Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to 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 they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, on the line, I've got Harry Kazianas.
He is the director of Korea Studies at the Center for the National Interest, and is executive editor at their magazine there, The National Interest.
Welcome back to the show, Harry, how you doing?
Good, how are you?
I'm doing good.
You know, it's funny.
We talked, I don't know, a year or a year and a half ago or something about Korea, and you said some great stuff.
But then I got really mad at you because you said some stuff that made me really mad.
But then you got really good again.
And you've been writing about how, hey, man, let's have peace with these Koreans instead of all this conventional wisdom.
Why don't you go ahead and tell them here?
Sure.
I mean, basically, the fact of the matter is the United States really doesn't have any massive national security threats coming out of North Korea.
Now, I know that might make people's heads spin in those sort of, you know, conservative camps.
But I think we need to think about it for a second.
The North Korean economy is the size of Vermont.
Actually, let me correct that.
It's smaller than the size of Vermont.
Now, a lot of people probably say, okay, well, how are they building nuclear weapons?
Well, it's pretty simple.
They're starving their population to actually do it.
So I think we need to take a giant step back and think about sort of the threat assessment and the actual dangers coming out of North Korea.
Yes, they have nuclear weapons.
Yes, those nuclear weapons could more than likely hit the U.S. homeland or bases in Guam or Hawaii or Okinawa.
But if Kim Jong-un uses those weapons in a nuclear holocaust, we would respond back with our own nuclear strike, which would level North Korea in about 20 minutes.
And I don't think Kim Jong-un wants to do any such thing.
So take that all together, stick it in a blender and spin it.
I think we come to a conclusion that there is an agreement that can work with Kim Jong-un and the North Koreans where we can develop a peace regime, where we can sort of change the dynamic from this old, outdated Cold War thinking into something where everybody sort of wins.
So that's my thinking in a nutshell.
Sounds good.
But the deal is, according to the BLOB, I guess that's what everybody calls it now, the Foreign Policy Establishment in D.C., which runs the gamut from AEI to CFR, they say that, nope, you have to give up all your nuclear weapons first.
And only then can we talk about the rest of anything, which is obviously a poison pill and tailor made to fail.
And that still seems to be the position of the Trump government, doesn't it?
You know, it is now, but I actually wonder if there was for a brief time in January and February where it wasn't.
What happened then is Steve Biegun, the special U.S. representative on all things North Korea, gave what I would call a famous speech at Stanford.
And basically what he alluded to is that the United States would be a little bit more flexible in terms of dealing with North Korea.
He said things like we would negotiate in parallel on different parts of the Singapore Declaration.
And that made a lot of sense, and that seemed to equate to the fact that we would not put denuclearization first and foremost, that we would work on things like liaison offices.
We would work on things like a peace declaration in the Korean War.
We'd work on things like bringing home more Korean War battlefield remains to North Korean families and U.S. families.
But something happened right before Hanoi, and that one thing that happened was the Michael Cohen hearings.
When those hearings dropped, Donald Trump was literally getting off Air Force One to go to his meetings in Hanoi.
And from what I've heard from very close administration officials that are close to the president, the president went crazy over the Michael Cohen hearings.
There was already a deal on the table.
All the listeners can find it.
It was written by Alex Ward in Fox News.
It lays out sort of the four points of the deal that was on the table.
And what I think happened, this is what I think a lot of people are starting to come to the conclusion to, is Donald Trump did not feel that he could sort of be vulnerable in U.S. domestic circles with Michael Cohen blowing up.
He knew that progressives wouldn't like that deal.
He knew neocons wouldn't like that deal.
And what ended up happening was that he ended up taking a much hardcore position.
And, of course, who did he bring with him to Hanoi that would back that position?
One, John Bolton.
The North Koreans call him that he's the father of their nuclear program because he scuttled the Clinton era deal.
So I think when you put all these things together, that's essentially what happened and why the United States is going back to a much more hardline position.
Well, yeah, really important there.
I mean, if you kind of look for historical comparisons, when I do, I think immediately of the Gary Powers incident, which I don't know if that was really a setup or not.
But in effect, the CIA scuttled what could have been a major breakthrough in talks between Ike Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev by getting a U-2 shot down over the USSR.
And this was not exactly the same as that, but the Democrats didn't have to hold the Cohen hearings that day.
They did that partially to affect the North Korea talks.
And what in the world?
To them, the politics of trying to make Trump trip up is more important than achieving a deal with the North Koreans that could lead to their nuclear disarmament, at least.
Exactly.
And I've talked to multiple different congressional sources on the Democrat and Republican side, and everybody seems pretty much convinced that that was done on purpose, like you alluded to, to damage the idea of these talks.
Now, look, there's a lot of things I don't like about President Trump.
But at the end of the day, I think it's a very American and patriotic thing to hope that your president is successful in ending a national security threat coming from the North Koreans or perceived national security threat, whatever you want to call it.
And I think history will look back at this as not only a colossal failure, but a big step back towards peace.
The good news, Scott, is there actually is a way out of this.
President Trump is going to be going to South Korea towards, it looks like the end of June or very early July, and he's going to have meetings with South Korea's Moon Jae-in.
Now, what may happen before that is Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un may have their own summit before that.
Now, I'm hearing a lot of rumors here in Washington that this could be a potential setup for President Moon to actually broker a third summit between Trump and Kim when he's in South Korea, or maybe all three of them meet along the Demilitarized Zone.
I think that's very possible, and we could actually resurrect the deal that could have happened in Hanoi.
So stay tuned for that, because there's a lot of scuttlebutt here in Washington on that.
Right.
And see, that's really could be the secret to how Trump gets all this done.
If everyone's going to only attack him in D.C. for trying to do this, then he can just let Moon continue on because he's the one really leading this parade anyway, and just let Moon go ahead and make peace.
And then the whole thing about CVID and give up all your nukes first and all that will essentially be a moot point because peace is moving forward anyway.
And then the only problem with that is Trump's need to take credit for everything, which could kind of get in the way.
Because the Democrats can't stop Moon.
They can screw up Trump.
They can't stop Moon.
And especially if Trump is telling Moon, go ahead and do what you can, which apparently still is, right?
Yeah.
And actually, when Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump had a call recently, about a week ago, Donald Trump was said to Moon, look, you want to go forward with food aid, which the South Koreans have had $8 million allocated to give a lot of food and nutritional supplements to the North Koreans who are going through very soon what will be a massive drought.
There's been reports saying that North Korea will be under a hundred year drought starting right now, going through September.
So potentially we're talking hundreds of thousands of North Koreans could die.
And the sanctions that we have on the North Koreans, this whole maximum pressure concept, are taking away the ability for them to get fertilizers, to build up their agriculture, to be able to feed their own people.
So I think those are things that have to be looked at.
And you're exactly right, Scott.
Moon Jae-in has done a great job in trying to build a peace regime on the peninsula.
In fact, during his campaign in 2017, that is essentially the sole thing he campaigned on, was not only to bring peace to the Korean people, to end the Korean War, but to end this foolish Cold War thinking.
And honestly, the South Koreans need to do this because their demographics are not so good.
They've got a lot of different economic problems.
They look to their brethren in the North as essentially the biggest economic prize that they can get in their future.
The North Koreans, I think, feel the same way.
Sorry, hang on just one second.
Hey, guys, have you ever read The War State by Mike Swanson?
It's great.
It's a history of the rise of the military-industrial complex after World War II through the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations.
I think you'll learn a lot.
I think you'll like it a lot.
The War State by Mike Swanson.
Well, and so that's a big deal, too, and this is part of the propaganda surrounding the first big summit was, hey, Kim, we know that you are not your father.
You are you, and you can do whatever you want, can't you?
Which was a pretty smart way to approach the guy, right?
In fact, not only is he not his father, his father's dead and can't even look at him sternly or anything.
So why not paint the whole thing as a whole new day and we don't have to have a Cold War at all?
It could be over last week.
Forget it.
Exactly.
I don't think a lot of it is, and this is sort of where I got stuck, and I think I had to really do a lot of soul searching to sort of end this thinking.
But, look, we all know the North Korean regime is a nasty, brutal regime.
We all get that.
I mean they have one prison camp that is geographically three times the size of Washington, D.C.
That is terrible.
But if we are looking for real ways to impact human rights, if we're looking for realistic solutions to make the lives of the average North Korean better, how do we accomplish that?
Do we get on our moral high horse and beat these people down and tell them how awful they are?
Or do we try to look for ways to incentivize them to make their lives better?
The way I think we can do that is I think you have to engage with them.
We have to show them, look, we have no interest in invading your country.
We've learned that regime change doesn't work.
Well, let's hope we haven't.
We have.
And I think if you do those things, it makes a lot of sense.
And Kim Jong-un has already stated he does want to get rid of his nuclear weapons, and he does want to create a better economic picture for his people.
And he's trying to figure out the best formula to do that.
But we've got to remember he's 35 years old.
He is more than happy to wait out Donald Trump, Moon Jae-in, and get the very best deal he can.
When you think about it on those terms, I think we can figure out what that deal looks like.
Well, that's a good point, right?
Moon has still got to get reelected.
Trump's still got to get reelected.
Kim's going to sit in that chair for a while, one way or the other.
But now, so here's the deal.
There's all this resistance, and it's not because everyone in Washington is just ideologically committed to opposing what is left of Marxism in North Korea or anything like that.
This is about the interests of the American empire.
And they've said it quite openly in numerous forums and writings and so forth that, well, listen, we need North Korea to hang over the head of Japan and South Korea so that they do what we say, so we can have troops in their countries to threaten the Chinese with.
Things that should sound absolutely insane to some farmer in Kansas who has no interest whatsoever in maintaining a world empire.
But this is how we make sure that the Pacific stays an American lake, is we have this threat to point to.
And now you are trying to take that away, Harry, and so you're running up against some real headwinds.
Or is there a better explanation for what's going on here?
No, I think you speak to a lot of truth there.
And I think as Americans, we have this problem.
And I think 9-11 is a great example of this.
On that day, we were brutally attacked.
3,000 Americans died.
You can watch this footage on YouTube.
But I think we have to remember, outside of that horrific historical event, overall, the United States is a pretty safe place to be.
I mean, think about it.
We have Canada to the north.
We have Mexico to the south.
We have the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean.
We are the most insulated great power in all of human history.
I mean, think about that blessing for a second.
So, as a country, we have the ability to decide what our fate is.
We have the ability to decide what sort of foreign entanglements that we get into.
And I think one of the reasons a lot of people voted for Donald Trump is because they're sick and tired of not only trying to be the world's policeman, but getting involved in places around the world that, look, we just don't have the national interest to get involved in anymore.
Or we never should have in the first place.
So, I think for a lot of Americans, there is this sort of rekindling of what our national interests actually are.
And when it comes to North Korea, yes, I think it's a good thing to make sure that we mitigate that threat as much as possible.
But that doesn't necessarily mean they give up every single weapon, because at the end of the day, Scott, if they ever use any of those weapons of mass destruction, they would be totally obliterated.
That's how deterrence works.
That's how it worked in the Cold War.
That's how it works with China and Russia today.
I think if we remember all of these things, we can sort of recalibrate our foreign policy and put some of that money back into a country that, quite frankly, here in America, we're struggling still.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it is important, too.
It's the same kind of thing when I hear all these hawks complaining about Iran's expanded power in the Middle East, when to a man, they are the exact same hawks who insisted that we had to get rid of Saddam Hussein for them.
So, I kind of don't want to hear it.
Same sort of thing here, where it's literally John Bolton himself is the guy who helped to scotch the deal there, as you're pointing out at the last talks.
And he's the guy who essentially handcrafted and handed nuclear bombs right to Kim Jong-il back in 2002.
I mean, when you go back, it's funny, because I've gone over this with so many different Korea experts over so long that I've compiled all of the different things.
It was really hard.
They had to take eight severe steps to finally bludgeon North Korea out of the NPT and their safeguards agreement, in order to almost even force them to turn to a nuclear program and start harvesting their plutonium from their old Soviet reactor and start making nukes.
And then, what was the plan back then?
Anyway, don't worry, we're going to make sure George Bush invades North Korea before they have a chance to get the first nuke together.
Because speaking of nuclear deterrence, it seems like that's why they started making these in the first place, was to keep us out.
And it's worked real well so far.
We've given them every incentive in the world to hang on to those things.
But I'm just curious, because I know John Bolton is a mean guy, and I know that he ain't the very brightest in terms of real wisdom.
I certainly have a different point of view from him on everything.
But it seems like there must have been more reason to what he was saying than, you know, like, hey, let's just make sure they get some nukes, and then we'll see what happens after that.
You know, I think there's this – I mean, it's hard to get in the mind of John Bolton, but if I was to try to do it, I would do it this way.
For him, I think he looks at the American power needs to be absolute.
Many threats around the world essentially need to be smashed.
That's the best way I can describe it.
You know, a lot of people call John Bolton a neoconservative.
He's not.
He doesn't want to remake Iran or North Korea into liberal democracies.
He doesn't care about that.
What he cares about is eliminating the threat and moving on.
Whatever happens in those countries after that, I think for Bolton, I think he'd say, so be it, whatever.
And I think that's the tragedy when we come to these things, that the simplistic notions from that camp that you could just sort of go around the world to deal with these problems through military force is apocalyptic.
I mean, think about North Korea for a second.
You know, back in January of 2018, the Wall Street Journal comes out with a report saying that the administration was thinking about, quote, unquote, a bloody nose attack on North Korea.
I mean, even if you just drop a couple bombs on North Korean missile sites, guess what?
The North Koreans are going to react probably with a full-blown strike of not only nuclear weapons, but they also have 5,000 tons of chemical weapons.
They have a biological weapons program.
They have 200,000 special forces.
I mean, I could go on and on.
I mean, their capabilities, a lot of them are old and crude, but it doesn't take advanced military capabilities to kill millions of people in Seoul.
So these are the problems that I sort of have with the neoconservative camp, and I'll be honest.
I don't think they're going to change anytime soon.
Yeah.
And by the way, how certain are you about their germ weapons program and their chemical weapons stock quantities and these things?
The chemical, I'm very, very – I have high confidence.
I'll use the CIA term.
On the bioprogram, when I've talked to various CIA officials, talked to people in the intelligence community in South Korea, they seem pretty adamant that at the very least of scenarios they do have a crude bioprogram that, with anthrax and other things, smallpox, that could do a lot of damage.
That could not only kill at least tens of thousands of people, but the mass hysteria that would be spread by just dropping a couple, even potential biological weapons in downtown Seoul, you would see millions of people head for the exits and clog the roadways and arteries.
I mean, just the threat alone would be terrible.
Well, it's just too bad these are the same guys who tried to sell me cartoons of Saddam Hussein's mobile biological weapons laboratories, so I'll never believe their claims about anyone ever again, even though, of course, it could be true.
What do I know?
But I know I don't believe them.
Even if you like your sources, I don't.
That's okay.
I want to see some real proof.
But anyway.
Not that – come on.
The North Koreans wouldn't do that, but our government relies on that kind of thing all the time.
Like what, you think Saddam Hussein is above holding onto some mustard gas?
Well, gee, I don't know.
Probably not.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely.
Anyways.
So, you know, I appreciate your approach here.
I always said we ought to send Dennis Rodman and all of his friends and everybody and just kill them with kindness.
Really, sort of like you said, we don't really have an actual national interest here.
Only an imperial one, in a sense.
And so we have really nothing to lose.
We have so much to give.
And so let's just murder them with kindness.
And it'll be great.
We'll just – just like we did with China.
You know?
It took a little while after the opening with Nixon and all that, but once the trade really got going and they saw that getting rich was glorious, look at the improvement in the standard of living over there and the improvement in the relationship between their nation and ours in that time, you know?
And I think you've got the nail on the head.
Economics, I think, is the way forward.
When I talk to VCs, Wall Street people, you know, investors that have billions of dollars to put places, they look at North Korea as one of the last big economic prizes out there in the world.
I mean, just to give you a quick example, North Korea is sitting on somewhere around $6 trillion in minerals.
They're sitting on potential large stocks of offshore oil.
We can't really explore it yet because they don't have the technology to do it, but just the raw mineral potential.
Also, the North Korean people, it's a proven fact that they are very hardworking, industrious people.
When they were allowed to work in the Kaesong Industrial Complex, they would work long, hard hours.
They were proven to be skilled, thoughtful, entrepreneurial, and capitalist.
If we were able to tap that potential, if they understood that they were able to take their economic future and put it in their own hands and actually work with the South Koreans, maybe not towards full-blown reunification, but some sort of federation or co-federation, I think their potential would be unlimited, and I think they would come to the realization that they don't need nuclear weapons, or maybe nowhere near as many as they have, and I think a peaceful solution can be found.
Yeah.
I mean, and I'd hate to see the Americans just come in and imperialize and take over the place and replace Kim with some Fatah al-Sisi character to do whatever America says and that kind of thing, but there's got to be a middle ground where we can have foreign investment that's not cronyism and exploitative and take advantage of these people, but in an honest way, let them into the international economic system and respect their political independence and let them be free as best as within our ability anyway, right?
Absolutely, and I mean, South Korea wants to lead the way on this, and rightly they should.
I mean, it's their peninsula, it's their brethren to the North.
I mean, think about South Korea and the brands that they have and the technological and managerial manpower they have, Samsung, LG, Hyundai.
I mean, these are global brands with global experience.
Their infrastructure and capabilities would easily be able to move in North Korea and rebuild their roads, railways, bridges.
They could start bringing 5G into North Korea.
Forget about running fiber optic cables and the rest.
They could go right into the 21st century.
These are things that when I talk to South Korean officials, they want to do.
They know how to do.
They have a unification ministry for Pete's sake, so this is doable.
Yeah.
Well, it sure sounds like it.
So tell me this, then, for last question real quick.
In terms of the spirit in Washington, D.C., are you making progress?
Are people starting to turn on to this at all?
That, hey, you know what, maybe it would be better.
Maybe it would be worse for our military industrial complex firms, but maybe it would be better for everyone else, and so that would be all right.
You know, there is a group of people that I would point out on the left and on the right that are really starting to work much more together.
You know, you talk to people like Tulsi Gabbard.
I'll be honest.
I don't agree with her progressive politics, but I do agree with her a lot on foreign policy, and I give her a lot of credit.
I mean, she's running a presidential campaign that's not looking very strong, but she's putting foreign policy and regime change wars and all of these things that we basically talked about today front and center, and I think people are listening to her.
And, you know, you see this immersion of sort of a left-right access where people are saying, hey, you know what, spending trillions of dollars on regime change wars is probably a bad idea.
This is starting to resonate, and I really do think this is one of the reasons that Donald Trump won, and I think one of the reasons that Donald Trump would lose in 2020 is if he decides to start some sort of crazy regime change war with Iran.
That is completely not in our national interest, and I think we need to understand that doing those things takes away from our own national power, and I think people get that message.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time coming back on the show here, Harry, and all your great writing lately.
Anytime, man.
You have me, I'll come.
All right.
You guys, that is Harry Kazianas.
He's Grecian Formula.
That's funny, on Twitter.
And he's the Korea expert at The National Interest, and that's nationalinterest.org.
Here's one of interest.
A U.S. invasion of North Korea would be like opening the gates of hell, but even better here.
How Donald Trump can reach a peace deal with North Korea.
Those are at nationalinterest.org.
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