A meme has been making rounds on the internet recently with a quote attributed to Hillary Clinton:
North Korea requires trained and experienced diplomats. Just sending out tweets won't work.
Is it true that Clinton actually said that in the past?
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Sign up to join this communityA meme has been making rounds on the internet recently with a quote attributed to Hillary Clinton:
North Korea requires trained and experienced diplomats. Just sending out tweets won't work.
Is it true that Clinton actually said that in the past?
She has expressed those ideas. But I could not find a reliable source for her saying those exact words together. And she certainly didn't say anything of the sort during the 2016 debates which are pictured in the image, so the image is misleading in that respect. (The transcripts are readily available and can be searched.)
In a March 2018 interview with Dutch media outlet Algemeen Dagblad (published in Dutch), she's quoted as saying:
,,De VS praat niet meer over mensenrechten. Het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken wordt uitgehold. Als je met Kim Jong-un wilt praten over zijn kernwapens, dan heb je daar ervaren diplomaten voor nodig. Mensen die de dossiers en Noord-Korea kennen, de taal spreken. Die mensen zijn weg. Je kunt geen diplomatie hebben zonder diplomaten. Dat gevaar wordt door de regering-Trump niet onderkend.''
Google Translation back into English:
"The US is no longer talking about human rights. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is being eroded. If you want to talk to Kim Jong-un about his nuclear weapons, you need experienced diplomats. People who know the files and North Korea, speak the language. Those people are gone. You can not have diplomacy without diplomats. That danger is not recognized by the Trump government. "
And on May 2, 2017, NBC News quoted her as saying, in a public interview at an event for Women for Women International:
“Negotiations are critical,” Clinton said of the efforts to achieve peace with the nuclear-armed nation. “But they have to be part of a broader strategy, not just thrown off on a tweet some morning that, ‘Hey, let’s get together, you know, see if we can’t get along and maybe we can, you know, come up with some sort of idea.’ That doesn’t work.”
Of course, the image's implication that tweets did work and experienced diplomats were not required, as demonstrated by the June 2018 summit (pictured in the bottom image), is a matter of opinion on many levels. Certainly experienced diplomats were involved in setting up the summit, and it remains to be seen to what extent the summit will improve US-NK relations or lead to North Korea's nuclear disarmament.