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Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and get the finger that FDR.
We know Al Qaeda Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like say our name, been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Aren't you guys introducing our friend John Pfeffer?
He's just back from a trip all around the world or something.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, John?
Good.
Thanks for having me back on the show.
I always love talking to you.
Where you been?
I was in South Korea and Japan.
Okay.
So tell me everything that you want to say.
Well, I was there, uh, ahead of Donald Trump.
And, uh, I can say that, uh, at least in South Korea, people were very concerned about president and his threats toward North Korea.
And there was considerable protests, uh, even leading up to his arrival.
I suspect that they will intensify, uh, when he gets there tomorrow.
All right.
And so, um, well, what's he doing there anyway?
Well, uh, he is going to sit down with Moon Jae-in, uh, relatively short visit.
Um, the purpose of the, uh, the visits to, to South Korea, China, and Japan are largely to, uh, kind of escalate the campaign against North Korea to get China to do more, uh, to reassure South Korea that the United States is still willing to defend the country and, uh, probably to kind of sit down with Shinzo Abe and, uh, and turn up the rhetoric against North Korea since Shinzo Abe in Japan is, is no fan of the government, uh, in North Korea.
Um, probably there'll be some discussions about trade and economic issues.
Um, since, uh, the president has expressed not a great deal of, um, support for the current U.S. South Korean free trade agreement.
Um, and of course, Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the first acts as president.
So he has some, uh, some discussions, uh, to pursue with the various countries on what could possibly replace that, uh, regional trade agreement.
All right.
So now, uh, on the issue of China do more about North Korea, what the hell does that mean?
Well, uh, so far, China actually has done more than it usually does, uh, with respect to North Korea.
That is, it has more or less supported UN sanctions.
It has, uh, cut off, uh, more of its financial connections to the country.
It has agreed to limit import export, um, basically, uh, sending oil one direction and bringing coal in from North Korea.
Um, but, uh, you know, that hasn't led to North Korea actually changing its behavior.
So, uh, the Trump administration, like all previous administrations, believes that it can get China to do more, i.e. cut off all contacts with North Korea.
You know, actually the Trump administration has been pressuring a number of countries to actually pull out their, their embassies.
Uh, India and the UK have pointedly said no, uh, that they'd like to have a point of contact with North Korea.
With China, the Trump administration, I think, uh, would like to get it on board a kind of regime change, um, program, something that China traditionally has been dead set against.
Um, so my guess is that, uh, Trump will follow up on what Rex Tillerson said, which was that, you know, China can either follow US dictates in a friendly manner or the United States will get tough with China, i.e. will, uh, impose economic sanctions of its own against China.
So I think that's the message that Donald Trump will be bringing to China.
Now, in the past, uh, Trump has, you know, actually switched positions on China.
He was very much, um, aggressive in his rhetoric toward China during the campaign.
And then of course, he changed around not shortly before, and then certainly after meeting Xi Jinping in the United States.
Um, perhaps that is correlated with his own, his own personal and his family's business connections in China, which were, uh, facilitated, shall we say, uh, shortly after he became president.
Um, but there has been news more recently, last week or two of a shift in the administration toward a more aggressive position toward China with several appointments going forward.
Um, and so we'll see, I guess with Trump in China, whether, uh, whether that, that reporting actually is accurate, uh, or whether Donald Trump still thinks of Xi Jinping as, uh, as his ally, uh, either in working, um, on North Korea policy or more generally looking at the world.
So, uh, now tell me more about, uh, Abe in, in Japan, and you say he's very hawkish on this, but that amounts to what support for anti-missile missiles?
Well, yes.
Um, Japan has basically partnered with the United States on a program to have a regional missile defense system.
Something actually that South Korea announced last week that it would not participate in, um, thus paving the way for reconciliation between China and South Korea.
After South Korea had agreed to host, uh, THAAD or theater high altitude area defense, a kind of more limited missile defense system in South Korea.
Japan, however, is, is gone all out in support of missile defense.
I mean, the problem traditionally has been that Japan's constitution has prevented it from, uh, from participating, uh, in such ventures, not because, um, I mean, the constitution basically says that Japan cannot have an offensively arraigned, uh, arrayed, um, military.
That's the famous article nine.
Um, and so the missile defense is of course defense.
So that is not necessarily a problem, but in order to participate in regional missile defense, uh, Japan actually has to, um, important and potentially sell as well arms, which previously had been prohibited by the constitution, but Abe and some of his predecessors have gradually changed the implementation of the constitution to permit, uh, such participation in missile defense.
I'll be of course wants to go further.
He wants to get rid of article nine altogether, change the constitution so that Japan can have quote unquote normal military.
Uh, as your listeners probably know, Japan has what's called self defense forces.
Um, but it's been many decades actually since self defense forces were strictly self defense.
Uh, they've gradually acquired more military capabilities.
And of course, Japan is one of the leading importers of, uh, arms in the world and has a huge military budget.
Uh, and Abe would like to improve on that.
Um, and, uh, there isn't much that Japan can do, uh, in terms of sanctions against North Korea that it hasn't already done.
So it's more a question of, uh, increasing the rhetoric and also kind of throwing Japanese support behind Donald Trump, uh, as fully as possible.
Yeah, I'm sure you saw, and you know what?
I didn't hear the audio.
He may have been joking, although the president's a pretty humorless dude, but it was reported by the media as just a straight statement that, Hey, I really don't understand why you guys haven't shot down these previous missiles that the North Koreans have fired over Japan when you're a nation of samurai warriors.
And I don't know if he thought they're going to use swords or, but they already have, I guess he's talking about the anti-missile missiles that America has already given them, right?
Yeah.
Um, and of course one of the concerns we have is that Donald Trump, um, actually believes much more in the efficacy of missile defense than is warranted.
In other words, it's one thing if we were simply, uh, kind of preparing for either missile launches or, uh, or even possibly an attack.
And that's one thing to, to over estimate one's missile defenses.
But the real concern is that Trump might think the missile defense system is robust enough, uh, and accurate enough that he can launch a first strike against North Korea and then take out anything that North Korea might send up in retaliation.
Therefore, it's possible that missile defense for Donald Trump provides a kind of false reassurance, um, that might lead him to declare, uh, or to, uh, launch a first strike against North Korea.
Well, it's too bad he doesn't read the papers cause there was one the other day about, uh, I for, I'm sorry, I actually didn't read the damn thing myself just cause I already know it.
So it was either the secretary of defense or the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, or one of these guys was saying, Oh yeah, no.
In order to secure all of North Korea's nukes, it would take a full scale land invasion and occupation of North Korea to get to them all.
And then obviously that raises questions about how quickly you could get to them before they went off.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
You know, Which that was put out there to say, we really don't want to do this.
That wasn't saying like, yeah, give us your sons.
That was saying, here's why not to attack North Korea.
Absolutely.
I mean, that was, that was at the request of Congress and in Congress, I think is at least many in Congress are, are increasingly concerned about the, the possibility that Trump will do something precipitous.
Um, and so whether it's a ground invasion or a nuclear attack or even just a conventional attack, uh, and Congress would be basically out of the loop.
I mean, I think Bob Corker said to a Senator from Tennessee, Republican said that, uh, you know, Trump could make a decision in 15 or 20 minutes.
Um, and that would obviously cut Congress out of the loop.
So Congress is trying to get back into the loop, um, not only by requesting information about what, uh, about the, the, the sheer difficulty of taking out North Korea's nuclear capability, but also trying to, uh, for instance, make it, uh, necessary for Trump to go to Congress before launching, uh, any nuclear strike.
Yeah.
You know, I don't know.
I really dislike this guy, but I guess I'm not buying the, he's uniquely unstable or anything like that.
I mean, you could argue, I guess I would argue that a lot of his policies are worse when he says, you know, CIA and special ops and Rangers and whoever, everybody, you know, the gloves are off when it comes to the terror war and your rules of engagement, make up your own, see if I care that kind of attitude, but that's not crazy.
That's just being a jerk.
Right.
I mean, so I wonder when James Mattis says to the president, yeah, no, I don't want to do this.
And trust me, I'm mad dog, Mattis and all of that, right.
That Trump's not going to override that and say he wants to do it anyway and launch a first strike and all this.
Right.
I would like to believe that.
Um, I, but I can't, I would have a really bad feeling about this if I really did have one.
And I really don't, I'm thinking, I mean, seriously, under what circumstances is he going to really launch an aggressive, you know, in, in other words, to preempt what a couple of more missile tests.
It's not like North Korea is really going to do a first strike on American forces in the South or on or in Japan.
So what's to preempt.
And, and so he's going to start a war at the, at the risk of all of this crisis and escalation.
And maybe nukes used on both sides in order to accomplish nothing.
And, you know, when it's obviously, you know, written that it could never work out that no one could win a war against North Korea right now that neither side would win.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I, I tend to agree with you.
Um, I hate to defend the guy.
She's everybody's so damn hysterical about him.
It takes everything out of context, out of real context.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I mean, I tend to think of him in the same category as Kim Jong-un, to be honest with you.
I mean, both of them are fair.
You know, I don't think he's crazy either.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I think both are, um, unpredictable to a certain extent, but I don't think that's suicidal.
Um, the, the real question really is, uh, if one or the other is pushed up against the wall and feels that they don't have any other choice, um, for Kim Jong-un, that would mean, you know, that he really does expect the United States, uh, whether it's, you know, he's, he's right in his perception or not.
They, he expects the United States to attack and he has no other choice for Donald Trump.
Um, you know, it might be a matter of, um, false intelligence.
It might be false perceptions.
Let's say that North Korea follows through on a missile test that does go into the waters around Guam as North Korea said it might.
Um, but that's interpreted falsely as an attack on, uh, US territory.
And therefore it wouldn't in fact be a first strike by the United States, but a retaliatory strike.
Uh, at least that's, you know, how Trump might see it.
But again, those, I say those, uh, I see those as largely being at the margins of policy.
I don't see those as being kind of front and center in either Pyongyang or Washington.
Yeah.
Well, good times.
Happy to hear you say that.
I know a lot of people are, Hey, listen, uh, I forget if we talked about this, uh, I don't mean to assume that you must've read this, but I think that maybe you did.
Uh, this article, it was pointed out by the China hand, Peter Lee, uh, to me on Twitter.
Uh, it was in the Los Angeles times and it was written by a guy from, I think it was a Hoover institution guy, but it sure sounded like he was speaking for the consensus about what's really going on here.
And it was one of those things where I was kind of surprised that it was written as frankly as it was.
And what it really said was, and this is at the height of Trump saying, you know, hell fire, like no one's ever seen before, whatever the exact quote was.
Um, and, and the height of the threats over the summer and the guy says, well, you know, we could make peace with North Korea.
I mean, come on, the outstanding issues are pretty obvious and we could resolve that, but then we would lose our leverage over Japan and South Korea.
We need them to be afraid of somebody so that we can be in the middle of protecting them from somebody all the time.
And if that's not the situation, then they might declare independence and no longer be satellites of our empire.
And God forbid, they might even spin off and get closer to China in whatever all exactly that means.
And that is what is unacceptable.
And that is why nuclear brinksmanship is acceptable as an alternative to making a final peace treaty for the end of the Korean war that ended in 1952 and to having, you know, giving them a security guarantee or whatever it would take to normalize relations and work even toward reunification of peninsula or whatever.
Well, that's an interesting argument.
Um, I'm not sure I buy it entirely.
Um, I mean, for one thing, you know, last week, South Korea and China already made up, um, over the, there had been a dispute for a year or more over the THAAD system and, um, and China had launched a kind of soft boycott of, uh, economic boycott of South Korea.
Um, so, you know, the, the kind of increased rhetoric, uh, the increased, increased kind of war, um, rhetoric toward North Korea had actually had the opposite effect for South Korea.
Um, also in terms of Donald Trump's campaign promises and some of the, some of the more extreme, shall we say, um, programs of, of the America firsters would be, uh, to let South Korea and, uh, Japan go off more on their own, um, regardless of, of North Korea, um, simply because, you know, for burden sharing reasons, they should spend more on their defense.
And, um, and I would also argue that, you know, it's not just the Trump administration, but going all the way back to the Clinton administration, uh, the United States has been pushing Japan to, to be more independent in its military.
So I'm not sure I really would buy that argument.
I mean, I, I'm, I'm more persuaded by the notion.
I mean, the argument that that's part of America's motor, that's how the Americans think about this or what?
Yes.
That American policymakers are using the North Korea threat to hold over Japan and South Korea to, to, cause that's a separate question from whether it's working or not, right?
Yes, that's true.
Um, but I would argue that it's more likely that the United States uses the North Korea threat, um, more in terms of its relationship with China.
Um, number one, because it allows the United States to spend an enormous amount on its Asia military presence, uh, by using North Korea as the rationale, rather than saying we're actually containing China, which is, you know, that's a very important point, economic ally of the United States.
Um, and also, uh, the North Korea threat enables us to, um, to have a certain amount of leverage over, over China since China's not happy with its ally.
Um, and we can extract some concessions from China as a result of North Korea's quote unquote, bad behavior.
Um, so I think I'm more persuaded by, by the China, um, the China, China problem, uh, rather than our alliance relationships with South Korea, Japan.
Well, although even in this article, he was really fair.
China was sort of the background to all of this is that that's the real competition.
This is how we keep these guys in our camp kind of thing.
Although, yeah, I guess I should send you the article and then ask you what you think of it.
All right now.
So, hey, do me a favor and let's talk about the old days a little bit here because people ask me about this, but you're the real expert.
And, um, there's a, a popular meme going around on Facebook and Twitter, I guess it says, Oh, Bill Clinton gave the North Koreans to nuclear reactors, basically giving them nuclear weapons.
And this is all his fault.
And apparently, you know, everybody's right wing cousin and uncle are sending this around and believe in it.
So what's the truth of all that?
Yeah.
I saw Donald Trump on Fox news saying that we gave them billions of dollars plus other things.
Um, which is an interesting claim.
Um, uh, he might've gotten it confused with his own claims about what we gave Iran.
Um, but in any case, uh, during the agree framework, which was signed in 1994 between the United States and North Korea, uh, the United States agreed to provide not money, in fact, no money at all, uh, but some heavy fuel oil.
Um, and the heavy fuel oil was, uh, actually temporary because the, the, uh, this kind of core of the agreement was the provision of two light water nuclear reactors.
Um, and that actually was not going to be paid for, for the most part by the United States because Congress, uh, was pretty hostile to the, to the agreement.
Um, particularly after 1996 and the turnover in Congress to Republican.
Uh, but it was going to be paid for by South Korea, mostly, although there were some contributions from Japan.
Um, the South Koreans, um, I, from what I understand did start putting together, uh, these reactors to send up North and in a big hole was dug.
Uh, but basically nothing, nothing concrete ever came of it.
Uh, and the North Koreans were kind of pissed off at that.
The heavy fuel oil was meant to compensate their energy needs or provide their energy needs until those light water reactors were up and running.
So, uh, we ended up not actually giving, well, anything other than the heavy fuel oil to the North.
Well, you know, it's in Andrew Coburn's book that it was Donald Rumsfeld's company that got the contract to build the light water reactors, although they never followed through with it.
I don't know how much of the money they still got to keep.
There was a lot of money that, that was provided through keto, uh, which was the Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization, which was the organization was set up from the agreed framework.
So certainly some folks got money out of that, but it wasn't the North Koreans.
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All right.
So now, 2002, I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself, but I just think this story is so important and hardly anybody knows it and you're one of the brilliant geniuses who understands all this.
I send people links to your articles all the time to kind of prove how this happened in 2002.
And I'm not sure if you mentioned this part, but I'm pretty sure it's in War Made Easy by Norman Solomon, the movie War Made Easy.
Anyway, there's footage of when the George W. Bush administration was brand new in 2001, where Colin Powell, the new Secretary of State, is giving this big speech about, oh yeah, we're going to do this and we're going to do that.
And one of the things is we're going to continue Bill Clinton's North Korea policy because basically it's working.
And yeah.
And then in the background, as he's saying this, Dick Cheney and some of the neocons, I guess Wolfowitz and others, are sitting there grumbling and Cheney's just scowling at him like, yeah, that's what you think.
And then, of course, yeah, so six months later, a bunch of stuff happens.
So I was, oh no, no.
Well, six months later, the terror war begins.
It was, sorry, a year and a half later, well, I guess a year later they were in the axis of evil speech.
But then it was a year and a half later in the fall of 2002 that the agreed framework deal that the Clinton administration, because after all, as you say, the Americans never really lived up to their side of it.
But the North Koreans had, or at least that was what was understood up until that point.
And then so how did it all break down?
Well, it was under the Clinton administration that the intelligence services got wind of North Korea's efforts to basically construct a second path to a nuclear weapon, which was this highly enriched uranium program, AGU, which involves these centrifuges, very similar to what Iran had, what Pakistan had.
And in fact, it was, at least from what we understand, a kind of a gift from Pakistan to North Korea.
We don't know how big a program it was.
I mean, the Clinton administration, it knew of it.
It wasn't too concerned about it.
And so it made some noises very quietly to North Korea, but it didn't make it public and it didn't challenge North Korea in terms of compliance with the agreed framework.
And indeed, one could argue, as some countries have argued, Iran among them, that highly enriched uranium is merely a way of having a civilian nuclear capability.
Well, yeah, I mean, my friend Gordon Prather, who's a nuclear physicist, I'm pretty sure he said back then that their Soviet design reactor was originally designed to take highly enriched uranium in the first place.
Yeah.
So, you know, they obviously could have made that argument.
Of course, North Korea, when it was first accused by the Bush administration, denied that it had the program.
And then at one point even said that it had the right to do it, which I think that what they meant was under the NPT, they had the right to pursue a civilian nuclear capability.
Although I guess they should have declared, if it's true, they really were spinning centrifuges.
They should have declared it to the IAEA and they hadn't.
Right.
That's correct.
But, you know, again, it was a resolvable problem if the United States under the Bush administration was interested in resolving the problem.
And as you point out.
We've got one more technical point there.
I believe that Barbara Slavin lately, who she can be hawkish sometimes, but she's really smart about all this stuff.
I saw her in a Twitter argument, I guess within the last year or so, pointing out that even if it was against the safeguards agreement, it wasn't against the agreed framework that they had this separate uranium enrichment program that hadn't been part of the deal.
I believe that's true.
I mean, because it's, you know, it was focused entirely on the plutonium facilities.
But, you know, again, it's, you could say it was a function of bad faith.
I mean, the same way that the United States was not building the reactors, it could simply say, you know, look, we haven't violated the agreed framework.
We just haven't finished them yet.
Or the delays in the heavy fuel oil shipments.
We haven't, you know, stopped them.
We just have been delayed in them.
But North Korea is pissed off at both of those anyway.
So you had bad blood on both sides, even if, you know, technically speaking, neither side violated the letter of the agreement.
The Bush administration was obviously looking for a reason to deep six the agreed framework.
And this was the most convenient way.
That isn't to say there weren't people within the administration, like Colin Powell, who thought the agreement was good, in the same way that you could say that there are people within the Trump administration that think that the current nuclear agreement with Iran is a good agreement.
But as with this Iran agreement, there were those in the Bush administration who were desperate to, to, to get rid of the agreed framework.
And, you know, the, you would have thought after the attacks of September 11, that they might, you know, the Bush administration might have changed its mind, because of course, North Korea was vehement in its denunciation of Al Qaeda.
And North Korea, as a state, you know, has traditionally been as concerned about non-state actors like Al Qaeda, as the United States.
And this was an opportunity, perhaps, for the United States and North Korea to find common cause, just as the United States and China actually established a number of different agreements after 9-11, intelligence sharing.
But that wasn't the case.
And as you point out, in the State of the Union address, it was January 2002, George Bush includes North Korea in the axis of evil, which might have been inadvertent.
I mean, I mean, it might have been something that Dick Cheney wanted to include, but that others in the administration simply included so as to prove that the axis of evil was not targeting Muslim countries.
You know, I can't find it anymore, but I remember reading that, and it was, I'm almost positive it was in Slate or something, you know, that was credible reporting at the time about this, because David Frum's wife had sent out an email, oh, my husband wrote the line, axis of evil, I'm so proud of him, right?
And so this became a news story.
And then it, I'm almost certain of this, that it was part of this story was that Richard Perle had given him the line, and that originally the line was Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
But then at that point, it was just way too obvious that this is about Israel.
And so we better throw in North Korea, like you're saying, sort of just to confuse the issue.
But then even think about that on the face of it, talk about confusing the issue.
There's an axis between Osama and Saddam and the Ayatollah and Kim Jong Il.
And people bought that.
Made no sense whatsoever.
And, you know, it would be easy to dismiss that as, you know, just a ridiculous formulation, but unfortunately, North Korea took it quite seriously, and really saw it as kind of the next step toward, you know, regime change coming from Washington.
And, you know, the fact that Dick Cheney would say things like, you know, it's, we don't negotiate with evil, we defeat evil, with direct reference to North Korea, only accentuated North Korea's fears.
So now, again, that didn't prevent the United States and North Korea later on in the Bush administration from sitting down and actually hammering out implementable agreements.
But- So hang on one second with that, because I want to get back to Christopher Hill and the negotiations in a second.
But just so we can nail down here the, in 2002, the fall of 2002, with, first of all, the axis of evil in January, and then with the accusations about the uranium program.
And then there were a couple other things, correct me if I'm wrong, it was new sanctions.
Well, first of all, because of the accusations over the uranium program, the Bush administration announced that they were abandoning the agreed framework.
The deal was off officially at that point.
And then they added new sanctions and they created the proliferation security initiative, which was their claim of the right to start seizing boats on the high seas.
And then, you know, outside of whatever previous treaties and so forth.
And then there was a nuclear posture review that mentioned North Korea as a place where they might have to do a preemptive nuclear strike.
And that was only then that they finally withdrew from the nonproliferation treaty or announced that they were withdrawing from it and started kicking the inspectors out.
Do I have that right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, I mean, the PSI, the proliferation security initiative was even more aggressive in its first iteration.
I mean, it wasn't just seizing boats, they had planned to seize airplanes as well, which, of course, would mean forcing planes down.
And once that was investigated in detail, they realized that that would be an act of war.
So they decided to scale that back.
But there was a pretty aggressive campaign at that point to push North Korea up against the wall and precipitate regime change.
And, you know, remember, this is not long after the famine.
You know, famine in North Korea lasts from 95 until about 99, maybe the end of 1999, beginning of 2000.
So there's this perception that the country is weak, that Kim Jong Il has only recently, you know, recently came out of the mourning period after the death of his father in 1994, that he's inexperienced, that the military, North Korean military has obviously fallen into great disarray because of limited access to energy resources.
And then the collapse of the industry in North Korea has made it virtually impossible for North Korea to keep up in an even remotest sense with South Korea military capability.
So all of these things combined to kind of create a new calculus within the Bush administration that regime changes is possible and all it needs is some turning of the screws.
Now, it still doesn't make any sense though, right?
Because they're about to invade Iraq.
They're about to put, you know, the army's active force in Mesopotamia.
So, I mean, did this story ever come out about they had a spy there that they thought would be able to do an assassination for them?
Or there was some real reason to think that it made any sense to provoke them, to deliberately provoke them into withdrawing from the nonproliferation treaty and ending their cooperation with the IAEA.
And pushing them again, I guess, you know, in other words, into possession of nuclear weapons, which they now have by the dozens apparently.
Well, I think that the, I don't know if they had any, what they call...
Because that would have been the calculation, right?
Like if you and me were evil and we worked in the Bush administration, we were like, okay, look, what we're going to do is we're going to break all the deals and we're going to provoke them into withdrawing from the treaty.
But then we're going to make sure that we do our regime change before they make their first nuke, right?
Because then once they make their first nuke, now they got nukes.
And then, so how does this make sense, John?
What am I missing here?
Well, you know, from their point of view, the scenario was going to look entirely different.
The North Korean regime was going to collapse under its own, the weight of its own incompetence.
South Korea was going to absorb this new entity much as...
I'm sorry, but just to be clear here, you're saying the plan was not to provoke it.
The plan was, don't worry, we can go ahead and invade Iraq and we're not going to attack North Korea.
We're not going to do a regime change in North Korea.
Just, we're so sure it's going to fall before they could get one nuke together that it's okay to go ahead.
But what is, I still don't understand, what's to gain from pushing them out of the NPT then?
I mean, how is that going to help topple the regime internally?
You know what I mean?
I don't think that, you know, the calculation was that withdrawal from the NPT was going to hasten regime change.
I think that the expectation was all the other associated strategies, sanctions, et cetera, was going to precipitate regime change.
But that this would be, but that this would be, you know, what we might call low, low cost intervention.
In other words, obviously the Pentagon wasn't going to have the resources to, to invade.
Like we were talking about, they went a lot further than sanctions, right?
They, they did everything they could, it seems like.
Is it only hindsight?
It says they were deliberately doing what John Bolton would do, which John Bolton did, push them out of the treaty and into nuclear bombs or toward them.
Well, again, I don't think they expected that North Korea was going to acquire nuclear weapons.
They thought they were wedded to the regime change, a regime collapse scenario.
And, you know, remember, this is something that, that previous, you know, the Clinton administration expected the, the, uh, North Korean regime to collapse, um, in prior to 1994, because of course, you know, all the other communist countries in the world had collapsed.
Um, it seemed as if they were about to, so North Korea was clearly going to follow that pattern.
Um, and you know, after this, after the famine, after the collapse of North Korea's industry, the Bush administration also came into office thinking that a regime collapse was a distinct possibility.
All it needed was a little push.
So I don't think that there was any expectation that North Korea would, um, acquire nuclear weapons, uh, become a kind of rogue slash renegade state again, and that the North and that the United States would have to confront it at some point militarily.
I really think that the, the, the expectation at that point was, um, regime collapse.
Remember there was a Donald Lumsfeld memo around that time that he circulated internally, but then it was leaked.
Uh, it wasn't intended for public consumption, but it talked about the United States and China, uh, basically partnering on a regime change strategy for North Korea.
And this was entirely a fantastical idea, the notion at that time that China would partner with the United States against its own putative ally.
Uh, but nonetheless, that was the thinking that was the strategic thinking.
It just required a little bit of a push and whether it was sanctions or it was the assistance of China, this was going to happen.
All right now.
So the Christopher Hill thing, I remember at the time talking with Ray McGovern about this and about the timing, I guess this was the New York times version of the story or wherever it was, New York times or post, um, that Christopher Hill, the ambassador to North Korea or whatever the hell he was, you tell me that he convinced Bush jr.
On a Friday afternoon when Dick Cheney was out of town and it was five o'clock quitting time, Fred Flintstone whistle blowing.
And he said, by the way, Mr. President, is it okay if I go strike up a deal?
And Bush was like, yeah, why not?
And that was how, but, but he made major gains there for a minute, right?
That's correct.
And I don't know if that particular story is correct.
I mean, I've, I've read other accounts that suggest that Christopher Hill first had to convince a Condoleezza rice, right?
Yeah, no, that was the part that the two of them cornered him on a Friday, I guess.
Um, and, and another kind of key player in this was Victor Cha.
And that's important because Cha is currently, um, uh, slated to become the U S ambassador to South Korea.
But at the time it was a member of the national security council and had been pretty hawkish on North Korea, but I think had, uh, during his tenure altered his position somewhat.
I think he's once again, altered his position, but that's another story.
Uh, and so Victor Cha also was kind of supportive of some form of engagement with North Korea.
Um, the challenge, of course, was that, you know, the North Korea wanted bilateral discussions with the United States and, uh, basically Bush had ruled that out and needed some kind of multilateral cover for this.
And so that's why they came up with the six party talks and that at least would get Japan, smuggled Japan and South Korea into the discussions and North Korea would have its putative allies, Russian and China on board as well.
Um, but in order to get though, any agreement at the six party talks or had to be preliminary bilateral discussions that took place secretly between the United States and North Korea.
Um, and yeah, I mean, they, they, they were, they were able to basically get North Korea to, uh, agree to start unraveling its plutonium facilities.
Um, and, uh, North Korea also maintained a, uh, moratorium on missile testing.
So there were some real concrete, um, steps forward, uh, and that came up against a couple of problems.
Um, eventually, um, eventually North Korea, um, started, started again with missile testing, um, in part because it was frustrated at the pace of, uh, of the six party talks also in part because there was a separate initiative coming out of, um, basically the commerce department to, uh, to go after financing of North Korea through, uh, uh, something called Banco Delta Asia, which was a bank in Macau that was funneling mostly Chinese money into North Korea.
And so an effort to kind of freeze the assets of that bank, uh, North Korea was not happy about that.
And so there were a number of reasons why coming toward the end of the Bush administration, uh, things were, um, somewhat deteriorating in the relationship.
And yet still, when, um, Obama came into office, there still was an opportunity to kind of build on that, build on the successes of the six party talks.
And that's, I think what North Korea expected.
But instead it got basically six months of silence from the administration.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so listen, um, it seems like, uh, we got a problem when we got Donald Trump and his people running this thing.
And I guess Rex Tillerson seems reasonable to look at, you know what I mean?
He's a oil executive.
So that means at the end of the day, he's got to be interested in prices and reality or else he's fired.
So unlike a politician who can get away with a whole Vietnam war, right.
With no accountability at all.
But so anyway, um, and, and more, uh, but anyway, so this guy Tillerson's over there and Donald Trump's tell him, don't waste your time, pal to the secretary of state.
So, uh, I don't know, just what's your best guess about what path we're on now, how this is going to shake out in the near term anyway.
Well, I mean, even though Trump has said, you know, that, uh, that the policies of the past have failed and by which he means engagement policies of the fact of the past, he still has said, look, I sit down with anybody, you know?
Um, so he continues to hold out the possibility of direct negotiations with Kim Jong Un, which I think is, is great.
Um, you know, that, that was probably the best scenario.
Uh, Donald Trump seems to have an affection for strong arm leaders.
And so, uh, I don't see any reason why he and Kim Jong Un couldn't come up with some kind of a modus operandi for, for resolving the current crisis.
Um, on the other hand, uh, you know, uh, Donald Trump also doesn't like it when he's crossed.
And I think he feels that North Korea has consistently crossed him as president.
Um, so.
That's a good way to put it really personal.
Cause it is with him.
It is.
Uh, I mean, I think the, the most likely scenario, um, is despite the fact that Trump says that, you know, the era of strategic patience is over.
I still see that as the most probable outcome in part, because the military option basically is not on the table.
Um, even though no one in the U S government will admit that, um, and negotiations at the moment are, are somewhat remote.
And so what other options are there?
Well, the only other option is really strategic patience.
And so, uh, strategic patients plus Donald Trump mouthing off on a routine basis.
So that's my guess for the future.
Yeah.
Well, I'm a utopian.
I think that if president Ron Paul just said, all right, look, here's the deal.
We're pulling our military out, uh, our army and our Marines.
We're pulling our Navy back.
We're no longer doing these training exercises where we practice invading your country twice a year.
And in fact, here's a security guarantee like Kennedy gave the Cubans America will not attack North Korea.
And by the way, we're lifting all our sanctions and opening up trade and whatever we're sending Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters and whoever else we can get to go over there and have fun.
We'll send Madeline Albright and the symphony orchestra or whatever we got to do, man, to get along that that would work if people would just, you know, listen to me, but they don't, you think I'm crazy?
And no, I mean, although I, I would point out that, um, the United States making a security guarantee to North Korea, mom, I don't think the folks in Pyongyang would take that very seriously, not because, you know, they wouldn't trust the particular president who was offering it.
And that just means a promise not to attack everybody.
He's not familiar with the term, right?
You know, North Koreans would be like, well, look, you say that today, but then you'll have elections and then you elect some dude who doesn't agree with that.
So how can we really trust you all?
Well, that's the whole thing.
You have to do it right now.
Then we could have eight years of peace and prosperity and growing, uh, an opening ties on be just like when Nixon went and shook hands with Mao Zedong and it's already a done deal by the time Jimmy Carter comes, what's he going to do?
Undo that.
Yeah.
I mean, I do think that, uh, uh, if it's institutionalized, in other words, if it's, uh, a real relationship that's established between the United States and North Korea.
Yeah.
I mean, then North Korea has no reason to use whatever weapons it has.
And that's ultimately what we're looking toward, not the elimination of all of North Korea's weapons.
Cause it's not going to get rid of all of its weapons.
What we want to do is ensure that it doesn't use its weapons.
Um, and in order to do that, we have to have a relationship with the country.
I think it's even possible, you know, given enough welfare, which I'm against all taxation and everything, but come on, if we're talking about bribing the North Koreans out of the nukes, I'm for that.
And I bet you there's a price on their nukes.
I mean, assuming the rest of what I said about dropping sanctions and opening ties and really warming up the relationship, like, Hey, you know what?
It really make us feel better.
If you got rid of your nuclear weapons, I bet there's a price on that, that they'd be willing to accept.
What do you think now?
Yeah.
I mean, they were willing to accept at one point about a, I think it was, uh, I think it was $10 billion for its missile program, um, that Israel offered.
Uh, so yeah, I do think there is a price, um, maybe not for its entire nuclear program, because again, you know, it, it needs a deterrent.
It believes that it needs a deterrent, um, to prevent the United States or any other country from deciding to invade it.
Uh, but how it defines that deterrent.
Well, that's, that's open to debate.
Well, after all, as we talked about, they were within the nonproliferation treaty until the Bush administration made it impossible for them to remain in it.
So it ought to be able to, you know, it ought to be within reason to get them, maybe not easy, but possible to get them back under the, under the old status as a non-nuclear weapon state.
Well, it's not easy to bring a nuclear weapon state backward.
It only happened one time, right?
In South Africa.
That's correct.
Um, so, uh, I mean, I, and that required, you know, a substantial change in government in South Africa.
Yeah.
It was the change of government coming that made the previous government abandoned, I think was how it went.
That's correct.
Fear of the new government having those weapons.
Um, so I, I, I'm not particularly optimistic about the prospects of North Korea giving up its full nuclear weapons program, but I do think that it's possible to negotiate a kind of minimum deterrence.
Um, and so that North Korea doesn't have, uh, a huge program, doesn't have a capability of, uh, striking the United States for instance.
Um, that I think is possible.
All right.
Listen, man, I'm sorry.
I've taken up almost an hour of your afternoon here today, but I really appreciate you coming on the show again, John.
No problem.
I enjoyed it.
Do great work there.
All right.
So that is John Pfeffer.
He leads the tribe over there at F P I F foreign policy and focus a whole stable of great writers for you.
They're all anti-war stuff all the time.
John Pfeffer and the guys at F P I F.org.
And, uh, yeah, you know me, I'm scotthorton.org libertarianinstitute.org and, uh, twitter.com/scott Horton show.
And, you know, Google bye.
