No desire

Bolton undercuts Trump and says North Korea has no desire to give up its nukes

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

President Donald Trump’s ousted national security adviser on Monday threw cold water on the president’s assertion that North Korea is ready to make a deal on denuclearization, giving his “unvarnished” view that Kim Jong Un would not voluntarily give up his nuclear weapons under current conditions.

At one of his first public appearances since his abrupt and rocky departure from the White House, John Bolton told attendees at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event that Kim "has not made a strategic decision to give up its nuclear weapons.”

In fact, he argued, “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, who was ousted earlier this month after a year and a half as Trump’s top security aide in part because of his hawkishness, began his remarks by joking that North Korea’s leadership was likely “delighted” by the fact he was there in a private capacity.

“Perhaps they’ll be a little less delighted now that I can speak in unvarnished terms about the grave and growing threat that the North Korean nuclear weapons program poses to international peace and security," he added.

Bolton alluded to several of the policy disagreements he had with his former boss, most notably that Kim was not ready to give up his nuclear weapons program, as Trump has frequently insisted after a handful of meetings with the reclusive leader.

He doubled down on calls to implement a “Libya model” when dealing with North Korea, comments that Trump derisively cited as detrimental to U.S.-North Korea relations after Bolton’s exit. Bolton also countered Trump’s repeated assertions that the U.S. is in “no rush” to push Kim to wind down his nuclear programs and took an indirect shot at his former boss for his forgiving attitude toward recent short-range missile tests in North Korea.

While Trump has said those tests were not a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, Bolton on Monday sided with anxious U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea in declaring that they were. Moreover, he added, Trump’s apparent disregard for the resolutions undermines U.S. policy by giving off the message that its leadership doesn’t care about the sanctions in those or other U.N. resolutions.

“When you ask for consistent behavior from others, you have to demonstrate it yourself,” Bolton warned.