The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  Why Trump wanted to roll back these latest enforcement actions was anybody’s guess, other than that he was feeling Kim Jong Un’s pain. Trump dictated a tweet that could only be read as reversing the Treasury Department’s recent announcement. I argued as strenuously as I could not to do so, with which Mulvaney fully agreed. We had no effect. The whole point, said Trump, was that the tweet was “for an audience of one” with whom he was trying to make a deal. “It won’t affect anything else,” he said, ignoring my obviously futile efforts to explain that lots of other people would also see this tweet and would inevitably interpret it as weakening the sanctions and a public repudiation of his own advisors, especially Mnuchin. Trump simply didn’t care. He wanted to send a message to Kim Jong Un, just as he had wanted to send a message to Xi Jinping when he rolled back Ross’s ZTE sanctions after they had been publicly announced. Sanders asked what to say about why Trump had tweeted, and he replied, “I like Kim Jong Un, and these sanctions were unnecessary.” The tweet went out.

  After we concluded with the Caribbean leaders, discussing common regional challenges, and headed for the airport, we saw media reports that Trump’s North Korea tweet did not refer to what Treasury had announced on Thursday but to other, unspecified future sanctions that weren’t yet public. Pompeo called me from the Middle East a little after six p.m. Eastern time, and I tried to explain what was happening, but it was still confusing. We were, however, both thoroughly disheartened by what Trump’s tweet had done. And this day, March 22, marked the first anniversary of Trump’s offering me the NSC position. It only seemed like ten years ago.

  On Saturday morning at about seven thirty, I called Mulvaney, who had stayed at Mar-a-Lago. Mnuchin had called him Friday afternoon to speak with Trump, to urge that pulling down the new Treasury sanctions would be embarrassing to him. Mulvaney put the call through, and Mnuchin gave Trump the same analysis I had. Trump agreed, hours after disagreeing with precisely the same points, to keep the decisions in place. Hearing this, I asked Mulvaney if I had not been clear about this the day before. “You were very clear about it,” said Mulvaney, “but sometimes it takes two or three tries to get it through.” As for the “future” sanctions, Mulvaney said this was merely Treasury’s “ham-fisted way of explaining things.” He and I decided to conference Mnuchin in. Mnuchin said he was trying to protect Trump from embarrassment by saying we wouldn’t do additional sanctions, although he agreed that the rest of the world could conclude we were receding from “maximum pressure.” We all agreed, however, that correcting the correction (our new synonym for “reversing”) would only make things worse.

  Although I didn’t initially like Mnuchin’s cover story, as the day wore on, I couldn’t think of anything better. We, or more accurately, Trump, might have appeared confused, but at least we didn’t look too weak. I spoke later to Pompeo, and he also agreed we should just let matters lie. In any other Administration, this affair would have been a major story, but for us, it passed almost unnoticed. The release of the Mueller report, which ended the “Russia collusion” issue, dominated news coverage. On Monday, with Pompeo and me in the Oval with Trump, and Mnuchin on the phone, we reaffirmed what we had decided after Singapore, namely that enforcement actions would continue, but that we would not impose additional prohibitions on North Korea without Trump’s approval. If Trump had simply listened on Friday, all this drama could have been avoided.

  * * *

  One issue that bedeviled relations with South Korea (and Japan, and to a lesser extent the European allies) was the question of what share of the costs of US military bases the host country should pay. Virtually everywhere we had bases, the host country paid some costs, but the amounts and formulas varied, and there was no real agreement on what the actual costs were. Under the Defense Department’s creative accounting techniques, almost any “cost” figure could be justified, high or low. As with other military funding issues, Trump thought our allies weren’t paying enough. This fit with his notion, unshakeable after countless discussions, that we were in, say, South Korea, to defend them. We were not there for “collective defense” or “mutual security” or any of that complex international stuff. We were defending Germany, or defending Japan, or defending Estonia, whatever, and they should pay for it. Moreover, as any good businessperson would tell you, we should make a profit from defending all these countries, in which the US had no particular interest (“Why are we in all these countries?” Trump would ask), or at least we should get a better bargaining strategy, starting at the outset of negotiations each time the host-country support agreements came up for renewal.

  Trump had long had the idea that host countries should pay “cost plus X percent” of US costs, as he said back in April 2018, pressing for Arab forces to replace us in Syria (see chapter 2). In time, he was persuaded that “cost plus 50 percent” sounded too raw, so he called what he was asking for by various other names, such as “fair share” or “full and fair reimbursement of our costs.”11 Make no mistake, however, the actual dollar amount he wanted, or at least wanted to start negotiations with, remained “cost plus 50 percent.” In South Korea’s case, under our Special Measures Agreement, that amount was $5 billion annually, an enormous increase over the less than $1 billion per year Seoul was paying. The current agreement was nearing expiration on December 31, 2018, causing enormous concern at both the State Department and the Pentagon. They didn’t want to charge host countries as if we were mercenaries, and also because they knew it would be hard to obtain such major increases. South Korea happened to be first because of the agreement’s expiration date, and Japan was next, but all were ultimately in line to face the question.

  Because I feared Trump’s ultimate threat—withdrawing our troops from any country not paying what he deemed to be an adequate amount—was real in South Korea’s case, I tried to develop a strategy other than just refusing to do what Trump wanted. The latter was Mattis’s approach, which had worked right up until Trump exploded and did what he wanted to do anyway. To State and Defense, withdrawing US forces from South Korea was inconceivable, so their sustained opposition to significantly raising host-country payments just increased the risk. Unfortunately, I knew where the edge of the cliff was. In 2018, after inconclusive negotiations at the end of the calendar year, with December 31 bearing down on us, South Korea agreed to an increase in its costs well above current levels, but still less than $1 billion per year. That meant we now had another year to get a resolution both Trump and the South Koreans would accept, hopefully avoiding withdrawing US forces. That’s how things stood for several months into 2019.

  * * *

  Obviously still concerned about the collapse at Hanoi, Moon Jae-in came to Washington on April 11. Pompeo and I met first with Moon at Blair House at nine a.m., along with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Chung Eui-yong. After the usual pleasantries, we learned the South had had no substantive contacts since the Hanoi Summit with North Korea; the North needed more time to get over Hanoi. Moon was very worried that Pyongyang’s cold shoulder on both the nuclear and inter-Korean issues was bad news for him politically, since his pitch was that “sunshine” would produce tangible results from the North, which it clearly was not doing. I tried to say as little as possible in this meeting, and in the Moon-Trump meeting, precisely because I knew Moon’s government was looking for others to scapegoat, and, within the US team, I was the logical person to target as an obstructionist. And why not? Watching the success of Kim Jong Un’s analogous strategy on Trump, it obviously worked.

  Moon arrived at the White House at noon, and after the usual press scrum in the Oval, Pompeo and I stayed with Trump to meet in a smaller setting with Moon, Kang, and Chung. Trump said he was getting a lot of credit for the way Hanoi had turned out, since it was better to walk away than to sign a bad deal. Moon thought that was fine, but he wanted something dramatic to generate momentum for what he thought could be the summit of the century. He urged a dramatic approach on timing, venue, and form, which could
in turn lead to dramatic results, suggesting meeting either at Panmunjom or on a US naval vessel. Trump cut through the monologue, which was fortunate, because he had seemed to be falling asleep, stressing that he appreciated Moon’s ideas, but underlining that his desire was for the next summit to produce an actual agreement. Meeting once without a deal was not a problem, but no one wanted to walk away twice. Moon, however, was still worried about form rather than substance, but what was really uppermost for him was stressing he was available to join Kim and Trump. Trump was not biting, insisting that there had to be a deal to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons before there was another summit.

  We adjourned to the Cabinet Room for a working lunch, and after reviewing North Korea developments and a little ramble through bilateral trade issues, Trump raised our base costs in South Korea. Trump explained that the bases cost us $5 billion annually,12 saying the US lost $4 billion a year for the privilege of South Korea selling us televisions. Other countries had offered to pay significantly more, and in the next phase of the negotiations, South Korea should be more forthcoming. Trump conveyed that he felt he was very protective of Moon, and had great respect for him. Moon tried to reply that many South Korean companies invested in the US, and pleaded that, regarding base costs, Trump’s expectations were too high. Trump asked if the US leased the land for its bases, or whether it was free, which Moon didn’t answer. Instead, he parried by saying South Korea spent 2.4 percent of its GDP on defense, which led Trump to criticize Germany for its inadequate defense expenditures. Then he was back to South Korea, which was freed from having to defend itself, and therefore free to build. By contrast, the US had spent $5 trillion for the privilege of defending the South, because they were the toughest negotiators of all. Trump wanted a formula fair to the US.

  After more North Korea discussions, Trump asked how relations were with Japan. We all saw the increasing difficulties between Tokyo and Seoul, which would worsen rapidly in the next few months. Moon was trying to upend a 1965 treaty between the two countries. That treaty aimed, certainly in Japan’s view, to put an end to the animosities created by Japan’s colonial rule over Korea from 1905 to 1945, especially World War II’s hardships and the well-known “comfort women” issue.

  Moon said that history should not interfere with the future of relationships, but, from time to time, Japan made it an issue. Of course, it wasn’t Japan that was raising the history, but Moon, for his own purposes. My view was that, like other South Korean political leaders, Moon tried to make Japan an issue when times at home were difficult.

  Trump asked if South Korea could fight together with Japan as allies despite not wanting to conduct exercises with Japan. Moon answered frankly that Tokyo and Seoul could conduct joint military exercises, but that having Japanese forces in Korea would remind people of history. Trump pressed again, wondering what would happen if we had to fight North Korea, and whether South Korea would accept Japanese participation. Moon clearly didn’t want to answer, saying we shouldn’t worry about the issue, and that South Korea and Japan would fight as one, so long as there were no Japanese Self-Defense Forces on South Korean soil.

  Moon ended by saying that when he returned to Seoul, he would propose to the North a third US–North Korea summit between June 12 and July 27. Trump said that any date was fine, but only if there were a deal beforehand. Moon kept trying, explaining, as we all knew, that on nuclear issues the North’s working-level diplomats had no discretion, and that he therefore wanted higher-level discussions. Trump replied simply that Pompeo and I would work on this.

  Prime Minister Abe arrived in Washington on April 26, offering very nearly the opposite view from Moon’s. Trump told Abe he had received good reviews by leaving the Hanoi Summit, which people respected. Abe agreed that the outcome was very positive, and that Trump was the only person who could walk away. He emphasized repeatedly that it was important to keep up the sanctions (which Kim hated), and make no easy concessions. Abe stressed that time was on our side, and Trump agreed.

  Unfortunately, North Korea continued testing missiles, not the ICBMs Kim had promised Trump he would not test, but short- and medium-range missiles that threatened much of South Korea and Japan. Some were launched in salvos, approximating wartime conditions, the first of which I heard about on the evening of Friday, May 3 (Saturday morning Korea time). I immediately called Pompeo and Shanahan after learning of the first launch, to give them a heads-up. Shortly thereafter, more launches were reported. After speaking with Dunford, I decided to call Trump to tell him what we knew. The missiles were short range, so there was no immediate threat, but you never knew with the North Koreans.

  I called Trump a second time a bit later, after still more launches, to say it looked like things were finished for the night. He said, in a somewhat agitated voice, “Keep it calm, play it down, play it down,” obviously worried people might think his friend Kim Jong Un was a touch dangerous. By then, based on public statements by the South Korean Ministry of Defense, press stories were appearing in South Korea, which had more to worry about from short-range missiles. Since State would inevitably be drafting something on our reaction, I concluded, just to be sure, that I needed to check with Trump first. I called him for the third and last time that night about an hour later, and as I suspected, he wanted no statement at all. He ended with “Okay, man,” one of his usual ways of saying he was relaxed about how we’d concluded a particular issue. Statement or not, these ballistic-missile tests, whatever the ranges, violated the Security Council resolutions forming the basis of the international sanctions against North Korea. Not that I was concerned about some inviolable status for council resolutions, but I worried pragmatically that if we dismissed clear violations as immaterial, other nations would learn the wrong lesson and start characterizing significant sanctions violations as de minimis. This was more than a little risky.

  Just to confirm my fears, when I relayed the latest information to Trump the next morning, he said, “Call it artillery,” as if labeling it something it wasn’t would make it disappear. He had also tweeted, in part, “[Kim Jong Un] knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!” Trump obviously thought these tweets helped him with Kim, but I worried they reinforced the perception he was desperate for a deal and that only his destructive advisors (guess who) stood in the way. We had all given up any idea of stopping the tweeting; all we could do was live with it. Interestingly, South Korea’s government was also now calling the rockets “projectiles” to minimize the story.13 All this because of a regime in Pyongyang that was beseeching the world for food for its supposedly starving people but still had enough spare change to engage in missile and nuclear-weapons development.

  Others weren’t so resigned. Abe called on Monday, May 6, to say Kim was getting ever-more irritated over the sanctions’ effects on North Korea, because they were working effectively, and that these new launches were intended to turn the situation in his favor by undermining international unity over the sanctions. Abe said he would completely support Trump’s outstanding policy of aiming for a deal and maintaining sanctions and a robust military posture, a posture he still holds publicly. I understood what Abe was trying to do, but I wondered if constantly telling Trump his strategy was brilliant didn’t in fact decrease Abe’s ability to keep the Trump train on the rails. In fact, Trump suggested Abe put out a statement that Japan and the United States were totally allied so that North Korea would see unambiguously that Japan was with us. He concluded by committing to keep Abe informed, but not to worry, because the launches were short-range and not really missiles. If he said it enough times, perhaps it would become true.

  The next day, Moon called Trump to speak about the weekend launches. Moon was, unsurprisingly, eager to play down the significance of the issue, about which Trump had already persuaded himself. As Moon rambled on about Kim Jong Un’s dissatisfaction with the joint US–South Korea military exercises, Trump observed that Moon seemed to have lost hi
s relationship with Kim, who was now not traveling to South Korea as once envisaged. Trump didn’t see this breakdown as Moon’s fault, but obviously something had happened. Moon conceded there still had been few if any substantive discussions with North Korea since Hanoi. Somehow Moon was able to turn that into an argument the US should be giving direct food aid to the North, instead of simply allowing the South to provide it through UNICEF and the World Food Program.14 Trump answered by saying that he would surprise Moon by giving his complete blessing to releasing the aid through the UN agencies, and asked Moon to let North Korea know that he had suggested it to him. Trump said he was doing this despite hard-liners who opposed it because he had a good relationship with Kim, and the timing was good.

  So much for consistency. North Korea could conclude, “We fire missiles and get free food.” This was a terrible signal, showing again how eager Trump was for a deal. I stressed to Pottinger and Hooker to make clear to South Korea that we weren’t going to be providing any food ourselves. We were simply not objecting to its providing resources, but also insisting that food aid distributed in the North required very careful monitoring. More missile launches followed through the spring and summer, showing Kim’s confidence there would be no retaliation.15 Maybe just more rice. Trump told me on May 9, after the next salvo, “Put heavy sanctions on,” later upgrading that to “massive sanctions,” but not to say anything publicly. We made a weathervane look like the Rock of Gibraltar.