The Reckoning of Western Foreign Policy Elites

March 08, 2022

As yet, it is barely perceptible, but with each day it is becoming more apparent that only a week into a globe-shaping crisis, we are seeing the first signs of a new phase.

It is clear that the United States is not whole-heartedly engaged and is lagging far behind its European allies in showing resolve. For example, while the EU has sanctioned 490 entities as of March 3, and Switzerland 371, the United States has only sanctioned 118. Moreover, leaks from the administration show signs of faltering rather than steeling will. Articles are appearing in elite Western papers, such as the New York Times, which only a week ago led the charge into confrontation, already laying out intellectual paths to backing off and yielding to Putin. In conversations in the last 24 hours with people in the bordering lands north of Russia, from what I gather the populations of the Baltic states are beginning to assess that they are next in Putin’s plans, but that they will not be saved by NATO despite all the talk and commitments. As a result, in the last 24 hours, there has been a drop in the hitherto lava-hot housing market in all those lands, and we are even seeing the first signs of an exodus from them. Population movements are among the best indicators of what people really think since they are voting with their feet at the cost of great disruption. In this case, they are voting on their appreciation as to whether the US – as the only genuine leader that can pilot the Western world — will go the distance on this and draw the hard border on Putin to stop the slide at and within Ukraine and no further, or whether the United States will back off after the initial hoopla, which will then set everyone up for Putin’s next thrust of which those closest to Russia will pay first and hardest.

Israel, the UAE and the Saudis are on the other end of this rising Eurasian power and face off against one of its most important allies, Iran. While the West demands fealty on Ukraine, all are deeply fearful that if they go blazing in, they will be picking a fight with a colossus and be left alone holding the bag. Arab nations and Israel just do not have faith yet that the US is genuinely changed, is now serious and has effectively begun mobilizing for the long haul. The emerging Iran deal, in fact, tells them the opposite.

There also appears as yet to be no appreciation in the West as to how great and disruptive sanctions will have to become to genuinely sever Russia and isolate its economy – which is one of the first steps as the globe enters another Cold War. There is no way to do this but to also sever the West from China, since Beijing will cut out banks that commit to the sanctions, and others that won’t. For example, Chinese banks can just hide and transfer monies internally between the two, therein positioning China as a money-laundering superpower on a scale never before seen. At this point, our elites are hesitant on truly isolating Russia, and thus are hardly in a position to really draw the line on China too.

In fact, we are not even willing to disrupt our dependence on Russian oil and gas. The White House, via its spokesperson, Jen Psaki, has made that clear a dozen times over the week since the invasion of Ukraine. As a whole Germany is more serious, as are several other European nations. For this they are to be commended. And yet, in the end, even Germany is willing to suspend NordStream2, which was not going to truly come on line until next winter. In other words, it took a stand for which payment is expected to come due only after Ukraine falls or wins. In contrast, Germany allows NordStream to continue to flow. Again, Germany and some of its European allies are still to be given credit for what it has done, but we should be sober. The sanctions all Western nations have imposed on Russia via SWIFT structures are riddled with holes because of this continued trade.

If we are really not willing to wean ourselves off Russian gas and oil, then it is unlikely that we will be willing to do so on everything else. Once Ukraine settles into a festering mess (it will never be truly subjugated by Russia, even if the Ukrainian army dissolves as a coherent conventional fighting force, which is itself not even certain), we will begin to feel the full effects of severed economic ties to Russia — the consequences of which (devastated supply chains, for example) we really have not thought through, and certainly not felt, yet.

In general, at this moment, when suddenly things really matter and everything becomes deadly serious, there seems to be a verdict on the reckoning of the US foreign policy establishment and of its uninspiring record of missteps, delusions, inconsistencies and lapses since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, despite the unveiling by Putin of a chilling manifesto last summer, US diplomats, indeed our Under Secretary of State for Policy, Victoria Nuland, this last October traveled to Moscow and left the impression that we were distancing ourselves from Ukraine, and even reprimanding it for its resolute interpretation of the 2014 Minsk Agreement. For a leader like Putin, who outlined last summer a dangerous imperial vision, that was like throwing steak to a tiger. He understood this as weakness and an invitation to invasion. A seasoned official like Nuland should have understood, given the troubling evolution of Putin’s thinking as unveiled over the last half decade, that whatever diplomatic nicety or polite deference she expressed, and any light she showed between the United States and Ukraine, would be met by man who brags about physically subjugating tigers and bears as weakness, not refinement.

Thus, as Ukraine fights for its freedom, its identity and its survival, nations around the world and their peoples will settle into a hedging pattern until they are convinced the US has it in it to go the distance here linearly and decisively, rather than in a partial, waivering and hesitant process, the consequences of which are that many closest to the fire will pay a horrific price until the US finally comes around clearly and determinedly.

Sadly, the problem is not just the shortcomings of the Biden team. If it was, then we could just fix it by changing leaders. The problem is far deeper. It is, in fact, a civilizational reckoning. People are beginning to take note of the speeches and writings of Putin and his clique of intellectuals – teaching us once again that we are ill served us when we ignore the earnest nature of what others with ambition say. And yet, while people are beginning to realize the expanse of the challenge he poses, there is little discussion of the magnitude. The geographic parameters of Putin’s ambitions are coming into focus, but still ignored is his civilization critique of the West and his grandiose solution, which in the end is a far more dangerous assault than any real estate. He believes the rise of Western freedom has corrupted Christianity, and that his Eurasian fantasy is the salvation of European civilization. Along the way, he has no need for the small and weak, all of whom should be retuned to the strong and bog as minions.

In as far as Putin judges the flaws of Western civilization (as distinct from his grandiose answer), it is important the West appreciates that there may be part of this critique which demands serious introspection on our part. Indeed, there is a common thread uniting Hitler, Japan, the Soviet Union, Khomeini, and bin-Ladin with Putin: they all believed that the West was a soul-less, corrupted civilization that confronted with strong will can be swept aside as easily as breezes scatter dust on a floor. While Hitler and Japan were buried decisively and immediately when a relentless America obliterated both their armies and their ideas, continental European powers and elites had until that point failed and were in fact swept aside.

It bears consideration as to why that was so. European elites, led by failing aristocracies, had become a pessimistic lot that had traded the souls of their national identity for an increasingly performative but ultimately hollow rising set of international ideas and institutions. In the end, those elites never really internalized that they were part of their nations or accepted the passing of the baton of defining “legitimate” culture to their whole populations. They thus increasingly distanced themselves from their own people, whom they believed had rejected their inherently superior status. The elites, led by a dying aristocratic class, felt jilted. Hitler gauged that Europe’s elites simply could no longer tap into and leverage their nation’s cultures for power, and thus with utter disdain he played upon the elites’ resulting impotence, internally and externally. His appreciation of the continent was correct, and despite Germany’s initial weakness and his personally tenuous grip on power, it fell to him within half of a decade. He then leveraged this as a parade of Western retreats not only to destroy, but to humiliate along the way, his internal doubters.

And yet, America was different, and its elites at that time were still products of the culture and its informing ideas that all Americans shared. Thus, when either Hitler or the Japanese imperial leadership slammed against America, it slammed against an insurmountable tide of power. It took a still confident America a bit longer to lead the world to devastate the Soviet Union, but win it did in the end. Still, there were some warning signs along the way as elites in the 1970s increasingly began to resemble the elites of their trans-Atlantic allies who lacked civilizational confidence and instead of confidently tapping the sinews of power of their own cultures, increasingly invested in international structures, institutions and norms to codify inertia – or which they hoped would at least — and hide their fading self-confidence.

Reading Putin and his intellectuals for years, it is this question which most animates him. The imperial expansion of geography is the aim, but his imagination that he can realize his ambitions emerge from his appreciation of the rot and corruption of the West, which he fingers as emanating from freedom itself rather than from the Western elites’ abandonment (rather than embrace) of their cultural identity and soul. For Putin, the West is a desert of nobody people, but the new Russia is a land of faith and a soul. His substance will vanquish our emptiness. In this civilizational challenge, Putin follows in the footsteps of the Hitlers, Ishiwara Kanjis, Mussolinis, Stalins, Nassers, Che Guevaras, Maos, Xis, Khomeiinis and bin-Ladins.

So where is America today as we enter the next great challenge? Do people outside America measure us as a rising confident civilization with a strong sense of who we are? Or do our urban and foreign policy elites — which after all is what is most visible to the outside, not the patriot with a pickup truck sitting in a diner in Fargo with a gun rack on the back window — either act with deep pessimism as if either we assume our own decline or behave as if we are a nobody people (no soul, no faith, no history, no identity)?

Putin, and for that matter Xi, ISIS, al Qaida, Iran too, measured us up as deficient. The real question, the answer to which will determine how far and fast the world will mobilize around the new order — which is not yet clearly either a cold war or a world war, but which is rapidly approaching somewhere on that level of seriousness — is whether people eventually see Putin’s, Xi’s, bin-Ladin’s and Khomeini’s assessment as the better bet or not.

Ukraine is an opportunity, not only a bellwether, in this regard. Putin views core elements of the West’s foundations with disdain. Our response to the Ukraine crisis ultimately must be a reassertion of our confidence as a civilization and the values (that unique combination of Greek, Roman, Judeo-Christian, Renaissance and early Enlightenment foundations) upon which it is grounded, not a specific policy or action.

The first signs are the American people are beginning to appreciate the true civilizational nature of this challenge. But our political elites face a reckoning. For many decades so far, they have failed us. Will our foreign policy be based on the platform of our culture and values, or on a ratatouille of academic theories, reactive scrambling and shifting values based on diplomatic expediency?

Meanwhile, in the Middle East: The Biden administration’s strategy is causing real problems

March 08, 2022

This article appeared in New York Daily News on March 8th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

Ukraine’s ongoing tragedy is now having dangerous ramifications in the Middle East, fueled by significant Biden administration policy failures. The United Arab Emirates, normally a staunch American ally, abstained recently on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Russia’s invasion. The reason: President Biden declined to relist Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who had repeatedly attacked civilian targets in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as a foreign terrorist organization. Biden had earlier removed the Houthis, Iran’s surrogates in Yemen’s civil war, from the list, purportedly to mitigate Yemen’s sustained humanitarian crisis.

The UAE pressed to reverse Biden’s delisting after early February Houthi attacks on civilian targets in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but the White House failed to act.

When Biden pressured the UAE, now a non-permanent Security Council member, to support his anti-Russia resolution, the UAE abstained instead. Embarrassing Biden reversals also include initially waiving, and now supporting, sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, which may have encouraged Moscow’s aggression.

Bumbling the Houthi threat reflects Biden’s profound misperceptions about what constitutes a serious menace to Middle East and global peace and security. Houthi strikes against civilian targets and threats to international shipping in the critical Bab-el-Mandeb Strait are, unfortunately, nothing new. Using missiles and drones, Houthi attacks increased markedly since mid-2019, along with increased Shia militia attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq. These dangers would not exist without Iranian weapons shipments, training, targeting and logistics.

Because of the Yemen civil war’s complex politics, deeply-rooted underlying causes and resistance to solution, outsiders often focus on the hardships the conflict has caused. While severe and enduring, these hardships hardly explain the conflict’s causes or who is culpable. Instead, pre-existing hostility toward Saudi Arabia and the UAE, unrelated to Yemen, have colored outside judgments. The Houthis played the “victim card,” and sympathetic Westerners were duped.

Biden announced he was ending American support for the Saudi war effort in Yemen in hopes of ending the conflict, although that military support ad already been considerably reduced. Nonetheless, the Houthis continued their military efforts without evincing any real interest in resolving the conflict.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Iran has largely escaped condemnation for meddling in Yemen, and for using the war to establish strategic positions literally in the backyards of its Arab enemies. Eliminating Tehran’s support to the Houthis would help end Yemen’s fratricide, and, equally importantly, end threats to commercial airports, oil infrastructure and other targets where innocent civilians live and work. Major airports are not far from urban population centers, and the reckless use of highly destructive weapons could easily cause mass-casualty events.
The Iran-Houthi alliance is almost entirely terrorist in its aims and methods. From its birth, Iran’s regime was a state sponsor of terrorism, so designated by Ronald Reagan in 1984. The Trump administration named the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran’s external military arm, to the foreign terrorists’ list in 2019. Iran’s ayatollahs have consistently pursued terrorism, from seizing U.S. hostages in 1979 to aiding Hamas, Hezbollah and Iraqi militias, and threatening Americans worldwide.

Even so, the Biden administration is still begging Iran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, an agreement fatally flawed from the outset, and getting worse with age.

The Houthis and their top leaders are also terrorists, as their behavior both inside Yemen and regionally amply demonstrates. As with the IRGC, the only legitimate complaint is that the U.S. government didn’t designate them as a foreign terrorist organization earlier. The designation expressly provided ways to ensure it did not impede delivery of humanitarian assistance to Yemeni civilians, UN protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Accordingly, while Yemen’s conflict remains complex and difficult, and not easily solvable, Iran’s presence is totally self-interested. It is not about Yemen, but about Iran’s efforts to achieve regional and religious hegemony through its own terrorism, assistance to terrorist groups and its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Unless and until Americans understand this reality, grave humanitarian challenges in Yemen will persist, and gullible Westerners will still believe they can make a viable agreement with Iran to limit its determined quest for nuclear weapons. But even if Houthis are returned to the foreign terrorist organization list, it is unclear the Biden administration understands these larger points.

Bolton is a former U.S. ambassador to the UN and former national security adviser.

Thinking strategically about Ukraine

March 04, 2022

This article appeared in The Hill on March 3rd, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

Just days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europeans and Biden administration supporters are already urging that we begin finding “off ramps” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. These sources counsel “moderating” the West’s current efforts to avoid “backing Putin into a corner.” Some focus particularly on Russia’s heightened nuclear alert status, or speculation about Putin’s mental stability.

This is exactly the wrong approach at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. It ignores both what’s actually happening in Ukraine, and the real point of Putin’s aggression: to weaken NATO and reestablish Moscow’s hegemony (or even sovereignty) over the former Soviet Union.

Make no mistake: The stakes are global, as China watches what Russia achieves in Europe to see what it can do in the Indo-Pacific. President Biden’s State of the-Union address, remarkably substance-free on national-security issues, only confirms that he is running out of ideas on Ukraine and the larger strategic challenges.

Having failed to deter Moscow’s unprovoked aggression against Kyiv; with economic sanctions ramped up only belatedly, and insufficient to halt the ongoing assault; and as Russian military forces continue their attacks, the West does not have a sufficient position of strength to contemplate finding Putin graceful exits. Concessions now will only encourage Putin to continue and substantially expand military efforts to achieve his objectives. 

Ironically, to say the least, we were finally moving in the opposite direction from finding “off ramps.” NATO’s resolve has been strengthened, although not enough. Outside NATO, a recent poll showed for the first time that a majority of Finland’s population supports NATO membership. This unprecedented 53 percent level of support is up dramatically from the last pre-invasion poll in 2017, which showed only 19 percent in favor. Support for NATO membership in Sweden has also reportedly risen to new highs. The prospect of more NATO on its northern flank can only depress Russia’s Defense Ministry.

In sanctions policy, the United Kingdom and Canada have been leading the way, while complaining quietly about the lack of sustained U.S. leadership. In Britain, especially, concerns are growing that the European Union (EU) rather than NATO will emerge as the West’s main engine of policymaking. London correctly worries that the EU’s congenital institutional myopia will lead to premature concessions, which Biden’s lethargy only reinforces.

Broaching “off ramps” now is dangerous. So far, Ukraine’s defenses have been remarkably strong, and the courage of its people readily apparent, disproving the refrain of America’s Kremlin surrogates that Russia conquering Ukraine is a “natural” reunion of a common people. Ukraine’s willingness to fight alone (the sad reality, Western illusions to the contrary notwithstanding) against aggression evidences its determination to maintain independence.

However, and without minimizing the importance of Ukraine’s spirit and strength, today’s highly fluid battlefield demonstrates that the West’s collective effort is insufficient. Moscow’s own mistakes significantly contributed to its relative lack of progress. In the war’s opening week, Putin tried to achieve too many objectives with inadequate human and materiel resources. By ignoring the ancient maxim to concentrate forces on fewer targets, Putin opened defensive opportunities that Ukraine’s military readily seized. Moreover, Russian logistical support for its lead combat elements seemed poorly planned and inadequate, as press and social media reports show repeatedly. 

These early failures and miscalculations cost Russia dearly and bought precious time for Ukraine’s defenders, but the “correlation of forces,” as they said in Soviet circles, is changing in the Kremlin’s favor. Over 80 percent of the troops garrisoned near Ukraine’s borders are now moving into action, with the rest following shortly. Russia’s mistakes will lead in due course to purges in its defense ministry, but the blunt reality is that Moscow still has time to get its act together.

Existing sanctions will not materially hamper Russia’s near-term war effort, and not necessarily in the long-term either. Iran, North Korea and Venezuela’s Maduro regime have all faced equal or more-severe sanctions regimes, and sadly they are still standing. Russia had ample advance notice of what was coming, and we may well find that those long weeks watching Russian military assets accumulate on Ukraine’s border were also long weeks where Russian assets were exiting vulnerable positions abroad. Even now, the EU is leaving two of Russia’s three largest banks connected to the SWIFT interbank messaging system.

Most importantly, until the West drives a stake through the heart of Russia’s energy sector, Moscow will continue to profit from this crisis. Europe’s reliance on Russian energy supplies could soon open debilitating loopholes in the sanctions if “off ramps” for Putin take priority.

The historical record does not provide a solid basis to believe in EU staying power, whatever the current rhetorical bravado. Russian hydrocarbon sales are reportedly down and selling at bargain-basement prices. The next step: more pressure.

Russia’s real territorial objectives in Ukraine are still, in my view, expanding control over (1) eastern and southern Ukraine, home to a predominantly culturally, linguistically and religiously Russian population; and (2) the entire Black Sea northern coast, including the port of Odessa, thus landlocking a rump Ukraine, and severely squeezing it economically. 

Russia’s success to date in eastern Ukraine has been limited. But in the south, striking out from Crimea and attacking from the Black Sea, Russia has achieved more, while Western media have focused on Kyiv and Kharkiv. Putin is therefore actually closer to success, his preferred “off-ramp,” than the West realizes.

In coming weeks, we must avoid “off ramps” or anything else that undercuts the imperative of increasing pressure on Moscow. For example, we should eviscerate Russia’s energy sector by prohibiting sales of hydrocarbons to all NATO and EU countries, and anyone else we can sign up. Dry up Putin’s revenues, which amount to 30 percent of Russia’s domestic economy and 60 percent of its export revenues, and make it expend its foreign currency reserves as fast as possible. Declare a visa ban on all Russian citizens, not just a few elite figures. There is much more to do.

But above all else, no “off ramps” should be visible while Moscow insists on sustained belligerence in its “near abroad” and its efforts to weaken NATO. This is not the time for tactical thinking about Ukraine alone, but for strategic thinking about global peace and security.

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

Entente Multiplies the Threat From Russia and China

March 01, 2022

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on February 15th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

It’s been more than 75 years since the U.S. last faced an axis of strategic threats. Fortunately, that axis proved dysfunctional. Had it been otherwise, Japan and Germany would have systematically attacked the Soviet Union, not America, first.

Our current strategic adversaries, Russia and China, aren’t an axis. They’ve formed an entente, tighter today than any time since de-Stalinization split the communist world. Involving some mutual interests and objectives, displays of support, and coordination, ententes are closer than mere bilateral friendships but discernibly looser than full alliances. The pre-World War I Triple Entente (Russia, France and Britain) is the modern era’s prototype.

Moscow is junior partner to Beijing, the reverse of Cold War days. The Soviet Union’s dissolution considerably weakened Russia, while China has had enormous economic growth since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Russia’s junior-partner status looks permanent, given disparities in population and economic strength (whatever today’s military balance), but Vladimir Putin seems determined to move closer to China.

This entente will last. Economic and political interests are mutually complementary for the foreseeable future. Russia is a significant source of hydrocarbons for energy-poor China and a longtime supplier of advanced weapons. Russia has hegemonic aspirations in the former Soviet territory, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. China has comparable aspirations in the Indo-Pacific region and the Middle East (and world-wide in due course). The entente is growing stronger, as China’s unambiguous support for Russia in Europe’s current crisis proves.

Washington would undoubtedly be more secure if it could sunder the Moscow-Beijing link, but our near-term prospects are limited. This entente, along with many other factors, renders especially shortsighted the common assertion that opposing China’s existential threat to the West requires reducing or even withdrawing U.S. support for allies elsewhere.

Barack Obama’s “pivot” or “rebalancing” to Asia produced a decade of variations on the theme that China matters and other threats don’t. Donald Trump agreed, although he wanted primarily to strike “the biggest trade deal in history” or impose tariffs if he couldn’t, along with assaulting China for the “Wuhan virus” when it became politically convenient. Some analysts argue that the global terrorist threat is diminishing and that hydrocarbon resources are becoming less important because of the green-fuel revolution. Both would mean that we could safely reduce U.S. attention to the Middle East. Thus, Joe Biden argued that withdrawing from Afghanistan was required to increase attention to China’s menace. Sen. Josh Hawley and others even believe we shouldn’t be deeply involved in the Eastern Europe crisis, to avoid diverting attention and resources from countering Beijing.

Such assertions about reduced or redirected U.S. global involvement are strategic errors. They reflect the misperception that our international attention and resources are zero-sum assets, so that whatever notice is paid to interests and threats other than China is wasted.

This is false, both its underlying zero-sum premise and in underestimating non-Chinese threats. Our problem is failing to devote anything like adequate attention or resources to protecting vital global interests. Political elites (who are noticeably lacking in figures like Truman and Reagan) focus on exotic social theories and domestic economics rather than national-security threats. America’s own shortsightedness, particularly an inadequate defense budget, makes us vulnerable to foreign peril. Washington must pivot not among competing world-wide priorities, but away from domestic navel-gazing.

Critically, those who exclusively fear China ignore the Russia-China entente. The entente serves to project China’s power through Russia, as Beijing also projects power through North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. Moreover, Beijing closely assesses Washington’s reactions to crises like the one in Ukraine to decide how to structure future provocations.

Mr. Biden had it exactly backward in Afghanistan. The U.S. withdrawal not only signaled insularity and weakness, but allowed China and Russia to extend their influence in Kabul, Central Asia and the Middle East. Beijing and Moscow thereby also became more confident and assertive. And that’s not to mention that even the Biden administration admits that terrorism’s threat is rising again in Afghanistan.

Beijing is not a regional threat but a global one. Treating the rest of the world as a third-tier priority, a distraction, the U.S. plays directly into China’s hands. Pivoting to Asia wouldn’t strengthen America against China. It would have precisely the opposite effect and weaken our global posture.

We need to see this big picture before the Russia-China entente grows up to be an axis.

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

A Littoral Foothold Strategy for Africa

March 01, 2022

By Dr. David Wurmser

One of the most intense and potentially most important battlegrounds of the new Cold War between the United States and China is sub-Saharan Africa. Absent from the competition, the United States, and for the most part Europe, Japan and other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries as well, have largely ceded the entire sub-Saharan continent to China over the last few decades as part of China’s amorphous Belt and Road slogan. And yet, at the same time, the OECD lands need with great urgency to begin to find alternatives to raw and rare materials to replace those coming from either Chinese or Russian origins. In this context, the United States and its OECD allies have little choice but to consider how the stability and development of sub-Saharan Africa, the proper husbanding of its resources, and the development of its ports are becoming a vital US interest.

The bad news is China has spent several decades anchoring its dominance on the continent. China is not just ahead of Europe and the US; the latter two are not even on the playing field yet. The good news is two-fold. First, China’s heavy-handed and exploitative behavior has left many African nations bristling and seeking to reorient to the West, provided it pursues appropriate development strategies while leveraging their resources. Second, rapid shifts in the energy sector – both in terms of focusing on non-hydrocarbon energy production (such as nuclear) as well as the rise in importance of energy storage in addition to production – are transforming global industry but demanding many raw materials still untapped which have remained out of China’s grip in Sub-Saharan Africa. The United States, leading its OECD allies, thus, has an opportunity as well as need to develop a strategy to gain a foothold on the continent which will serve as a model to offer African nations a different, more mutually beneficial path than that offered by the exploitative Chinese Belt and Road campaign.

Background – Chinese neo-Imperialism in Africa

Over the last decades, China has aggressively pursued its interests in sub-Saharan Africa under the ”Belt and Road” slogan. To a lesser extent, Russia has cultivated its ties as well. While the precise meaning of China’s “Belt and Road” slogan is at best misty – perhaps intentionally so — the pattern under which China operated was clear and consistent. China offered the promise of vast economic development by building grand infrastructure projects, starting with the Chinese financed and built “Tazara” railway project in 1975 to transport primarily copper to the Tanzanian coast from landlocked Zambia. China began the pattern of a trifecta win for itself: 1) witheringly indebting countries, 2) exporting its own labor and goods to build the railway, which then 3) serviced China’s keen interest in securing a critical resource, which in this case was copper. Recent rail projects dominated by China are the Kinshasa-Mombasa port railway in Kenya, and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway in Ethiopia and Djibouti ports – essentially granting China control of Africa’s Indian Ocean coastal ports from the Red Sea to the Tanzanian coast. China’s EXIM bank provided 70 percent of the funding for this grand project.

These projects are often of highly dubious utility, but China offered to provide the funding, the expertise, materials (capital equipment) and even labor force to execute the projects. As such, it essentially exported internal Chinese labor pressures and guaranteed export of Chinese equipment at the cost of a foreign country’s incurring insurmountable debt. Of course, these grand projects involved very little local labor or industry, ensuring that the Chinese labor market and its industrial export sectors would be the prime benefactors.

The infrastructure built was thus grand but basically useless other than for the Chinese, and most became unmaintainable boondoggles that in the end left nations with jumbo debts and white elephant memorials. The Addis Ababa-Djibouti line, for example, was billed and sold to these two nations as the spine of a new Africa rail network to service the passenger pressures emanating from the rapidly urbanizing African population. And yet, this rail network carries only about 84,000 people per year last year – far less than the Washington, DC subway carries in one day. This essentially leaves only freight service of consequence, most of which services Chinese firms extracting raw materials from Africa to fuel and supply industry and employment in China, leaving almost no economic and industrial growth in Africa itself. Overall, this project is returning only about USD 40 million in revenue per year, while the cost of operating the line is USD 70 million. There is a similar story with the Nairobi-Mombasa line in Kenya, 90% of which was financed by China’s EXIM bank to the tune of USD 4.7 billion.1 Not only are both Ethiopia and Djibouti unable to even begin recouping enough money to begin to pay the debt on initial investment and construction expenses (Kenya is unable to pay the USD 245 million loan payment due already on its railway to China), but both are continually hemorrhaging more money per year on the gap between revenue and ongoing operating costs.2 The result: Djibouti became China’s first military base in Africa, turning the Horn of Africa into a Chinese strategic asset.

Essentially, these projects – the Chinese funded portion of which amounts to 42 percent of all construction and infrastructure spending on the African continent – have become a modern rendition of colonialism following the worst practices of the old colonial powers of a century or two ago. Having ironically originated in the 1955 Bandung Conference, which was ostensibly organized to de-colonialize the world from Western imperial control, these projects are predatory and serve exclusively Chinese economic and strategic interests, not those of Africans.

There was also a geopolitical dimension to this ensnarement via debt. China was quick to follow by leveraging the debt and the attending erosion of sovereignty not only to secure access and control local resources (rare earth as well as critical raw materials), establish dominance in many critical ports, but also to demand fealty in global international institutions, such as UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Commission or the UN General Assembly and Security Council itself – leading to such embarrassments as Tedros Ghebreyesus to lead the WHO.

Recently, China forged new alliances with Iran and Turkey, reducing both to dependence on Beijing in exchange for Beijing’s floating their sinking economies. This not only strongly positioned China as a dominant player along the old silk and caravan routes of Central Asia and the Near East, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it further entrenched Chinese control in sub-Sharan Africa by exploiting Iranian/Hizballah networks in sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey’s machinations in eastern Africa (Somalia especially) and the Maghreb (such as western Libya), as well as Turkey’s robust port operations companies. As such, the West now finds itself having essentially surrendered sub-Saharan Africa, its nations, its resources and its ports strategically on the eve of an era of heightened geo-political tensions.

And yet, China may have seized the wallets and resources of the African continent, but they have not won the hearts and minds. China – and many of its admirers among the Western elites — may tout the success of its “soft-power” influence strategy, but underneath, China is really facing a soon-to-erupt geyser of pent-up local resentment at indebtedness, loss of independence, and the exploitation of resources in ways that produce neither African wealth nor local industrial development. The emerging resentment to China’s heavy-handed subordination of African economies has opened unprecedented opportunities to the West to reenter the continent, provided it is done so on a very different footing than the Chinese and encourages local wealth accumulation and industrial development in ways that help these nations regain their independence.

Industrial and Strategic Shifts Changing the Role of Africa

The United States officially began to take note of this gathering danger and rising opportunity on the African continent during the Trump administration. The NSC under Ambassador John Bolton coordinated with Ambassador Peter Pham at State (Secretary

of State Mike Pompeo’s Sahel region and de facto Great Lakes/sub-Saharan Africa point person) to developing a strategy to help states across Africa break their entrapment via “predatory” debt to China and to some extent Russia as well. The strategy was first revealed in December 2018 by Ambassador Bolton at a speech to the Heritage Foundation. Apparently, the classified version of the strategy outlined was reported to be far more expansive and specific.

Bolton described China thus in targeting this strategy:

“China uses bribes, opaque agreements and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands. Its investment ventures are riddled with corruption and do not meet the same environmental or ethical standards as US development projects.”

After Ambassador’s Bolton’s departure, Matthew Pottinger at the NSC (Deputy NSC Adv) continued to coordinate with Pham to try to bend the IMF — by campaigning to secure a sympathetic leader there in order to restructure sovereign debts and begin to challenge China’s domination of the African continent via indebtedness. But the problem was that the IMF and other US structures (and especially US NGOs who were under the sway of George Soros) placed demands on these African leaders for restricting loans that were tantamount to their endangering their own power. Dangling the prospect of governmental suicide is hardly an effective enticement to strategically reorient toward the West away from China or Russia. As such, the effort launched by Bolton and Pham, and furthered by Pottinger, faced a constant headwind that left only minor initial progress by the end of the Trump era. Still, the contours remained and, as Ambassador Pham noted, continuity in Africa policy historically persists between administrations, and it likely will continue to some extent going forward into the Biden years.

But substantial changes in industry and patterns of demand of raw materials offer the West a brief window to break China’s grip on Africa. Specifically, the transformation of the energy sector from exclusive focus on energy production to additional focus now on energy storage changes the mix of raw materials in high demand. While China has locked up many sources of critical raw materials in sub-Sharan Africa, it did not entirely anticipate the speed with which a new category of raw materials would be demanded – such as lithium and graphite. Having left such critical materials still up for grabs is a strategic lacuna of China’s and a great opportunity of ours. It leads to a unique opportunity for the West to try to help African nations, many of whom bristle with great

resentment not only at their loss of sovereignty to China but also at the complete absence of China’s use of local labor or industry, to wean themselves off of Chinese debt, build wealth through the export of these raw materials, allow for local employment and ultimately give African nations the ability to leverage the wealth to finally develop their economies properly. And a coherent strategy with our allies to help some of these nations — starting with some sort of littoral foothold — to mine, develop industry to employ locals, and build modern and efficient port structures not only will further contribute to local employment, but also help begin the process of nudging China out of critical areas.

The Great Lakes Basin as a Foothold for Change

There are several potential openings in Africa at this point, but the Great Lakes Basin and adjacent lands might be a place to start. One of the key principles upon which Bolton, Pham and Pottinger focused was the need to replace the predatory practices of China and Russia with genuine development policies that allow local African governments to become more independent, accrue national wealth and genuinely grow the local economies and expand local industry and employment.

With the vast debt, however, with which China has saddled many of these nations, they must carefully but aggressively leverage their natural resources to build national wealth, wean themselves off Chinese debt, and establish sovereign wealth funds as vehicles to grow the prosperity and reinvest revenues in their economies and when necessary and economically prudent, build out infrastructure.

While the politics of some nations can be challenging, the geology of the Great Lakes Basin is particularly promising. Burundi, in addition to copper, nickel, cobalt and vanadium also has rare earth elements. Its Waga, the Musongati and the Nyabikere deposits rich in nickel, cobalt and copper – are all critical for energy transmission and storage — are already owned by the UK’s Kermas Group rather than China. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the source of a great deal with the world’s copper and cobalt.

And then there is Tanzania, which has substantial deposits of the critical raw materials of graphite and lithium. The Great Lakes Basin, especially Tanzania, might thus represent an interesting place to begin. The graphite resources in Tanzania are naturally recurring jumbo-flake deposits, which are practically non-existent elsewhere other than synthetically produced but are critical for the nuclear power industry, particularly in encasing spent nuclear fuel.

Flake graphite is also critical for making lithium-ion batteries, but even more necessary in making fuel cells, meaning any eco-friendly vehicle requires it. Not only is graphite — which in Tanzania occurs as a very pure deposit — as a whole critical for so many industrial sectors at this point, as its strength and light weight allows for replacement of metal, but the jumbo-flake graphite occurring in Tanzanian deposits are also critical for the nuclear power industry.

As the current limits on wind and solar power become apparent, the move away from hydrocarbons by Western economies will highlight the continued importance of nuclear power. Over time it is likely that the demand for the materials needed to supply the nuclear power sector will only grow in importance as many nations begin to realize there is no path to green energy that also includes rapid and total simultaneous elimination of both all hydrocarbon and nuclear power. Germany will soon discover that its decision to shut down its last power plants was a significant misstep in strategic and energy policy. It reduced Germany to dependence on Russian natural gas supply just as the Ukrainian crisis began in earnest. It is hard to imagine that Germany will likely not eventually be forced to reconsider this decision. France, in contrast to Germany, has already realized the continued potential of nuclear power. President Emmanuel Macron announced on February 10, 2022, that it will place a priority on reinvigorating its nuclear power industry to usher in a French nuclear industry “renaissance.” And even the United States over recent weeks has returned to considering nuclear power as a “green” energy, and thus a rehabilitation of our nuclear power industry appears more desirable. Indeed, even Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said in early February that, “U.S. nuclear power plants are essential to achieving President Biden’s climate goals and that the DOE is committed to keeping 100% clean electricity flowing and preventing premature closures.” The more the OECD lands return to nuclear power, the more they will value many of the resources the Great Lakes Basin hold, not the least important of which is the jumbo-flake graphite deposits of Tanzania.

As far as infrastructure to extract these materials or downstream industrial use of them to develop local industry there needs to be a focused port through which to send these products to the world. Sadly, Djibouti has allowed the Doraleh container port to fall to Chinese control, and thus the Horn of Africa. But the strategicallylocated port of Dar Es-Salaam, which is a deep water port in a strategically critical area, is still out of China’s grip and adds to Tanzania’s importance, especially given how Tanzania suddenly finds itself in possession of two critical raw materials of great value over which China has not yet asserted control.

So by serendipity of geopolitics, economic change, and supply demands, Tanzania manifests a unique nexus between a government which is eager, indeed very eager, to wean itself off of Chinese debt, has world class resources that service growing industrial demand in exactly those materials that can be tapped and used as a foundation not only to extract itself from that debt but for broader industrial investment, and a geopolitically important location with direct access to the sea and the potential for making Dar Es-Salaam a major West Indian Ocean port and hub. These resources can help in what might be considered a US “foothold” strategy, wherein the combination of Tanzanian government willingness and export resources availability with rising global demands, and a critically strategic port can be combined under US and European encouragement to become a foothold and serve as a model for other nations in the sub-Continent to strip China of its influence and dominant presence as well as deny China, along with Russia, their domination over critical resources. Adding the other Great Lakes Basin countries to this bloc can create an industrial/resources development zone with its own port structure, to anchor an African revival and US strategy.

Conclusion

It is likely that in the coming years, the emergence of a new Russian civilizational challenge to the West will combine with the increasing assertiveness of Chinese communist leaders to painfully remind the West that its geopolitical inattentiveness and excessive reliance on cheap production costs in China had led it to be highly vulnerable to geopolitical blackmail. Supply chains, raw material access, energy production and storage capabilities, mining capacity among other things are now preserved only at the indulgence of these emerging adversaries.

As the ensuing threat is more broadly realized, the West will begin to mobilize, both in terms of reconstituting its power, but also addressing its geopolitical position, reinforcing its structure of alliances, strengthening its global presence (including in a network of port structures) and remedying its supply chain dependencies.

At the same time, there will be dramatic shifts in the mix of industries and materials needed. On the one hand, change from production alone to linked production-storage-use structures in the energy sectors, and the rise of a new cluster of materials (hitherto of far more limited use if any) needed for cutting edge industries – such as neodymium for new non-polar magnetic structures in quantum computing – will change our understanding of the geography of economic reliance. For example, lithium mines will become as strategically important as oil wells. These changes will make parts of the world important that were hitherto largely ignored.

In short, the West finds itself with a great economic and strategic opportunity if it embarks on a plan to partner with an African nation or nations who seek to regain their independence from China’s tightening grip. And this can serve as a foundation for the West to establish a foothold.

But with one significant caveat.

Predatory haughtiness burdens China and Russia in their relations with Africa. Africans are beginning to see their “altruism” for what it is: neo-colonialism. As such, when Ambassador Bolton unveiled the new Africa strategy in 2018, he carefully noted the predatory nature of China’s involvement, and emphasized the need for partnership with the US rather than control by it. And it was consistent with a broader change in US policy globally in the last several years. The US had always correctly used the language of partnership and decolonization, but in practice, our diplomacy and strategic posture was based on control. It was perhaps a function of the Cold War when containment demanded a tightly controlled alliance structure to damn up Soviet expansion and maintain a stable cordon around it. But any policy on Africa that aims to succeed will assert American leadership and strategic confidence, but at the same time demonstrate to Africans that we are the antithesis of Chinese Communist haughtiness or Russian

John Bolton on the lessons to be drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

March 01, 2022

This article appeared in The Economist on February 28th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

The West must not lapse back into complacency about potential aggressors, says a former US national security adviser

JUST DAYS into what might be a protracted Russia-Ukraine war, politicians and pundits are already drawing sweeping conclusions. For some, Russia’s failure to gain a swift, decisive, low-casualty victory renders Vladimir Putin’s downfall inevitable, and imminent. For others, a Russian victory, however bloody, directly threatens Ukraine’s neighbours and would mean sustained tensions in Europe. Which is correct, I can’t tell. Edmund Burke’s advice is, as usual, apt: “Please God, I will walk with caution, whenever I am not able clearly to see my way before me.” A few prudential lessons, however, are clear.

First, pay attention to what adversaries say. In 2005 Mr Putin said that the Soviet Union’s disintegration was the 20th century’s greatest geopolitical catastrophe. Slowly but systematically since then, he has sought to reverse the collapse, most visibly through invasions, annexations and creating independent states—in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014). Mr Putin has also used less kinetic means to bring states like Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan into closer Russian orbits.

While this unfolded, the West remained largely insouciant: not spending adequate amounts on defence; growing increasingly reliant on Russian oil and gas supplies; and mirror-imaging Russia’s leadership as Europeans-in-waiting (ie, just like us except not as refined). Those days may be over, but Winston Churchill’s insight as to “the confirmed unteachability of mankind” remains profound. Been reading speeches by Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Khamenei and Kim Jong Un recently?

Second, the aggressive use of military force is back in style. The “rules-based international order” just took a direct hit, not that it was ever as sturdy as imagined in elite salons and academic cloisters. Although the steps taken to prevent Russia’s invasion and aid Ukraine in advance were obviously inadequate, the strength of the international reaction once the shooting actually started is impressive. It helps immeasurably that, so far, Ukraine’s resistance has been stiff. But let’s not be naive. Reports that Russian forces got lost, ran out of fuel, surrendered readily or even refused to cross into Ukraine all bespeak a Russian military not nearly so prepared, in morale or resources as Mr Putin believed.

The real unknown remains whether the widespread spontaneous outrage is sustainable, or whether the West lapses back into complacency regarding Russia and other potential international aggressors. World peace is not at hand. Rhetoric and virtue-signalling are no substitute for new strategic thinking and higher defence budgets. Germany’s commitment on February 27th to meet a commitment it had already made in 2014 to spend 2% of its GDP on defence merits applause. More will be merited when we see the colour of its money.

There has rightly been growing attention to the enormous threat China poses to Taiwan’s independence. So grave is it that Abe Shinzo, a former Japanese prime minister, and others have advised Washington to abandon “strategic ambiguity” over whether it will defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. The Japanese now fully understand that an attack on Taiwan is an attack on Japan.

North Korea’s threat to South Korea is neither trivial nor a cold-war relic, especially in light of Pyongyang’s increasingly successful nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programmes. For Beijing, the prison-state North is an asset with which to threaten the western Pacific and beyond. South Korea’s impending presidential election will reveal much about the impact of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and its implications for smaller countries abutting large, former-Communist, land empires.

In the Middle East, Iran proves that extremist, expansionist theology is still alive and well. Tehran’s hostile activities parallel Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile threats, and extend to providing drones and missiles to Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack civilian targets in nearby countries; aiding terrorist outfits like Hamas and Hizbullah; and using conventional forces and terrorist tactics in Iraq and Syria to advance Iran’s interests.

Third, the new Russia-China entente is rolling along. Breast-beating about isolating Russia refers primarily to isolating it from Europe (which has, entirely through its own fault over several decades, become over-dependent on Russia for energy supplies). It remains to be seen whether the rest of the world will concur in the long run. Merely as one example, when Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Ukraine invasion, India, China and the United Arab Emirates all abstained. China may well be providing Russia with a tacit insurance policy through a willingness to buy any oil and gas Europe decides to embargo (not that Europe has acted yet; it’s cold in Berlin).

More important is the strategic positioning of the Russia-China entente. Although not yet a full-scale alliance, the Beijing-Moscow relationship is something the West feared during cold-war days. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were determined to “play the China card” to widen the gap between Beijing and Moscow that had been opening since Nikita Khrushchev launched de-Stalinisation. There is no doubt the entente has legs, after years in which the two countries’ interests have been converging. With both empires now showing their fangs, playing a new strategy “card” to split them will be difficult. The entente is likely to be a threatening reality for decades.

In sum, international threats are back with a vengeance. The critical unanswered question is whether the United States and the West generally can shake off their lassitude. ■

John Bolton was America’s national security adviser in 2018-19 for President Donald Trump. He was ambassador to the United Nations in 2005-06 and served in the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. 

Broken Biden sank the West’s efforts to stop Putin invading Ukraine

February 28, 2022

This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on February 28th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

President Joe Biden has explained why he failed to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He admitted that he had no idea what he was doing.

For months, Nato members and other governments thought they were working to deter Vladimir Putin from unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. The entire debate centred on choosing the most effective measures to convince Putin of the enormous consequences he and Russia would face if they resorted to military force.

Western leaders asked themselves what combination of preventative actions, threats of economic sanctions and even – in the minds of some, myself included – military force would be the most effective deterrent against a Russian invasion. What measures would persuade Moscow that the costs of any military action would be prohibitive, and more serious for Russia than any possible benefits?

Today, it is tragically obvious this collective effort failed. Last Thursday, at a White House press conference, we may have learnt why. Biden admitted that he never believed his threats to impose economic sanctions against Russia, and other steps the West might take if the Kremlin “further invaded” Ukraine, would deter Putin. The transcript is admittedly confused, as are so many of Biden’s unscripted remarks, but the meaning is clear.

A reporter asked: “Sir, sanctions clearly have not been enough to deter Vladimir Putin to this point. What is going to stop him?” Biden answered: “No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening.” That was news to Washington and beyond, where people believed their deliberations and preparations were intended to do precisely that.

Another reporter asked: “If sanctions cannot stop President Putin, what penalty can?” Biden said: “I didn’t say sanctions couldn’t stop him.” Perhaps stunned at Biden contradicting his own words, uttered just moments before, the reporter tried again: “But you’ve been talking about the threat of these sanctions for several weeks now.” Biden interrupted: “Yes, but the threat of the sanctions and imposing the sanctions and seeing the effect of the sanctions are two different things… He’s going to begin to see the effect of the sanctions.” If that wasn’t bad enough, Biden said repeatedly that “this is going to take time”, as though every day in Ukraine isn’t agonising.

Translating Biden’s answers into sensible English leads to disturbing conclusions. Possibly, he simply doesn’t understand what deterrence is, and that it almost always includes credible threats of future punishment to affect an adversary’s current actions. It hardly inspires confidence in US leadership when its President fails to grasp the vital concept that kept the West safe during the Cold War’s nuclear standoff. Yesterday, Putin showed what he thought of Biden’s leadership by placing Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert – a provocative move, to say the least.

It may be that Biden was never confident Putin could be deterred, certainly not by threats alone. In that case, unless Biden was prepared to accept the inevitable devastation that an invasion of Ukraine would cause, he should have spared no effort to develop additional steps to prevent it. He did not, despite widespread, urgent advice that the sanctions he threatened were insufficient, and that real-time costs had to be imposed on Putin before he initiated military action.

The rubble in Biden’s mind is what it is. We should not await improvement. Instead, we immediately need new ideas that can change the direction of events and impact Putin and Russia.

The Ukrainian people are certainly doing their part. They are fighting hard and courageously, and their spirit is high. The contemptuous riposte of a small outpost in the Black Sea (“Russian warship, go f— yourself”) reminds us all of General McAuliffe’s equally defiant response to German demands he surrender during the Battle of the Bulge: “Nuts!”

One new idea is for Nato and EU countries simply to bar entry to any Russian citizens. Such a visa ban is clear, sweeping, immediate and readily enforceable. This would be far more shocking to Russians than sanctions against a small number of high-ranking targets. (Now under both Russian and Chinese sanctions myself, I can say confidently they don’t affect me at all. I only regret I didn’t have any assets Russia and China could have seized!) We could go further and expel Russians already in Western countries.

Some will say this is too harsh and disruptive. Really? Ask Ukraine what harsh and disruptive mean. The West has failed to deter Russia’s attack, and its post-invasion sanctions have so far been pinpricks, hardly even touching Russia’s critical energy sector. If there are better ideas than a visa ban, let’s get them out in public. Otherwise, we will just be sitting back watching the casualty lists get longer.

John Bolton is a former US national security adviser

Atomic Bluff? Why Putin Placed Russia’s Nuclear Forces On High Alert

February 27, 2022

This article appeared in 19FortyFive on February 27th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

Perhaps because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not gone nearly as quickly or decisively as he expected, Vladimir Putin is now trying to raise the stakes. Or at least pulse rates and blood pressures among skittish Western elites. His Sunday announcement that he had ordered Moscow’s nuclear deterrent forces to high alert produced all the publicity he must have expected, at home and abroad.

The actual operational consequences of the announcement remain unclear, but whether it is something more than information statecraft is doubtful. Overreacting or underreacting would give Putin more than he deserves.

For the Kremlin, this is an unusually late salvo in the Ukraine propaganda battle that Russia has been losing badly. Since launching the invasion Thursday, official pronouncements from Moscow have been very few, and mostly innocuous at that. In stunning contrast, Ukrainian officials, at the national and local levels, have been prolific disseminators of information, in traditional and social media.  Western media reporting on Ukraine have amplified this information with videos, photos, and interviews with private Ukrainian citizens and soldiers, facilitating widespread dissemination of every piece of good news. There have even been media coverage adverse from around Russia, behind the lines, which Moscow has had mixed success in suppressing.

As in any propaganda war, the veracity of much of what is being said is still open to question, e.g., whether the Ukrainians on Snake Island were killed as Kyiv claimed, or taken prisoner as Moscow now says, after their iconic response to Russian admonitions to surrender. Winston Churchill rightly said that “[I]n wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” No one should be surprised if Ukraine isn’t well aware of that unpleasant but very omnipresent necessity.

By playing the nuclear card in Russia’s information-warfare deck, Putin aims to achieve two goals. First, he is appealing to his fellow citizens, continuing efforts to persuade them he simply had no choice but to invade Ukraine, largely because of NATO threats and historical grievances dating to World War II. That propaganda campaign inside Russia has not gone well, and Putin could readily have concluded he needed something more sensational to get people’s attention and rally them around his flag.  And it couldn’t hurt the morale of Russian troops already in combat in Ukraine to know that Putin was showing their ace of spades as a backup. Whether this gambit works domestically or not is a different matter.

Putin’s real audience, however, was almost certainly political leaders in America and Europe that he considers week-kneed. Critical to producing the desired propaganda effect in foreign countries is the well-known reality that Russian military doctrine explicitly contemplates the first use of nuclear weapons, emphatically so at the tactical or battlefield level. Those in the West predisposed to assume the fetal position at the mere mention of nuclear weapons, and their numbers are substantial, are likely Putin’s main target. How well he succeeds, we shall soon see.

There must be no wavering in NATO’s continued urgent supply of weapons and other assistance to Ukraine’s government. There is nothing negotiable here with Russia, including at the possible peace talks coming soon at some point on the Ukraine-Belarus border. If the United States demonstrates any hesitation here, it will only ignite even more jitters in Europe, where displays of fortitude in the Ukraine crisis have been higher than expected, so far.

There remains the possibility that Putin is actually deadly serious about the imminent use of Russian nuclear capabilities in the Ukraine theater. Perhaps things are actually going even worse for Russia than already reported in Western media. Putin could worry that a coming military debacle would suffice to have him removed from power, and perhaps even collapse the entire regime he and his cohorts have created. In such a desperate situation, using nuclear weapons would create an entirely new scenario. Putin could assign blame to others for Russia’s conventional military failures, and use the radical uncertainty of the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since 1945 to cling to power.

This scenario is unlikely, but obviously deeply concerning. To date, the Biden administration has flooded the airwaves with intelligence information about the Kremlin’s capabilities and plans before Putin’s invasion began, unfortunately to no deterrent effect, and perhaps too promiscuously. If, however, there is ever a moment to use intelligence declassification in an information warfare effort, this is it.

In the meantime, we have much to be done both in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world where our adversaries may try to take advantage of the priority we are rightly according to Ukraine. Putin’s nuclear threat needs to be assessed seriously but not reflexively.

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

Gradual Sanctions Against Russia are a Loser

February 27, 2022

This article appeared in The New York Post on February 27th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

The Biden Administration has been explicit that it is pursuing a strategy of “graduated escalation” in imposing sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine. This approach is virtually certain to be less effective in imposing economic hardship on Russia than a more robust effort, thereby prolonging Ukraine’s agony and postponing Russia’s isolation. Gradual escalation in economic warfare carries precisely the same risks as in kinetic warfare; the enemy has a say in both cases. Biden could be introducing us to to the Vietnam of economic sanctions.

Indeed, to all outwards appearances, Biden’s graduated-escalation policy is motivated largely by domestic American political considerations, especially regarding Russia’s energy sector. With U.S. inflation high and rising, economic pain at home is the last thing the White House wants, especially soaring oil and gas prices. Consumers feel the squeeze not only when they fill their gas tanks, but in their other purchases that require transporting good to stores or front porches, especially food.

A little history on sanctions and recent U.S. foreign policy. It says something about today’s Democratic Party that Woodrow Wilson’s views are too hard-line to contemplate. Wilson, amidst his prolonged reveries about the League of Nations, strongly advocated using economic sanctions in lieu of military force to resolve international disputes. He called sanctions “a peaceful, silent deadly remedy,” and “a hand upon the throat of the offending nation.” Too much for the Biden Administration.

America’s experience with sanctions has been mixed, and suggests several conditions for effectiveness. First, sanctions should be imposed swiftly and by surprise if possible, to prevent targets from taking precautionary or protective steps to mitigate the sanctions’ impact. That obviously did not happen with Russia, international sanctions having been threatened for months, and even if not known in precise detail, easily imaginable. If Russia is not prepared for the measures already imposed so far, the Kremlin is guilty of governance malpractice.

Second, sanctions should be as sweeping and comprehensive as possible, since no sanctions will be completely effective. Lesser measures produce lesser results. Phrases like “targeted sanctions” sound good in diplomatic communiques, but broad-gauge sanctions are far more likely to cause sustained pain. Even history’s most-extensive sanctions, the UN Security Council measures against Iraq after invading Kuwait, did not ultimately succeed in forcing Saddam Hussein out. Concern for second-order impacts of sanctions on America’s economy is warranted, but sanctions should maximize harm to the target, with other measures separately protecting the domestic economy. Dialing down sanctions to protect the sanction-imposer does far more to shield the target than Biden realizes.

Finally, sanctions should go for the jugular. With Russia, its very existence as a major threat relies on the revenues from its oil and gas production and exports. As some wags have said, it’s more a big gas station than a real national economy. Russian earnings from hydrocarbon sales internationally totaled 60% of its export revenues in 2019, and forty percent of its national-government budget. Russia’s dependence on oil and gas revenues has grown steadily over the last eight years.

The Biden Administration argues that blocking Russian hydrocarbon sales would not immediately damage Russia because of currency reserves accumulated in anticipation of just such sanctions. Of course, many more non-hydrocarbon sanctions are also required than currently announced, also hastening expending the reserves. The aggregate effect of more robust and comprehensive sanctions, including particularly oil-and-gas sanctions, would strangle Russia’s government and broader economy.

The Administration’s misguided graduated-escalation strategy and failure to strike Russia’s energy sector unfortunately reinforce one another, providing Putin a lifeline. Postponing any sanctions now, especially against energy, only sustains Moscow’s war machine. If Biden wants to keep U.S. hydrocarbon prices down for political reasons, he should consider the supply side: U.S. production increases, quickly available through already-existing horizontal-drilling and fracking infrastructure, could substantially mitigate price rises on American consumers.

Europeans may have a harder time, entirely through their own fault, and contrary to U.S. warnings dating to Ronald Reagan against depending on Russian energy sources. And what better opportunity or higher motive for Germany and other governments to force their economies toward green energy than supporting the courageous Ukrainian people. No one is asking for unnecessary sacrifice, but no anti-aggression policy in Ukraine is cost free. That is the reality of a globalized economy. Otherwise, the West’s policy is simply, “we support Ukraine, but not when it is inconvenient.”

It’s time to squeeze the Kremlin hard, not engage in semiotic warfare, gradual escalation, and pearl clutching. Drive a stake through Russia’s energy sector. Now.

The battle for the soul of the Republican Party has just begun 

February 11, 2022

This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on February 11th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

‘President Trump is wrong.” With these words last Friday, former vice president Mike Pence drew an unambiguous red line in the fight for the Republican Party’s future. Although the battle began well before January 6 last year, when Pence rejected Trump’s direction to subvert the Constitution when counting the Electoral College’s vote, Pence’s steadfastness and clarity come at a critical moment.

As the conservative-libertarian Federalist Society was applauding Pence, the Republican National Committee tragically voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in a House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 riots. This self-inflicted wound evokes the remark attributed to the Marquis de Talleyrand: “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake.”

Pence’s words mean inevitably that Republicans must choose sides between supporting Trump’s dangerous effort, in his own recent words, to “overturn the election,” or Pence’s adherence to the clear Constitutional text. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s sharp criticism of the Cheney-Kinzinger censure on Tuesday underlines the importance of Pence’s stance. This issue will now play out in two ways: constitutionally, as people align with either Trump’s view or Pence’s, between which there is no compromise; and politically, in the race for 2024’s Republican presidential nomination.6 sec

On the substance of the Constitutional issue, the merits are entirely with Pence. Neither the original Constitution nor the Twelfth Amendment give Congress or the vice president anything other than a clerical role. Pence said it eloquently on Friday: “I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American President.”

No “constitutional conservative” can seriously argue the Framers intended Congress to do more than tabulate the respective States’ electoral certificates. The Framers wanted a system of separated powers, with President and Congress elected by different methods and constituencies, thus establishing the independence of government’s two elected branches. The Electoral College’s sole purpose is electing the President and Vice President; it was created precisely to exclude Congress from that function. And in America’s federal system, each State determines who its valid electors are, not Congress. Trump’s assertion that Congress has a larger role subverts the most fundamental premise of America’s national government. It is not a parliamentary system.

Politically, therefore, aligning with Pence or Trump is a flat, either-or choice. Pence, in the early maneuvering for what will blossom into a fully-fledged presidential campaign, has tried hard not to alienate Trump or his supporters. To maintain his own unquestioned integrity, however, he cannot bend on the correctness of his January 6 conduct. Party leaders and members were always going to have to choose sides, and that moment has arrived.

Moreover, other prospective Republican candidates, currently numbering between 15 and 20, must also now declare themselves one way or the other. In the campaign’s current “testing-the-waters” stage, most candidates are seeking the best of both worlds: separating themselves from Trump’s worst excesses without incurring Trump’s wrath. Good luck with that minuet.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who does very well in public opinion polls even with Trump included as an alternative nominee, has consistently refused to state publicly that he will not seek the nomination if Trump runs. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has already said he is in whatever Trump does. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who may run, will have no trouble aligning clearly with Pence.

By contrast, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has clung to Trump like a limpet, now faces his worst nightmare. Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Rick Scott, and more now have the same dilemma. To exemplify the dangers in Trump-world, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has said she won’t run if Trump does, but he nonetheless castigates her mercilessly for her inconsistencies (which will likely doom her campaign in any case).

Some commentators say the issue is philosophical, with more-conservative Republicans supporting Trump, while moderates oppose him. This is false. Donald Trump has no philosophy or policy other than Donald Trump’s greater glory. That is why the debate Pence has created is so important for the party’s future. It can either be a conservative party or a Trump party. It cannot be both. My bet is that philosophy, which ultimately brings electoral victory, will prevail.

Securing America’s Interests In a Challenging World

Posts by: Eric Sherred

The Reckoning of Western Foreign Policy Elites

Meanwhile, in the Middle East: The Biden administration’s strategy is causing real problems

Thinking strategically about Ukraine

Entente Multiplies the Threat From Russia and China

A Littoral Foothold Strategy for Africa

John Bolton on the lessons to be drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

The West must not lapse back into complacency about potential aggressors, says a former US national security adviser

Broken Biden sank the West’s efforts to stop Putin invading Ukraine

Atomic Bluff? Why Putin Placed Russia’s Nuclear Forces On High Alert

Gradual Sanctions Against Russia are a Loser

The battle for the soul of the Republican Party has just begun