Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said North Korean negotiators were up to their usual tricks when President Trump walked away from the table.
Gates said in a CBS interview aired Sunday that leader Kim Jong Un deployed familiar tactics during the bilateral summit in Vietnam in February “that he’s followed with Trump’s predecessors, you know, we’ll do a little and you do some. We’ll do a little and you do more.” He said over the years of negotiations, North Korea’s nuclear facility “opened and closed so many times it ought to have a revolving door.”
The former director of central intelligence under President George H.W. Bush said he thought Trump’s decision to negotiate personally with the North Korean leader was “a bold stroke that might create an environment where there could actually be progress toward getting limitations on the North Korean nuclear program,” he said. “I believe that the North Koreans will never completely denuclearize.”
While the first meeting between the two leaders in Singapore in 2018 — the first between a U.S. president and the head of North Korea — yielded a signed joint statement, the second bilateral meeting, in Vietnam earlier this year, ended abruptly.
Gates, who was appointed secretary of defense by President George W. Bush and continued to serve under President Barack Obama, agreed with the statement that the president was right to walk away when he did.
“I think he was. Now, I think they’re unrealistic believing that they can get complete denuclearization. So the question is: If the north won’t give up all of its nuclear weapons, are other limitations worth pursuing? And what’s the alternative pursuing those other alternatives?” he said.
