Obama should abandon failed 'strategic patience' on N. Korea: Bolton

By Lee Chi-dong
WASHINGTON, July 15 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President Barack Obama should drop his "strategic patience" policy on North Korea, which has only raised the possibility of more nuclear tests and weapons proliferation by the communist nation, a former senior U.S. official said Friday.
John Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations in the Bush administration, also urged Obama to put more pressure on China and Russia to counter the North's proliferation activity.
"Mr. Obama's deliberate silence and near-palpable lack of interest have helped drive North Korea into media obscurity while simultaneously symbolizing our failure to contain -- let alone eliminate -- the DPRK's threat," he said in a contribution to the Washington Times.
The DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Bolton, now a senior fellow at th American Enterprise Institute and known for his hard-line diplomatic views, stressed the Obama administration's so-called strategic patience policy shows the absence of its determination to stop the North's nuclear and missile programs.
He said the U.S. is passively waiting for North Korea's third nuclear test. It carried out two plutonium-based nuclear experiments in 2006 and 2009. Experts say the North is likely to use uranium next time.
"A real strategy, which we need much sooner than later, would require understanding that the DPRK and Iranian threats, including cyberwarfare, are two sides of the same coin, not unrelated outbreaks of nuclear contagion," he said. "The United States must take both seriously, reversing our present course of ignoring both."
Bolton said, "We must press China and Russia far harder to quarantine North Korea's trafficking in nuclear and missile technologies and materials."
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