UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said Tuesday that she used “the unpredictability of President Trump” to help convince the Chinese to back tougher sanctions on North Korea.
Speaking to students at the University of Houston, the U.S. ambassador described how the strategy “always” made it easier for her to “get the sanctions through.”
“I would say, ‘We have to cut off the (North Korean) laborers’, you know? ‘We have to do this,’” Haley recalled. “And they’d say, ‘Oh, no, no, we can’t do that.’ And I would say, ‘OK, but I can’t promise you that President Trump won’t use the military. I can’t promise that there won’t be a more forceful action, so why can’t we do this and see if we can start to cut the revenue in North Korea?’”
The technique is very similar to the Nixon-era “madman theory” — which was conjured up in the 1970s by then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger as a way to negotiate during the Cold War and keep enemies in the dark.
Haley said she wanted to use the strategy to “leverage the situation” on the Korean Peninsula and get China on board first before trying it out on Russia and the other nations who were involved in the international sanctions.
“We knew that they were worried about a destabilized North Korea,” Haley explained. “We knew about the pressures they felt like that would put on China. We knew about the idea that they didn’t want war in the region, and so a lot of the sanctions that we did — even though we squeeze China and we knew they hurt — the truth is, I would always use the unpredictability of President Trump to help me get the sanctions through.”
Haley added, “It was through [this strategy] that we did the three sanctions, and by the time I got China to agree to pass those sanctions and I’d get the other countries to agree, then I just told Russia, ‘This is getting ready to happen.’ And we just kind of pushed them out of the way.”
Her comments — which came during a Q&A session — sparked a round of applause from the audience, who had been hostile toward Haley in the opening minutes of her speech.
The former South Carolina governor was initially met with chants from protesters after taking the stage Tuesday, which referenced the recent embassy move in Israel.
“Nikki Haley, you can’t hide. You signed off on genocide!” the protesters shouted. “Haley, Haley, you will see. Palestine will be free!”
The ambassador later urged students to come together in an attempt to bridge the political divide.
“Here at home our political opponents are not our enemies and they’re not evil,” Haley said. “There’s a big difference, and if we can’t keep that difference straight, we’re going to have a hard time conveying a message of hope to the world.”