With Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, Ambassador John Bolton, Peter Pham, and Jim Hanson

Will Russia and China become increasingly influential players in the Middle East? As the U.S. defers the strong horse role, how many bad actors will make their move? Ambassador Yoram Ettinger outlines the threat matrix of the Middle East where the Muslim Brotherhood  and others benefit from U.S. policy decisions from Egypt to Iraq.

It seems the Law of the Seat Treaty will be brought to a vote in the Senate by John Kerry in the coming weeks.  Ambassador John Bolton charts the implications for U.S. sovereignty.  (See the transcript below.)  Ambassador Bolton also weighs in on the Iraq withdrawal.  Then, Peter Pham of the Atlantic Council forecasts U.S. interest in Africa for 2012.  From Nigeria to Somalia and the hunt for Joseph Kony after the dust settles on the Congolese elections and the Sudan regime acts up again, Africa will become evermore important in U.S. foreign policy.  Finally Jim Hanson covers America’s wars in a way that only he can.  You don’t want to miss today’s Secure Freedom Radio.

Transcript of Ambassador John Bolton on the LOST treaty.

JOHN BOLTON ON “LOST” AND CHINA

FRANK GAFFNEY:

But on this question of sovereignty, you have written and been quite, I think, visionary in your warnings about something called the Law of the Sea Treaty. There are reports that the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, at the administration’s behest, hopes to bring it up for a vote in the United States Senate in 2012. And I’d just like to get your sense of the advisability of such a step and what’s really wrong with the Law of the Sea Treaty.

JOHN BOLTON:

Well, the treaty is really a relic of the 1970s and it’s been an objective of the international left for thirty years now to get the United States to sign onto the treaty, which basically internationalizes the seabed and puts control over undersea resources in an international authority and locks in the rules of navigation that the US, up until now, has had considerable flexibility and power because of our strengths both in the commercial and military naval fields. But the proponents of the treaty are about to make one last push it appears with the Obama presidency still in office and with control of the Senate. These offenses to get the treaty ratified have occurred a number of times in recent years, are always defeated by alert people in the Senate who see the negative implications of this treaty, but as you say, it looks like we’re going to see this rise again one more time in a very important battle in the Senate this coming year.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Ambassador Bolton, you and your colleague in the Bush Administration and now at AEI, Dan Blumenthal, wrote an important piece about China’s double game with respect to the Law of the Sea Treaty. And I wonder if you might elaborate on that, because we’re told by proponents of the treaty that – including the United States Navy, amazingly enough, that we need the treaty to contend with the threat that China, particularly, is now playing – or posing, at least, with respect to passage of the South China Sea and some of its critical, you know, narrows and passages.

JOHN BOLTON:

Well, yeah, the Chinese performance in the past couple of years is an excellent, almost elaboratory style example of what’s wrong with the Law of the Sea Treaty. And with those who say they understand what the treaty’s provisions mean, they understand simplifications. In fact, what China has done very successfully is exploit ambiguities in the treaty entirely to its own advantage to try and extend its influence through the treaty’s economic zone into political control. And as you mentioned, in the South China Sea, where they have just extraordinary territorial claims, both for strategic military reasons, but also for economic reasons, to get control of what are expected to be extensive deposits of oil and natural gas. So the economic purpose is there and the political, military purpose is very clear as well. They’re trying to push the United States Navy as far back from their coast as they can to prevent us from carrying out what for centuries have been entirely legitimate military missions in international waters and to deny us the ability to conduct intelligence gathering activities, which in international waters are perfectly permissible. That’s why the US joining this treaty really renounces the freedom that we have now under customary international law and would subject us to the votes of the treaty adherents, which are undoubtedly, much like the General Assembly of the UN, going to be very negative in their views of the US role.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. And also that can be said of the various mechanism that the treaty creates for mandatory dispute resolution, which are also stacked decks against us. Mr. Ambassador, before we turn to another topic, just quickly, one of the presidential candidates for the Republican nomination, Rick Santorum, was on our program last week and made much the same sort of argument against the treaty. How important would you say, given your sense of the threat this treaty represents to American sovereignty, that we have the other Republican presidential candidates address this issue forcefully and directly in the days ahead?

JOHN BOLTON:

Well, I think it’s very important. You know, one of my concerns for the past year has been the lack of discussion of national security matters at the top levels of our national political debate. And I’ve been particularly concerned about the relative lack of discussion of national security in the presidential campaigns. So I’m quite glad that Rick Santorum has come out forcefully against the Law of the Sea Treaty and in these days before the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, I’d like to see all the Republican candidates oppose it. I think that is their inclination. But I think we should get them on record. I think people need to know about these issues as they cast their votes in the caucuses and primaries.

With Jim Hanson, Jon Adler, and Andy McCarthy

Happy Thanksgiving!  Today’s show starts with Frank’s take on the debate.  You’ve just got to listen.  You won’t find a better analysis on the GOP CNN national security debate that cuts to the heart of matters like Frank does.

Jim Hanson of Blackfive.net brings his own brand of boots on the ground GOP national security debate analysis as well.  He also lays out the economics of good intelligence collection weighed against the costs of war especially in the Middle East.

Jon Adler of the he Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association raises the sadly ignored issue of what the budget cuts mean for those protecting us on American Soil.  He also has some choice words for politically correct counter terrorism training policies.

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 First speaking of that Sharia dominated world, I want to celebrate the arrival on the scene today of a brand new film, it’s called Iranium. I had a small part to play in it so I can’t be entirely objective about it but it is to my way of thinking an absolutely superb treatment of one of the most important subjects of our time, weather the Islamic Republic of Iran and its ambitions to bring Sharia to the world through perhaps the arrival of the Mahadi? The 12th Imam whose return to earth can only be precipitated by something that looks a lot like the apocalypse, Iranium is brought to us by the Clarian Fund; this is a group of film makers who in the past have produced extraordinary motion pictures like Obsession and the 3rd Jihad. There niche if you will is the documentary film in which they intersplice videos from terrorists from acts of violence or demonstrations the exhortations to engage in those sorts of things from various clerics around the world, interspliced with some of the most thoughtful people in the national security space who help make sense of what these other video clips document and in so doing stitch together a story in very compelling ways that helps illuminate truly the most momentous challenges of our time. I happen to think Iranium is the best of the bunch, maybe because I am in it, but actually I think its because its taught and skillful rendering of this complex subject involving the Iranian regime, how it came to power, its ambitions, the threat that it poses not just to Israel most obviously but to the United States for that matter to freedom loving people’s the world over. It describes the steps the Iranian government has taken for decades to actualize that threat, to build up the various kinds of capabilities and terrorist wielding groups both those of the regime it self and its proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. The conventional military power and the unconventional capabilities that are giving rise to ever more ominous threats from Iran including not least of course the nuclear threat. The capacity to build nuclear weapons and to place them aboard missiles that deliver them to ever longer ranges. One particularly worrying scenario that we talk about here from time to time on secure freedom radio is one I am very concerned about in fact I had a chance to speak to the filmmakers in Iranium is the prospect that those ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear weapons could be placed aboard ships as Iran has tested missiles in the past launched from those ships perhaps fairly close to our shores , lofting a nuclear weapon into space where it could be detonated high above our country unleashing what is known as electromagnetic pulse with what you have heard her on secure freedom radio in the past would be quote catastrophic. That is from a blue ribbon commission that was empanelled by the congress to look into the threat of a strategic electromagnetic pulse attack Iranium helps explode , if I can use that term, the real danger that this represents to our country and to our freedoms and I think its imperative that you understand what that threat is as well as the nature of the regime that is probably most aggressively pursuing the capacity to inflict such catastrophic damage on this country . Iranium, it’s a terrific movie the narrator is a marvelous Iranian expatriate by the name of Shohreh Aghdashloo. She appeared brilliantly most recently in a movie entitled The Stoning of Sariah M. She had a staring role in that film and in a way she has a staring role through her marvelous smoky voice as she narrates Iranium. But this is a moment when as her presence in the film and that of so many experts makes clear, we all had best be seized by the danger posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Pursuing as it is the array of very dangerous capabilities weapons and ambitions. And doing so ever more evidently in a way that is designed into conflict with us. Sadly I think it is clear from Iranium that we are not going to be able to talk the Iranians out of these agendas, out of these capabilities out of this threatening mode. Were going to have to stop them and the distraction of Egypt is making that perhaps lot of more difficult, not just for us but for our friends in Israel. We cannot afford to take our eye of this ball. I want to see you put your eyeballs of Iranium. Check it out tonight its rolling out in eight cities around the country maybe more. It is very worth seeing find out how at iraniumthemovie.com