When will Biden get tough with China? And other foreign policy questions that will define 2023

January 03, 2023

This article first appeared in The Hill, on January 3rd, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

With 2023 opening under huge uncertainty about renewed COVID-19 outbreaks in China and other countries, one might think 2020 was repeating itself. In fact, Beijing’s mishandling of the original pandemic; its refusal to cooperate in serious, credible investigations of its origins; its disdain for the global consequences, including blatant dishonesty and concealment from other countries; and its authoritarian response domestically, all contributed to significant negative shifts in international attitudes about China’s communist regime. 

Moreover, concerns about Beijing’s hegemonic aspirations in the Indo-Pacific and beyond are increasing on many economic and political-military fronts. A recent Pentagon report judges that China’s defense budget almost doubled in the last decade, is still rising and includes new activities across nearly the full military spectrum. All this promises several 2023 pivotal moments at which to confront China’s threatening behavior. The real question for the United States is when our government will face up to this reality.

Instead, the Biden administration’s first two years have been remarkable for not producing a coherent, let alone comprehensive, counter-China strategy. Some notable individual decisions deserve praise, but the general pattern has been passive and acquiescent, even as other regional powers have been addressing the increasingly unavoidable Chinese threat. The White House’s passivity can be explained by the priority it has assigned to negotiating climate-change issues with Beijing. 

A week after Biden’s inauguration, his global climate envoy, John Kerry, said “climate is a critical standalone issue” and that despite “serious differences with China on some very, very important” economic and political issues, “those issues will never be traded for anything that has to do with climate.” 

Accordingly, he said, “it’s urgent that we find a way to compartmentalize, to move forward, and we’ll wait and see.” 

Thereafter, the White House emphasized its desire for progress above all else on climate-change matters, fearing to jeopardize potential environmental agreements by taking tough positions on imminent Chinese threats. In 2023, will the administration continue to marginalize China’s economic and politico-military aggressiveness, or will it assume the leadership position its regional allies are clearly hoping for?

In fairness, Biden has gotten some things right. He has increased economic pressure on China’s telecommunications and information-technology sectors. He attended the first in-person, heads-of-government meeting of the Asian Quad (India, Japan, Australia and the U.S.), which Shinzo Abe, Japan’s tragically murdered former prime minister, sought to nurture. The Quad is no NATO and may never be. But as a partnership to address politico-military issues (and others) among four key players in the Indo-Pacific region, it is an excellent beginning. India is especially salient. We need to enlist New Delhi in containing Beijing, which is clearly in India’s interest. But we must also find ways to decrease India’s reliance on the Kremlin for sophisticated weapons and hydrocarbon fuels. Concurrently, India could also be instrumental in splitting the Russia-China entente before Russia becomes completely subordinate.

Biden also approved cooperation with the United Kingdom and Australia (forming “AUKUS”) to produce a dozen nuclear-powered, hunter-killer submarines for Australia’s navy. AUKUS is still in its early stages, but it provides a useful pattern for many forms of military cooperation across the region. One could readily imagine Tokyo seeking a similar partnership on nuclear-powered submarines, and other Indo-Pacific countries participating with Washington and European powers in advancing a variety of miliary capabilities.

Despite U.S. fecklessness, other regional states are not standing idly by. Undoubtedly the biggest recent sensation was Japanese Prime Minister Fujio Kishida’s announcement that his government would more than double Japan’s defense budget over the next five years, thereby equaling NATO’s commitment that each member spend 2 percent of GDP on defense programs, and making Japan the world’s third largest military after the United States and China. 

Spurred in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and thereby again demonstrating the extraordinary importance of unambiguously defeating Moscow’s aggression), Tokyo is now doing much of what Shinzo Abe long espoused. Japan is making it clear that, after full debate, it intends to behave as a “normal” nation, one that can be trusted with a strong military, especially when in close alliance with the United States. Germany should take note. 

South Korea has also increased its defense budget, responding to the North’s continuing, increasingly provocative and threatening behavior, although President Yoon has reduced the rate of increase, trying to restore fiscal discipline in Seoul. It may be unfair to fault South Korea’s budget performance since Congress has had to increase U.S. military spending over White House requests, and since, at least until after the 2024 elections, U.S. defense spending will not approach the necessary levels. 

Nonetheless, we can urge that, for now, Seoul follow Tokyo’s budgetary example rather than Washington’s. In addition, the South’s growing arms sales to Poland demonstrate both its own seriousness and the severe problems in U.S. military procurement systems, where assembly lines are significantly overbooked, with deliveries both to allies and our own arsenals alarmingly distant. This is not just a budget issue and requires a real change in U.S. attitudes to ensure stockpiling adequate weapons supplies before conflicts begin.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s recent decision to lengthen military service for draftees from four to 12 months was significant, both for its intrinsic merits and for the signal sent to Washington and Beijing that Taiwan is deeply determined to increase its own defense capabilities. There is a very real risk of near-term hostile action by Beijing, given its increasing violations of Taipei’s airspace and menacing of U.S. aircraft in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

U.S. military sales to Taiwan are increasing but have been hampered by long delays in delivery dates, providing additional evidence that supply-chain inadequacies jeopardize our own posture as well as losing American firms’ sales opportunities, as with Poland.

Campaign 2024 is already underway, so aspiring presidential candidates should be questioned closely about how they would handle Beijing’s belligerence. This is not an election cycle to allow national security issues to be obscured by purely domestic concerns. Too much is at stake, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

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.

Western weakness could still allow Putin to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat

January 03, 2023

This is a decisive year for Ukraine, and whether the West can show Russia, China and Iran the strength of its resolve

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article first appeared in the Daily Telegraph on January 3rd, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

President Volodomyr Zelensky’s December 21 Washington address to both houses of Congress was a dramatic reminder of how critical Europe’s biggest land war since 1945 is for the US, the UK and the Nato alliance. Summing up the 10 months of relentless combat since the Kremlin’s February 24 invasion, thanking the West and (being a savvy politician) especially Congress for its assistance, Zelensky made it clear that more was needed. He closed by saying, “Happy Victorious New Year!”

Let’s hope Zelensky’s wish comes true, because 2023 is likely to be Ukraine’s year of decision. If Washington and London don’t get Ukraine right over the next 12 months, the negative consequences will be felt far beyond the present battleground. It will be all downhill in dealing with China, Iran, North Korea and others who will see anything less than an unambiguous victory for Kyiv as evidencing Western weakness, which they will not hesitate to exploit. While the nuclear ambitions of Tehran and Pyongyang are massively threatening, and while resisting China’s existential threat will be the West’s major endeavour in this century, the urgency of Ukraine’s fate cannot be ignored.

This is no time to pat ourselves on the back. Despite significant advantages, including the fighting spirit of Ukraine’s population; substantial weapons and intelligence assistance, especially by London, Washington, and Eastern Europe’s stalwarts; and the appallingly poor performance by Russia’s forces – land, air, and sea – the war is now at a stalemate. Economic sanctions have impaired Russia’s economy, but Ukraine’s economy is in worse shape, with substantial portions of its physical capital literally being ground into dust. Finland and Sweden have made the stunning decision to join Nato, but Russia’s commercial and military partners have not yet deserted it in its hour of need, sadly including Turkey, whose Nato membership should be at issue in 2023 if president Erdogan is (probably through fraud) re-elected.

The real issue is Western unity and resolve. Neither is guaranteed. Start with Germany. Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared a Zeitenwende (“sea change”) in Berlin’s foreign policy shortly after Russia’s invasion. He announced that Germany, in 2023, would more than meet Nato’s 2014 Cardiff commitment for members to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence matters; created a 100 billion euro fund for weapons procurement; and committed to spend 30 billion of those euros to purchase 35 nuclear-capable F-35s to replace Germany’s ageing Tornadoes.

However, little has actually happened, and the pledges are in doubt. Germany’s regular 2023 defence budget will be smaller than 2022. The 2 per cent target is now a target for 2025, maybe, which is little better than what Angela Merkel promised when she was chancellor. None of the 100 billion euros has been contracted, and the F-35 purchase appears stalled by bureaucratic infighting. Good thing there’s not a war going on in Europe.

By comparison, Japan recently announced that it will more than double its defence budget in the next five years to achieve Nato’s 2 per cent target, and in so doing will become the world’s third largest military, after the US and China. It’s the kind of performance that reinforces former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar’s proposal, made over 15 years ago, to take Nato global, starting by admitting countries like Japan, Australia, Singapore and Israel.

Then there’s France. Zelensky and Emmanuel Macron have clashed about what to “give” Russia to reach a diplomatic resolution. As recently as December 4, Macron said, “one of the essential points we must address, as President Putin has always said, is the fear that Nato comes right up to its doors,” which has long been a Kremlin talking point. There is, of course, no evidence that Ukraine ever constituted a threat to Russian security, or that Nato has ever been anything but a defensive alliance. Worse, however, Macron also said, “we need to prepare… how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table”. The aggressor deserves no security guarantees merely for showing up to discuss reversing its aggression, rather than actually doing something concrete, like withdrawing its forces to Russian territory.

The United States also has problems. Since the American media enjoys critiquing internal political splits among Republicans more than those among Democrats, its reporting has highlighted signs of opposition to Washington’s continued assistance to Ukraine from a small number of isolationists on the Right, ignoring the much-graver threat from Leftist “progressives”.

A few Republicans, reflecting their disdain for serious geostrategic work, did indeed skip Zelensky’s address. Progressives, however, have groused at length on Ukraine, most recently in an October 24, 2022 letter to President Biden. Thirty House Democrats urged him “to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push”. Their suggested conditionality was music to Moscow’s ears, although the resulting firestorm led to the letter’s quick withdrawal. The co-signatories, however, apologised only for making a timing error in the letter’s release (because of the approaching mid-term elections). They made no criticism of the letter’s substance. With the new Congress convening today, expect to hear more from the progressives. Fortunately, neither Russia nor Ukraine shows any desire to negotiate.

From Moscow’s side, there is continuing disturbing news about Belarus. Since the invasion, Putin has engaged his counterpart, Aleksandr Lukashenko, in intense personal diplomacy, meeting, for example, twice within a week at year’s end, in Minsk and then St Petersburg. Public readouts of the meetings did not mention Ukraine, but there is little doubt it was a principal subject of discussion. Belarus recently complained about a stray Ukrainian missile hitting its territory, a classic pretext for later military action.

Russia’s abysmal military performance may continue in 2023, Putin’s political position may be weaker, and economic constraints may grow. But every day that passes without the withdrawal of Moscow’s forces from Ukraine risks adding to strains within the West. US and UK leaders still need a strategy to give the Ukrainian people that “Happy Victorious New Year!”

Joe Biden’s ‘Strategic Patience’ On North Korea Is A Historic Mistake

December 21, 2022

This article was first published in 19FortyFive on December 21, 2022. Click Here to read the original article.

North Korea’s Friday announcement that it had successfully tested a “high-thrust, solid-fuel motor” was seriously bad news for the United States and its allies. Pyongyang’s ballistic missile program has long received considerable international attention (although regrettably little effective response), but last week’s test reached a potentially significant milestone. Solid-fuel missiles, unlike their liquid-fueled counterparts, are quickly launchable once deployed from hidden arsenals. They are essential to a nuclear power’s first-strike capability, sent on their way before they can be pre-emptively destroyed on the launching pad, which is a major risk for liquid-fueled missiles. North Korean propaganda always merits independent verification, but this rings depressingly true, following as it does months of extensive, continuing missile testing, nearly 70 launches this year, and increasingly harsh rhetoric by Kim Jong Un’s regime.

The Biden administration reacted passively, letting the test proceed without significant reaction. Perhaps it was consumed with its rearrangement of the bureaucratic deck chairs on the State Department Titanic to handle its nearly invisible China strategy. There’s nothing like a government reorganization to help divert from a policy vacuum. Unfortunately, North Korea’s quickening menace hasn’t even provoked any visible paper reshuffling. 

While Beijing is undoubtedly this century’s existential threat for America, Pyongyang is an immediate danger — to Northeast Asia, the United States, and worldwide. As the North’s capabilities accumulate with increasing speed, it may be difficult to identify the significance of each new piece of bad news. But North Korea remains a desperately impoverished country, once again reportedly enduring significant food shortages and still shrouding its experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic. Indulging in the expenditures necessary for the offensive military systems it is building, its nuclear-weapons program most prominently, underlines just how determined, and likely how close to fruition, Kim’s project is.

Japan and South Korea Getting Serious

North Korea is effectively China’s surrogate in destabilizing Northeast Asia. Although both sides deny that Pyongyang is subordinate to Beijing, it is long past time to appreciate that China’s support for the North is effectively the foundation keeping the Kim dynasty in power. China’s Communist party supports the world’s only hereditary Communist dictatorship because it suits them; if China wanted North Korea’s nuclear program ended, it could terminate its support tomorrow. Kim Jong Un would be unable to hold onto power for long, replaced most likely (and perhaps bloodily) by a general at Beijing’s beck and call. Stripped to its essentials, the Beijing-Pyongyang relationship is not nearly so complicated as the charade we have, in effect, accepted these many years.

The key conclusion is that China and North Korea constitute a joint threat. They are not independent variables, although the nature of their threat manifests itself in many different ways. From that conclusion flows the logic that an opposing strategy must address how to handle this combined threat over time, whatever aspect seems most imminent at any particular point. Indeed, if anything, given the intensifying cooperation between North Korea and Russia regarding Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the global nature of the growing threat is even clearer. Washington may be having trouble understanding this point, but last week, after due deliberation, Tokyo reacted with stunning decisiveness.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to double Japan’s defense budget in five years (thereby reaching the target of 2% of GDP for military expenditure set eight years ago for NATO members). Fulfilling the pledge would make Japan’s defense outlays the world’s third-largest, behind only the United States and China. Tokyo also published Defense of Japan 2022, a white paper stressing the threat from Beijing and Pyongyang and the continued strengthening of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Moreover, as Japan foreshadowed earlier this year announcing its assistance to Ukraine, the new defense strategy says clearly that “North Korea defends Russia.” The European Union should certainly take note of this resolve emanating from the Far East.

A few days before, Japan announced its purchase of up to 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles, a move the Washington Post characterized as “a stunning break with a long tradition of eschewing offensive weapons.” With a range exceeding 1,000 miles, Tomahawks fired from Japan could easily reach Beijing, and they could hit all of North Korea. Obviously much more remains to be accomplished before Prime Minister Kishida’s objectives, and those of Defense of Japan 2022, can be achieved, but Tokyo’s forward thinking is impressive.

In South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, still a relatively new president, has had considerable success in moving away from the “sunshine policy” of his immediate predecessor, notably by restarting joint military exercises with the U.S., which were unwisely curtailed during President Donald Trump’s futile efforts to negotiate with Pyongyang. Yoon has also taken steps to improve relations with Japan, which is critical to more effective collective-defense measures in the Western Pacific. South Korea’s growing appreciation that Chinese threats to Taiwan implicate its own national security marks a critical advance in Seoul’s strategic vision.

Foreign Policy Is a Big Domestic Political Issue

The real problem here, in facing China and North Korea, is the passivity of the United States. President Biden’s seeming resolve to continue for a third term the failed Obama administration policy of “strategic patience” toward North Korea, and its self-imposed imperative of climate-change negotiations with China, have stifled development of an effective U.S. policy response. Once-promising initiatives like the Asian Quad are stalled, and new military initiatives regarding Korea, worthwhile though they may be, are decidedly limited in scope. Around the region, for example, concern for China’s efforts to establish hegemony has motivated Vietnam to consider major increases in weapons purchases from America, but Washington is reacting to these developments, not leading.

The already-underway 2024 U.S. presidential campaign is likely to turn more on foreign policy and defense matters than most other recent elections. A major land war in Europe, the continuing threats of international terrorism and nuclear proliferation, and above all China’s growing menace and that of its North Korean sidekick, are increasingly impossible to avoid. The Biden administration’s quiescence, particularly on Asian threats, jeopardizes U.S. national security. Now that it could jeopardize Biden’s political security, perhaps the White House will awaken.

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.

Biden’s terrible hostage policy

December 12, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on December 12, 2022. Click Here to read the original article.

The Biden administration’s portrayal of trading convicted Russian agent-provocateur Viktor Bout for basketball star Brittney Griner highlights the central error of quid pro quo hostage deals. President Joe Biden’s misguided triumphalism incentivizes hostile governments, rogue states, and terrorists to calculate the benefits of seizing U.S. citizens as bargaining chips, pawns in their larger strategies.

Humanitarian concern for wrongfully detained Americans is entirely justified, but such concerns should not generate policies putting more citizens at risk. Presidents must consider larger national security priorities, most importantly the even-more compelling humanitarian imperative to shut down hostage-taking as a profitable enterprise. That Washington’s record in handling human extortion has been imperfect is no reason to abandon our strategic aim to protect citizens worldwide under the civis Americanus sum principle, derived from ancient Rome.

In 1985, Ronald Reagan said clearly and concisely: “America will never make concessions to terrorists — to do so would only invite more terrorism. Nor will we ask nor pressure any other government to do so. Once we head down that path, there would be no end to it, no end to the suffering of innocent people, no end to the bloody ransom all civilized nations must pay.” Reagan himself allowed his policy to be violated, seeking to ransom U.S. hostages in Lebanon, with deeply negative consequences for the country and his presidency. Unfortunately, the subsequent tragedy of continued hostage-taking is the best evidence Reagan was right the first time.

It is one thing for the U.S. to engage in explicit spy-for-spy exchanges, similar to the long-recognized legitimacy of prisoner-of-war exchanges. It is something quite different, however, to enter quid pro quo arrangements to obtain the release of unjustly seized Americans, whether by hostage swaps, ransoms, or any other compensation to the hostage-takers. First, it demonstrates globally that Washington is willing to deal, in the “right” circumstances, and that there is no issue in principle to buying back U.S. citizens, only a question of the price. Second, the circumstances of seized Americans differ widely. Some have simply acted foolishly, straying too close to the borders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea and being captured by their security forces. Others have given hostile governments a pretext by committing small offenses that their captors exploit (Griner’s case and Marc Fogel’s, also held by Russia, who has received almost no public attention). Some may actually be engaged in espionage and unlucky enough to be caught. Treating the full range of possibilities as fungible only encourages hostile actors to claim that all those seized are spies, thus upping the price for returning truly innocent Americans like Paul Whelan.

Heedless of the compelling prudential arguments against quid pro quo exchanges and instead expanding on prior ill-advised exceptions, the Biden administration has dramatically altered fundamental U.S. hostage policy. The White House complains about the growth of “hostage diplomacy,” but its own far-reaching repudiations of Reagan’s principles are important contributing causes. Biden’s appeasement policy first manifested itself by releasing Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou from Canadian extradition proceedings, thereby allowing her to return to China. In exchange for this surrender, Beijing released two Canadians it had unjustly seized. No wonder Russia thought it, too, could profit from this expanding human souk, seizing Griner just days before it invaded Ukraine. The Department of Justice argued unsuccessfully not to settle with Meng, and it lost again over the Bout-Griner swap.

As bad as the new Biden policy is, the White House and its supporters have compounded their error, thereby inviting new and even more-creative hostage-taking, by the way they have characterized Griner and the rationale for capitulating on Bout. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that “Brittney is more than an athlete, more than an Olympian. She is an important role model and inspiration to millions of Americans, particularly the LGBTQI+ Americans and women of color.” Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson described Griner as an “icon” and a “hero,” words echoed by commentator Van Jones.

These improvident statements effectively tell governments and terrorists considering seizing Americans as bargaining chips who the ideal targets are during Biden’s presidency. The president and his advisers are suckers for the right target. Even worse, all this boasting raises the price for other still-incarcerated Americans who are not “icons.” Whelan and Fogel are, at this very moment, unfortunate cases in point. Where are the politically powerful interest groups lobbying Biden for their release? And if it took conceding Bout to free Griner, what is the price for Whelan, Fogel, and other American hostages around the world? Obviously, much higher than a week ago.

Unquestionably, Washington needs to do a far better job of deterrence and punishment against hostage-talking generally. But one thing is certain: As long as the bazaar for U.S. citizens is open, any number of our country’s most ruthless enemies will be ready to bargain.

John Bolton was the national security adviser to former President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The US must urgently address China’s nuclear threat

December 07, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article first appeared in the Washington Examiner on December 7th, 2022. Click Here to read the original version.

The “peaceful rise” of China as a “responsible stakeholder” in international affairs has long been Beijing’s mantra to conceal its extraordinary expansion of military capabilities. Its rapidly growing nuclear weapons arsenal, which makes it the third-largest nuclear power after Russia and America, urgently requires adapting U.S. nuclear and overall military strategy to respond to this increasing threat. This process has begun, but it remains dangerously inadequate and far too slow. The newly elected Congress provides a critical opportunity to raise the alarm about China, especially its nuclear capabilities.

Lulled for years by Deng Xiaoping’s stratagem “hide your strength, bide your time,” policymakers believed China sought only “minimal nuclear deterrence,” enough to deter nuclear attacks but not more. That is no longer true, if it ever was, as China replaces “hide and bide” with “wolf warrior” diplomacy. Testifying at his September confirmation hearing to lead the U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Anthony Cotton said, “We have seen the incredible expansiveness of what they’re doing with their nuclear force, which does not, in my opinion, reflect minimal deterrence. They have a bona fide triad now.” By developing land, air, and sea delivery systems, China is acquiring a first-strike capability and the resilience to withstand a first strike and still respond with devastating nuclear force. This is not a “peaceful rise.”

The Biden administration’s nuclear posture review, in a declassified edition released later, agrees that America “will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.” Incredibly, however, the review asserts this threat will arise “by the 2030s,” which is manifestly incorrect. We are there now.

Undoubtedly the hardest strategic problem is dealing simultaneously with two near-peer nuclear powers, both in terms of deterrence and, if need be, actually launching nuclear weapons on two fronts. Cold War deterrence theory essentially assumed a bipolar U.S.-USSR scenario. Incredible intellectual and operational work went into thinking through deterrence in such circumstances and the consequent weapons and delivery system requirements both to maintain deterrence and to retaliate if it failed.

A tripolar nuclear world is far more dangerous and complicated. How do we deter two nuclear threats simultaneously? Will Russia and China act as allies or behave opportunistically? Will we have enough warheads and delivery systems to handle two separate nuclear crises? We are nowhere near able to answer these questions confidently, and Cold War history should teach that we are already well behind in responding, both conceptually and operationally.

Indeed, we can only say with certainty that substantial additional nuclear warheads and delivery systems are necessary — and sooner rather than later. America must also urgently progress beyond the limited national missile defense program then-President George W. Bush launched over 20 years ago. The reality is that comprehensive homeland defense measures capabilities are inescapable when facing the combined Chinese and Russian threats. Any other conclusion is irresponsible.

One trap to avoid is believing that arms control agreements with China will solve or at least mitigate its rising threat to Washington and our allies. We should quickly jettison the alluring view, already in the air, that arms control will restrain China any more than it restrained Russia or rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

During the Trump administration , we saw the implications of China’s growing nuclear capabilities in part because the New START agreement with Moscow would expire (unless jointly extended by the parties) in February 2021, which was rapidly approaching. Clearly, New START has failed badly, and its extension would inordinately benefit Moscow over Washington. Russia had repeatedly violated the treaty, it did not cover tactical nuclear weapons, with which Russia had a huge advantage, and it did not address more recent technological advances like hypersonic cruise missiles.

Most critically, however, there is no logic to bipolar nuclear arms control treaties in a tripolar nuclear world. Why should America continue to bind itself in a treaty with Russia if China is left completely free to increase its nuclear arsenal without limit? Moscow agreed to bring China into any future negotiations, but Beijing oh-so-politely demurred, explaining modestly that its nuclear forces were not nearly so extensive as to warrant including them in a successor to New START. That’s where things remain today, notwithstanding the Biden administration’s grave miscalculation in extending bilateral New START without any changes until 2026.

Continuing to invite Chinese participation in future nuclear weapons negotiations serves one important purpose. If Beijing still declines to participate, it will demonstrate its clear hypocrisy. And if China joins the negotiations, it will almost certainly gridlock them, thus forcing U.S. policymakers to realize that protecting the United States is a matter of strategy and hardware, not ephemeral arms control agreements. The next two years are a period of vulnerability for America but provide ample time for Congress and possible 2024 presidential candidates to lay out their arguments. Let the debate begin.

John Bolton was the national security adviser to President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The US needs a sanctions policy revolution

December 01, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article was first published in The Hill, on December 1st, 2022. Click here to read the original article

For over three decades, economic sanctions against America’s adversaries have been a critical element of our foreign policy. Unfortunately, increasing evidence shows that, far too often, sanctions are poorly conceived and enforced. 

We have failed to appreciate that our sanctions’ targets are devious and creative, crafting successful evasion and mitigation strategies. We have been satisfied with sanctions as virtue signaling rather than real economic warfare. Unsurprisingly, therefore, sanctions are often only marginally effective or, even worse, self-delusional.

Most recently, Iranian drones used by Russia against Ukraine have been found to contain enormous quantities of U.S. and other Western components, including sophisticated elements of targeting and propulsion systems.

The sanctions and export controls involved here do not involve Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs. But the robust pattern of Tehran’s drone-related counter-sanctions activity suggests its success in thwarting one sanctions regime are readily applicable to thwarting others.

Other ongoing examples of sanctions failure include Iran selling more oil internationally, especially to China, because of lax U.S. enforcement; not effectively empowering Venezuelans to overthrow the authoritarian Maduro regime because of inconsistencies in American policy; not bringing Russia to its knees in retaliation for its aggression against Ukraine; and not stopping North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

These and other cases exemplify the need for a cultural revolution in American sanctions policy as we face adversaries such as China that are major economic powers and greater threats. Failing to act now can cripple us later.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson, eager for alternatives to military action and America’s most outspoken sanctions advocate, called them “a hand upon the throat of the offending nation,” and a “peaceful, silent, deadly remedy” that will “not cost a life outside the nation boycotted,” but which apply pressure that “in my judgment, no modern nation can resist.” Wilson was proposing economic warfare, not virtue signaling.

Today, however, Washington’s decisionmakers often sabotage their own efforts. One common mistake is to implement “smart” or “targeted” sanctions rather than broad and sweeping measures. Unhappily, the more precise the sanctions, the easier they are to evade.

During George W. Bush’s administration, for example, specified Chinese companies sanctioned for selling Pakistan missile components took evasive measures such as changing their names or creating cut-outs, thereby easily evading enforcement. That problem remains pervasive.

Far better to apply the broadest possible sanctions, such as Security Council Resolution 661 after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, declaring that United Nations members “shall prevent the import into their territories of all commodities and products originating in Iraq” (or Kuwait after the date of the invasion). No ambiguity or room for creative interpretation there.   

Another failure, unfortunately typical of both American and European sanctions, is providing long delays before sanctions take effect. After President Trump exited the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and announced resumption of U.S. sanctions, the renewed restrictions largely did not take effect for six months. In response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February, Europeans declared sweeping prohibitions on importing Russian oil and natural gas, yet those much-ballyhooed sanctions are only now coming into effect. 

Analogously, the Biden price-cap scheme for Russian oil exports is conflicted, trying both to restrain exports but also permit them under certain levels to avoid increasing global oil prices. You can’t have it both ways.

The argument for delays and other caveats is that businesses affected by sanctions need time to adjust. Instead, grace periods are far bigger gifts to the sanctions’ targets, furiously using the time available before the effective date to transact as much business as possible, while also preparing longer-term evasive and concealment mechanisms. 

Worse, to avoid “overcompliance,” Washington’s bureaucracies provide explanations about sanctions that are little more than roadmaps for sanctions violators to follow.

Briefly grandfathering existing contracts to allow affected companies to extricate themselves from existing agreements has merit, but there is no compelling reason to shield firms from prospective sanctions. It is rare indeed that rising political or economic tensions with foreign nations do not afford time to anticipate and protect against increasing risks, including through protective contract drafting. Political risk is a cost businesses must face in a less-than-perfect world. 

Perhaps most importantly, the State, Treasury and Commerce Departments, which administer sanctions and export controls, are simply not aggressive enough. Real-world experience and public-choice economic theory confirm that government bureaucracies have their own cultures, highly resistant to change and outside direction. 

Moreover, in many cases, particularly with financial institutions, the U.S. relies on self-enforcement, perhaps effective with domestic firms, but with little or no impact on shadowy operators abroad.

Enforcement resources are also limited. Notwithstanding the desires of many sanctions officials to be tougher, they simply lack the wherewithal. Moreover, enforcers are buried in agency bureaucratic cultures hardly known for swift, decisive behavior, and which do not reward economic warriors, who are often viewed as troublemaking pariahs.

We need serious consideration of shifting responsibility for detecting sanctions violations, and punishing or retaliating accordingly, to agencies with bureaucratic cultures better suited to real economic warfare. The most likely alternatives for sanctions enforcement would be the Defense or Justice Departments. Justice has investigative and enforcement capabilities, but we must also guard against an excessively legalistic interpretation of sanctions. Punishing adversaries broadly is the objective, not proving case-by-case violations judicially beyond reasonable doubt before punishment or retaliation are justified. 

Alternatively, Defense could establish a civilian-led “Economic Command,” paralleling the existing Cyber Command, European Command and the like. The military has conducted sanctions enforcement, including George W. Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative, and its Iraq-related work under Security Council Resolution 665, authorizing “such measures commensurate to the specific circumstances as may be necessary…to halt all inward and outward maritime shipping” to guarantee compliance with Resolution 661. That is real enforcement, which we can undertake unilaterally under existing constitutional and statutory authorities. 

These are issues which the new Congress should carefully consider over the next two years, and which 2024 presidential candidates can and should debate.

Taiwan and the U.S. Need Statesmanship, Not Partisanship

November 29, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on November 28th 2022. Click here to read the original article.

Taiwan’s local elections on Saturday weren’t exactly held under fire, but the threat from China was palpable enough. The island’s competitive voting contrasted sharply with the Chinese Communist Party’s National Congress in October, which effectively made Xi Jinping president for life. Videos of Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, being forcibly removed from the convention are historic, now underlined by scenes of the Chinese government repressing public protest over its draconian zero-Covid policies.

Taiwan’s local elections typically don’t foretell how the public will vote for the national government. Take President Tsai Ing-wen, who as head of the Democratic Progressive Party won re-election in 2020 by wider margins than in 2016, even though the Chinese Nationalist Party—the Kuomintang, or KMT—made significant inroads in 2018. The KMT again made major gains this election, including Taipei’s mayoralty, despite the DPP’s effort to nationalize the elections by stressing Beijing’s threat.

While Taipei’s domestic politics mirror those of other industrial democracies, few countries face so imminent an existential threat. National attention now turns to 2024, when Ms. Tsai’s last term ends. Shortly after Saturday’s results, Ms. Tsai resigned as DPP leader, opening the way for a new party chairman. All of Taiwan’s political leaders should emulate her approach: less partisanship and more statesmanship for crafting strategies to deter Beijing’s threat to Taiwan and the entire Indo-Pacific.

In the U.S., both parties recognize that Taipei expects Washington to help with the Chinese threat. Nevertheless, it is imperative that America convey its expectations of Taiwan and synchronize strategies. Prioritizing these conversations will decrease isolationist sentiment in the U.S., most recently on display in disagreements over arming Ukraine against Russia. America aids Ukraine because it advances our strategic interests, and Ms. Tsai and other Taiwanese leaders must make their case vigorously, as President Volodymyr Zelensky has done.

By demonstrating seriousness of purpose, Taiwan can refute one canard still alive in Washington: that Taiwan’s citizens are insufficiently committed to their own defense. Geostrategist Edward Luttwak recently wrote in these pages of “the persistent fecklessness” of Taipei’s military preparedness, while its “youth can continue to play video games.” Such criticism is unjustified and corrosive, as Taiwan can’t open itself to criticism that it is free-riding on U.S. political and military aid.

America must stop treating Taiwan’s defense as an exercise in developing a lengthy list of weapons systems to provide. Strategy is more than list-making, however estimable the list, especially given our recent failure to prioritize budgetary and operational matters. In the Ukraine case, the U.S. faces daunting logistical challenges in delivering weapons to Kyiv while also restarting or accelerating production lines to meet the needs of itself and endangered allies such as Taiwan. Promising weapons that are unavailable for several years is empty virtue-signaling. The depletion of U.S. arsenals directly affects our own security, a vulnerability that Washington can no longer ignore.

Taipei urgently needs comprehensive political thinking, too. Its political leaders and diplomats—many of whom are up against Beijing’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy—must begin planning and acting at higher strategic levels than before, integrating existing bilateral efforts into a global grand strategy. The same goes for the U.S. and its allies, who need more-comprehensive strategies to defeat the existential Chinese threat. China has a strategy and is obviously executing it.

Beyond Taiwan, Washington rightly has expectations of other Indo-Pacific allies. We must fully integrate Taiwan into rapidly emerging Indo-Pacific political and military structures for deterrence purposes. Taiwan isn’t merely a “customs territory” but a functionally independent state. Though most nations resist entertaining full diplomatic recognition for Taiwan, this isn’t currently an imperative. Significantly enhancing substantive, near-term political ties is both feasible and more important than the trappings of full diplomatic recognition. Israel has long mastered this complicated role-playing, and Taiwan and its Indo-Pacific neighbors have quietly engaged in the minuet for years.

Now, however, is the time for diplomatic rock ’n’ roll. Let’s prevent whining from isolationists that America didn’t realize what it was undertaking if, sooner rather than later, China provokes a crisis in Taiwan. Taipei is the epicenter of what for Washington could be another “present at the creation” moment—as Harry Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, described the beginning of the postwar world. The U.S. and all its allies must be ready to perform.

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.

Bibi Netanyahu Could Upend Biden’s Weak Foreign Policy

November 28, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article was first published in the 19fortyfive on November 28, 2022. Click here to read the original article.

Bibi Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, victor in its fifth national election in four years, is forming his seventh government (surpassed there only by David Ben-Gurion). Netanyahu’s coalition won a clear Knesset majority (by Israeli standards), 64 seats out of 120, but few recent governments have emerged easily. This new one is no exception, but the current tumult over Cabinet positions should not distract outside observers or Israeli politicians from what will follow thereafter.

For whatever is the duration of Netanyahu’s new government, and whatever the allocation of Cabinet positions, the critical reality is that Israeli national-security policy will rest essentially in his hands. He has firm, long-standing views on critical issues which will inevitably, and probably quickly, bring him into sharp conflict with President Joe Biden, both men’s emollient assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. How Washington responds to Jerusalem’s new government could materially affect Biden’s own foreign-policy legacy over what could be his last two years in office.

Even before then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned against an Iranian “nuclear Holocaust,” Netanyahu grasped that Tehran’s nuclear weapons were the existential threat facing Israel. In possibly his last term, Netanyahu’s top national-security priority will be ending, not simply managing, Iran’s threat. This is infinitely distant from Biden’s Iran policy, which venerates Barrack Obama’s inaugural address: “[W]e will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

Tehran’s fist is today otherwise occupied, pummeling its own people. Still, it will continue menacing Israel and America unless and until the internal resistance finds ways to fracture the senior levels of Iran’s regular military and the Revolutionary Guards. Netanyahu undoubtedly sees Iran’s growing domestic turmoil as an opportunity for regime change, which Israel and others can facilitate. Simultaneously, Jerusalem can be preparing its military and intelligence services to attack Tehran’s nuclear program, something the White House simply refuses to contemplate seriously. Biden’s obsession with reviving the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal utterly blinds the White House to the potential for a more significant victory. If regime change prevails in Iran and the new leaders understand that seeking nuclear weapons endangers Iran’s security, the need to destroy the nuclear program will diminish substantially, perhaps totally. And the likelihood of a post-ayatollahs’ regime supporting international terrorism is highly remote.

Obtaining full Israeli diplomatic recognition across the Arab world constitutes a closely related Netanyahu priority. Iran’s nuclear, conventional, and terrorist threats reordered the priorities of all the other regional governments in ways the Administration has yet to grasp. These tectonic shifts in the Middle East’s geostrategic alignments engendered the Abraham Accords, normalizing Israel’s relations with four Arab states.

Ironically, Israel under Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia will be more closely aligned strategically than today either is with Washington. Even if Riyadh and Jerusalem do not achieve full diplomatic relations in the immediate future, widespread cooperation against the common Iranian threat is certain. Given Biden’s dim view of the Saudis (and other oil-producing and therefore climate-despoiling Arab monarchies), such politico-military teamwork, especially if it facilitates miliary action against Tehran, won’t improve US-Israeli relations any time soon.

The Abraham Accords demonstrate that the Palestinian issue has tacitly become a second-tier matter, particularly for the Gulf Arabs, which is hardly Biden’s view, and a major reason he shuns the Abraham Accords. Instead, his eagerness to resurrect the Iran nuclear deal is mirrored by his desire to resurrect the long-dormant “Middle East peace process,” and a “two-state solution,” for the Palestinians.

Even under the now-fallen Bennett-Lapid government (whose settlements policy was not far distant from Netanyahu’s), the Administration has repeatedly warned against any attempted Israeli annexation of the West Bank, and criticized Israeli settlement policy in that disputed territory. Controversies over the handling of the Temple Mount cannot be far behind, especially given the major role in Netanyahu’s coalition of decidedly pro-settler parties. The underlying Washington-Jerusalem divergence on the very legitimacy of a “two-state solution” promises nothing but controversy.

One issue on the front burner right now is the report that America’s Department of Justice will conduct an unprecedented investigation of the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on the West Bank. In the hard-to-believe category, the White House and State Department quickly denied any knowledge of the investigation, and Justice and the FBI declined to comment. To justify jurisdiction for the probe, officials have quietly pointed to statutory authority regarding crimes committed against Americans overseas by terrorists(), but that authority is dubious in Abu Akleh’s circumstances. In any case, Israel will flatly not cooperate. This is the sort of spark that can inflame any bilateral relationship, but especially an already sensitive one.

To make matters worse, Biden has just created a Washington-based position at the State Department, a “special representative for Palestinian affairs”, that has already drawn criticism in Israel both for the new position itself and for the person named to fill it. Advocated as one more step toward “upgrading” U.S. relations with the Palestinian Authority, the new position looks nearly certain to become the locus not of advancing American interests regarding the failed Authority, but of advancing the Authority’s interests within the Biden Administration.

There are many other easily foreseeable potential flashpoints. Under its previous government, for example, Israel was widely criticized for decidedly underwhelming support for Ukraine, largely attributed to the need to mollify Moscow so Israeli strikes against Iranian and other terrorist forces in Syria could proceed unimpeded. And, during the recent campaign, Netanyahu called a deal to delineate the Israeli-Lebanon maritime border, thus enabling exploitation of undersea natural-gas fields, a “historic surrender”. There are more, such as the West’s tenuous relationship with Turkey, and how it might affect Israel. Netanyahu has yet to make many critical decisions, to which Biden’s responses are equally unknown.

Some say Biden and Netanyahu need each other politically, albeit for decidedly different reasons, so there is little to worry about. That is not what history teaches. And Netanyahu is likely a man in a hurry. Biden may be as well, writing a prescription for contentiousness.

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.

Missile Defense Is More Urgent Than Ever

November 14, 2022

As rogue states and powerful rivals grow more dangerous and belligerent, even Biden acknowledges its necessity.

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article was originally published in the Wall Street Journal, on November 13th, 2022. Click Here to read the original article.

Iran now boasts that it possesses hypersonic ballistic missiles capable of defeating existing missile defenses—even in the U.S. While skepticism of the regime’s claims is warranted, it might not be bluffing. Russia’s military desperation in Ukraine has reportedly led it to supply Iran with captured U.S. and U.K. weapons in exchange for drones and to purchase arms from North Korea.

It is a small step for Russia from violating these international taboos to offering military assistance to rogue-state allies. Given China’s historical support for nuclear and missile proliferation and its enormous demand for oil and gas, you can imagine Beijing’s doing the same. And, unfortunately, it’s true that current U.S. missile defenses would be woefully inadequate to defend against significant ballistic missile strikes. But Washington must make enhancing our missile defenses a priority.

Even President Biden seems to understand what a vital task this is. As a senator, he stridently opposed George W. Bush’s decision in 2001 to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and build out missile defenses. The Bush administration’s plans were, in Mr. Biden’s view, equivalent to “raising the starting gun that will begin a new arms race in the world.” But times change. The Biden administration’s Missile Defense Review, released late last month, attests to the “expanding and accelerating risk” missile technologies pose to the U.S., its forces abroad and our allies, as well as the heightened need for missile defense.

Mr. Biden’s mind has been changed by more than Iran, which accompanied its claims of missile advancements with a threat that those who meddle in the state will “pay the price.” As experts speculate that North Korea is readying a seventh nuclear test (its first since 2017), the administration worries that Pyongyang might graduate from testing nuclear weapons to using one against an adversary. A sign of this fear: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently threatened that such a strike would mean “the end of the Kim Jong Un regime.”

North Korea’s missile-delivery systems, which like Iran’s are based originally on Russian SCUD missile technology, are improving rapidly as well. Tehran’s recent claims of advanced missile capabilities and its nuclear program in general have benefited from Pyongyang’s technical assistance. Iran is simply following North Korea’s lead. Pyongyang has been testing at a steeply accelerated pace, including a record-breaking 23 launches on Nov. 2, one of which landed near South Korean territorial waters. Subsequent North Korean tests included an intercontinental ballistic missile, which caused Japanese authorities to order civil-defense measures, although that launch was ultimately determined to have failed.

China and Russia pose a growing nuclear danger too. Both have made increasingly belligerent references to nuclear arms and offensive war. Yet the limited defenses America has built up have been consistently inadequate and are now simply not fit to meet that threat.

Washington has no excuse for how sparse its national missile defenses remain, two decades after freeing itself from the ABM Treaty. As our enemies pursued hypersonics and other threatening new technologies, America’s operational capacities for deterrence—and its will to retaliate with military force as deterrence requires—have declined. North Korea’s recent testing has led some pearl-clutchers to argue that we should acknowledge the dictatorship as a nuclear-weapons state. Yet it doesn’t take a hawkish attitude to see the immense value in improving our missile defenses. They are designed and deployed for defensive purposes and to protect the lives of innocent civilians. No president would hesitate to employ missile defenses in the event of an attack, especially a nuclear one, even if he feared retaliating against our adversary—contrary to our national security interests and deterrence policy.

We don’t need perfect systems to influence enemy risk calculations about taking offensive action against the U.S. Nonetheless, there is a significantly higher risk of missile strikes on the American homeland today than two decades ago, and our capabilities haven’t improved correspondingly. The U.S. needs greater accuracy in antimissile systems, and far more of them. Our defenses need to be deployed to deal with rogue-state threats, as well as China and Russia, and against all phases of hostile launches: boost, midcourse and terminal.

Such efforts will need to be far more ambitious than previous attempts. When Mr. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty 20 years ago, he created a missile-defense program to defend against “handfuls” of incoming missiles from rogue states and accidental launches from Russia and China, as was entirely appropriate for the threats at the time. Today, rogue state capabilities are more sophisticated, Russian rhetoric is becoming more belligerent, and China’s nuclear arsenal is growing rapidly. In response we must urgently increase our homeland missile defenses across the board, which will also have the collateral benefit of aiding our allies. The technology we develop to protect ourselves can be deployed to defend them too.

Today’s threat environment leaves no room for further delay and failure. Homeland missile defense should command top priority in our national security strategy.

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.

Biden has it backwards on Iran, Saudi Arabia

November 01, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

Why does President Biden favor policies alienating Saudi Arabia, whose alignment with the U.S. dates from Franklin Roosevelt, while coddling Iran, our most dangerous Near East enemy?

Biden’s recent visit to Riyadh, pursuing his political priority to reduce gasoline prices before November’s elections, unmistakably failed. Criticizing Riyadh for meddling in domestic U.S. politics, the White House, despite its own obvious political motivations, threatened unspecified “consequences,” saying it will “reassess” U.S.-Saudi relations due to the Kingdom’s “decision to align their energy policy with Russia’s war.”

Congressional Democrats immediately revived proposals to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of Yemen’s civil war and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Today’s oil-pricing tensions did not arise in a vacuum, although the administration is trying to make it appear that way. In fact, Biden may simply have believed he had a deal when he didn’t, reminding us that international-affairs scholars Simon & Garfunkel once warned “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

And it is more than obvious that Iran is Russia’s real Middle East ally, as its supply of “kamikaze” drones demonstrates. Reprisals against the Saudis now would cause lasting strategic damage to Washington, in fact enhancing Moscow’s influence in Riyadh.

Biden’s badly misguided Middle East policies are reaping predictable results. In 2020, he was rhetorically brutal to the Saudis, saying “I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them. … We are going to in fact make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are.”

He emphasized there was “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,” pledging to “end the sale of material to the Saudis where they’re going in and murdering children.”

That was strike one from the Saudi perspective, although later, as president, Biden did authorize some Saudi arms sales.

Strike two was candidate Biden’s overall campaign against the oil-and-gas industry. He described climate change as “the existential threat of all time,” essentially advocating putting Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing Arab states out of business. Biden wants to reduce reliance on carbon-based fuels through all possible means, notwithstanding the complex dependence of advanced industrial society on precisely those fuels. The merits of Biden’s views are debatable, and their likelihood of success dubious, but his hostility to the industry, foreign and domestic, is open and notorious.

Speaking of existential threats, strike three from Riyadh’s perspective was Biden’s obsession with rejoining the gravely flawed 2015 Iran nuclear deal. For a candidate who stressed the importance of repairing America’s international alliances, Biden paid little heed to the fears of Israel and the Gulf Arab states. They view Tehran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, ballistic-missile delivery systems and support for terrorists, like Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, in just that light. They rightly fear that Biden’s blindness to Iran’s multiple threats, so reminiscent of President Obama, reflects an upside-down view of the Middle East that endangers not only them but the United States as well.

For the Saudis, these three strikes alone easily justified rebuffing Biden’s recent supplications. Riyadh says its subsequent decision to restrict oil production rests on economic analyses unrelated to U.S. politics, a disagreement unlikely to be resolved soon. The real question is what Washington does next. Eliminating or restricting U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, as Sens. Menendez (D-N.J.), Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and others urge, likely with White House support, is precisely the wrong approach.

Yemen’s tragic civil war continues because of Iran’s persistent efforts to meddle in the Gulf Arabs’ backyard. It is Iran’s surrogates in Yemen, using weapons supplied by Tehran, that have targeted Saudi and Emirati civilian sites like airports and oil installations. Tehran keeps the Houthis threat alive to obtain the incalculable strategic advantage of enveloping the Gulf monarchies through a continued Iranian military presence in Yemen. The arms shipments that should cease are from Iran to the Houthis, not U.S. sales to Saudi or the United Arab Emirates. The civil war would likely find at least partial resolution shortly thereafter.

Moreover, the region’s truly momentous strategic question now is whether Iran’s ongoing demonstrations, sparked by Tehran’s “morality police” murdering Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, will grow sufficiently to threaten the regime’s legitimacy and very existence. After years of widespread opposition to the ayatollahs’ economic mismanagement, these new country-wide demonstrations are being reinforced by increasing numbers of striking workers in the oil-and-gas and manufacturing sectors.

Western reporters outside of Tehran are rare, but reports in Farsi on social media, including cell-phone pictures and videos, show the resistance continuing and strengthening. There is word of security forces refusing orders to suppress the resistance or fleeing confrontations with emboldened demonstrators.

Ground truth is hard to come by, but no one should underestimate the fierceness with which the ayatollahs will try to cling to power. Indeed, their savagery just in the six weeks since Amini’s murder has left over 200 civilian dead and thousands injured.

The White House is utterly tone deaf, at precisely the moment when domestic opposition to the ayatollahs has reached levels unseen since they seized power in 1979, to pressure not Iran but Saudi Arabia. Riyadh and other Arabs can quietly and effectively assist Iran’s resistance, especially the Arab and Sunni ethnic and religious minorities, and provide safe-havens outside Iran for the resistance to organize, plan and grow into a real counter-revolutionary force. If the ayatollahs fell, their successors would not likely sell drones to Russia.

Even former President Obama has admitted he was wrong not to have done more to aid the protesters against Iran’s thoroughly rigged 2009 presidential election. Biden likes to say, “don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.” He should apply the same logic to the Middle East, which should make the choice easy for his administration.

High U.S. gasoline prices are due to Biden’s own inflationary fiscal policies (and the Federal Reserve’s sustained low-interest rates), as well as restrictions on domestic oil production. Post-election, Biden should stop blaming Saudi Arabia and look in the mirror. 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.

Securing America’s Interests In a Challenging World

Category: By John Bolton

When will Biden get tough with China? And other foreign policy questions that will define 2023

Western weakness could still allow Putin to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat

Joe Biden’s ‘Strategic Patience’ On North Korea Is A Historic Mistake

Biden’s terrible hostage policy

The US must urgently address China’s nuclear threat

The US needs a sanctions policy revolution

Taiwan and the U.S. Need Statesmanship, Not Partisanship

Bibi Netanyahu Could Upend Biden’s Weak Foreign Policy

Missile Defense Is More Urgent Than Ever

Biden has it backwards on Iran, Saudi Arabia