President Trump used North Korean rhetoric as an excuse to walk away from a high-stakes summit with dictator Kim Jong Un, a senior Senate Democrat suggested Thursday.
“It seems to me that there’s an effort here to create alternative facts in which North Korea walked away, but it’s rather clear to me that this was President Trump’s decision,” New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel, said during a Thursday hearing. “He walked away … it’s likely because he came to the conclusion — that the challenges that dawned on him of the full nature of the negotiations with the north, and that his approach was setting us up for a failure.”
That was one tart example of Democrats blaming Trump for the cancellation of what would have been an historic June 12 meeting with Kim.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., argued more heatedly that the White House bungled the diplomacy in the run-up to the meeting. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo maintained that the process had stalled due to North Korean intransigence.
“Over the past many days we have endeavored to do what Chairman Kim and I agreed, [which] was to put teams, preparation teams, together to begin to work to prepare for the summit,” Pompeo said during the hearing. “And we received no response to our inquiries from them.”
Trump released an unexpected letter canceling the meeting Thursday morning, after North Korea issued a statement accusing Vice President Mike Pence of making “unbridled and impudent remarks” about the regime. “Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote in a missive addressed to Kim.
Markey insisted that the administration provoked North Korea’s outrage by invoking “the Libya model.” White House national security adviser John Bolton cited the 2003 negotiations over Libya’s nuclear weapons program as an example of how the North Korea talks would unfold; that is, the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi would dismantle his weapons program, and then the United States would ease sanctions. But it’s a fraught example, because western powers supported Qaddafi’s overthrow and death in 2011 — a campaign that might have unfolded differently if Gadhafi possessed nuclear weapons.
“In the mind of Kim, it will not be two separate storylines … it winds up with him dead,” Markey said. “We should be negotiating peace, Mr. Secretary, but you seem to want to negotiate war. You seem to be willing to miss this opportunity.”
Pompeo emphasized that Bolton was referring only to the 2003 process. “Let me give you one more reason that Chairman Kim should understand it differently: He and I spoke about it,” he said. “He and I spoke about what assurances were going to be provided to him. these were assurances that would clearly have to … extend beyond the end of the negotiations as well.”
Trump’s team has acknowledged previously that Gadhafi’s fate makes the North Korea talks more difficult. “The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes … is, unfortunately: If you had nukes, never give them up. If you don’t have them, get them,” Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, said in 2017.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker blamed former President Barack Obama for the existence of that dynamic.
“One of the reasons I opposed so strongly what the Obama administration did in Libya was exactly the argument you’re laying out right now,” Corker told Markey. “It was, in fact, let’s face it, the doctrine of the last administration to take out a leader that gave up their nuclear weapons and that does make it more difficult for us down the road.”
Similarly, Pompeo faulted Obama for allowing North Korea’s nuclear development to reach a crisis point throughout his tenure.
“I think this administration has behaved incredibly well with respect to encouraging and get[ting] closer to a solution certainly than the last administration did,” he said. “Certainly. It was the previous administration, senator, just for the record: this guy built this out and had the infrastructure to build this out over the last 15 months that occurred over the last eight years.”
Markey agreed with that much. “Right — who’s debating that? No one is debating that,” he said. “The whole world was looking forward with great anticipation to this summit and it has collapsed over a misuse, in my opinion, of an analogy that has the likelihood of precisely zero of getting to the result which we all [want].
