For Pacifica Radio, January 21st, 2018.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
Alright you guys, welcome to the show that is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the opinion editor at Antiwar.com.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 4,500 interviews, going back to 2003 now, at ScottHorton.org.
Alright you guys, introducing the great historian and journalist, Gareth Porter, my very favorite reporter.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Gareth?
Hi Scott, thanks, Steve.
Glad to be back again.
Very happy to have you here on the show, of course.
You wrote the book, Manufactured Crisis, The Truth Behind the Iran Nuclear Scare.
It's a very important book.
It's the book on Iran's nuclear program for people who really want to know.
That's what you need to know.
And you know, I guess it's sort of a related subject today.
Before I start asking you questions, I want to remind you, Gareth Porter, that the first time I ever spoke with you was 11 years ago, January 2007, and a lot of people were concerned that George W. Bush was going to launch airstrikes against Iran, and so maybe we're going to have to attack them.
And you came on the show to say, nah, hold your horses.
The USA may attack Iran, but if they do, it won't be till late spring, early summer.
Told us all we needed to hold our horses.
So I'm very happy to have you back on the show today to do the same thing a decade and a little more later here.
Why Trump's North Korea bloody nose campaign is a big bluff.
Preemptive sigh of relief there.
Go ahead, Gareth.
Tell us what's going on here.
Well, first of all, you're absolutely right that there is a bit of a parallel here, because what we were seeing in 2007, as we are seeing right now, was an effort to convince the Iran Iranians that the Bush administration was prepared to launch a strike against its nuclear facilities.
So that's an interesting parallel with what is going on with the Trump administration today with regard to North Korea.
And this is a phenomenon, this idea of putting out a storyline that suggests, not just suggests, but tries to convince the world and particularly the adversary that the United States is preparing a potential strike unless they straighten up and fly right.
It's a common theme, really, for the last few decades in U.S. national security policy, because it has to do with this old bugaboo of mine.
I know you're familiar with the concept of coercive diplomacy.
And this has been a subject that I've been quite obsessed with over the years and have now come back to, of course, again with the Trump administration, because this is of the essence of what it's trying to do on North Korea.
It's trying to convince, I think not so much North Korea in this case, but China, that it needs to take actions to restrain the North Koreans in order to make sure that the United States doesn't carry out a strike.
So that's what we've really been seeing essentially since the first months of the Trump administration.
And in my piece, I really go back to the origins of this, to the first round, if you will, of the idea that was put out by the Trump administration in April of 2017, that it was prepared to launch a strike against missile and nuclear weapons facilities in North Korea.
And so what we've been seeing in recent weeks with this campaign to suggest that the administration would carry out a bloody nose strike against North Korea is as a reprise, if you will, of something that happened very early in the Trump administration.
That earlier version was much less concentrated or much less fulsome, if you will.
It was only a leaked story, as I recall, to NBC News that the administration was preparing a strike against these facilities and that this would take place if the North Koreans did not end their testing of both ICBMs and nuclear weapons.
Of course, we know perfectly well that's not what happened at all.
The North Koreans went ahead with testing of both nuclear weapons and the ICBM and nothing happened.
So that really by itself should have been an indication that this administration was ready to carry out a coercive diplomacy campaign, but not ready to carry out a strike.
And so what we've seen in more recent weeks, I think, is clearly something that is not real.
It's not a genuine indication of an intention to strike North Korea, but rather just another effort to convince, particularly convince the Chinese that they need to step up and do something because otherwise we really can't restrain this crazy man in the White House in the United States.
Shades of Richard Nixon, right?
Hank Kissinger, tell them I'm crazy, I might nuke the place if they don't go ahead and get in now.
In fact, of course, we know that Trump very consciously has cited Nixon mad-mad theory as a useful tool for US policy.
And there are those who have gone along with that, that, you know, yeah, well, maybe he's right.
Maybe that's not such a bad idea after all.
And I think that that is built into the campaign that we've seen, but particularly carried out by McMaster in a series of interviews with various news media.
That's H.R. McMaster, the National Security Advisor, who's a three-star general, currently still in the army, even though he's National Security Advisor.
Now, so here's the thing, though, about some of his different statements.
And, you know, we have time, so I hope you'll go through them and kind of show what insights you're gleaning.
But one of the things that it seems important is that he has said, well, the president has asked us to review options.
And that sounds like that declarative statement sounds true enough, that Trump has said, I don't want to know what options you have on the shelf.
I want you to review what options I have and bring them before me kind of thing.
And that's dangerous.
Sure.
Look, I have no doubt that McMaster did, in fact, get orders from not just McMaster, but the entire administration, Defense Department in particular, got orders from the White House to prepare, you know, all the options available, including new options, not just the ones, as you said, on the shelf.
No, no doubt that that's what happened.
And no doubt Trump was hoping that there was something that would come up that would be spectacularly, you know, something that he could he could actually use.
But it's very clear that the suite of options that were prepared for Trump did not include anything that was not quite familiar to the military already.
There was nothing essentially, you know, spectacularly new about the about the options that were prepared.
They were all variations on the same theme that they would try to strike selective facilities, particularly a missile facility, I think would be the ones that would be most easily targeted because they know where most of them are, although not every single one.
And of course, the nuclear facilities that are declared and out in the open, they can target them as well.
But then what?
And then you get to the heart of the matter, because every single option that involves one of those strikes has to consider the likelihood, the extreme likelihood that North Korea would respond by an artillery barrage from 10,000, roughly, artillery, missile and rocket weapons that are hidden, almost all of them sheltered in mountain caves north of the DMZ, north of the 38th parallel, and therefore, relatively well protected from airstrikes that the United States might try to carry out to try to suppress them, they could do some damage, they could do quite a bit of damage, I'm sure.
But, but no one who's looked at the at the evidence really believes that there's any possibility of preventing the leveling of a large part of the capital area of Seoul, South Korea, which is 10 million people, including hundreds of 1000s of Americans.
So it rather dampens the enthusiasm, shall we say, of the Pentagon, the Defense Department, and particularly Secretary of Defense for recommending any such, any such option.
And, and, you know, that which kind of undermines the strategy, right?
When, when everybody kind of knows it must be a bluff.
Mattis himself has said, that if we have another war in North Korea, it will be the most bitter fighting of our lifetimes, which Matt is talking, I think includes the first Korean War.
You know, yeah, look, you're absolutely right.
I'm sure he wasn't referring to World War Two, but he was, you know, referring to the entire post war period, post that war.
And, and there is no question that Mattis and everybody in serious positions in the military services and in South Korea, in the US Forces Command in South Korea, are absolutely adamantly opposed to a military option with regard to North Korea.
This, this is a dead, a dead pipe, lead pipe, cinch certainty.
But you know what, when the newspapers have this quote, that well, they're talking about a bloody nose strategy, that that's comes from somewhere, right?
That's one of the options, option C, or whatever, for everybody's picture in the Simpsons movie, right?
And they lay out option A, B, C, D on the desk and choose number four, or whatever it is.
So that is one of them.
But you're saying then that we have to count on the fact that these generals must be saying to the president that, listen, the bloody nose option is the, you know, fistfight all afternoon option.
There is no bloody nose.
You know, this, this guy's not going to turn around and go home if we bloody his nose, he's going to flip out.
That's exactly right.
In other words, the bloody nose term, makes it sound like it's just a little fistfight on the corner by some kids.
And not that much of a problem.
Whereas the reality, of course, is that it's not a bloody nose.
It's a, it's a Holocaust of sorts, involving, you know, massive hundreds of thousands potentially of casualties in just a matter of hours, really, because of the capabilities that the North Koreans have for retaliation immediately.
And the other part of this that we haven't talked about explicitly is that there is a little undercurrent that you get from some sources, which I didn't really talk about in my piece, as I recall, that McMaster may have suggested in private conversations to people that, well, you know, Kim Jong Un would not dare to respond to a limited, very carefully targeted strike on his nuclear missile facilities, because he would be deterred by the threat of US nuclear retaliation destroying North Korea.
In other words, he's already deterred.
He's already deterred.
And of course, this is not likely to be true, given the fact that North Koreans have to assume that, particularly in light of the great amount of information that's been put out in the media about the US-South Korean military exercises that, since 2016, have been based explicitly on a strategy of decapitation, meaning essentially destroying the leadership of North Korea, plus denuclearization, targeting all of their nuclear and weapons facilities, I mean, their ICBM program facilities.
So, they would regard a US strike reasonably as an effort to take out the regime.
And that means that they would have nothing to lose, quote unquote.
And that's pretty well accepted by anyone who's really looked at the North Korean perspective on this.
And the North Koreans have said that in the past.
In 1994, if I remember correctly, or thereabouts, in conversations with US diplomats, the North Korean officials or a North Korean official said that if the United States were to send major reinforcements to the region, suddenly, we would take that as a sign that you are ready to go to war and we would carry out then a strike, our own strike, as a preemptive measure.
We would go to war preemptively.
So, it is generally accepted that North Korea would, in fact, carry out a preemptive strike.
And they've said so quite explicitly in recent months.
Well, you know, I think this is something that has to be brought up from time to time, Gareth.
And that is that millions of North Koreans were killed in the air campaign, especially in the Korean War, you know, in the early 1950s there.
And we just don't have any kind of comparison for that.
You know what I mean?
What if the history had been that the Korean war had taken place here and it was millions of Americans who had died?
There are people who are still alive in North Korea, obviously, who remember that U.S. military campaign, which, as you say, killed upwards of, you know, as many as three million.
Two million has also been used as a figure commonly.
And that's really out of 10 million people, if I remember my history correctly.
So, for Americans, this is just another war.
We got 10 of them, right?
And, you know, I don't know, North Korea, what difference does that one make?
But for them, the American war, that is obviously, and not just because of their crazy communist totalitarian propaganda, but for very real reasons, is sort of the center of their entire identity over there.
Those who are constantly threatened by the Americans, that's what it means to be a North Korean.
Absolutely.
And, you know, the single biggest, you know, the thing that makes me sickest about the treatment of this whole North Korea issue in the U.S. media is the refusal to take account of the reality that you've been referring to.
And to understand that the impact that this has had on the North Korean government has not been to make them madmen, irrational, or anything of the sort, but rather precisely the opposite.
It is arguable that the North Koreans are the most cautious, the most carefully calculating leadership involved in a major conflict with the United States over a long period of time.
And indeed, in my story, I mention, I refer to the fact that the CIA, which has set up a new center for analysis of North Korea, has gone to the extreme length, the extraordinary length of going public at a conference in November, or maybe it was October, of revealing the essence of their analysis of North Korea as a decision-making, the North Korean government as a decision-making body, and particularly, of course, of Kim Jong-un.
And that analysis is that he personally and the government in general are extraordinarily rational, extraordinary calculating, and cautious.
And therefore, this whole idea that they can't be deterred, of course, is ridiculous.
And the U.S. government knows that perfectly well.
And in fact, we know that McMaster's been trying to trade on the idea that they are cautious, which means that this whole idea that we have to prepare and threaten a strike against North Korea to prevent them from using a nuclear weapon against the United States is the biggest piece of bunk ever put out by the U.S. government.
Well, and this is really, I think, very important in terms of constructing for the American people a pretext for war if somebody wants one.
And this is the Branch Davidian model.
The guy's crazy, so there's no point in trying to negotiate with him because he's totally irrational.
He's got illegal weapons, and he's bad to his own people.
And so this is the trifecta of horrors.
We have to go in there and do something about it.
And then they pulled the exact same script on Saddam Hussein.
I mean, anyone think back to 2002.
Wait, why can't we just send Donald Rumsfeld back over there to shake hands with him and sell him some weapons again and everything will be fine?
Oh, no, you don't understand.
He's so damn insane.
Yeah, no, you can't believe him.
You can't make a deal with a guy like that.
And once you accept that premise and have a policy based on that premise, well, you see where it leads.
So now what they tell us about North Korea is that same David Koresh thing again.
He's crazy, he's bad to his own people, he has these illegal weapons, especially he does have nuclear weapons, we know he does.
And yet you're saying, well, CIA says that's not true.
But if CIA says so, I mean, is that a national intelligence estimate that says that's not true?
Is it officially the position of the government of the United States, really in the National Security Council, that they know that that's not true, that that's what they tell us on TV, but that their policy really is based on the rational nature of the leadership there?
I can't, I mean, I don't know of any specific citation of a national intelligence estimate saying that, but I have absolutely no doubt that that is the assessment that has been conveyed by the CIA at high levels to the White House and to the entire administration, and that it is perfectly well known by every policymaker in the US government.
Well, look, I think the point that people need to really get a grip on about North Korea, and this applies to Iran as well, is that these states, these weaker, militarily weaker states, and economically vulnerable states, have had to devise strategies that take into account the ability of the United States to strike them.
And the fact the United States also has pursued policies of trying to isolate and to squeeze their economies to the point where it has very serious repercussions for the societies and the political systems in those countries.
And so they have really been more or less forced into a strategy of citing their nuclear capabilities and their missile capabilities, in the case of North Korea, as a bargaining chip, if you will, with the United States, and even more fundamentally, a way of getting the attention of the United States and getting them to sit down with them and to negotiate some kind of deal, which results in a significant lowering, a reduction of the threat.
Well, we saw that with Iran, you know, Reza Mirashi at the National Iranian American Council pointed out so well, that when it came to the nuclear deal with Iran, the Americans side, you know, TV always says that, well, the sanctions forced them to the table.
And he's like, no, the buildup of their civilian nuclear program forced America to the table.
It was getting to the point where their breakout capability was going to be maybe less than a year, maybe half a year, something like that.
Something had to be done on this side.
Right.
And they were quite conscious about it.
They even telegraphed what they were doing.
No, I've written about that myself.
They were quite explicit.
Look, we're going to increase the enrichment of uranium up to more than 20 percent, but we'll stop it as soon as you come to an agreement with us that meets our essential needs here for sort of fuel to be able to carry out the reactor, to operate the reactor that we're using to produce isotopes for medical purposes.
Well, so much for this coercive diplomacy.
I mean, how exactly is that different than the other kind when we're talking about the American empire with, you know, fists full of H-bombs here?
Isn't it all coercive diplomacy?
And where does this leave the Trump administration now when they have all these threats?
And occasionally we'll hear leaks that, oh, yeah, we'll even talk or not even leaks as statements.
Yeah, we'll talk with them even without preconditions.
Let's go ahead and sit down.
And then they turn right around and say, no, of course, the nuclear issue first and reunification never.
The problem, Scott, with the Trump administration is really no different from the trouble with every other post-war, post-Cold War U.S. administration, with the partial exception of the Clinton administration, which is that they have a hang up about actually sitting down with the North Koreans and offering them a deal which involves sort of ending the extraordinary state of war on the peninsula of Korea.
And this was most recently dramatically illustrated by Ashton Carter, Obama's last secretary of defense, in an interview with Christiane Amanpour in November of last year, in which he made the extraordinary statement that, well, we can't really offer the North Koreans anything in return for disarming themselves because we just don't feel like we want to basically do anything until after they get rid of all their nuclear weapons.
We'll be willing to talk to them about peace on the peninsula, ending the armistice, the formal still state of war, but an armistice on the peninsula, only after they agree to get rid of all their nuclear weapons.
So there's no predisposition here.
There is, I should say, a predisposition to refuse to negotiate until the North Koreans essentially capitulate.
Now, that's, you know, in a way what the Obama administration was doing in its first term.
It was only going to negotiate with Iran on the nuclear issue once the Iranians agreed no enrichment.
And it finally gave that up in its second term.
Well, on Korea, this is certainly Bush's position after he pushed them to nukes in the first place, that we can't negotiate anything until you give up your nukes first.
That was Bush's position for sure.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah.
No, Gareth, I remember one time that there was a problem with the translation and South Korean President Roh had said, oh, I'm sorry, Mr. President, did I misunderstand?
Did you just say that we could negotiate on reunification and peace and all these other things along with the nuclear issue?
And Bush got all mad and goes, no, that's not what I said.
I said, once they negotiate the nuclear issue and that is resolved, only then can we talk about any other thing.
And now this obviously is a great opportunity to mention your most recent article before this one.
Well, first of all, again, this one is called Why Trump's North Korea Bloody Nose Campaign is a Big Bluff.
It's at antiwar.com.
And before that, how Cheney and his allies created the North Korea nuclear missile crisis.
And I'm not one to try to give Bill Clinton credit for anything on this show or any other place, but he does deserve credit for negotiating and with the help of Jimmy Carter, negotiating to keep North Korea inside the nonproliferation treaty, inside their safeguards agreement, and to keep them from making nuclear weapons.
And then Bush, as you show in this article better than any other article on this issue, you show how step by step by step, the Bush, Cheney, John Bolton, Junta up there, forced the North Koreans out of the nonproliferation treaty.
They broke the deal, the agreed framework that Clinton had struck and pushed them out basically directly into the possession of nuclear weapons.
And they did it because of their overriding interest in getting funding for and deploying a national missile defense system.
That was what they really wanted.
And an agreement with North Korea was going to get in the way one way or another.
So it's not even that they thought that, well, we'll just knock over Saddam Hussein and then we'll go on to Pyongyang.
They figured, no, it'll be fun.
We'll push this most totalitarian regime on earth into the possession of nuclear weapons.
We'll bet on their rationality that they'll never use them.
But we'll also bet that, hell yeah, we'll have a threat to scare people that they're going to get nuked in their jammies if they don't let us build them a missile defense system.
Essentially, that's right.
Yep, I agree.
That precisely depicts the general thinking behind the policy of the Bush administration.
And again, that article is called How Cheney and his allies created the North Korea nuclear missile crisis.
And of course, the great Dr. Gordon Prather also wrote one called How Bush Pushed North Korea to Nukes.
I believe that was his last article before he retired back in 2009, something like that.
Just an incredible story.
It's almost unbelievable except for how true it is.
All right.
And with that, thank you very much, Gareth.
Really appreciate your time on the show again.
Glad to be back.
All right, you guys, that is the great Gareth Porter.
He wrote the book Manufactured Crisis, The Truth Behind the Iran Nuclear Scare.
His most recent article, I believe his first ran at Truthdig.
It's at antiwar.com right now.
It's called Why Trump's North Korea Bloody Nose Campaign is a Big Bluff.
And that's it for Antiwar Radio for this morning.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the author of the book, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
And I'm the opinion editor at antiwar.com.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 4,500 interviews now going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org.
And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks.
