John Bolton Condemns Bush’s “North Korea Capitulation”

I think “Singapore Surrender” has a more alliterative ring, but I take no issue with Bolton’s argument:

Last week in Singapore, U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan reached a deal that rests on trust and not verification. According to numerous press reports and Mr. Hill’s April 10 congressional briefing, the U.S. will be expected to accept on faith, literally, North Korean assertions that it has not engaged in significant uranium enrichment, and that it has not proliferated nuclear technology or materials to countries like Syria and Iran.

Indeed, the North will not even make the declaration it earlier agreed to, but merely “acknowledge” that we are concerned about reports of such activities ““ which the United States itself will actually list. By some accounts, the North Korean statement will not even be public. In exchange for this utter nonperformance, the North will be rewarded with political “compensation” (its word): Concurrent with its “declaration,” it will be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and freed from the Trading With the Enemy Act.

President Bush has repeatedly told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley not to make him look weak on North Korea. If the president accepts the deal now on the table, things will be far worse than that.  [Wall Street Journal]

Bolton has always been against Agreed Framework 2.0, so it’s premature to say that this is a sign of a rebellion that actually threatens this deal.