Trump Says Should Have Fired Bolton for Botching NK Talks, but Bolton Had Already Sabotaged Talks Under Bush

So why was he ever allowed anywhere near them?

Trump now says he was shocked to learn in 2018 — one month after he had already installed Bolton as the National Security Advisor — that the latter still thought the Iraq War had been a good idea all along.

He also blames Bolton for setting him back on the North Korea process so much so the consequences are still felt to this day:

Trump says he should have fired Bolton “right then & there,” however it isn’t as if Bolton had been an unknown quantity on North Korea.

In the Bush years, Bolton together with Cheney already played a decisive role in burying the Clinton-era Agreed Framework that could have led to peace:

John Bolton, Cheney’s proxy in the State Department on proliferation issues, writes in his memoir Surrender is Not an Option that he considered the “axis of evil” speech a signal that he could now begin a bureaucratic offensive aimed at killing the Agreed Framework. Bolton recalls that he pushed the State Department to adopt the position that North Korea was out of compliance with the Agreed Framework for having “failed to make a complete and accurate declaration of its nuclear activities and refused to allow inspection of related facilities.”

However, Bolton was misrepresenting the terms of the agreement, which provided that North Korea would come into full compliance with its safeguards agreement, including the accuracy and completeness of its declaration on its nuclear program, “[w]hen a significant portion of the LWR [light water reactor] project is completed, but before delivery of key nuclear components…” Construction on the light water reactor had not even begun in 2002, when the State Department notified Congress that North Korea was out of compliance.

Bolton’s plan was frustrated temporarily by resistance from the NSC, over which then-National Security Adviser Rice had some influence. But the decisive blow to the Agreed Framework came in July 2002, when, according to his memoir, Bolton obtained an intelligence assessment stating that North Korea “began seeking centrifuge-related materials in large quantities” in 2001, and that it had “obtained equipment suitable for use in uranium feed and withdrawal systems.” Bolton recalls that the new intelligence finding was “the hammer I had been looking for to shatter the Agreed Framework.” He argued in interagency meetings that North Korea had pledged to “take steps to implement the North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” and therefore any North Korean move toward uranium enrichment violated its commitment.

Bolton was creating another false issue. Robert Carlin, a North Korea expert and adviser to the US negotiators, has pointed out that the reference to that document was an “afterthought” and that “no one really believed that the reference to the North-South agreements would constitute one of the core DPRK obligations” in the agreement.

Bush’s negotiator with North Korea, Charles L. Pritchard, suggested bringing the uranium enrichment issue into the Agreed Framework, using the North Korean interest in normalization as negotiating leverage, according to Bolton. He also warned that if the United States withdrew from the agreement, North Korea would resume its plutonium program or start a new uranium program.

However, Bolton recalls telling Pritchard that wouldn’t make “the slightest difference,” because North Korea already had enough plutonium for “several weapons.” In fact, it was not at all clear that Pyongyang had already converted plutonium into a single nuclear weapon.

However, Bolton showed no apparent concern about North Korea’s long-range missile program, which the Clinton administration and North Korea had agreed would be negotiated in conjunction with moves toward normalization. “I wanted a decisive conclusion that the Agreed Framework was dead,” Bolton writes.

So given that Bolton had extensively documented his role in sabotaging a prior North Korea engagement, why was he ever allowed within ten miles of Trump’s repeat attempt?

 


Related/background:

15 Comments
  1. cechas vodobenikov says

    they mean Goebbels when they describe someone as an academic or advisor in the USA

  2. TRAD says

    There was a way to guarantee peace with North Korea. I sent those proposals during Bolton’s reign, they were ignored.

  3. restless94110 says

    Trump already gave you the reason: he likes to have different inputs. The fault for anything is on the disloyal traitors who think they were the ones elected and they know better. Just because Trump chose to listen to them means nothing. This article means nothing. It is just more lunacy. Rear view mirrors are ever so clear. Toss the mirrors out onto the street. No one has any use for these articles.

  4. James Willy says

    It don’t matter if bolted on is working or not. Don’t matter if dotart *fired* him. That fat slob is there now doing both mens jobs at once. The fat slob probably calls it *multi-tasking_ The fat slob is good at it anyways. His recent performances on stage have been extra sickening this past week. Just wish these yankees would attack China. Then we could watch yankeestan get wiped out in one day.

  5. Undecider says

    How does Trump not know Bolton was a sack of dung?

  6. thomas malthaus says

    https://www.aei.org/op-eds/john-bolton-was-dead-wrong-about-venezuela-and-trump-was-right/

    Roger Noriega’s opinion on how John Bolton got Venezuela wrong.

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      It would take someone with that surname to confuse Venezuela with its neighboring narco dictatorship, Columbia, which the CIA has been housing its narcotics manufacturing and distribution activities since Vietnam days, when its source was Cambodia, and its destination LA.
      Believing anything that the American Enterprise Institute peddles will turn anyone into a compliant change agent working for worldwide American hegemony under the guise of helping the countries they hose to the max.

      1. thomas malthaus says

        How long did you work for the US government?

        I don’t know to what extent Maduro is involved in narcotics trafficking-if any.

        Books and articles have been written about CIA and US military drug operations. Afghanistan is their most conspicuous effort.

        Ramstein Air Force base is a convenient traffic node.

        I think the article is probably true as it portrays Bolton’s failures and war mongering regarding Venezuela.

        1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

          I’ve never worked for any government, but I spent my youth resisting my WW2 veteran father’s attempts to “interest” me in a military career.
          He cornered our Senator, William Armstrong, at a Shriner meeting and got him to commit to a scholarship to the Air Force Academy for me, if my grades were good enough, and they were. I still remember the night that I told him I wasn’t interested. I also remember the night, a week later, that he walked out on my mother and I after a fight that I listened to from out of sight. I didn’t talk to him for 15 years, until it turned out that he was working 3 blocks from my job.
          It was my late step-mother (who was a better parent than he ever has) who told me, after his death, that he had been proud of me, something he could never bring himself to tell me over the decades since I’d reunited us.
          Pat Tillman and Michael New are my only two military heroes.
          Ramstein Air Force Base wasn’t anywhere as useful to the CIA as the Mena airport during Bill Clinton’s governorship, thanks to Jeb Bush.

          1. thomas malthaus says

            Describe the MENA airport or are you referring to all airports in northern Africa and perhaps Saudi Arabia and the UAE?

            http://www.dilyana.com — The journalist has written a piece somewhere within her archives referencing Ramstein and the drug trade.

            You probably didn’t miss anything by not serving, unless long term government benefits were your ultimate aim.

            The way the US has destroyed whatever passed for world comity since 1945 isn’t anything to admire and neither was my miniscule contribution.

            That’s why they’re called empires.

  7. TOUGHCHOICE says

    EVERYONE presented to Trump had a background in the shadow government….and also were endorsed by the establishment GOP congress critters…Trump was bombarded from all sides with NO valid advisor..still to this day NO valid advisor for him…IF imo RON PAUL was at the beginning his advisor we would see a different country today…not a wasted 4 years for some of us…as the shadow critters still profited $$$ and have kept their POWER….the swamp is still in charge…along side of the FED…imo

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      Unfortunately, what Dr. Ron Paul failed to do in 11 terms in the House wouldn’t have been accomplished by his being an advisor. He managed to do what his constituents re-elected him 10 times to do, represent them. In his next to last campaign, his Democratic opponent ws endorsed by the Texas Republican Party, and he still won by a landslide.
      I haven’t seen any sign that his son will follow in his father’s footsteps, yet.

  8. cechas vodobenikov says

    apparently it is the fascist American dimocrats that most admire bolton….trump displays poor judgement often—no different than Obama—-haspel, Pompeo, devos, grenel, Mattis—he would do better w Kissinger “we immediately do the illegal; the unconstitutional takes a little longer”

  9. voza0db says

    Because mutTrump is just a funny moron jester…

  10. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

    John Bolton must not have the ability to tell the difference between members of the Bush family and those of the Trump family, if he can’t tell the difference between North Korea and Libya.

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