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 hacked.
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 us, 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, introducing Jon Pfeffer from Foreign Policy in Focus, that's fpif.org.
And also we feature what he writes pretty much every time, I think, at antiwar.com, original.antiwar.com slash Pfeffer.
And the latest is called, Is Korea's Cold War About to End?
I'm sorry for sounding so skeptical there.
How about, Is Korea's Cold War About to End?
Welcome to the show.
How you doing, Jon?
Good.
Thanks for having me back on.
Very happy to have you here.
So listen, I got a cold, so you do all the talking.
What's going on with this whole Korea thing?
You did sound a little different when you came on the phone.
So the article I was writing about was the changing situation on the Korean Peninsula itself.
In other words, there's been a lot of press here in the States about how nuclear negotiations with North Korea have stalled.
And then there's this report this week or last week on this secret missile, set of missile bases.
But I think what the press largely has missed is that the two Koreas are basically dismantling or beginning to dismantle the Cold War structures on the peninsula, beginning with the demilitarized zone.
And this is an extraordinary development and one that is very promising, not to say that it's not reversible.
Of course, nothing is irreversible.
But this is something that is, I would say, a major step ahead of what took place in the late 1990s, early 2000s, between the two Koreas in the sunshine era, where the focus was largely on economic exchanges.
This time, they're actually starting to, for instance, destroy guard posts at the DMZ, demine an area of the DMZ, establish a no-fly zone above the DMZ, basically call a halt to hostilities along the maritime divide between the two countries.
And this, I would argue, is an absolute precondition for any kind of steps forward in what I would call slow-motion reunification.
Yeah, all that is really great.
And so how about now talk about how great is this South Korean president Moon here?
He's really the driving force behind this whole thing, right?
He is.
And he's also remarkably modest about this.
So, for instance, he's given a lot of credit to Donald Trump, even though, frankly, Donald Trump really doesn't deserve a lot of credit.
I don't want to say he doesn't deserve any credit.
He certainly deserves some credit.
But Moon Jae-in has bent over backwards to basically say that this has been at the initiative of the United States and the Trump administration.
He has been able to, within—he hasn't even been in office for a year— but basically to transform the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
He's been able to maintain his popularity.
He's been able to win over a lot of independents.
There's still a core group of conservatives who are not happy with what he's been doing.
But I would argue that politically on the peninsula, he's been doing a remarkable job.
All right.
Now, so you started off with what the media has been missing here.
And so that really goes to the point, isn't it, that—and you know me, I'm no partisan to Donald Trump or what have you— but it's his supposed rogue nature from the establishment, which in most cases is completely missing, but in this case seems to be all for the better.
And it has the entire center and the entire national security state and all of the biggest media organs of the establishment beside themselves with grief here.
That he would dare to basically over Bush and Obama's dead legacies go ahead and try to figure out a way to demilitarize this crisis, maybe even have a peace deal, right?
Absolutely.
I mean, we have to step back and remember that that wasn't his intention coming into office.
And that certainly wasn't his policy for basically the first year of the administration.
Indeed, you know, we have his most recent interview in which he says that we came very close.
He doesn't say to war, but that's kind of implied in his sentence.
We came very close to war with North Korea.
National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster was preparing plans for a preemptive strike against North Korea.
And unfortunately, there would have been quite a lot of support for that in the foreign policy community.
We should specify here, right, this is because they were finally figuring out how to make their rockets reach to Washington, D.C.
Not that they miniaturized their nuclear warheads yet, but that was perceived to be a real line that we're going to have to figure out to do one thing or another right now because of that.
That's correct.
So, yes, it's North Korea's ICBM capability, which it seemed to have mastered, though, you know, it's always a question mark with any or an asterisk, I should say, with any of North Korea's military capabilities because, you know, we don't really have any complete proof that, A, you know, they've mastered the ability to fire an ICBM accurately.
I mean, it's one thing to send one up in the atmosphere and for it to come down again, but to actually target it in any real sense, and then, of course, as you say, to miniaturize sufficiently to put a nuclear warhead at the head of an ICBM.
But anyway, yes, this was the Trump administration's concern that North Korea was finally, you know, finally had the ability to target the United States.
But, of course, you know, this was also the trigger for North Korea to decide that it was ready to negotiate, first and foremost with South Korea, that it had essentially accomplished its military objective.
And, you know, you could either say that its military objective was to achieve this capability, A, or B, to scare the United States, even if it didn't have that capability.
And once it had kind of passed that stage, then it could focus on economic reconstruction, and that required getting outside capital.
And the only places that it, frankly, could expect large infusions was South Korea, and then ultimately the United States, and through the United States, the global economy.
Hey, you guys, if you're good libertarians, go ahead and submit articles to the Libertarian Institute.
Maybe I'll run them.
You can find out all the submission guidelines there at libertarianinstitute.org.
So I did quit Twitter, not because they banned me for a week, but because I've been trying to quit anyway.
I've got a lot of book reading done, and now I'm writing another one here.
And so I'm glad to be done with that.
But I am still on Reddit, but it's a private Reddit group.
Tom Woods convinced me to do it.
He wanted me to do Facebook, but it's on Reddit.
Anybody who donates more than $5 a month by way of PayPal or patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show, or whatever you want, send a check.
You get access to the private Reddit group at r slash Scott Horton Show.
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And so I spend some time in there if you want to check that out.
All right, now, so all the progress that has been made so far does not include a deal for denuclearization.
Or any major change in the status of the conflict there.
But I guess as you're pointing out here, all the very kind of baby steps they're taking are actually like pretty good toddler steps.
Like they're really working toward this thing.
And as you say, compared to the old sunshine policy of the 1990s, this is really quite a few steps beyond that.
And I know you warned that it's far from irreversible.
And yet there really does seem to be a momentum here.
For really, as long as America stays the heck out of the way, that the North and the South can come to a conclusion on this thing, huh?
Yeah, and like you said, there's no nuclear deal on the table.
There's still a major disconnect between the U.S. and North Korea over basically the process where the United States says, you have to do all these things, North Korea.
You have to jump through all these hoops.
And then once you've done that, then we will consider some incentives.
Even though, of course, the word incentive suggests that you would provide that in order to get that behavior, not after that behavior had already been demonstrated.
But in any case, that's the U.S. position.
CVID or something like Pompeo's come up with a couple of additional or substitute acronyms, but complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement or disarmament.
North Korea has to achieve that before it sees any reduction in sanctions.
North Korea's position is, let's do this step by step.
You do something, we do something.
You do something, we do something.
And that's really the standoff right now.
And the United States makes demands.
It wants to get an inventory, for instance, of what North Korea has.
And North Korea is basically saying, look, you know, we need to see some good faith from you folks before we proceed any further down this road.
As for North and South Korea, well, the problem is, well, first of all, I would say that the seriousness of this or the importance of it can be measured by U.S. reaction.
So when the two Koreas agreed to a no-fly zone over the DMZ, the United States was very uncomfortable with that because, of course, that limits U.S. flexibility, U.S. range of motion, if you will, in the airspace.
And after the third inter-Korean summit, the Treasury Department basically called up all major U.S. major Korean banks, South Korean banks, and said, you know, I know you folks are excited about what's happening in North-South relations, but remember, we have these serious sanctions and you cannot depart from that policy even one inch.
So, you know, celebrate all you want after your third inter-Korean summit, but basically you still have to toe the line.
So, you know, that's one indication of the seriousness.
Another indication is the price of land up around the DMZ, which has gone up precipitously.
In other words, investors have decided that this is serious and that even if we don't have Korean reunification next week, it still means that the reduction of tensions around this border between the two countries will allow for significant construction and investment into those otherwise, in some cases, completely unpopulated areas and in other areas underpopulated.
All right.
Now, you know who's a really bad reporter, but who's really good at his job?
David Sanger of the New York Times.
And it's funny because he got dragged all up and down the place and he's about to by you in a minute, I hope, about this scaremongering article that came out in the Times last week that you mentioned there.
And yet he's got a real history of this going back for many years.
Notoriously, he was the coiner, I think, of the phrase Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program, which he just referred to, as Robert Perry would say, as flat fact, out of context all the time.
In any context, whenever he's writing about Iran's nuclear program, it was always their illicit nuclear weapons program, which was a damned lie.
It was never true.
And Sanger knew better, but Sanger's a liar.
And now here's Sanger again, just absolutely hyping up this CSIS report, which I don't know how great it was or not, but it's pretty clear that he took it way out of context on the front page of the New York Times in this story that was clearly designed to make the president and his administration out to be fools, falling for the deceptions of the Wiley Kim family.
That's right.
I think you've characterized it correctly.
The CSIS report was a fine report, but it didn't really break a lot of new ground.
It said that there are basically 20 missile basing sites.
These are not launch sites, but places where the missiles would be staged, essentially.
Mostly short and medium range, although it didn't say that long range, or ICBMs, couldn't be mounted at some of the sites.
And then it had basically two reports.
One was the general report on this network, and then the second report was on a specific site at Sakanmol, which was specifically for short range missiles.
And what happened between these two reports and the reporting on these two reports is that somehow there was a disconnect between, first of all, North Korea's missile program and its nuclear program.
Because the negotiations with North Korea have been, for the most part, about its nuclear program, not about its missile program, and certainly not about its short term or intermediate range missiles.
There have been, at times in the past, attempts to address those missile issues, but the overriding concern for U.S. policy has been nuclear material, nuclear bombs, and the long range missiles that can carry them.
Again, not short range or intermediate range.
And North Korea never indicated that it had any intention of stopping its missile program.
It did declare a moratorium on missile launches as a good faith effort, but it never said it was going to get rid of all of its missiles.
And certainly the United States and South Korea never said they were going to get rid of their missiles either.
So this was really a focus on North Korea's nuclear program.
So that's number one.
Number two, the article suggested somehow that this was something new.
That, in other words, while North Korea was negotiating with the United States, with the Trump administration, and again with South Korea, it was all the while pursuing an upgrade in its capabilities.
Now, we could talk about that with respect to nuclear issues, but that's not what these reports were about.
They were about missile bases.
And if you look at the CSIS reports, they're very clear that there's basically been no upgrade to these bases since 2011.
So, well, that's seven years ago.
So obviously this was not new, and it was not an indication that North Korea was kind of being, engaging in perfidious acts by saying one thing and doing another.
So those are the major kind of reasons why this CSIS report was not really big news.
And, of course, the second reason is that North Korea was not really big news.
And, of course, the South Korean government said there's really nothing new here.
And the Trump administration said there's really nothing new here.
It was really only the New York Times that said that there was something new.
Yeah, you know, I read a piece by Tim Shorrock in The Nation this morning about this, where he said that NPR News and NBC both kind of ran with it.
And yet then he cited some of which had kind of alarmist headlines, but did not include Sanger's worst claims about this shows deception and this shows, you know, all this secret progress or this indicates a violation of what's going on here.
I mean, they really do act like we think that Trump and Kim signed an agreement, a final agreement or something at that meeting in Singapore and make sure it's all the way broken and that we can move forward from here.
Donald Trump and Kim have shaken hands and say that they really mean to move forward here.
And so then that's it.
There is no agreement for them to violate at this point.
As you say, everything that they're working on so far are all these other smaller icebreakers like demilitarizing the DMZ somewhat and this kind of thing.
So, you know, I actually was looking for this morning.
The CSIS quote, I'm sorry, I forget the lady's name, but I'm pretty sure it was one of their Korea experts, a lady there who, when this all first started, the announcement that Trump's going to go to Singapore and all of that wrote on the CSIS Twitter, that's the Center for, is it Science and International Security?
Strategic and International Security.
Strategic and International Security.
That, oh no, that's a pretext to keep troops there, which are there of course for China, not for Korea.
And so just blatantly, you know, out of the mouths of babes kind of a way, completely unembarrassed that this is supposed to kind of be secret that you're not supposed to say that you would prefer, as you were talking about earlier, John, nuclear brinksmanship between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un to precipitate an artificial crisis of American troops on the peninsula.
Can that really be our policy?
Can you imagine if that was what Russia's policy was somewhere, how our side would characterize that as the most evil and cynical, imperial kind of hegemonic manipulation that we would put our South Korean friends and our Japanese friends in such danger over a pretext?
And then, but while I was looking for that, I saw these tweets saying, OK, well here we are, no progress on denuclearization.
OK, here we are one month after Singapore and still no progress on demilitarization.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
They know they're being ridiculous, you know, moving goalposts around like that.
They must.
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine that they, let's start with the first issue, which is the question of U.S. troops.
I mean, in large part, it's a non-issue.
It's a non-issue because, frankly, North Korea is perfectly happy, judging from comments from the leadership over the years, for U.S. troops to remain in South Korea.
In fact, there's probably more opposition to U.S. troops in South Korea than there is in North Korea.
And the reason for that is, of course, that North Korea is more concerned and also worried about Chinese dependency, dependency of North Korea economically in terms of security on China, that U.S. troops actually serve a balancing function from the North Korean point of view.
So when the United States starts worrying about the reduction of U.S. troops or the elimination of U.S. troops, they're going to have to look for some other culprit.
It's not going to be North Korea themselves.
It might be American taxpayers.
It might be, you know, a president like Donald Trump who says that the South Koreans should pay more or we'll take out our troops.
Those are the more likely vectors, if you will, for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
As for moving the goalposts, you know, the foreign policy community in general is uncomfortable with a president that doesn't listen to it.
You know, it has expected over the years that a president will either seek its advice when it comes to North Korea, as the case was, for instance, for Bill Clinton, or if the president is not interested in moving forward on any kind of negotiations with North Korea, the Trump administration, then at least Obama as president would kind of respect quote-unquote the foreign policy community by not trying to go too far out in front of it.
And, you know, of course, I think when Obama was complaining about the blob, he had in mind a number of foreign policy issues.
But, you know, there was a pushback from the foreign policy mandarins in Washington, D.C.
So to have a president like Donald Trump do something that is so out of keeping with ordinary presidential behavior on this issue, I think prompts the foreign policy community to do unusual things.
And so moving the goalposts is perhaps the least clearly, you know, criticizing the president for not making headway when, you know, this is an extraordinarily difficult, challenging issue and, you know, we don't have even a full, I would say, a full cohort of people working on it in the administration.
It's, you know, what's worse, however, as far as I'm concerned, is the criticisms of South Korea for basically tearing apart the alliance.
This is really the, one could argue, displaced anger from the foreign policy community.
You can't really criticize the president or the administration as much as it would like, for moving too far ahead in its negotiations with North Korea and that this, you know, is a challenge to the alliance itself.
Hey guys, check out my book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan by me, Scott Horton.
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Check it out.
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I'm writing a new book.
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All right.
Now, so what about John Bolton?
He's the National Security Advisor and it's not too late for him to ruin everything.
And I guess you referred in an offhand way I think to Bolton before when you said the administration's position is really kind of intransigent at this point.
First, give up everything and then we'll deal with you.
Whereas the North's position is, well, let's, you know, kind of trade off one thing at a time.
It seems like there's being the far more reasonable situation there.
But, I mean, is that Trump trying to sabotage his own damn deal just to say he tried?
Or that's, is that John Bolton insisted that that's the way they have to approach it?
Or is that what Pompeo believes too?
Or has he made statements that, you know, is the hardest way?
Which is, of course, the very hardest way.
It hasn't succeeded in blowing up the deal yet, but it seems like it could if they really make it that hard for the North to come around.
Well, you know, I believe that North Korea policy for this administration divides into two groups.
And the groups are the president in one group and everybody else in the other group.
And that means that the, the kind of rapprochement between the United States and North Korea is quite fragile because it, it basically rests on the shoulders of one person.
Well, Pompeo's in on it with them, no?
I don't think so.
I mean, he's doing it because he's a loyal secretary of state.
You know, he has, you know, like, I guess here's why I say that.
It's because when he was the director central of the Central Intelligence Agency and went over there, I guess I assumed this, that it must have been that he had told Trump that, hey, they're really serious and there really is room for pursuing.
It's not sticking your neck out for no reason.
It's for a good reason you could do it.
Because if he hadn't have told Trump that, it doesn't seem like they would have continued.
And he keeps sending Pompeo back there.
So it seems like he is really the guy with the new relationship with the North Korean regime.
But maybe, I am reading too much into it, I know, but what do you think?
That would, that would require Pompeo to basically reverse his entire position on North Korea that he developed over the years, including, you know, even before this rapprochement began.
Because Pompeo has always been in favor of regime change in North Korea.
So he really is going along with this grudgingly, you think?
Well, here's the thing.
I think that someone like Pompeo is willing to give it a shot because he has other irons in the fire, shall we say.
There are other things he, that are more important from his point of view that he wants to accomplish as Secretary of State.
This is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a long, uh, long shot.
You know, this is, this is putting a couple of chips on, you know, number 16 on the roulette wheel, not expecting that it's gonna show up.
But hey, if it does, big payout, okay?
Um, someone like Bolton?
No.
Uh, Bolton, I don't think, has reversed his position.
I mean, he, he supported a preemptive strike appointed to be National Security Advisor.
Bolton, I think, is basically laying in wait.
Um, he's waiting for this, uh, to blow up and he can step in and offer an entirely different policy.
A policy that he's preferred all along.
Um, now, why we still have a CVID policy?
Well, you know, they don't call it a foreign policy consensus for nothing.
Um, this is not just, Well, but it's even CVID first almost, right?
Is the thing.
Yeah.
I mean, this is institutionalized across the bureaucracy.
I mean, this is a, this goes back, this, this is a, uh, this has deep roots.
Um, now, Trump can ignore that to a certain extent because he has certain, um, executive, uh, uh, executive choices he can make that are not subject to his advisors, much less Congress or the American people.
And one of those is to have a summit with somebody.
Um, and he can have a summit and see if there's some wiggle room there in one-on-one negotiations.
But it all still has to take place within the context of CVID, which, you know, Pompeo and Bolton and others constantly remind everybody that this is still the U.S. policy.
For, uh, Trump to take the next step, which is not just to have a second summit, but actually to say, okay, look, you give us, um, a, a list of what you have in your arsenal and, you know, the rest of your complex and we will, you know, uh, reduce sanctions by this amount, bilateral sanctions or recommend at a multilateral level that multilateral sanctions be reduced a certain amount.
Well, that, that would be more in tradition or in the consensus than having the summit in the first place.
So, that's the real, uh, the, the sticking point.
That's, if that happens, then we know there has been a fundamental shift in U.S. policy.
All right.
Now, are you late for Oregon practice or can I ask you one more question?
Go for it.
All right.
So, uh, could you please tell the people how this is all John Bolton's fault Well, I don't know if I can give you that story.
I mean, you like that story.
You should tell that story when I'm not on the air.
Well, you're the one who taught it to me, man.
Uh, well, you and others, but, you know, the uranium program and the end of the agreed framework.
I know, I know.
I just, I'm tired of telling this story.
Yeah, but you know what?
Think of it this way.
There are a lot of people who don't know the story, so it's kind of a historical thing for them.
They don't know the story at all, so they need you, John.
Okay.
Well, as we know, we have the agreed framework.
Uh, what's the agreed framework?
The agreed framework is the, um, 1994 agreement between the Clinton administration and the United States and North Korea.
Um, it was the groundworks established by Jimmy Carter and his visit that summer and his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Il-sung.
Uh, essentially, this is before North Korea had nuclear weapons, but it had a nuclear program and it was, uh, basically an exchange.
It said, look, uh, as long as you, uh, mothball your nuclear weapons, uh, program, we'll supply you with, um, and I should mention that this is, this nuclear program was plutonium, uh, program.
Uh, so, uh, if you, if you have any questions that you have at Yongbyon, um, we will give you, uh, two light water nuclear reactors, uh, which you can use for energy purposes and, you know, the, the nuclear material that's produced at these, um, light water nuclear reactors.
It's, it's very difficult to turn that into, you know, the possibility of, uh, diplomatic recognition.
In other words, we're establishing a, a U.S. embassy at some point in Pyongyang and looking at, um, establishing economic relations as well.
So, a kind of a package deal, the agreed framework.
Well, that was 94, 96 Congress changes hands, Newt Gingrich takes over and, the Republican control of Congress is gunning for the agreed framework.
Um, and they have the power of the purse to a certain extent and they, uh, make it much more difficult for the agreed framework to go forward.
Um, it's not the only reason the agreed framework doesn't go forward and there are a number of other reasons.
Uh, Bill Clinton is hamstrung on a number of foreign policy questions and domestic issues to the extent that he can't move forward on kind of the political and the economic side of things.
Um, and, North Korea stonewalls on a number of issues as well related to the building of the light water reactors over, for instance, who's gonna build it and who's gonna pay for it and, um, et cetera, et cetera.
So, I mean, these were issues that could have been dealt with but, uh, because of the kind of sustained opposition from Congress it was very difficult for the Clinton administration to basically, uh, deal with.
And then, uh, near the end of the Clinton administration there are rumors that a frustrated North Korea is basically, um, uh, taking out an insurance policy and that insurance policy is, uh, pursuing a second path to nuclear weapons and plutonium being the first, uh, which it has mothballed.
The second being, um, highly enriched uranium or HEU and, uh, which requires, um, industrial grade, uh, centrifuges.
And, uh, that Pakistan has, has innovated and provided North Korea with the, um, blueprints for.
Okay, so that's the rumor that the Clinton administration gets but it decides that it effectively is not a serious program and it doesn't really have to, um, bring this up in negotiations with North Korea.
Bush administration comes in.
Bush administration has decided that it does not like the agreed framework.
It doesn't like what the Clinton administration has done.
Uh, and it, uh, it needs a reason to basically cancel the agreed framework.
And John Bolton among others, uh, identified this HEU program as the kind of tool with which to, uh, smash the agreed framework.
Um, again...
His words.
Right?
Yes.
Um, now again, this could have been if, if we had a different administration or if the Bush administration decided as it ultimately did when it, uh, began the six-party talks later, uh, in the administration or in the second term, um, if the administration decided, okay, look, this is something worth saving, uh, and we do want to talk about this.
This is a, this is a, this is a concern.
Uh, let's find out if it's building these, um, these centrifuges.
Um, let's, let's see if they're actually building them.
Let's see if it's a, something they'll talk to us about and perhaps we can have an add-on negotiation.
But no, um, that was not the intention of the Bush administration and it was not the intention of John Bolton um, not that, you know, a new administration comes in in, uh, 2004 that decides that it wants to, to basically revive the agreed framework.
It's the same administration.
It's the same George W. Bush administration that realizes by 2004 that it actually made a really big mistake and by that point I believe Bolton was gone.
He was, he was a recess appointment, so, uh, his malign influence was no longer there.
Uh, and you had people like Condoleezza Rice um, who were, uh, interested in actually uh, seeing if there was negotiating possibilities but you lost those four to five years um, and that's the tragedy there because we really could have had a, even if they had, had changed the agreed framework, even if they had renegotiated it, it still would have been uh, possible for them acquiring nuclear weapons.
Well, but it wasn't just the agreed framework, right?
Was it, breaking the agreed framework was just one step in driving the Koreans, the North Korean regime out of the nonproliferation treaty and their promise to not make nuclear weapons.
Well, yes, that's correct but I mean, they were, they essentially agreed as part of the agreed framework that they would, you know, adhere to international standards.
So, I mean, they announced North Korea in the nuclear posture review where they said, hey, here's a country we might use a preemptive nuclear war against and it was only then that they announced that they were withdrawing from the NPT.
Yeah.
So, it was, it was definitely a series of actions but the, the thread, if you will, to unravel the tapestry was this HEU program.
And it was because they were, they were trying to not, I mean, they really were trying to precipitate a crisis here.
The same as with Bolton where he's caught on that AIPAC conference call saying that with all their demands and sanctions and everything against Iran circa 2005, they were trying to force Iran to leave the NPT and to kick the IAEA out of the country in order to put them in a more advantageous position as he said to foment a real crisis.
Yeah, and I mean, we should remember that, that Bush, this was in the, that Bush, this was in the 2002 State of the Union address, puts North Korea in the axis of evil.
And although some people said that they only did that because they wanted to have, you know, non-Middle Eastern country in there to make it not so obvious they were going after both Iraq and Iran.
But I, I do think that, you know, certainly Cheney and certainly Bolton had all along this idea that as Cheney said, you don't negotiate with evil, you don't negotiate with evil.
You don't negotiate with evil, you destroy evil.
And, and that was their understanding of foreign policy that you, you apply maximum pressure, you create a crisis and either you precipitate a regime change in Tehran or Baghdad or Pyongyang or you have a war that dispatches what they believe to be inherently unpopular leaders to be replaced by, you know, their, their own kind of hand-picked replacements.
Right.
And every idiot at some AEI conference agreed, so we know that it's going to be fine when in fact what do they get instead?
They just push the North Koreans into possessing nukes that they never had and had no real reason to obtain when all they had to do as he said was just give them some fuel oil and a little bit of welfare money and some light water reactors.
Funny, it was Donald Rumsfeld's company in the 90s that got the contract to build them because what the hell?
Yeah.
Didn't have to be this way at all.
Just like the war in Iraq, just like everything.
It didn't have to be this way at all.
That Bush government just screwed up everything, man.
I'd have to agree with that.
Yeah.
And where Obama didn't double it, he at least never fixed it.
You know, he did sign the Iran deal.
100 million credits for that.
But in terms of North Korea, what was Obama's legacy, John?
Strategic patience.
Yeah.
And, you know, in other words, a bigger stockpile of nukes for them to negotiate away with Trump later.
Exactly.
But, you know, it's interesting you look at the opportunities that the Obama administration had to make a difference on the foreign policy front.
Iran, Cuba, Russia, Israel, Palestine, North Korea.
It makes kind of key investments into those particular regions to see what would, what will happen.
It gets stymied on Russia, doesn't get anywhere with Israel, Palestine.
Iran and Cuba on the other hand, there are strong forces in favor of rapprochement coming from the U.S.
The business community, the oil and gas interests in Iran, and the agricultural lobby interests in Cuba.
With North Korea, nothing.
Nothing really pushing the administration to take a political risk there.
Now, you can kind of complain as I did all those years about the timidity of the Obama administration.
But at least it made a strategic calculation about what it thought it could get done.
And I'm not talking about what it could get done with the respective regimes.
I mean, who knows whether Obama could have gotten something out of Kim Jong-il or the two sides could have come to some kind of an agreement.
The real challenge was getting Congress to back it.
And there, it would have been a major heavy lift.
It was hard enough to get the Iranians.
Right.
But at least there was some Republican support and there was considerable Republican support for Cuba data.
A lot of Republicans from agricultural areas as well as Republican governors were very much in support of that.
But with North Korea, zip.
Right.
Zero.
Nada.
You know, and it's the same for Obama as it is for Trump, really.
I mean, the dynamics are a little bit different.
Typically Democrats feel all like much more pressure as you said.
He had to invest all this political capital in doing a deal with Iran.
And that was even with half the establishment supporting him.
Whereas on the Republican side, only Nixon can go to China and that kind of thing.
So it makes it easier for them in a way.
And yet, if he's standing on a stage with Kim and whatever, pick your South Korean president in the last few years or whatever in the Obama years and doing the shake hands and exchange cheek kisses on the White House lawn, that's a huge victory itself.
That hey, I mean, look at all the mileage that Trump is getting out of this with his constituency right now.
And he even builds in the hedge and says this isn't perfect and we don't know exactly how it's going to work but we're doing our best.
All right, thumbs up everybody.
And they rally around that.
They like that.
So what's the problem with the Khamenei?
I think just, hey, I ain't afraid of no Ayatollah.
Let's go over there and make a deal.
What's the problem?
As Dick Cheney said, you may know this anecdote, Dick Cheney committed the gravest act of treason when he criticized the American government while standing on foreign soil.
Remember when that was such a big scandal and the Dixie Chicks denounced Bush in England or whatever?
Anyway, Dick Cheney was in Australia and said, and denounced in no uncertain terms the Bill Clinton regime for its Iran sanctions because these people are people, too.
We want to do business with them.
He was representing Halliburton interests, you see, and wanted to do some construction for them and for connected oil interests.
And Dick Cheney was right.
What a great argument, Dick.
So that's my thing is all this stuff about, oh no, they'll attack me if I withdraw from Afghanistan.
Yeah, but we'll all celebrate you if you do.
What about that?
How about have a little bit of moral courage and do the right thing?
Maybe people will say, oh no, what if the think tanks criticize me?
What kind of president is that?
I couldn't agree more and we'll see what happens with now that Democrats are in charge of the House.
We'll see how much waffling we'll see from the Democrats, unfortunately, on Korea policy.
Well, we see them attacking Trump for being so naive and giving away the store and all this attacking from the right, huh?
Exactly.
And so, you know, if I hesitate to predict, but, you know, if the Trump initiative fails, it may be placed at the feet of the Democrats who, you know, who, you know, can't abide by the idea of Trump having any kind of foreign policy accomplishment.
Yeah, even if it meant finally ending a war that's been on since 1950.
I mean, my goodness.
Talk about just a lack of security in Afghanistan and talk about just a lack of self-awareness, right?
Like, you all know that we're looking at you, right?
We can see you right here out in front of everyone.
That's your position, huh?
Yeah?
Crazy.
Anyway, man, you do such great work.
Thank you, John, for your time.
Thank you, Scott.
I appreciate it.
It's great to be back on the show.
All right, y'all, thanks for tuning in.
This is Scott Horton for AF.org, Foreign Policy in Focus, and we reprint all this stuff at antiwar.com, well, about, like, 95% at original.antiwar.com slash pfeffer.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scothorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scothortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at fool'serrand.us.
