Amb. Bolton on the Obama policy that has devastating long-term consequences- the surrender of American control over Internet registration:
“I understand why Barack Obama wants to take it out of the control of the United States and give it to the rest of the world. That’s consistent with the way he’s handled foreign policy for the last eight years – and, by the way, consistent with the way Hillary Clinton will handle it.”
“It’s completely understandable that Clinton will try to avoid blaming Obama because she desperately needs to recreate the Obama coalition on November the 8th.”
“The Internet as we have known it is about to disappear, and I think that has national security implications. It certainly has implications for freedom of communication internationally.”
“Obama has long believed the United States is too strong, too powerful, too assertive, too successful…he wants to spread the power around. This is going to be a key part of his legacy.”
Three months after the Brexit vote, it’s time for the UK’s leaders to “get this country moving again,” as JFK once exhorted Americans. Or “make Britain great again,” per Donald Trump, if you prefer.
Brexit was undeniably a revolution in human affairs, opening up vistas for Britain once buried in European Union bureaucracy. Both economically and politically, London has a unique opportunity to rewrite the international conventional wisdom.
Margaret Thatcher foresaw exactly what Britain needs today: “Don’t follow the crowd. Let the crowd follow you.” On Britain’s relationship with the EU, for example, commentators dissecting the “Norway model” or the “Swiss model” are missing the point. Create a British model suited to Britain’s needs, and press ahead.
Negotiations with Brussels’ bitter-enders will be difficult; no one who has ever dealt with the EU could imagine anything else. But do not approach the EU true believers as supplicants. Their businesses and consumers want access to UK markets, products and services just as their British counterparts want the reverse.
Within the EU and within individual European governments, particularly Germany, Britain’s negotiators should seek allies to outflank recalcitrant politicians, many of whom are already severely stressed because of mistakes on other fronts, notably the terrorist attacks and refugee floods sweeping the continent. Divide and conquer has long been a winning strategy, and can be again in the exit negotiations.
On those security issues, Brexit affords the UK the opportunity to be an independent world power once again. No longer drowning in the molasses of EU decision-making, London can act as an equal partner with Washington regarding threats to the West globally.
True, there are those in America, as well as Britain, who have long held that it is in America’s interest to have Britain inside the EU arguing the US case. On this theory, the UK’s role is to be the US barrister before the high court of Germany and France.
This has always been nonsense. It hasn’t worked for the United States, but more to the point here, neither has it worked for Britain. You lose nothing by abandoning the role. The notion that Britain must have “a seat at the table” in the EU appeals primarily to those whose sole objective is having a seat at the table. (This means you, Whitehall mandarins.) Actually getting things done requires rising from a table and doing it, precisely what Brexit now allows.
EU politico-military decision-making invariably produces a smoothie – appetising perhaps, but hardly durable. Recent French and German efforts to move (yet again) toward more robust EU military capabilities may achieve rhetorical success, but little else. From the St Malo declaration forward, the EU collectively has been long on defence talk and short on action. A fully independent UK can now be more effective with Nato’s central and eastern European members by not having to temper its security posture to suit Berlin and Paris. For example, Britain’s view of resurgent Russian militarism within the former Soviet Union has consistently been more clear-eyed than many of its continental partners.
Now, London will once more have its own voice to say so.
Whether, after the US presidential election on November 8, America will again have the political leadership it needs to complement renewed British assertiveness is presently unknowable.
The election is tightening, however, as Trump’s support solidifies and as Clinton’s manifest inadequacies become more evident. But whatever happens in November, Britain must still make her own way.
History’s opportunities do not last forever. The Brexit decision should not be squandered through indecisiveness and inaction. If Britain proceeds confidently, the ripples of Brexit in Europe and beyond will force reforms that could remake the European political landscape to the advantage of both the UK and its soon-to-be-former EU partners. The same is true for Nato, which needs to become more agile and less bureaucratic.
Britain’s actions over the next few months will be more important for itself and the wider West than anything London has done since 1945.
North Korea’s fifth nuclear test signals continuing progress and sophistication in its decades-long effort to possess deliverable nuclear weapons. Moreover, both US and South Korean military experts assess that the increasing range of Pyongyang’s ballistic missiles, and its ability to miniaturize nuclear devices in order to mate them with its missiles, means targets across America will be vulnerable in just a few years.
The North’s weapons program perfectly embodies Winston Churchill’s warning about “perverted science,” where humanity’s highest intellectual achievements fall into the wrong hands.
The test is yet another fire bell in the night. North Korea’s leaders may have been trying to get President Obama’s attention, but their odds of success are small. For nearly eight years, his resolute indifference to Kim Jung-un’s advances demonstrated that nuclear proliferation is just not one of his priorities.
While Obama’s rhetorical response to the North’s evident progress is sometimes vigorous, it never extends to meaningfully tightening sanctions or anything more robust. And Pyongyang doesn’t even slow down.
Why should it, given Obama’s lack of interest? Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also been thoroughly indifferent, although her rhetoric, especially as she runs for president herself, tends to torque somewhat higher than Obama’s. Nonetheless, if humor is permitted in these dire circumstances, Clinton’s just deserts will be having to deal with the consequences of their mutually failed North Korea policy if she wins.
Conversely, Japan and South Korea need little incentive to worry about Pyongyang’s growing threat. Their intense interest in missile-defense technology is less about China’s aggressive investment in nuclear and ballistic-missile programs than the North’s ongoing menace. In stark contrast, Obama and Clinton have consistently opposed vigorous national missile defenses for America — a mistake Donald Trump should emphasize.
Obama’s defenders argue the Iran nuclear deal demonstrates his nonproliferation bona fides. Instead, the Iran accord proves the opposite. New information emerges daily about the agreement’s inadequacies, both in its own right and in side arrangements like the cash-for-hostages ransom debacle. Plus, there’s increasing evidence of clear Iranian violations of the deal itself, which its verification mechanisms are insufficient to detect, especially considering that major Iranian cheating may be underway in hidden facilities in North Korea.
The unfortunately long, bipartisan history of negotiations with Iran and North Korea contains important lessons for the next president.
First, once launched on the path to nuclear weapons, Tehran and Pyongyang both demonstrated they had made irreversible strategic decisions. These were not lightly taken, nor the potential consequences ignored. Accordingly, once they were underway, negotiations to induce them to abandon their nuclear objectives were inevitably doomed to failure.
Gaining nukes had become essential not just for military purposes but for regime political survival. And just as diplomacy could never succeed, no “agreement” reached with the proliferators ever had serious prospects of being adhered to. Cheating was always central to the rogue states’ strategies. Once they had fixed on acquiring nuclear weapons, duplicity was an automatic reflex.
Second, our intelligence on North Korea has been negligible for so long, and obviously so to the rest of the world, that Tehran would’ve been foolish not to explore the possibility of cooperating with Pyongyang on developing nuclear weapons. We’ve known for at least 20 years of their extensive collaboration on ballistic missiles; why wouldn’t they also collaborate on nuclear weapons, the intended payloads of such delivery systems?
We should’ve long ago stopped “stove-piping” the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats as if they were unrelated. We need dramatically improved intelligence about the North, in considerable measure for what it could reveal about cooperation with Iran and other possible nuclear proliferators. Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others might well pay Pyongyang handsome premiums to counter the potentially existential threat of a nuclear Iran.
Quite rightly, the threat of radical Islamic terrorism is a central issue in the 2016 campaign. Nuclear proliferation and other national-security issues should be as well.
Candidates who demonstrate mastery over these matters, and persuasively explain their strategic thinking, would be tapping a rich, politically helpful and widespread concern among American voters.
They are looking for leaders who truly understand that our government’s most important job is keeping their fellow citizens secure from foreign threats.
