Tag: John Bolton

Bolton Says “Performance” Not Denuclearization Needed By North Korea to Drop Sanctions

It is starting to become pretty clear that sanctions will ultimately be dropped before North Korea denuclearizes based on the new rhetoric coming from the White House:

ohn Bolton, the U.S. national security adviser, said Thursday that Washington will remove sanctions when it sees “performance” from North Korea and advocated a second summit between the two countries’ leaders.

In an interview with Washington-based National Public Radio (NPR), Bolton discussed a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and said it will be possible “sometime after the first of the year.” 

Through a second North-U.S. summit, Bolton said Trump “is trying to give the North Koreans a chance to live up to the commitments they made at the Singapore summit” and has “held the door open for them.

“They need to walk through it,” Bolton continued. “This is one more chance for Kim Jong-un, who is the only decision maker that matters in the North Korean system, to deliver on what he said in Singapore.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Who is Playing Who In Regards to the North Korea Nuclear Issue?

It looks like people are starting to realize that President Trump has been following John Bolton’s advice all along in regards to North Korea:

First, Trump could simply choose to shrug, continue to tweet that the North Korean threat has evaporated, and direct Pompeo to secure concessions in any way possible. This would be a likely path to appeasing Pyongyang, resulting in the United States giving up valuable leverage for virtually cosmetic North Korean concessions like the reversible dismantlement of tunnel entrances at the Punggye-ri nuclear site. North Korea has plenty of old and now out-of-use nuclear and missile sites it could happily detonate before the international press.

Second, Trump could simply allow the North Korea process that began on June 12 to quietly collapse and put the issue of its nuclear program and disarmament on ice—call it a return to “strategic patience.”

The problem here is that the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign is all but dead after the Singapore summit and it’s more likely than not that China, along with Russia, will ease up on the implementation of existing sanctions and perhaps even call for a removal of United Nations sanctions applied in 2017 on North Korean exports.

In this scenario, the U.S. loses interest and North Korea benefits economically while continuing to build out its nuclear program without constraints. This would be the equivalent of a continuation of the muddling-through approach that three consecutive U.S. administrations found themselves resigned to with North Korea, updated for the era of a considerably more capable North Korea.

Third, Trump could find himself left with nothing but the literal nuclear option. Feeling spurned and humiliated by Kim, Trump may find that the only way to move forward is to let John Bolton’s March 2017 prophecy come true.

Weeks before entering the White House as Trump’s advisor on national security affairs, Bolton, as a private citizen, had remarked on Trump’s acceptance of Kim’s invitation that “[The purpose of this process is to] foreshorten the amount of time that we’re going to waste in negotiations that will never produce the result we want, which is Kim giving up his nuclear program.”

Gone would be the days of “all options” being on the table. Trump might conclude then that the only path to denuclearization is an all-out military strike on North Korea—a trigger to a nuclear war that would engulf Northeast Asia in tremendous destruction and likely parts of the U.S. homeland, given North Korea’s intercontinental-range ballistic missile capability.

None of these scenarios are appealing, though the third is quite clearly the worst. Trump’s Monday tweet offers the clearest glimpse of why diplomacy-for-diplomacy’s-sake with North Korea can be dangerous—even if it pulled us back from the brink of “fire and fury.”  [Daily Beast]

You can read more at the link, but I have been saying this for quite sometime that I think the Trump administration is simply giving the Kim regime one last chance to rejoin the world community and denuclearize.  It almost seems like they are checking every box to say they have tried every peaceful means to get them to denuclearize.  If the Kim regime does not take advantage of this chance I think other options will be seriously considered and appeasement which this article suggests will not be one of those options.

John Bolton Says North Korean Nuclear & ICBM Programs to Be Scrapped Within a Year

Good luck with this because I am very skeptical this will happen:

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Sunday the U.S. has a plan that would lead to the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in a year.

John Bolton said top U.S. diplomat Mike Pompeo will be discussing that plan with North Korea in the near future. Bolton added that it would be to the North’s advantage to cooperate to see sanctions lifted quickly and aid from South Korea and Japan start to flow.

Bolton’s remarks on CBS’ “Face the Nation” appeared to be the first time the Trump administration had publicly suggested a timeline for North Korea to fulfill the commitment leader Kim Jong Un made at a summit with President Donald Trump last month for the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

Picture of the Day: North Korean Media Shows John Bolton Shaking Kim Jong-un’s Hand

N. Korean leader Kim shakes hands with hawkish Bolton

This photo, taken from the North’s Rodong Sinmun daily newspaper on June 13, 2018, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (R) shaking hands with U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, who is known for his hawkish views on the North, at the Capella Hotel on the Singaporean resort island of Sentosa. Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump held a summit there a day earlier. (Yonhap)

Bolton to Use Libya Nuclear Deal as Benchmark for North Korea Denuclearization

Mr. Bolton just needs to make sure that no one brings up what happened to Libya after the nuclear deal:

Washington’s newly appointed national security advisor John Bolton may seek a comprehensive denuclearization deal with North Korea as the U.S. used to disarm Libya in the early 2000s.

Bolton has referred to the Libya case as a means to denuclearize Pyongyang. The remark was made as leaders of North Korea and the U.S. are set to meet in May to discuss the North’s denuclearization.

In 2003, Libya agreed to destroy all of its chemical, nuclear and biological weapons stockpiles, and its nuclear weapons program equipment was shipped to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the U.S. the following year.

The dismantlement was made in exchange for the normalization of Libya’s relations with the U.S. and Europe and the easing of economic sanctions it had been under.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, however unlike Libya, if North Korea does give up its nuclear weapons they have a large enough conventional military capability to threaten Seoul that any future regime change attack is unlikely.

Is Appointment of John Bolton A Signal to North Korea To Be Serious About Denuclearization?

Considering John Bolton’s recent comments about North Korea, I think it is pretty clear that President Trump is putting people in position that will support hard measures against the Kim regime if negotiations fail:

John Bolton

When John Bolton talks of war, on the other hand, it’s more explicable. “Question: How do you know that the North Korean regime is lying? Answer: Their lips are moving,” he said on Fox News shortly after news broke that Trump and Kim Jong Un had agreed to participate in direct talks on “denuclearization” by May. The North Koreans aren’t going to voluntarily abandon their goal of obtaining nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, he argued. “They want to buy time: three months, six months, 12 months—whatever it is they need to get across the finish line. What Trump did … is foreshorten that period” by organizing a meeting that can quickly expose North Korea insincerity about relinquishing its nuclear program anytime soon. (“I may leave fast or we may sit down and make the greatest deal for the world,” Trump himself recently predicted.) “Rather than having the low-level negotiations rising to the mid-level negotiations rising to the high-level negotiations, finally rising to a summit meeting—that’ll be two years from now, they’ll have deliverable nuclear weapons,” Bolton explained. “That we cannot allow.”   [The Atlantic]

You can read the whole article at the link.

I think President Trump’s quick acceptance and short timeframe for conducting the summit combined with his recent appointments of Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Bolton has to be putting significant pressure on the Kim regime that past delay games are not going to work this time.