Bolton Nearly Torpedoes North Korea Talks with the Suggestion of Libyan Model

The guided missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) launches a Tomahawk cruise missile March 29, 2011, in the Mediterranean Sea while operating in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn. Fourteen nations have partnered to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorizes all necessary measures to protect Libyan civilians under threat of attack by Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces. (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jonathan Sunderman, U.S. Navy/Released)

In The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan lambastes National Security Advisor John Bolton’s suggestion that America use the “Libyan model,” of nuclear disarmament in North Korea. Even those not paying attention can remember that not too long after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nuclear weapons, he was deposed and hanged in concert with an Obama administration air strike campaign championed by Hillary Clinton. No leader would agree to such terms, and the North Koreans made their feelings known soon after Bolton’s remarks. Pat writes:

Sunday, NSC adviser John Bolton spoke of a “Libyan model” for the North’s disarmament, referring to Moammar Gadhafi’s surrender of all his weapons of mass destruction in 2004. The U.S. was invited into Libya to pick them up and cart them off, whereupon sanctions were lifted.

As Libya was subsequently attacked by NATO and Gadhafi lynched, North Korea denounced Bolton and all this talk of the “Libyan model” of unilateral disarmament.

North Korea wants a step-by-step approach, each concession by Pyongyang to be met by a U.S. concession. And Bolton sitting beside Trump, and across the table from Kim Jong Un in Singapore, may be inhibiting.

What was predictable and predicted has come to pass.

If we expected Kim to commit at Singapore to Bolton’s demand for “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization,” and a swift follow-through, we were deluding ourselves.

At Singapore, both sides will have demands, and both will have to offer concessions, if there is to be a deal.