Bolton's North Korea agenda

[John Bolton] recently made news by appearing to support the idea of negotiations with North Korea, comparing it to the deal that the Bush Administration struck with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2003.

Don’t fall for it. The agreement with Libya, and how its relates to North Korea, is actually one of the least well-understood episodes in recent diplomacy. But it is important, because it demonstrates how Bolton plies his trade, and the danger he poses.

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush Administration faced a delicate situation: There were no weapons of mass destruction! Saddam had, in fact, abandoned his programs and the United States had invaded Iraq anyway. This looked, well, bad. How could Bush convince other world leaders, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, to give up their nuclear weapons aspirations if it looked like the U.S. would just turn around and topple them, just as it had Saddam?

Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, hit on an ingenuous solution. The United States had also struck a disarmament deal with Libya. Why not have Gaddafi vouch for Bush?

“North Korea will be surprised to see how much will be possible (if it abandons its nuclear programs),” she reportedly told the South Korean Foreign Minister in 2004. “I wish Kim Jong-Il would talk to Gaddafi.”

Rice likely presumed the message would leak, but just to be sure Bolton—at the time, an undersecretary of state—gave a speech emphasizing that “Kim Jong Il could follow the advice of Dr. Condoleezza Rice. She was serious when she expressed several days ago her hope that Kim Jong Il would talk to Colonel Gaddafi.” A few days later, Bolton was asked whether the U.S. would “arrange a meeting between Kim Jong-Il and Colonel Gaddafi” and Bolton agreed that “it would make for an interesting conversation.”

Of course, we know how that worked out. In 2011, Libyan opposition forces backed by U.S. airpower overthrew Gaddafi. It was, in fact, NATO aircraft that struck the Gaddafi convoy as it was attempting to flee Sirte, forcing Gaddafi out of his vehicle and into the hands of the rebels who brutally murdered him.

As Libya collapsed into civil war, the very same John Bolton, by then a television pundit, openly advocating killing Gaddafi. Asked how this squared with his support for the 2003 disarmament deal, Bolton was nonplussed.

“Nobody at the time thought it was a get-out-of-jail-free card in perpetuity,” he explained.

“It was fully exposed before the world that ‘Libya’s nuclear dismantlement,’ much touted by the U.S. in the past,” North Korea’s state media noted, “turned out to be a mode of aggression whereby the latter coaxed the former with such sweet words as ‘guarantee of security’ and ‘improvement of relations’ to disarm itself and then swallowed it up by force.”

States pursue nuclear weapons for a lot of reasons, but chief among them is that the bomb is, in fact, a get-out-of-jail-free card in perpetuity—or at last as close to one as there is. A lot has been made of the fact that Kim Jong Un reportedly told a visiting South Korean delegation that would consider denuclearization. It’s worth looking at precisely what Kim allegedly said:

“There is no reason for [North Korea] to possess nuclear weapons as long as military threats to the North are eliminated and the regime's security is guaranteed.”

Kim is doing isn’t offering to give up his nuclear weapons, he’s explaining why he needs them.