John Bolton: US must continue support for Kurds, keep strong presence in region

Amb. John Bolton.

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – “We need to continue the support that we’ve extended” to the Kurds “and continue to have a strong American presence” in the region, Amb. John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser until resigning in September 2019, said.

Speaking to Kurdistan 24 in an interview hosted by Dr. Nahro Zaros, just before the Nov. 3 US elections, Bolton was strongly critical of Trump’s initial decision to withdraw US forces from Syria, later reversed, in part.

“Many people in the administration tried to explain to the president that Kurdish forces had carried the brunt of the battle, in Syria, in particular, against the ISIS territorial caliphate,” Bolton explained, “and that they were highly regarded by our military, had worked well with them, and could look forward to continued US support.”

Speaking of a possible Joe Biden victory, Bolton added, “My hope would be that the friends of the Kurds in Congress, in the Democratic party, as well as the Republican party, can make it clear to a new president Biden, if he wins, that we need to continue” our support for the Kurds and maintain a strong US military presence in the region.

The Democratic party, in general, has opposed the “endless” post 9/11 wars in the Middle East (as Trump has done), but Biden, himself, may not need much persuading about the Kurds, as he has long been friendly toward them.

In 2007, as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden worked with Republican Senator Sam Brownback (now Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom) to sponsor a bipartisan, non-binding resolution, advocating a decentralized, federal system in Iraq and calling for three autonomous regions, in accord with the 2005 constitution: Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shia Arab.

Read More: Super Tuesday: Joe Biden and the Kurds

The resolution was based on a New York Times article which Biden co-authored with Dr. Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations (Gelb, whose distinguished career began as a university professor, passed away last year.)

Some ten years later, in 2017, this reporter chanced to see Biden at a local grocery store and joined others speaking with him. I asked the former vice-president about the Obama administration’s position on the Kurds, and he responded, “Masoud Barzani is a good friend of mine,” and “I wish we could have done more for the Kurds.”

“Why didn’t you?” I replied. “Turkey,” he answered.

Whether that will continue under a Biden presidency remains to be seen. In an interview with The New York Times last December, Biden criticized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an “autocrat” and suggested the US should take “a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership” and “that we are in a position where we have a way, which was working for a while, to integrate the Kurdish population who wanted to participate in the process in their parliament, etc.”

A video clip of that interview appeared on social media in August, prompting Ankara’s fury. Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan’s spokesperson, tweeted, “The days of ordering Turkey around are over,” but “if you still think you can, be our guest. You will pay the price.”

Risk in Second Trump Term: US withdrawal from Greater Middle East

“If Trump wins a second term, it’s highly likely that he would pull all Americans out of Iraq and Syria,” Bolton said in his Oct. 30 interview with Kurdistan 24. “He’s tried before. He’s been dissuaded by his advisors, but I think he would come back to it.”

“I think he’ll pull all the Americans out of Afghanistan,” Bolton continued. “He thinks this is something that most Americans want,” but “I think he’s just dead wrong on that, and I think he just doesn’t appreciate that will not bring stability to the region.”

The tally of votes in last week’s election remains to be officially certified and a few states have yet to finish their count, but Biden appears very much to have won—even as Trump mounts widespread, but dubious, legal challenges to the results as reported so far.

A figure of unusual probity and intellectual courage in Washington, Bolton tweeted last Friday, “We Republicans are facing a character test. All candidates are entitled to pursue appropriate election-law remedies if they have evidence supporting their claims,” but “they should certainly not lie.”

That was followed on Saturday by an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, “Donald Trump’s disgraceful behaviour risks doing lasting damage,” in which Bolton expanded on his tweet, and a second piece in The Washington Post on Wednesday, in which he excoriated the leadership of the Republican party, which has accommodated Trump’s claims that fraud has seriously distorted the election results.

“As of this writing, the Republican Party has not suffered permanent damage to its integrity and reputation because of President Trump’s post-election rampaging,” Bolton wrote, but “this will not be true much longer.”

Bolton also warned of potential harm to the country, particularly as Trump has just fired his Secretary of Defense, along with three other top Pentagon officials, and replaced them with loyalists.

What if some hostile power tries to exploit Washington’s disarray in the 70 days remaining in the Trump administration?

Later, on Wednesday, Republican political strategist, Karl Rove, added his voice to the criticism with a Wall Street Journal article:This Election Result Won’t Be Overturned; Recounts occasionally change margins in the hundreds, never in the tens of thousands.”

Rove, with an encyclopedic knowledge of US elections, stated, “There are only three statewide contests in the past half-century in which recounts changed the outcome,” and the initial results were very close: between 215 and 355 votes—far short of the 12,614 to 49,064 vote difference in the five states where Biden has been deemed the winner and Trump’s team is challenging the results.

Criticism of Obama, Support for Kurdish Independence

In his interview with Bolton, Zagros also asked about Baghdad’s assault on the disputed territories following the Kurdistan independence referendum and the use of US military equipment by the Iraqi military, particularly the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF.)

Bolton attributed that to a continuation, in Trump’s first year in office, of “the mistaken strategy adopted under the Obama administration.”

Obama had been far too indulgent toward Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Bolton suggested. The US objective had been the defeat of the ISIS territorial caliphate, but “what the Obama administration didn’t understand was that the Shia militias, armed, equipped, and trained by Iran in Iraq had a very different objective.”

“That is sadly what happened, using some of the equipment supplied by the US,” he said.

“There has to be a more systematic examination of what is a just and equitable outcome,” Bolton continued, and “I have said for some time that I think that stability in the region can best be achieved by recognizing an independent Kurdistan.”

Indeed, in September 2017, shortly before the Kurdistan independence referendum, Bolton told Kurdistan 24 just that.

Read More: Amb. John Bolton: Independence referendum is 'good thing'

In his latest interview, Bolton acknowledged there would be difficulties in recognizing Kurdish independence, but “if the United States policy were clear,” it would “force other countries to come to terms with it.” But “right now, we’ve got an ambiguous policy.”

“I’m afraid that will be the same under a Biden presidency,” he continued, but “I think it’s just going to lead to further trouble.”

Indeed, Biden himself is sympathetic to Kurdish political aspirations, but if he were to pursue such a policy, he might well face substantial bureaucratic obstruction, as bureaucracy is, typically, the realm of the routine.

So Bolton called on the “friends of the Kurds in the United States” to “work harder on Biden and his advisers to explain” current circumstances and “why continued US support for the Kurds is important.”

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany