noted above, Biden has shifted with the political winds inside the Democratic Party on critical issues. How he maneuvers to handle a fractious and increasingly impatient Democratic left during his Administration remains to be seen. To date, the progressives have concentrated mostly on domestic policy. Few of their most prominent voices have any significant experience in foreign or defense policy, or have articulated their views in any detail.

Accordingly, absent some dramatic North Korean gesture, like a nuclear detonation or an ICBM launch, Korea policy would not likely be a priority during Biden’s early days in office. However, beyond the complex issues posed by Kim’s continuing efforts to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons, relations between China and America have taken a dramatic turn for the worse.

As in most industrial democracies, U.S. public opinion has swung decidedly negative on China because of its all-too-obvious efforts to cover-up the origins and consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump’s trade war with China, controversial though it may be, has also brought into full public view China’s longstanding efforts to steal intellectual property from foreign countries and businesses, and generally using mercantilist policies to manipulate what should be an open international economic order. China’s growing belligerence along its periphery (in the East and South China Seas, Southeast Asia, and with India) will test relations with the outside world. Finally, China’s complicity in Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons program, and its protection for the North against international sanctions and opprobrium, must now be considered before any international concessions can be offered. None of this will be easy.

Beyond the nuclear issue, of course, U.S.-ROK relations were strained during Trump’s Administration by disputes over the shared costs of U.S. bases in South Korea, and the strength of America’s commitment to the bilateral alliance. Similarly, relations between Seoul and Tokyo are also strained, even as Indo-Pacific countries search for ways to increase cooperation in the face of Beijing’s threat. Biden, unlike Trump, is committed to strong U.S. alliances, but that does not mean he can tolerate inequitable burden sharing any more than Trump or even Obama. Remember, it was Obama who first called U.S. allies not bearing their fair share of alliance costs “free riders.” That is a widely-held American view, not a Trump aberration.

But it will be the disappearance of Trump — himself the real aberration in American foreign policy — that is most immediately obvious in the day-to-day communications between the Blue House and the White House. That will be good for each side, although it will hardly resolve the larger geo-strategic threats faced by both countries, and their closest allies.

Biden Must Reverse Course on Western Sahara

December 15, 2020

Trump’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty dangerously undermines decades of carefully crafted U.S. policy.

This article appeared in Foreign Policy on December 15, 2020. Click here to view the original article.

By John Bolton
December 15, 2020

Outgoing President Donald Trump’s Dec. 11 proclamation that the United States would recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara marked yet another low for his administration. In an unrelated deal to facilitate the exchange of diplomatic relations between Israel and Morocco, Trump’s decision to throw the Sahrawi people under the bus ditches three decades of U.S. support for their self-determination via a referendum of the Sahrawi people on the territory’s future status.

Republican Sen. James Inhofe was exactly right when he said in a Senate floor speech on Dec. 10 that Trump “could have made this deal without trading away the rights of this voiceless people.” Inhofe is one of the few U.S. experts on Western Sahara, built up through years of service on both the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on Armed Services, which he now chairs. I have worked frequently with Inhofe on the Western Sahara issue over the years, dating back to my own initial involvement as assistant secretary of state for international organizations during the George H.W. Bush administration.

Warm but unofficial relations between Israel and Morocco are nothing new. Morocco has long considered recognizing Israel, and King Hassan II aggressively pursued that option during the 1990s, as did other Arab nations. Secret Israeli-Moroccan contacts have been commonplace since. Today, full relations are thus neither new nor difficult to achieve. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have recently taken the plunge, and more could follow. But what Morocco has actually agreed to remains unclear; Rabat denies it will open anything more than a “liaison office” in Israel (which it did in the 1990s), or that its deal actually involves full diplomatic relations.

In making his rash decision, Trump consulted neither the Polisario Front—which has long represented the Sahrawis—nor Algeria and Mauritania, the most concerned neighboring countries, nor anyone else. This is what happens when dilettantes handle U.S. diplomacy, and it is sadly typical of Trump’s nakedly transactional approach during his tenure.This is what happens when dilettantes handle U.S. diplomacy, and it is sadly typical of Trump’s nakedly transactional approach during his tenure. To him, everything is a potential deal, viewed in very narrow terms through the attention span of a fruit fly. Fully weighing all the merits and equities involved in complex international scenarios is not his style. Historical background and future ramifications? Those are for losers. Fortunately, Trump made no nuclear deal with North Korea or Iran; one can only imagine what he might have given away.
His casual approach to notching one more ostensible international victory raises significant problems of stability across the Maghreb. And crossing Inhofe, reelected last month to another six-year Senate term, was a major political mistake. Trump knows exactly how Inhofe feels about the Western Sahara; I was there in the Oval Office on May 1, 2019, when the Oklahoma senator explained his support for a referendum. Trump said he had never heard of Western Sahara, and Inhofe replied, “Oh, we spoke before, but you weren’t listening.”

The Washington Post reports that in recent weeks, Trump became irate that Inhofe would not accede to nongermane amendments that the president wanted in the annual defense authorization bill, such as repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields social media platforms from liability for what they publish. Trump’s advisors reportedly persuaded the president to stiff Inhofe on the Western Sahara in retaliation. But this standoff is far from over. Inhofe is a determined Sahrawi proponent, and, from his powerful position as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he will make the argument to reverse Trump’s decision directly to Biden if need be.

Where, then, does Trump’s reckless and unnecessary move leave President-elect Joe Biden and the foreign governments most directly interested in the Western Sahara?

The answer begins with the obvious—the very name of the U.N. peacekeeping operation authorized by Resolution 690 of 1991 was “Mission of the United Nations for the Referendum in Western Sahara” (MINURSO being the Spanish acronym). When Spain’s colonial rule collapsed with Francisco Franco’s 1975 death, and after an initial conflict between Mauritania and Morocco, the Polisario-Moroccan military hostilities left the territory partitioned and its status unresolved. The Polisario’s fundamental choice in 1991 was to suspend its ongoing confrontation with Morocco in exchange for a referendum, in which the choice would be between independence or unification with Morocco.

King Hassan II fully understood that this deal was, in Resolution 690’s express terms, “a referendum for self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.” The choice, stated in the first paragraph of the U.N. Secretary General’s report approved by Resolution 690, was “to choose between independence and integration with Morocco.” The 1997 Houston Accords, negotiated under James Baker’s auspices as the Secretary General’s personal envoy, reinforced that understanding. (At the time, I worked for Baker at the U.S. State Department, and I later assisted him in his work as the U.N. envoy.)

Members of the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army take part in a ceremony to mark 40 years after the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was proclaimed by the Polisario Front in the disputed territory of Western Sahara at the Rabouni Sahrawi refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria, on Feb. 26, 2016.
Can John Bolton Thaw Western Sahara’s Long-Frozen Conflict?
The Polisario Front has created an international diplomatic presence on a shoestring budget and sees the Trump administration as its best hope in decades to gain independence from Morocco.

Nonetheless, Morocco has spent nearly three decades preventing the referendum from taking place. Together with France and other Security Council allies, it has tried, unfortunately with some success, to blur Resolution 690’s referendum commitment. Rabat has offered a variety of so-called autonomy proposals, not one of which has ever come close to being acceptable to the Polisario, proposing a referendum on incorporation versus “autonomy.” To the Sahrawi, this is a take it or leave it proposition, and has therefore always been unacceptable. From Morocco’s perspective, this kind of so-called peace process could go on forever: Rabat not only controls the vast bulk of the Western Sahara’s territory militarily, but, through successive waves of settlement from Morocco proper, is trying to overwhelm the ethnic Sahrawi population. Secretary General António Guterres’s statement following Trump’s announcement, for example, called for preserving the 1991 cease-fire, but spoke only about a “resumption of the peace process.”

If Morocco won’t accept a referendum, it doesn’t deserve a cease-fire or a false “peace process.”

This is a pathetic—and authoritative—admission of 30 years of U.N. failure. The Polisario did not abandon its war against Morocco for a “peace process,” but for a referendum. One obvious option, therefore, is to terminate MINURSO, and return to the status quo ante of open hostilities. With the original deal broken, and Morocco for three decades evincing no intention of accepting a referendum, why keep a U.N. peacekeeping operation on perpetual life support? If Morocco won’t accept a referendum, it doesn’t deserve a cease-fire or a false “peace process.”

In fact, a major cease-fire violation occurred last month, so serious that many believed full military hostilities might resume. For now, there is no way to tell whether this is likely, or what the outcome might be. But make no mistake, the Polisario is at a crucial juncture. It would be fully justified if it chooses to return to the battlefield, but much depends on the positions of Algeria, Mauritania, and others—and what resources are available.

For the Polisario, Trump’s about-face is more than disappointing. It broke a U.S. commitment that once looked rock-solid, and which I tried to defend and advance during my time as national security advisor—often in the face of the State Department’s determination to find a way to solidify Moroccan control of Western Sahara.

Unfortunately, the Sahrawis are not the first during Trump’s tenure to experience an assault on one U.S. undertaking after another, imperiling even long-standing formal U.S. alliances like NATO. It is perfectly appropriate for a nation to modify its responsibilities in light of changed national-security circumstances, but it is quite another to gratuitously destroy a commitment, with no consultation, just to make a so-called deal in a completely separate context.It is perfectly appropriate for a nation to modify its responsibilities in light of changed national-security circumstances, but it is quite another to gratuitously destroy a commitment, with no consultation, just to make a so-called deal in a completely separate context. Fortunately, Trump’s time is all but over.
From the perspective of U.S. policy, the best outcome would be for Biden, once inaugurated, to reverse Trump’s acquiescence to Moroccan sovereignty. This will not be easy, given the expectations—misguided though they are—already built up in Rabat and Jerusalem. If Biden wants to do a 180-degree turn, he should do so immediately on taking office, which would minimize any damage.

There are other obstacles. Ironically, Trump’s insouciance gave the State Department bureaucracy exactly what it has wanted since Resolution 690 first encountered stiff Moroccan resistance within months of its adoption nearly three decades ago. Rabat had argued that losing the Western Sahara referendum would destabilize its monarchy, and the State Department’s bureaucrats lapped it up. In fact, the referendum’s outcome would almost certainly depend on who constitutes the voting-eligible population, yet another issue Morocco has contested despite its earlier commitment to the 1975 Spanish census defining the universe of eligible voters—an era before Morocco sought to engineer the territory’s demographics in its favor. Notwithstanding substantial Moroccan transfers of population into Western Sahara, and the supposed benefits of its rule, Rabat and the U.S. State Department both fear they haven’t done enough to achieve the result they want.

Morocco is no longer really concerned about its monarchy’s stability being undermined by formal diplomatic ties with Israel than are Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, or other Gulf Arab states yet to come around. What is really behind Morocco’s argument is that Rabat has come to believe its own propaganda, rather than its underlying reason for the occupation—which is that it wants control over possible substantial mineral resources buried under all that Saharan sand, fishing assets, and possible resort development opportunities for tourists.

Biden, of course, will have a few other things on his mind on Jan. 20 apart from Western Sahara. While Biden and his advisors formulate their own policy, they can lay down a marker that Trump’s about-face is under review, insisting in the meantime that a referendum is still a prerequisite before the United States will consider the Western Sahara issue resolved. There should be no outcome acceptable to Washington that is not approved by the Sahrawis in an internationally conducted, free, and fair vote—with a yes-or-no choice on full independence on the ballot. Morocco may gag at this option, but it has little choice but to accept it if the United States insists on it.

For Algeria, Mauritania, Israel, and European leaders, there is not much to lose if Biden reverses Trump’s misguided move. It will be a welcome relief that the prospect of conflict with Morocco has been at least postponed. These states should all insist that the Western Sahara’s future should not be shuffled aside, a development that only benefits Morocco, given its de facto control over the bulk of the territory.

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have already freed Israel from the formal diplomatic isolation it faced for many years. Whatever Morocco does in response to a new Biden policy that reaffirms Western Sahara’s status quo will affect Israel only slightly. And graciously accepting what a new Biden administration says about the territory may well be in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interest. In this way he could, at essentially no cost to Israel—for which the Western Sahara is a non-issue—add to his political capital with Biden for issues that really matter, like taking on the threat posed by Iran.

The European Union—especially Spain, the former colonial power, where support for the Sahrawi remains quite strong; and France, Morocco’s protector—could summon up a few words about self-determination to help move the process along. If they choose not to say anything, they should remain silent bystanders and avoid compounding Trump’s mistake.

A post-inauguration bipartisan agreement between Biden and Inhofe could repair the disarray caused by Trump’s gratuitous grandstanding. Such a deal would mark a welcome change from the past four years of chaos and division, and a return to pursuing U.S. national interests rather than those of Donald Trump.

News

I am not saying Trump is innocent. But if his foes really wanted to punish him, they would simply ignore him.

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

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

Trump had no philosophy, no principles and no plan to govern, and yet the GOP supported his rise to power – with distastrous consequences. The party needs to understand how that happened before it can do better

The sooner the Trump aberration passes, the better

Trump’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty dangerously undermines decades of carefully crafted U.S. policy.