WASHINGTON -- In his first public comments since leaving the White House, former national security adviser John Bolton said the United States has made no gains from its outreach to North Korea.
Bolton never mentioned President Donald Trump by name, but he said he wanted to "speak in unvarnished terms about the threat posed by North Korea," and made it clear that he thought the president's approach to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had benefited only one side.
"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 said during a speech to a Korean forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Under current circumstances, he will never give up the nuclear weapons voluntarily."
Bolton said Kim's effort to keep his country's nuclear weapons is an "unacceptable" threat to the world.
Trump has insisted that Kim wants to make a denuclearization deal with him, noting that Kim has halted nuclear weapons tests. Trump's three meetings with Kim -- two formal summits and a handshake in the Koreas' Demilitarized Zone, where Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea -- have been among his signature foreign policy achievements.
Asked during a question-and-answer session if "bromance diplomacy" is effective -- a reference to the warm letters that Trump has exchanged with Kim -- Bolton demurred.
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"I'm not going to comment on that," Bolton said. "Nice try."
There is, though, "no basis" to trust any statements from the North Koreans, Bolton said.
"This is a government that has essentially violated every international agreement it has ever made," he said.
Bolton warned that there is a danger not just from North Korea's own weapons but also the potential that it could sell missiles or technology to other states.
The United States, Bolton said, is the only country in the world that can stop nuclear proliferation. He said there should be "serious discussions" about strategies, including military force, to counter North Korea's weapons program.
"If you believe, and you may not, that it is unacceptable for North Korea to have nuclear weapons, at some point military force has to be an option," he said.
Trump has said he has no timetable for a deal with North Korea.
"I'm in no rush. There's no testing. As long as there is no testing, I'm in no rush," Trump said in February. "If there's testing, that's another deal."
Bolton, however, stressed Monday that time may be running out to resolve the issue.
"Time works against those who oppose nuclear proliferation," Bolton said. "A relaxed attitude to time is a benefit to the likes of North Korea and Iran.
"Every day that goes by makes North Korea a more dangerous country," he added. "You don't like their behavior today? What do you think it will be when they have nuclear weapons that can be delivered to American cities? You want to wait until then to act, or do you want to act now?"
White House officials declined to comment on Bolton's North Korea remarks, noting that he did not criticize Trump by name.
LIBYAN PATH COMMENT
Bolton was pushed out from his job as Trump's third national security adviser less than a month ago amid disputes over how to handle major foreign policy challenges, including North Korea.
The differences between Trump and Bolton on North Korea were no secret during Bolton's time at the National Security Council. During a four-day state visit to Japan in May, Trump contradicted Bolton and Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, who both called North Korea's short-range ballistic missile tests a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
"North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me," Trump wrote on Twitter, noting that he trusted Kim to "keep his promise to me."
Trump has also cited Bolton's comments that North Korea should follow the Libyan path of denuclearization by fully eliminating its nuclear program upfront in a possible deal with the United States.
That reference angered the North Koreans, who saw Moammar Gadhafi's agreement with the West as an example of why no one should trust U.S. efforts to disarm another nation. Years after the agreement was reached, Libya descended into civil war, and NATO forces targeted the Libyan military. Gadhafi was eventually killed.
Trump has said that Bolton's views set the United States back "very badly" in talks with the North and added that "maybe a new method would be very good."
Bolton had accompanied the president to the summit with Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam, earlier this year, but he was on a previously scheduled trip to Mongolia when Trump crossed the Demilitarized Zone.
His departure was expected to help revive talks with North Korea, even if it remained unclear what further concessions the North Koreans would be willing to make.
"The chances of a fourth summit go up a great deal now that he's not there," said Victor Cha, the Korea chairman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I don't think there's anybody now at his level that will show the same degree of caution and skepticism of North Korea's intentions."
Christopher Hill, who served as the lead U.S. negotiator during the six-party talks with North Korea during President George W. Bush's administration, has criticized Trump's strategy. But he said Bolton, who had a stormy and short-lived tenure in the State Department during the Bush years, has a history of being "totally disrespectful" after leaving public office.
"I think what we see from John Bolton today is what we've seen from him in the past, and that is that he simply does not understand he is not working for himself," Hill said.
Hill said Trump's summits with Kim resemble a "global reality TV show," but he added: "I don't think John Bolton should be the one sounding the alarm. He should show decent respect for people who took a chance on him and maybe give them some more time."
Others said Bolton was within his rights to speak about the inherent risks of negotiating with North Korea, given his proximity to Trump's diplomatic efforts.
"I didn't hear him say the word 'Trump,'" said Richard Armitage, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration and participated in a different panel during the Center for Strategic and International Studies event. "By all accounts, he fought to have a more sensible policy [on North Korea]. John Bolton realizes -- like everyone except Donald Trump and [South Korean President] Moon Jae-in -- that Kim Jong Un has no intention of denuclearizing."
Information for this article was contributed by Annie Karni of The New York Times; by Ben Fox of The Associated Press; and by David Nakamura and John Hudson of The Washington Post.
A Section on 10/01/2019