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Robert Carlin, visiting fellow at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Robert Carlin advises US president to dismiss John Bolton’s advice
Calls for Donald Trump to abandon the so-called “Libya model” and adopt a more feasible solution on the North Korean nuclear issue are emerging ahead of the US President’s planned summit with South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in on Apr. 11. Robert Carlin, visiting fellow at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation who previously analyzed North Korea intelligence for the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times titled “Trump should trust his instincts, not [White House National Security Adviser John] Bolton’s, on North Korea.” In the piece, Carlin criticized the document reportedly delivered by Trump to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un just before the collapse of their Hanoi summit in late February as “in part, a rehash of a ‘Libya model.’” According to a recent report by Reuters, the so-called “big deal” document laid out the US’ vision for broad-ranging denuclearization, including the transfer of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and materials to the US. “At the historic June 2018 Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, the president had pragmatically laid aside Bolton’s all-or-nothing Libya model in favor of a more feasible approach,” Carlin noted. “He’d have been better off to continue that approach in Hanoi. Yet, suddenly the Libya model was back,” he continued. Carlin observed that the “Libya model” was the same one Bolton had proposed during the George W. Bush administration, leading North Korea to resume its previously frozen plutonium program. Referring to the 2002 abandonment – spearheaded by Bolton – of the Agreed Framework reached between North Korea and the US in 1994, Carlin said, “For the North Koreans, [the Libya model] isn’t really diplomacy; it is simply a call for their surrender.” “We already know this tactic doesn’t work with Pyongyang,” he added. Carlin described the Libya model as operating according to “circular logic,” holding that a country that has decided to abandon its nuclear program must be prepared to dismantle everything and ship it out – and that its unwillingness to do so conversely means that it has not decided to abandon its nuclear program. “Abandoning diplomacy again under the tattered flag of ‘the big deal or nothing’ will have only one result: a North Korea armed with even more nuclear weapons,” he predicted. Carlin also characterized North Korea’s proposal to exchange dismantlement of its Yongbyon nuclear facilities for sanctions relief as “vague and unacceptable to the United States.” “The paper Bolton has touted, however, was [. . .] a hammer to smash a negotiating process he did not like,” he continued. “Worse, now as then, there is no practical Plan B for when it fails, just a near-religious belief in the efficacy of ‘pressure,’” he added. Carlin went on to say, “Next week, when President Moon Jae-in of South Korea arrives in Washington, there’s a chance to regain traction on negotiations with North Korea if he and Trump can harness each other’s pragmatic experience in dealing with Kim and drop the all or nothing approaches.” By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
