John Bolton does NOT like what he read in an op-ed yesterday from Mattis and Tillerson on N. Korea. In short he says they are in favor of continuing the policies of the past and if Trump follows their advice, his legacy will be a nuclear N. Korea.
Watch:
Here are Bolton’s tweets from yesterday:
(1/3) If the Mattis-Tillerson op-ed in this morning's Wall Street Journal is actually this administration's policy on North Korea…
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) August 14, 2017
(2/3) …Then the game is over. North Korea will be a full-fledged nuclear-weapons state in very short order. Iran will follow.
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) August 14, 2017
(3/3) We should not continue twenty-five years of failed policies under a different slogan. Leave that to President Hillary Clinton.
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) August 14, 2017
I would post the WSJ article, but you gotta subscribe. But here’s what Business Insider wrote about it:
Equally as important to the US’s stated goal, however, are objectives the pair say they won’t pursue.
“The US has no interest in regime change or accelerated reunification of Korea,” they wrote. “We do not seek an excuse to garrison US troops north of the Demilitarized Zone. We have no desire to inflict harm on the long-suffering North Korean people, who are distinct from the hostile regime in Pyongyang.”
These promises to respect Pyongyang’s leadership and the buffer between US-influenced South Korea and Chinese-backed North Korea represent the substance of what China and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would most likely demand from the US in any negotiation.
This is the flip side from what I wrote this morning. Yes, Trump did get a victory and causing the N. Korean leader to back down. But if they end up pursuing the same policies of the past, then this won’t matter in the long run at all.
Bolton says in the video he does not believe that what Mattis and Tillerson wrote represents Trump’s position on this. I’m sure they talk so Bolton may be right. Either way, Trump has a choice to make here and I hope for all our sakes he doesn’t make the easier choice, which would be to follow the advice of Mattis and Tillerson and kick the N. Korean can down the road.
Here’s more from Bolton on the op-ed: