Bolton criticizes Trump’s stance on North Korea
WASHINGTON >> In his first public comments since leaving the White House, John Bolton, the former national security adviser, delivered a stark warning Monday about President Donald Trump’s approach to North Korea, undercutting the president’s insistence that its leader, Kim Jong Un, wanted to make a denuclearization deal with him.
Without mentioning Trump by name, Bolton said he wanted to “speak in unvarnished terms about the threat posed by North Korea,” and made it clear that he thought the president’s outreach to Kim had benefited only one side. And while Trump has made a deal with Kim one of his signature foreign policy goals, Bolton asserted that there had been no gains with his approach.
“The strategic decision Kim Jong Un is operating through is that he will do whatever he can to keep a deliverable nuclear weapons capability and to develop and enhance it further,” Bolton said during an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Under current circumstances, he will never give up the nuclear weapons voluntarily.”
Bolton was pushed out from his job as Trump’s third national security adviser less than a month ago amid disputes over how to handle major foreign policy challenges, including North Korea. Stopping nuclear proliferation in the Korean Peninsula is where the United States needs “to focus our attention,” Bolton said, “not can we get another summit with Kim Jong Un or what the state of stafflevel negotiations are to achieve a commitment from North Korea it will never honor.”
For Trump, the showy summits have been among his signature foreign policy achievements, held up as historic firsts. But there has been no sign that North Korea’s nuclear provocations have diminished since Trump’s outreach and the exchange of “beautiful” letters from Kim that the president likes to show off.
Trump last met with Kim in June, when he crossed the Demilitarized Zone from South Korea and became the first sitting American president to set foot in North Korea. Trump delighted in the drama of the meeting and the historic handshake with the North Korean leader, which he had arranged with a surprise invitation via Twitter barely 24 hours earlier.