In the wake of last week’s collapse of a planned June 12 summit between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un (which now may be back on), commentators rushed to point the finger at National Security Adviser John Bolton. Bolton “seems to have played a key role in the cancellation” wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “John Bolton must be stoked,” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). “John Bolton’s Wrecking Ball Takes Down North Korea Summit” reads the headline of Ankit Panda’s Daily Beast op-ed. F.H. Buckley calls for him to be fired.
In fact, Bolton was barely involved. It was a pair of jaw-dropping televised gaffes by the president and vice-president that sent the Trump-Kim lovefest into a downward spiral.
The saga began on April 29, when Bolton was asked on CBS’s Face the Nation about the administration’s expectation that Kim Jong-Un demonstrate upfront his willingness to give up nuclear weapons. “I think we’re looking at the Libya model of 2003, 2004,” Bolton replied, referring to Libyan dictator Moammar Ghadhafi’s abrupt decision to verifiably abandon all of his weapons of mass destruction and associated infrastructure, which helped rapidly bring him back into the good graces of the West after years of pariahdom stemming from Libya’s orchestration of the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
That Trump, who had been gushing with praise for North Korea since welcoming home three American prisoners a week earlier, suddenly found himself threatening to “decimate” North Korea because of his misunderstanding of Bolton’s “Libya model” was bad enough. No one in the administration corrected the mistake. Indeed, the mistake became the new truth inside the White House.
Hours later, North Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son Hui denounced the “ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice-president” and threatened to “put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the DPRK-U.S. summit.” This insult led Trump to announce cancellation of the summit on Thursday.
This week, Trump is full of obsequious praise for the North Korean dictator as his administration reportedly scrambles to revive the June 12 summit. In light of the president’s resistance to sitting through detailed briefings on North Korea and the fact that he still “doesn’t think he needs to” prepare for the summit, according to a senior White House official quoted by Time, let’s hope it stays cancelled.
Gary C. Gambill is a Philadelphia-based policy analyst.