Despite months of hard diplomacy, U. S. envoy Stephen Biegun didn’t even get a seat at the negotiating table in Hanoi, where hawkish national security adviser John Bolton instead had the president’s
White House national security adviser John Bolton’s last-minute role in influencing President Donald Trump’s negotiations with North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un played a major role in the summit’s ultimate failure to produce any agreements, experts have said.
Bolton, who has a long history of dismantling international deals, was not present when Trump and Kim sat down for dinner Wednesday at the Sofitel Metropole Hotel in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. Neither was North Korea envoy Stephen Biegun, who has led extensive, unprecedented negotiations with Pyongyang in the wake of a historic bilateral summit in Singapore last June.
Biegun’s absence raised some eyebrows among observers. When he took a backseat to not only Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—who did dine with the two leaders—but Bolton at the negotiating table the following day, those hoping to see a diplomatic milestone immediately grew concerned.
« Something happened, » Christine Ahn, founder and international coordinator of the Women Cross DMZ activist group, said Thursday during a press call, discussing signs in Kim’s personnel choice that he was prepared for serious diplomacy. « When we saw the table and John Bolton sitting at the table and Stephen Biegun sitting behind when he had done all this work to do all this preparation, it just seemed for us, ‘Oh my gosh, something fishy is going on here.' »
President Donald Trump, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un and their respective delegations hold a bilateral meeting during the second U. S.-North Korea summit at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, February 28. Among those seated next to Trump are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, while U. S. special representative to North Korea Stephen Biegun is seated out of sight in a chair behind them. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
While few expected to see Kim agree to immediately or unconditionally forfeit the nuclear weapon program his country has held dear for decades, analysts saw the real possibility that the two countries—technically still at war since the two Koreas fought in the 1950s—could declare peace and that the U. S. was prepared to offer some sort of partial sanctions relief in exchange for North Korea’s commitment to take concrete steps toward denuclearization. Instead, Trump told reporters that « sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times. »
The upset left many wondering what went wrong and, amid the many variables surrounding the complex, uncharted talks between the U. S. and North Korea, those who have followed closely the events of the last few days are pointing their fingers at Bolton’s presence. The former top arms control official and United Nations ambassador has made no secret over the years of his distaste for international agreements and his advocacy for military action over diplomacy.
Bolton was a major proponent of the Iraq War and has continued to defend the conflict despite charges that the country was producing weapons of mass destruction and harboring militants affiliated with Al-Qaeda having been proven false.
