South Korea Can Play a Vital Role in the Indo-Pacific

September 28, 2022

Taiwan may be Asia’s most imminent flashpoint, but the threats facing South Korea are no less perilous. North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs continue advancing amid constant rumors of another nuclear test, which would be North Korea’s seventh. Particularly significant for South Korea’s emerging strategy in response is the growing realization that threats across the Indo-Pacific aren’t discrete and unrelated but ultimately emanate from one actor: China.

In Seoul, speculation about Pyongyang’s next nuclear detonation centers on the days just before America’s elections. The Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress, expected to enshrine Xi Jinping as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, begins on Oct. 16. Kim Jong Un won’t risk spoiling the Chinese congress during its session, but the ensuing weeks will offer a dramatic opportunity to flaunt his nuclear capabilities. Mr. Kim’s recent announcement of his first-strike nuclear policy, together with blunt warnings he won’t negotiate away the nuclear program, publicly codifies North Korea’s longstanding nuclear doctrine.

Seoul has always understandably concentrated on Pyongyang’s threat. Now, however, it sees Beijing’s belligerence toward Taiwan, interference in South Pacific Island states, and critical support for North Korea as interrelated parts of an overall Chinese Indo-Pacific strategy. This assessment points to what should be obvious: Beijing is ultimately responsible for Pyongyang’s nuclear threat. For too long, the U.S. has allowed the Chinese government to pretend (through the Six-Party Talks, for example) that it is genuinely committed to finding a solution on nuclear proliferation. This fantasy is increasingly difficult to sustain, since North Korea never threatens China. Instead it threatens South Korea, Japan and America.

More-comprehensive policies countering China’s Indo-Pacific threats, previously seen as unconnected, are slowly developing. President Biden enhanced the profile of the Quad (Japan, India, Australia and the U.S.) and approved the Aukus partnership to provide Australia nuclear-powered submarines. He also met with South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a potential step to “trilateralize” Washington’s ties with Seoul and Tokyo. Nonetheless, the administration’s overall China policy remains fragmentary and opaque if it exists at all.

Significant U.S.-South Korea military exercises (canceled by Donald Trump as an unreturned favor to Kim Jong Un) are resuming, with the USS Ronald Reagan carrier-strike group arriving in Pusan for joint maneuvers. The Reagan’s deployment (the first carrier visit since 2018) sends Pyongyang a strategic signal, but it is unaccompanied by any evidence the White House is prepared to jettison the failed 30-year diplomatic minuet with North Korea. Repeated administration offers to engage the North have elicited no interest.

Mr. Yoon is working to improve relations with Japan, meeting informally with Mr. Kishida last week in New York, and their foreign ministers discussed problems blocking closer linkages. Improving ties with Japan is only a first step toward broader South Korean involvement in East Asia, but it is a critical one. Japanese opinion views a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan as tantamount to an attack on Japan, a view Seoul doesn’t share. Beijing’s menacing stance toward Taiwan, however, is inexorably bringing South Korean leaders a fuller understanding of China’s many interrelated efforts to control its periphery. Greater cooperation between Taiwan and South Korea is critical to thwarting China’s ambitions.

The Quad should become a “Quint” by making South Korea a full member. Seoul’s perspective and capabilities would measurably enhance the grouping’s potential to address Beijing’s use of North Korea as a surrogate, its threats in the South China Sea and to Taiwan, and its aggressive behavior in the South Pacific. Moreover, Seoul-Tokyo engagement in a Quint context could more easily encourage bilateral patterns of cooperation than if the two were limited to stewing in contentious bilateral issues.

A Quint would demonstrate broader resolve in the face of China’s attempts to keep the U.S. and its allies off balance through divide-and-conquer tactics. South Korean participation in wider regional structures would help eliminate strategic ambiguity about Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack. Biden staffers have apparently rebuffed suggestions to make South Korea part of the Quad. If so, this mistake needs prompt reversal.

The tempo of Indo-Pacific challenges is increasing, with threat levels rising. But as the U.S. confronts critical tactical decisions, such as how to arm Taiwan effectively to deter Chinese belligerence, it must be careful not to ignore larger strategic issues. South Korea and its new president are ready for regional defense cooperation beyond the existing hub-and-spoke bilateral alliance with the U.S. All the concerned countries in the Indo-Pacific would benefit. Let’s not miss this opportunity.

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.

 As China targets the South Pacific, the U.S. urgently needs to push back

September 13, 2022

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

Few areas of the world seem more distant from the United States than the island states of the South Pacific. World War II reminiscences have faded, and the words “South Pacific” now resonate more as a Broadway musical title than a geographic locator. For U.S. national security, this needs to change, sooner rather than later.

Get the maps out; Chinese leaders, diplomats and the military have theirs nearly memorized. Hemmed in by what it calls the “first island chain” (stretching from the Kuril Islands, through Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia), China has longed to break free into the broader Pacific Ocean. Beijing is interested in this wider horizon because its aspirations extend not merely to hegemony along its immediate Indo-Pacific periphery, but to far wider objectives, already reflected in its pursuit of economic interest in Africa and the Western Hemisphere.

Taiwan is thus important to China not just because of nationalistic fervor, but also because dominance over Taiwan would irretrievably pierce the first island chain. Another breakout strategy over the tyranny of geography is to leapfrog the close-in islands and stake out positions across the Pacific — which is precisely what Beijing appears now to be attempting.

The Pacific’s insular nations are small in land mass and lightly populated, although huge when their ocean territories are included. Xi Jinping has marked them as vulnerable, seemingly intent on going island-hopping, using intimidation, bribery or whatever it takes to achieve China’s ends.

The immediate crisis is in the Solomon Islands, where U.S. forces won a critical victory in 1942-1943 on Guadalcanal, a World War II turning point. In August, senior administration officials Wendy Sherman and Caroline Kennedy, whose fathers fought in the Solomon Islands, led a U.S. delegation to mark the 80th anniversary of the battle at Guadalcanal. Signifying growing Chinese hegemony, however, and perhaps issuing an insult at China’s behest, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare failed to attend the ceremonies near Honiara, the capital. Weeks later, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel was denied permission to make a port call, another apparently intentional discourtesy. Most recently, elections scheduled for next May were postponed until 2024, a move that opposition leaders consider an ominous sign of China’s influence.

A Chinese base in the Solomons would directly menace Australia (about 1,200 miles away), harking back to the Japanese threat during World War II. I was recently in Sydney, and found that Australians need no persuading about China’s rising regional threat. What they seek is a more visible, vigorous U.S. presence in the region, and rightly so. The Solomons are in jeopardy now, and while “domino theory” inevitability might not yet obtain, other island states are clearly vulnerable.

America has for too long paid insufficient attention to the South Pacific. In 1945, the United States assumed Japan’s former League of Nations mandate over the new United Nations’ Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. After plebiscites in 1983, one island chain became the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, thereby remaining part of the United States, adjacent to Guam, long a U.S. territory. Three other island groupings — Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia — chose independence. (American Samoa is a separate territory.)

These three new nations all signed “compacts of free association” with the United States, which provide that Washington supervises their foreign affairs (short of declaring war), including prohibiting the presence of foreign military forces without U.S. permission. The compacts have been extended once and are now up for renegotiation because they expire over the next two years.

This is not a moment to falter or for shortsightedness. Fortuitously timed as the renegotiation is, the White House should take full advantage of the opportunity to cement long-term strategic relations with this trio of nations to keep China out. The costs of enhanced U.S. involvement are trivial in the context of global aid budgets; and the sea and land expanses involved are only somewhat smaller than the continental United States itself.

When I briefed President Donald Trump just before his meeting with the three leaders of these freely associated states in 2019, he asked, “Why am I meeting these people?” His successors should not need to ask.

South Pacific responsibilities need not rest on the United States alone. Australia, New Zealand and Britain all have contemporary relationships and regional histories, dating back to naval coaling or whaling stations. France retains three extensive overseas territories (New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Fortuna), represented in France’s Parliament, and whose territory is deemed part of the European Union.

Countering Chinese aggressiveness in the South Pacific should be a matter of urgent bipartisan agreement and action, rare as they might be today. The faraway island of Bali Hai, celebrated in a certain musical, is closer than we thought.

Hard questions for King Charles III

September 12, 2022

This article was first published in The Hill on September 12th, 2022. Click Here to read the original article.

As the reality of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing sinks in, and international mourning continues, Britain’s unmatched flair for dignified pageantry is affirming the continuity and stability of the nation and its sovereignty. Notwithstanding the ceremony, however, no one is blind to the hard questions King Charles III and the monarchy itself will face in short order.

Inevitably after 70 years of one person’s reign, Charles will face close scrutiny to see if he matches the expectations, accumulating for decades, about the sovereign’s behavior. Equally inevitably, beginning perhaps during the preparations for Charles’s coronation (likely next year), there will be a surge of republican sentiment from Britain’s left advocating elimination of the monarchy itself. 

Accordingly, how the new king comports himself in the coming months could be decisive not merely on some “performance” level but, constitutionally, in handling both near and long-term challenges he and Britain face. 

Since the origins of the United States lie in repudiating the monarchy, many here too readily dismiss its deep-rooted significance for our United Kingdom cousins. Given our (history’s oldest, continuously-in-force, written) Constitution, Britain’s historically derived, unwritten and now almost unique form of constitutional order is even more remote. 

Unquestionably, however, the evolution of Great Britain’s governance structures over centuries has produced a monarchy that is not simply a decoration, an appendage that can be easily excised with few collateral consequences. Even so, early missteps by Charles will complicate his reign; full-blown debate over abolishing the monarchy can only complicate it more.

Doubts about the monarchy’s utility underlie much of the coverage of the ongoing royal transition. Some commentators stress the turmoil, stress and uncertainty Britain faces, led by both a new sovereign and a new prime minister, but such assessments are overwrought.

We are not in World War II. That was stress. Other pundits have excoriated Britain’s imperial past, as if the monarchy alone is responsible for the alleged misdeeds. It is not, nor is it responsible for the enormous benefits stemming from Britain’s empire-building, “mother of parliaments” that it is, not that many today will mount that defense.  

Properly analyzing the monarchy requires assessing its unique function in the UK’s constitutional system, not every aspect of British international policy. Nonetheless, as the living symbol of Britain’s nationhood, the new king will face many more broadside attacks.  

In the first days defining his new role, under unprecedented media attention, Charles has delivered in unexpected ways. Arriving at Buckingham Palace, his new home, rather than just inspecting the flowers and mementoes left to honor the queen, he greeted well-wishers gathered across the palace’s frontage, an image that surely stunned and likely captivated Britons who rarely see such a personal royal touch or public access. Even while mourning his loss, Charles reached out to the British people, and they responded. It was a masterstroke.

Immediately thereafter, the king’s first speech was entirely on target constitutionally.  Duty, service and constancy are obviously Charles’s priorities, as they were Elizabeth’s.  Still, this is just the beginning.

The paramount question is whether Charles can maintain his mother’s distance from day-to-day politics. In these first remarks, he signaled a withdrawal from the political arena: “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others.”

In Britain’s constitutional system, the king’s duty – and it is a duty of constitutional dimensions, not mere symbolism – is to be the nation’s voice when necessary. His role decidedly does not involve nattering on about current events. 

At moments of grave crisis, such as wartime, the king can exercise a steadying presence, and provide a much-needed sounding board for the prime minister, a presence who should have no agenda other than discerning the national interest and how best to protect it. 

As crown prince, Charles was outspoken on issues such as the environment and climate change, obviously popular for many, but complicated and politically controversial.

A king’s proper stance, by contrast, requires remaining above the specifics of legislative or policy programs at Westminster or 10 Downing Street. He is not a political actor or commentator. Resisting the allure of short-term political acclaim must be a top royal priority, a task requiring sustained effort and discipline to succeed. 

Here, Charles III’s military experience, in both the (appropriately named) Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, marks potentially the most important constitutional role he can play. Although the King’s authority as commander in chief is fully delegated to parliamentary ministers, national defense is existential, and the monarch embodies British nationhood not just sentimentally, but constitutionally. 

Thus, King George VI’s determination to stay in Britain during World War II no matter what, in the face of a feared Nazi invasion and after Buckingham Palace itself had been bombed, compellingly demonstrated the will to survive as a nation.

On another practical level, the king’s constitutional persona as head of the Commonwealth of Nations is potentially quite significant. There are untapped possibilities for the United Kingdom and the West more broadly in the Commonwealth, and Charles’s long international experience provides a foundation for prime ministers to build upon. 

Beyond the Commonwealth, the king could play a significant role representing British national security policies generally. For example, an early visit by the new king to Ukraine would carry enormous weight. Newly liberated from the European Union, global Britain could make full use of the monarchy, probably its best-known national institution.

There are other perils clearly ahead for Charles. Media and critics will scrutinize all things financial and the inevitable efforts of many to take advantage of his new role.  Although he has already endured such a spotlight, the new extent of the attention will be extraordinary. 

Elizabeth was spared much of this pressure, but Charles will have no such luxury.  Success in the monarchy is ultimately a test of character, and therefore will rest only on the king himself.

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.

American presidents can only dream of what the Queen accomplished

September 09, 2022

This article first appeared in The Telegraph on September 9th, 2022. Click Here to read the original article.

Queen Elizabeth’s seventy-year reign makes her the only British monarch almost all American citizens (not to mention the entire world) have ever known. For audiences over here, the coming memorials will rival the distantly remembered ceremonies for Winston Churchill, and those more recently held for Margaret Thatcher. 

Since the U.S. constitutional system has always vested both the “head of state” and “head of government” functions in the President alone, processing the Queen’s role, and therefore her significance and the consequences of her passing, is harder work for the cousins on the far side of the Atlantic. But there will now surely be considerable discussion of it, and hopefully better understanding for the future.

In theory, the Queen stood above partisan politics and the sausage-making of government in ways utterly impossible for an American President. Her separation from the often-unpleasant reality of day-to-day affairs of state, again in theory, allowed national divisions of opinion, even deep and bitter ones, to be subsumed under a unifying figure that had only the British national interest at heart.

While a President can certainly be a unifying figure, he is always at risk of accusations that he is putting party priorities above those of the nation as a whole, invoking its sacred symbols not for higher purposes, but for those very crass partisan interests that are always getting in the way. The tension is inherent in the job. And it is the theoretical and (largely) actual absence of that tension in the monarchy that makes understanding its role so hard for many in the land where our last King, George III, caused us so much dismay.

Elizabeth, nonetheless, year after year, fulfilled her constitutional and theoretical responsibilities in a truly remarkable fashion. Especially as the role of the media in Western society has grown to the point where it will report almost anything, at length, and then have commentators analyse it at even greater length, the Queen carried on her duties undistracted and seemingly unperturbed. Notwithstanding the ceaseless pounding of press attention on her family, which was revealed to be completely human, to the surprise of some and the delight of others, Elizabeth, in public, simply persevered in her duties.

At Portsmouth for the June, 2019, 75th-anniversary celebration of the launching of the D-Day invasion forces, the Queen praised the spirit of that time. Perhaps ad-libbing her own thoughts, she said “the wartime generation – my generation – is resilient.” Note the present tense. In the United States, we refer to that crowd as “the greatest generation.” And the Queen was very much part of it. So perhaps her performance was not remarkable at all, but only what her duty required, as she saw it. She knew what her job was, and she did it, period.

Such diligence, so unlike the common run of politicians in democratic societies, was virtuous and appealing, in its own way compelling evidence that the Queen’s interest was only the national interest. After all, why else would she put up with the public spotlight on her family’s travails, the commentariat’s second-guessing, and especially the animosity of those who see no place whatever for a monarchy in Britain’s constitutional system. 

It is tempting to reach for the chronology of events that occurred to Britain and the world during Elizabeth’s reign to characterise or embody her performance. Many historians will be hard pressed not to speak of a “second Elizabethan Era,” but it is a mistake to take such a description at face value. The Queen’s direct influence on affairs of state is limited by design. Nor is it fitting to say she “set the tone” for life in the United Kingdom, since in many cases her manner was distinctly contrary to the tone of contemporary Britain, albeit quietly and with dignity. “Setting the example” is what she did instead, not conforming to tendencies she surely rejected and was right not to embody, however popular they might have been. Her impact was unquestionably positive, beneficial to all Britons, although its full extent must await the historical accounting. 

Beyond Britain, Elizabeth embodied the Commonwealth, whether its members also regarded her as their head of state or whether they were republics (or something else at times). As an organising principle for British strategy and diplomacy, the Commonwealth has had clear benefits for successive Prime Ministers’ foreign policies. Its virtues are hard to quantify in an age of statistics, but the benefits of the monarchy in making the Commonwealth work are undeniable, and may yet hold unrealized potential, especially in a post-Brexit environment.

It was also entirely appropriate that the Queen’s last official acts sealed the transition between the fourteenth and fifteenth Prime Ministers of her reign. Head-of-government transitions in democracies are inherently messy and sometimes unpleasant. In America, after Thomas Jefferson defeated incumbent President John Adams in the 1800 election, Adams left Washington on Inauguration Day in 1801 without attending the swearing-in. We just went through it again on January 20, 2021. Having the Queen be ceremonially central to a transition at the head-of-government level provides a greater sense of continuity and stability than encounters between fractious politicians can ever be.

Americans will deeply miss Queen Elizabeth character, perseverance, and, yes, resilience. Our prayers and best wishes to Charles III.

John Bolton is a former US National Security Adviser

Liz Truss May Be Just the Prime Minister America Needs

September 06, 2022

When there’s a leadership vacuum in Washington, a resolute Britain is crucial to Western interests.

Frissons of disapproval shook the State Department last year when British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss first met Secretary of State Antony Blinken. She was “blunt” and “assertive” and took “maximalist positions,” anonymous U.S. sources asserted. The horror: a British official as plainspoken as an American!

As prime minister, an assertive Ms. Truss could be a force multiplier for the U.S. Boris Johnson, in his farewell to Parliament, advised colleagues to “stay close to the Americans.” These words are strange to American ears because we seldom hear them, even from our closest friends. But Mr. Johnson meant it, and there is no doubt Ms. Truss agrees. In the crises and conflicts ahead, her reward for pro-U.S. inclinations will be criticism that, like Tony Blair during the post 9/11 Iraq war, she is Washington’s “poodle.” Critics don’t grasp that Washington appreciates London’s unvarnished advice and candid criticism as proof of the alliance’s strength. Besides, I’ve never encountered a British poodle.

For America, bilaterally and globally, the transition from Mr. Johnson to Ms. Truss will likely be smooth. At a time when U.S. leadership is hesitant if not flatly wrong, such as in the tragic decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, British resolve is critical to sustain and advance Western interests.

Mr. Johnson bequeaths to Ms. Truss the essentially completed job of liberating the U.K. from the European Union, thus enabling her to focus on new priorities. As a former “Remainer,” Ms. Truss is, ironically, well-suited to the post-Brexit imperative of making a success of Britain’s new international reality. This requires abandoning a Eurocentric focus in economics, striving instead to expand British trade and commerce world-wide, and in politics advancing global British interests. While serving as Mr. Johnson’s trade secretary, seeking bilateral deals with the U.S. and other countries, Ms. Truss’s post-Brexit focus was marked by determination and perseverance. The philosophical direction of her policies seems clear.

The Ukraine war has proved that when it comes to defending continental peace and security, the U.K. can be a better “European” outside the EU than key EU members like France and Germany. While President Biden has stuttered in delineating clear objectives for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and in delivering military assistance to Ukraine, Mr. Johnson’s government never wavered. Ms. Truss has spoken about ensuring that Vladimir Putin “loses in Ukraine” and suffers a “strategic defeat.” By contrast, Mr. Biden and his more timid advisers appear to be dragged along by Congress, more forward-leaning officials and events on the ground. Especially if Ms. Truss keeps Defense Secretary Ben Wallace in place, London is likely to remain resolute even if Washington continues to falter.

Finland’s and Sweden’s fortuitously timed moves to join NATO will make it easier to keep decision-making on defense and security within the alliance and resist France’s constant push to expand EU involvement in those realms. Ms. Truss will have no difficulty insisting that NATO is the epicenter of Western politico-military debates, rather than indulging the fanciful notion that the EU can or should be.

Because Ms. Truss is freed from EU parochialism, she appears up to confronting China’s aspirations for Indo-Pacific and then global hegemony. During the just-concluded Tory leadership campaign, she was reportedly ready to reopen Britain’s national-security strategy to declare China, like Russia, an “acute threat,” rather than merely a strategic competitor. As in America, bureaucratic resisters in key departments, such as Treasury and the Foreign Office, resist even acknowledging the struggle with China, but Ms. Truss has no illusions. Her leadership as foreign secretary in establishing the Aukus partnership to build nuclear submarines for Australia proves the point. During the campaign, Ms. Truss’s support from Sino- and Euro-realists like former party leader Iain Duncan Smith and Sir Bill Cash indicates that she is committed on the China issue.

Iran’s nuclear menace also remains a challenge to Britain and America. As a party to the 2015 nuclear deal, London has a key role, and there are signs Ms. Truss is more skeptical of the failed agreement than prior U.K. governments. Her vocal supporters certainly are. No longer part of the “EU-3” negotiating group with France and Germany, Britain can play a truly independent role. If Ms. Truss used the occasion of her first phone call as prime minister with Mr. Biden to urge that he scrap the deal and emphasize that all options are on the table, her government would be well-launched.

Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 selection as prime minister foreshadowed Ronald Reagan’s election as president. We can only hope for a reprise, and the sooner the better.

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.

Addressing the Mar-a-Lago affidavit challenge

August 22, 2022

This article first appeared in the Washington Examiner on August 22nd, 2022. Click Here to read the original article

The Justice Department’s decision to execute a search warrant of Mar a Lago has ignited a two-front war, legal and political. Legally, a Federal magistrate authorized a search based on an FBI affidavit that there was probable cause crimes had been committed and that pertinent evidence was at Mar a Lago. In the “normal” course, little more would be said publicly by anyone involved. Justice would proceed to conclusion: prosecute someone or close the file, in silence. On the legal front, Justice’s position is comparable to many thousands of routine search warrants executed annually.

Enter Donald Trump, who, predictably, has launched a political war, one Federal law-enforcement officials were utterly unready to fight. Trump complained of unfair treatment, certainly compared to Hillary Clinton. He didn’t have any classified documents, or, if he did, he had declassified them, or something. His lawyers are challenging the warrant, and he insists the entire court file, including the underlying affidavit, be made public. He tweeted his complaints, inspired his allies to complain, and did television interviews. And that was just in the first few days. For Trump, this was the rough equivalent of clearing his throat.

Attorney General Merrick Garland responded in a public statement defending his Department’s actions, which he seemed to be doing under duress. This is unsurprising since DOJ, especially in criminal cases, normally speaks publicly only through its court filings and courtroom appearances. There are good reasons for the absence of public commentary, most importantly fairness to those under investigation. If they are not ultimately prosecuted, it is long-standing Anglo-American practice that their files are closed, and the matter ended. Prosecutors prosecute or don’t; they do not make social commentary on their work or the people they investigate, however loathsome they may be.

Now the political battle (and, incidentally, the legal battle) is whether the underlying affidavit should be made public. Trump has publicly so stated, thereby potentially waiving any argument that disclosing the affidavit’s contents would cause him harm. In addition, media companies are in court seeking to have the affidavit made public. DOJ vehemently opposes this request, arguing that disclosure would endanger existing and potential witnesses, and jeopardize the entire ongoing investigation, which is still at a relatively early stage.

The magistrate ordered Justice to consider “redacting,” or blacking out affidavit language it considers sensitive so at least parts could be made public. Justice said it would have to redact

so much that what was left would be unintelligible. Nonetheless, the magistrate ordered Justice to submit proposals for redaction by April 25. There is little doubt Justice will fight every step of the way, including appealing to an Article III judge if the magistrate does not rule to its satisfaction. Meanwhile, Trump is very successfully fundraising off the controversy, and Justice is, in Watergate parlance, left twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.

Trump has a First Amendment right to say what he has, but Justice has no obligation to be a punching bag. Substantively, DOJ’s concerns are compelling, but it needs to recognize the exigent circumstances it faces. It should acknowledge past mistakes, like then-FBI Director James Comey’s misbegotten handling of Hillary Clinton’s case. It should be timelier and more aggressive in publicly communicating the facts about its positions and actions. It need not say anything it has not already said in court filings and appearances, but it needs to speak more often, in more different fora and media, and especially in more extensive contact with Congress.

On the affidavit itself, there is an alternative to all-out trench warfare over “redaction” versus “no redaction”: paraphrase where possible what the actual affidavit says. This would allow at least some additional information to be made public. Such paraphrasing, of course, would have to be approved by the magistrate to ensure it accurately, if more obscurely, reflects what the original text said.

For example, affidavit references to classified documents might contain actual sensitive information from the documents, or materials that could reveal sources and methods of gathering intelligence. Instead, phrases could be used like “information about American nuclear weapons,” or “information about Chinese ballistic missile capabilities.” There might be ways to refer to present or future witnesses that would not reveal their identities or make them easily identifiable. There could be more-generalized statements about the probable-cause narrative on what crimes Justice alleges have been committed. There are almost certainly cases where paraphrasing is impossible, in which case the magistrate will have to rule on full disclosure or no disclosure.

Like everyone else in this debate except DOJ personnel and the magistrate, I have not seen the affidavit. I do not underestimate how difficult or unusual is the suggestion I am making. If there are better suggestions, let’s hear them. Otherwise, important law-enforcement institutions are in for a firestorm of unanswered criticism.

Putin’s resolve hasn’t collapsed. He may be planning his most outrageous gambit yet

August 15, 2022

Be prepared for Russia to halt hostilities and exploit European weakness in a brazen attempt to secure many of its objectives

Russia’s failure to capture Kyiv shortly after its February 24 invasion, kill or overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky, and seize all of Ukraine, will be a landmark case study for future political and military strategists. So will Russia’s subsequent decision to fight a World War I-style offensive, primarily in eastern Ukraine, grinding out a few miles or less in new territorial gains every day.

And so will the next phase of the war, as summer turns to fall. In all probability, it will depend more on political strategy than military affairs. Unquestionably, the military state of play is a critical variable, but in the coming months of the war, intangible, hard-to-measure, hard-to-predict political variables could have the dispositive role. Accordingly, Nato and other Ukraine supporters must start thinking now (and should have been thinking long before today) about how to prevent Moscow from seizing the diplomatic high ground and bring the conflict to at least a temporary halt on its terms, not Kyiv’s. The next ninety days is a useful time frame, especially in America, with nation-wide congressional elections looming on November 8.

At present, Russia is still fighting its excruciatingly slow and painful style of offensive operations, almost entirely in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Absent dramatic changes in the next ninety days, there will be no daring Russian armor attacks, no effective use of air power, and no significant, newly-initiated, cross-border incursions. In American football, this ground-game strategy is called “three yards and a cloud of dust.” Moscow’s casualties have been high, debilitating logistical and personnel problems persist, domestic public opinion is mixed and uncertain at best, and international sanctions have strained (albeit not visibly altered) the Kremlin’s war effort.

Ukraine appears to be readying a “southern strategy”, perhaps aimed to retake Kherson and to punch through the current lines to reach the Black Sea near Mykolaiv, thereby severing direct Russian land access from the Donbas to Crimea and adjacent territories. US, UK, and other Nato deliveries of high-end weapons are finally entering into significant usage on Ukraine’s front lines, although not at levels and in time-lines Kyiv’s military would like. Ukraine has kept a generally effective lid on disclosing its actual military casualties, but these may well be higher than generally understood in the popular Western imagination. And casualties among affected civilian populations, not to mention property and infrastructure destruction in the most contested regions, have been substantial.

Accordingly, one entirely possible scenario, perhaps even the most likely, is that the war simply grinds on, with no discernible end point, certainly not in the next ninety days. This, however, is where Russia’s political calculations may be dispositive. Before and during the conflict, the West has repeatedly underestimated Russia’s long-term resolve and its cost-benefit analysis about its gains and losses. Eager to personalise “Putin’s war” to show its purported domestic Russian unpopularity, Western leaders have failed to see how widespread – and how deep – is Russian feeling that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics were illegitimately torn away from the rodina, the motherland. People may tire from reading Putin’s 2005 view, but this is his core belief: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Minimizing the loss of “historical Russia”, in turn, leads to underestimating the Kremlin’s willingness to suffer what seem to foreign observers to be disproportionately high casualties for relatively modest territorial gains. It may also help explain why Russia’s war of attrition is acceptable to Moscow where it might not be in the West. In America’s Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant was harshly criticised (called a “butcher” by some) for his 1864-65 campaign against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, as was William Tecumseh Sherman for his 1864 “march to the sea” from Atlanta to Savannah. Grant’s war of attrition against Lee and Sherman’s swath of destruction brought the secessionists to final defeat, the Union’s blunt strength crushing the Confederacy. Similarly, in the 1939-1940 “Winter War” with Finland, Moscow also bled profusely, but persevered to victory.

So, there should be no surprise that Russia’s resolve has not collapsed. Nonetheless, Putin can certainly see the risk that sufficient supplies of sophisticated weapons and other war materiel from Nato in Ukraine’s hands will jeopardise the gains Russian forces have made to date. Putin also knows that support for Ukraine in Europe, particularly in France and Germany, is not what Nato leaders make it out to be, and that President Biden’s actions (as opposed to rhetoric) during the conflict have hardly been consistent with deep resolve. Finally, signs of disagreements within Ukraine’s political leadership are now appearing – not as yet disabling, but increasingly visible nonetheless.

Russia thus has a difficult political decision to make. Putin will not want to lose opportunities to retake more Ukraine territory, especially since he is far from his initial goals. Even more importantly, however, he does not want to be caught with Russian forces in broad retreat, where any diplomatic effort would be taken as a sign of weakness. Westerners who believe Putin is inadequately aware of the human and material costs suffered by Russia’s military are kidding themselves; he knows all too well he needs a respite if he can get one on his terms.

In such circumstances, Russia’s best option may be this. In the next ninety days, Putin announces, with a straight face despite its obvious falsity, that the Kremlin has achieved its objectives. Accordingly, he has ordered all offensive military operations halted, demands Ukraine do the same, and calls for immediate ceasefire negotiations to establish an agreed line-of-control between the forces. Putin will have to grit his teeth to do this, but he knows that a cease fire will give Russia time, years perhaps, to rebuild its military, restore its economy, and perhaps reabsorb more pliant, weaker parts of the Russian empire, from Belarus to Central Asia.

Moscow will be calculating that it can catch Kyiv unaware. Obviously and understandably, Zelensky, left to his own devices, would flatly reject halting the conflict with Russia still holding perhaps 25 per cent of Ukraine’s territory. He knows full well that any purported “cease-fire line” could become the new Russia-Ukraine border. Unfortunately, Zelensky may not be in a position to give a “Snake Island” response.

Without a prior agreed-upon diplomatic strategy with Nato, optimally from now forward, Zelensky is vulnerable to political weakness in the United States and key European Union members, which Putin knows and is prepared to exploit. Winter is coming, as they say. Germany and much of Europe are deeply concerned about Russia’s considerable leverage over their energy supplies. And, let’s be honest, many Western Europeans are tired of this war. Continuing economic turbulence, whether inflation, recession or both, only reinforces the angst that, in just 6-9 months, this has become an “endless war” that needs ending. Proclaiming the need for humanitarian relief in war-torn Ukraine, they would seize the chance of a “cease fire” to return to pre-February 24 relations with Russia.

Ukraine and Nato need diplomatic agreement now against this pre-emptive Russian ploy, which may rapidly gain the initiative regardless of battlefield developments. Indeed, in the coming weeks, Russia’s inclination to spring a “cease fire in place” will increase as its prospects for substantial further military gains recede.

The most important element of a Western counter-strategy will be to make clear at once that all sanctions against Russia will remain in place until the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine’s territory. Eliminating the sanctions is central to any Russian expectation of reviving its economy and military, thereby to reinitiate hostilities at some future point. If sanctions looked to be effectively permanent until full Ukrainian sovereignty was restored, Putin’s gambit would fall at the first hurdle. Many other issues, including reparations, prisoners of war and accountability also need resolving, but the key point is to stop Russia from consolidating its territorial gains through a scam, unilateral “ceasefire”.

Will France and Germany agree to such a counter-strategy? Will Biden be so weak before the November elections that he will jump at the chance for a diplomatic “win” to enhance Democratic prospects on November 8? Achieving real Nato unity on a hardline political stance against Russian efforts to split the West and leave Ukraine in peril will require considerable heavy lifting. Now is the time to start, and underlines why a new government in London, as resolute on Ukraine as Boris Johnson, is so critical.

 Iran is stuck in Biden’s blind spot

August 15, 2022

This article first appeared in the Washington Post, on August 15th 2022. Click here to view the original article

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

It has been somewhat surreal over the past few days, I admit, to be speaking publicly about Iran’s plot to assassinate me and many other American citizens on American soil. Fortunately, as an alumnus of the Reagan administration’s Justice Department, I have seen once again the diligent, enormously competent and courageous work of FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys who uncovered and pursued Iran’s murderous plots.

And, thanks to President Biden, I again receive Secret Service protection, as I did when I served as national security adviser.

However, what gives surrealism an entirely new meaning is that the Biden White House, faced with Iran’s broad campaign of anti-U.S. terrorism, amounting to an act of war, is still obsessively grinding along to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps efforts targeting me reached the point where the Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shahram Poursafi, unsealed last week. Interestingly, the charging documents’ narrative of Poursafi’s criminal conduct ends in late April, just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken first publicly admitted Iran’s threats to current and former American officials in congressional testimony. A significant number of former public servants are also in Iran’s sights, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former defense secretary Mark T. Esper and others not now appropriate to name, but whose peril has been widely reported.

Nearly four months passed between Blinken’s public corroboration of Iran’s threat and the filing of criminal charges. The only reasonable explanation is that the president feared revealing the accusations would imperil his all-consuming goal of reviving the Iran nuclear deal.

Iran’s malign efforts, however, do not stop with public officials. Consider naturalized American citizen Masih Alinejad, an advocate for women’s rights in Iran. Just weeks ago, an Iranian agent armed with an AK-47 arrived at her Brooklyn home, intending, in the FBI’s view, to kill her. On Friday, Salman Rushdie, long an Iranian target, was grievously wounded by an assailant immediately lauded by Hasan Nasrallah, leader of Iran’s terrorist surrogate Hezbollah, as “a Lebanese champion” who had “implemented” the “honorable fatwa” promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Agence France-Presse reported that pro-regime Iranian media hailed the attack, and quoted Mohammad Marandi, an adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiators, tweeting, “I won’t be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred and contempt for Muslims and Islam,” while implying the attack was a U.S. false-flag operation.

The assassination attempts on Alinejad and Rushdie might or might not be coincidental. Along with the extensive list of present and former government officials at risk, however, this is no small matter, except apparently to the Biden administration. We face a concerted threat to America itself, not unconnected threats to random individuals. Iran does not fear U.S. deterrence.

Accordingly, continued pursuit of the nuclear deal signals U.S. weakness worldwide. Russia has invaded Ukraine; suppose the Kremlin was now trying to murder Americans, as in 2018 when it attacked defectors in Britain with chemical weapons? Would Biden still hope for climate change negotiations with Vladimir Putin, as John F. Kerry suggested before the invasion? Or, given China’s threat to Taiwan, would we still conduct trade negotiations if clandestine Beijing agents were similarly engaged? Too many Americans are already threatened with death on American soil by a foreign government. It’s time for Biden to reject business as usual.

In recent weeks, the White House has nonetheless heedlessly, zealously continued its policy of capitulation, reportedly making further concessions to Tehran. These include whitewashing long-standing Iranian obstruction of International Atomic Energy Agency efforts to pursue necessary investigations, and weakening the scope and effectiveness of U.S. sanctions against the very Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that is attempting multiple assassinations.

How to explain this manic quest for the Holy Grail of reviving the 2015 deal? Analytically, Biden is compartmentalizing Iran’s nuclear program in one silo and its terrorist activities in another, treating them as separable and unrelated. He is engaging in the classic diplomatic fallacy of “mirror-imaging,” believing his adversaries see the world the same way he does, sealed off into separate compartments.

The reality in Tehran is precisely the opposite. The ayatollahs’ malevolence is comprehensive, with nuclear weapons, assassination and terrorism all elements in their full spectrum of capabilities. By failing to grasp the wider scope of Iran’s menace, and plainly failing to deter it, Biden’s dangerous effort to resurrect the nuclear deal is threatening America’s larger interests. Substantive arguments against the 2015 agreement and the concessions Biden has made over nearly 19 months in office should already suffice to bury the deal, but the broader threat Iran now raises should be the final nail in its coffin.

Biden’s bizarre policy of “nuclear deal über alles” reflects an instinct for the capillary when it comes to Washington-Tehran relations. Iran’s nuclear program is only a symptom of the real problem: the regime itself. That is what the United States must focus on ending.

What We Can Learn from Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit

August 08, 2022

China’s near-term response to House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan may not yet be concluded, but its main outlines are clear: significant increases in “wolf-warrior diplomacy” rhetoric; significant military exercises in and around Taiwan’s territorial waters; and suspension or cancellation of several channels of Sino–U.S. diplomatic discourse. More might be coming, but what Beijing has done so far is neither unexpected nor game-changing.

What could be game-changing is whether China’s temper tantrum awakens American business and political leaders to realities that have been steadily accumulating even before Xi Jinping took power. In the last decade, Xi and others unambiguously abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s disingenuous, low-profile approach of “hide your strengths, bide your time.” Xi said expressly, “A military force is built to fight. Our military must regard combat readiness as the goal for all its work and focus on how to win when it is called upon.”

Initial U.S. business reactions to China’s fist-shaking are discouraging, such as reports that “U.S. companies with Taiwan-based operations are panicking about the impact of possible Chinese military aggression.” What have these firms been doing the last ten years? (Or are the reporters the ones panicking?) Moreover, risks to U.S. investment and supply-chain reliance on mainland China are far more important. If Taiwan’s circumstances are worrying, consider the vastly greater American economic exposure in China itself. Shareholders and management might want to revisit the phrase “political risk.”

The White House has also reacted poorly, canceling a long-planned ICBM test for fear of agitating China. Then, echoing Beijing’s alarmist rhetoric, the administration said of Beijing’s suspension of climate-change talks: “China’s not just punishing the United States . . . they’re actually punishing the whole world.” Such irresolute, apologetic behavior encourages China’s belligerence, and worries countries along its Indo-Pacific periphery.

Pelosi’s Taiwan trip didn’t create problems, but instead exposed what has long been obvious, or should have been, about China’s growing menace. Ironically, Beijing has unwittingly provided Washington an opportunity to initiate or accelerate much-needed policy directions ignored during this and prior administrations.

First, political-risk factors in business and economic affairs are not “back”; they never went away, although all-too-many U.S. businesses disregarded them. Now, however, is the time to reconsider existing and potential capital expenditures in, and supply-chain reliance on, China, and seek alternatives. Not least among the possibilities are relocating assets to the United States and the Western Hemisphere, not just to reduce political risk, but to enhance security for intellectual property, increase supply-chain resilience, and lower transport costs. Government “industrial policy” or subsidies are not necessary here, just business common sense.

More forcefully countering China’s economic warfare against America and the West is critical. Decades of schemes to steal our intellectual property, force technology transfers, and weaponize Chinese “companies” such as Huawei and ZTE as arms of the Chinese state must be brought to a halt. Trade policies designed to counter Beijing’s abuses would garner widespread support not only among OECD industrial democracies, but also in developing countries threatened by China’s hegemonic “debt diplomacy” and Belt and Road Initiative. Such an initiative would have a significant, worldwide unifying impact against China, a unity precluded in recent years by internecine trade disputes among Beijing’s adversaries.

Second, both government and business must pay greater attention to countering China’s efforts to isolate Taiwan politically and economically. Doing so in no way minimizes the need to enhance Taipei’s self-defense capabilities, but rather prioritizes embedding Taiwan’s security in a broader system of alliances and partnerships. It also requires Washington to think in larger strategic terms, at truly Indo-Pacific and even global levels, regarding China’s menace. That threat at the moment is focused on Taiwan, but the next levels up — Beijing’s aspirations for hegemony along its Indo-Pacific periphery, and then worldwide — are closely related. Taiwan is not the only country near China. Ask South Korea and Japan, Vietnam and Singapore, and India, which already profoundly grasp the larger picture. Europe, except for the United Kingdom, lags behind, but even the European Union can be encouraged to keep up.

After World War II, the North Atlantic countries formed deep, extensive political and economic ties, including NATO, history’s most successful politico-military alliance. Only rudimentary building blocks for such structures now exist in the Indo-Pacific, but progress is being made. Japan’s tragic loss of Shinzo Abe should not diminish his strategic vision and accomplishments. He first imagined both the concept of the “Indo-Pacific,” and the Asian Quad (Japan, India, Australia, and the U.S.), which is now beginning to take shape. AUKUS, the trilateral effort to produce nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, is another building block, and there is urgent need for more such creative thinking. The ultimate Indo-Pacific partnership structures need not, and probably cannot, duplicate NATO in the near future. But there is enormous room for greater cooperation against China’s dangerous ambitions.

Third, and the immediate focus of attention, is defending Taiwan itself. China’s post-Pelosi military exercises could foreshadow either an outright invasion or a naval blockade, the latter actually more likely because Beijing wants Taiwan without the devastation Russia is causing in Ukraine. Accordingly, China could well try to create an artificial crisis at a time of its choosing, including announcing a blockade, to see who will stand with Taiwan. If the U.S. and others fail to act, Chinese hegemony and even annexation of Taiwan will follow in due course. Deterring either physical invasion, a blockade, or a threat to Quemoy and Matsu requires action now. It should include home-porting U.S. naval vessels and stationing meaningful U.S. military forces in Taiwan. Troop deployments will be necessary in any case to train and assist Taiwanese troops to handle the new weapons systems and necessary joint military exercises. We should not repeat the mistakes made in the Ukraine crisis that failed to deter Russia’s invasion.

China’s reaction to Pelosi’s visit is a “teachable moment.” Beijing has removed its mask, and we have seen its real intentions. We cannot miss the opportunity presented. There may not be another.

JOHN R. BOLTON — Mr. Bolton served as national-security adviser to President Donald Trump and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush. He is the author of The Room Where It Happened.

Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Boils Down To One Word: Weakness

August 01, 2022

This article first appeared in 19 Forty-Five. Click Here to see the original article.

The wrong countries, notably Russia and China, are learning dangerous lessons about President Biden’s lack of international political resolve. Both substantively and in diplomatic tradecraft, his Administration is hesitant, submissive, and erratic. On issues as diverse as prisoner swaps with Moscow, American re-entry into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, or Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the White House betrays a propensity to crumple under pressure. Weakness and uncertainty on these seemingly unrelated matters, and others, comprise a pattern heartening to adversaries and alarming to friends.

For example, long-standing, bipartisan U.S. policy has rejected negotiating with hostage-takers, whether terrorists or lawless states.  That policy has at times been breached, as in the dismaying Iran-Contra affair, but the underlying rationales are clear. Bargaining with hostage-takers epitomizes the moral-equivalency fallacy, legitimizing and publicizing their status; often advances their cause by providing them resources or returning important personnel; and invites more hostage-taking, thus endangering other Americans, by putting a price on our citizens.

Instead of incentivizing hostage-taking by trading prisoners, the correct response is harsh action, either economic or military, depending on the circumstances, against those who engage in such atrocities. Deal-making is congenial for terrorists and authoritarian states; severe punishment is not. As painful as it is for hostages’ friends and families, a President’s responsibility is long-term, protecting the future security of all Americans, not placing more of them in jeopardy. This was Ronald Reagan’s mistake in Iran-Contra. The United States erred again by its utterly inadequate response to North Korea’s savage, ultimately fatal treatment of Otto Warmbier, taken hostage by Pyongyang in 2017.

Trading hostages with terrorists or rogue states is not comparable to well-established Western practices of exchanging prisoners of war and, more recently, intelligence personnel. Hostage-takers, including states under a pretense of “law enforcement.” are fundamentally illegitimate kidnappers seeking bargaining chips. Moreover, swapping personnel of different types (a common criminal offender for an illicit arms dealer, for example) encourages hostage-takers by conceding moral equivalency, obscuring their fundamentally unacceptable behavior.

Biden has shown little regard for these principles, as in his 2021 decision to grant Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou a highly favorable criminal settlement, dropping U.S. extradition proceedings against her in Canada. In exchange, China released two Canadian citizens it seized on fabricated charges immediately after Meng’s initial 2018 arrest in Vancouver. Biden’s retreat in Meng’s case undoubtedly colors China’s efforts to stop Pelosi’s Taiwan trip.

The Meng capitulation foreshadowed April’s exchange of American Trevor Reed for a major Russian cocaine trafficker, and ongoing negotiations to free Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan. All three arrests were politically motivated (although Griner “confessed” to drug charges); Reed is now pressuring Biden on behalf of the others. Viktor Bout, the Russian offered for Griner and Whelan, is serving twenty-five years for selling arms to Colombian narco-terrorists.

Interestingly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week the prisoner-exchange talks originated in the June 2021, Biden-Putin meeting in Geneva, where the leaders “agreed to appoint representatives in charge of these issues, and the Foreign Ministry is not among them.  The timing is consistent with White House deliberations on conceding the Meng case and the Russia prisoner swaps. Also quite interesting is Lavrov’s comment that negotiations initially were not in diplomatic channels but perhaps between intelligence or law-enforcement authorities.

Lavrov was uninterested in speaking to Blinken before they finally connected on July 29. Russia’s Maria Zakharova had earlier said Lavrov “has a busy schedule of real work,” and the two would talk “when time permits.” Moreover, Blinken, having avoided calling Lavrov for five months after the invasion of Ukraine, has repeatedly publicly discussed the substance of a possible deal, which the Russians have not. Similarly, the White House openly denounced as “bad faith” Russia’s proposal that the deal includes releasing a former intelligence official in German custody.

This public commentary reportedly reflects administration nervousness that talks are proceeding slowly, an error of tradecraft if accurate. Similar disarray has marked Biden’s efforts to stop Pelosi’s Taiwan visit. China’s rhetorical pressure has been intense, and the Administration’s discomfort far too visible. The President himself referred to Pentagon concerns for Pelosi’s safety, and anonymous officials confirmed Biden discussed the trip in his recent telephone call with Xi Jinping. Beijing was not so shy, saying Xi told Biden, “Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this.”

China is, in effect, trying to make Pelosi’s trip a hostage. Some American analysts buy Beijing’s propaganda, worrying the trip “[C]ould ignite this combustible situation into a crisis that escalates to military conflict.” Such paranoia may well reflect White House insecurity, but it is badly misplaced.  Xi knows full well that any danger to Pelosi’s safety would prompt a robust American response, at least from most administrations.  And while military exercises were held in Fujian Province, there is no evidence of any real threat, according to the White House itself.

Dreading Chinese fist-shaking without a clear-eyed analysis of reality has all the hallmarks of Biden vetoing the transfer of Polish MiGs to Ukraine, and hesitancy and delay in providing Kyiv with higher-end weapons, for fear of provoking Russian escalation. Administration trepidation about Pelosi’s travels is painfully visible worldwide, dispiriting our friends and whetting our adversaries’ appetites.

In Tehran, the ayatollahs must be dismayed for having come in too low bargaining with Biden and not demanding more concessions before readmitting the U.S. to the 2015 nuclear deal. And no wonder Kim Jung-Un is again making nuclear-weapons threats.

By abandoning well-established American policy against negotiating with hostage-takers; by overestimating short-term pressures and underestimating longer-term ramifications; and by repeatedly signaling weakness and uncertainty dealing with China, Russia and others, Biden has harmed American credibility and thereby invited more threats and challenges. This lack of resolve bodes poorly for Ukraine if Russia’s invasion grinds on, especially since several European countries, notably Germany and France, are signaling their own lack of resolve. It’s no surprise that Taiwan wants a Pelosi visit.

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

Securing America’s Interests In a Challenging World

Category: By John Bolton