All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
We can also sign up for the podcast fee.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
Hey, guys, on the line, I've got the great Tim Shorrock, and he wrote the book Spies for Hire, and man, he's an expert on Korea because he used to live there, and I learned here.
He's been writing about it since I was in the second grade, third grade here.
Very nice to know.
Is that right?
1983, the year Return of the Jedi came out.
You started covering- Actually, I will have to be when you're in nursery school because I actually began writing on Korea in the late 70s.
Oh, great.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Oh, it's For the Nation.
You started writing For the Nation in 1983.
That's another lost tab I have in my pile here.
That's correct.
It was a nation piece.
So that's good.
That was- My first article in The Nation was about an incident in 1983 when North Korea set off a bomb in Burma where the South Korean dictator and his cabinet were meeting and killed most of the South Korean cabinet.
So I've been covering conflict between North and South for The Nation since 83, and like I said, Korea in general since the late 70s.
Man.
Well, I already knew how lucky I was to have you as a regular guest on this show to cover these issues for us, but now I think so even more.
And I'd like to go back and read your old stuff now even, knowing it goes back that far.
Do you have books about Korea too?
Funny you should ask.
Well, I'm actually in the middle of writing a proposal for a new book on Korea that would be a kind of hidden history of the U.S. role in Korea, North and South.
There is a book out on Gwangju that was published quite a long time ago.
It's been republished in several editions called Gwangju Diary.
It's about the 1980 uprising in Gwangju, South Korea.
And the text is written by a Korean participant in that uprising.
And I had an epilogue that sort of talked about the U.S. role in South Korea at the time.
That's the only book on Korea I have out.
And like I said, I'm working on one.
You know what, I bet if you could just wrangle up a good editor and put together a compilation of your magazine articles and so forth that you've written over the years, that that could be a book on its own.
That would.
Highly informational.
It could be.
I mean, I've actually thought about doing that because there's a lot of really interesting pieces I've written about areas that most people don't know much about.
I'll say.
That would be something I should do.
Yeah, man, absolutely.
Imagine that you recruit somebody to help you do it, too.
That way you can still keep your eye on the ball and in working on the important stuff that you're producing now, too.
But I bet you could do that.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, man.
Well, this is great.
So now let's talk about this thing in Responsible Statecraft.
I misplaced my nation article.
You had a great one in the nation recently, too.
But this one in Responsible Statecraft, the Quincy Institute, it's called Old Obama Hands on Korea Policy Could Pose New Problems for Peace.
And reminding us that the status quo was a nightmare.
And then when the nightmare came, he was actually a lot better on this issue than the establishment that he replaced.
And now that they're back, and it's in many cases the very same people who ran this policy in the Barack Obama government, it seems like they're, you know, we have lots of good reason to anticipate which way they're going to go with this policy.
And from what I can tell here, it doesn't look good.
Well, it's, you know, I'm saying that what they've done in the past doesn't look good about the future, but you never really know until they actually start implementing policy.
So who knows?
But I sure hope that, you know, some of the progressive voices that have become active on Korean issues can, I know they've been meeting with the new Biden team.
So I know that there's been some discussion, you know, by peace groups here with the Biden team about what to do in Korea.
So at least they're open to it.
You would never get that kind of audience with the Trump administration, that's for sure.
That's true.
But we shall see.
That's true.
Because, you know, Women Cross DMZ, which has been very active and one of the most prominent of the peace groups, you know, did meet with Stephen Begin, who is Trump's negotiator with North Korea.
So, you know, he and he has held several meetings with with peace groups and try to get their views.
So, you know, I think I think there are people in government that are really, you know, that are very serious about actually trying to come to a negotiated peace.
And after all, I mean, Trump, you know, he didn't do it right.
But he did, you know, make some real progress and shake some hands and do his photo op at the border.
And, you know, they destroyed some bases near the DMZ and, you know, some of these symbolic actions.
He dialed back the exercises.
So in other words, to go back to the status quo would be to ratchet tensions back up quite a bit.
And another way to put it would be that that Trump in a way has set Biden up to say, geez, I kind of have no choice but to follow through on really seeking peace here because I'm in a I'm in a much closer position to peace now than I was four years ago.
Well, and I think Biden Biden is actually acknowledged that, I mean, you know, they he was very critical during the campaign and, you know, you saw him in the debates.
He was always the one to say, you know, call Kim Jong Un a thug and to criticize Trump for meeting with him and, you know, giving him, you know, putting him on the world stage and giving him so-called legitimacy.
But but as everyone knows that who knows about Korea, that that meeting, those meetings between Trump and Kim actually changed the dynamic and, you know, got some real negotiations going.
Unfortunately, you know, the Trump hard line of maximum sanctions, you know, maximum military pressure didn't work.
And, you know, the talks fell apart in March 2019, almost two years ago.
And, you know, since then, really, there's not been very much discussion between North Korea and the U.S. and relations have really, you know, gone downhill between South Korea and North Korea.
In fact, it's, you know, it's it's it's at a real low point now.
And so it's really important, I think, that that the Biden administration starts, you know, picking up the, you know, picking up the ball and trying to trying to come back to a negotiated, you know, situation rather than, you know, hostility and, you know, continuation of this, you know, it's a military confrontation, which has never gotten us anywhere.
Can you talk a little bit more about the deterioration of relationship between North and South here in the last, I guess, in the last year since Trump's quit trying to deal with them?
Well, well, generally, overall, like what, you know, what happened was, you know, after, you know, if you recall, like there was the the Trump Kim meeting was actually, you know, set up in large part by South Korea by President Moon Jae-in, you know, after his initiative, peace initiative, diplomacy initiative during the Winter Olympics of 2018, right, you know, almost three years ago when he invited, you know, the senior leadership from North to South to observe the games and to start some negotiations.
And actually, you know, he held a meeting with, his first meeting with Kim Jong-un in March of 2018 in Panmunjom at the border, and they declared that they would try to work out peace between North and South on their own.
And from there, you know, after that, Moon gave the word to Trump and the Trump administration that Kim Jong-un was willing to meet with President Trump.
And that's how that got started.
But in September of 2018, Moon Jae-in went to Pyongyang, and they had a major summit meeting with the North Korean side.
And they came to some very important agreements.
And that's where that agreement to demilitarize, not demilitarize, but to, you know, deescalate the situation on the DMZ came about.
Like, they had a military-to-military agreement.
As I've told you before, you know, they shut down a lot of border posts, and some of the weapons that people carried, they no longer carry.
And there was a real, you know, softening of the situation on the border, and the real progress.
And then, you know, they were hoping that they made plans for economic projects, cross-border projects, like building, you know, railroads and trying to, the South Koreans working with North Korea to rebuild their railroad system and link North and South.
They started on that.
And that's where the Trump hard line, you know, started making things difficult.
Because, you know, there's the U.S. controlled United Nations command in Korea, which is responsible for administering the armistice that ended the Korean War.
They have complete control over anybody who crosses the border, right?
Anyone who wants to cross the border, North to South, South to North, has to get the permission of the United States military through the U.N. command.
And they blocked certain projects, certain plans that the North and South had made, such as, you know, one of the projects that they stopped was this cross-border railway project.
And Moon Jae-in kept trying to, you know, persuade the Trump administration and Pompeo, the Secretary of State, to kind of pull back on the sanctions and sort of, you know, maybe, you know, lift some sanctions, make it easier for the North and South to work together as they proceeded with negotiations on the nuclear issue.
And that didn't happen.
And the talks between Kim and Trump fell apart.
And after that, North Korea started, you know, saying to South Korea, look, you know, you're not helping this process because you're too close to the U.S. You know, everything you want to do is vetoed by the United States.
So why should we trust you?
And, you know, that's how things really went downhill.
And then, you know, it was earlier this year when Kim Jong-un's sister, Kim Yo-jong, who's, you know, become quite a powerful figure there, apparently through her control of the military, there was a liaison building in North Korea where North and South negotiators would meet and, you know, talk about their plans.
They actually blew up that building.
And that was a real sign that, okay, you know, we've given up on you.
But then a few days later, Kim Jong-un came on and said, that was a mistake.
And, you know, he started making, you know, saying, well, you know, there is room for negotiation.
So it's, you know, we're on, you know, thin ice in terms of, you know, the North-South situation.
But I think if there is some outreach by the Biden administration, it's possible that the situation could start moving forward again.
Well, you got to appreciate the antics at least, blowing up the meeting house and then coming out the next day and going, nah, you know, we might've left the meeting house alone.
That would have been okay to keep that.
Yeah.
I don't know what it is.
It's a bad cop, good cop kind of routine or whatever.
But, you know, but, you know, the South, you know, there is, you know, right now, if anyone reads my tweets or follows the Korean press, now there's a huge dispute between, you know, all these sort of, you know, US Democrats, neocons in Washington, all these so-called human rights groups that focus on North Korea.
South Korea just passed a law that actually makes it very hard for these defector groups to send these balloons across the border into North Korea, which are becoming a real serious problem in terms of negotiations between North and South.
It was also a problem for South Korean people to live on the border because it sort of escalates the situation in the border region.
And South Korea passed a law making, you know, basically making these kind of cross-border balloon tricks and these other propaganda operations that were mounting there, they banned those.
And so now you have all these, you know, like, you know, people in Congress, there are actually some Democrats in the House are going to have a hearing to criticize South Korea for this law.
And a lot of South Koreans are just like, you know, look, this is a question of the, you know, our sovereignty as a country.
You know, if we want to make a law to protect our borders, who are you to tell us not to do this?
And so there's increasing tension now between South Korea and the United States.
So, you know, it's not a simple situation at all.
Now, so, but here it is, though, right?
It is simple if they wanted to solve it, right?
And this is something we've talked about for a long time, was that really as Stephen Biegun, and this is important, you brought him up.
He was the guy that worked for Trump.
And as we've discussed, he gave this one good speech where he said, listen, we know that what we have to do is first, we'll have a ceasefire.
I mean, a real end to the war that we only have a ceasefire to now from back in the 50s, a real peace treaty.
And then we'll drop the sanctions and we'll open up more diplomatic relations and we'll make friends with them.
And then we'll figure out how to denuclearize from there, because we know that they're not going to give up their nukes as long as we're enemies, only after they're so reassured of our new status that they feel comfortable doing so, would it even be possible to consider it?
So we're just going to do the right thing.
So my question for you there really is, was that his position that that's what he wanted to do?
And that, I mean, do you know, he was telling Trump that this is the way we have to do it?
Or at some point, some principals or deputies meeting or something, they said it was okay for him to give that speech, but then they decided, no, they're definitely not.
But it's like a light switch, right?
It's either on or off.
Either you want to make peace with Korea and you do it the way he described in that speech, or you don't.
And then so you stick with give up your nukes first, which everybody knows is a poison pill and is going nowhere.
Begin made that speech a few weeks before the Hanoi summit that fell apart.
And a lot of people, including myself, read that speech, heard that speech and thought, wow, they're really, you know, at this next meeting, they may have some real solid proposals that maybe the North could accept.
Because he was talking about, you know, being flexible on the issue of sanctions, which means, you know, allowing South and North to proceed with different projects that are now banned by these sanctions and the UN commander their blocks.
And so it seemed like that's where they're removing.
But John Bolton was Trump's national security advisor.
And when the meeting in Hanoi happened, one of the first things I noticed anyway was, you know, when they showed the table, you know, before it collapsed, they showed the table on one side is Trump and the other side is Kim Jong Un and his team.
But on the US side, it was Pompeo and who else was there was Bolton and Begin was sitting in the back, right?
He was on the side.
So the main negotiator had been pushed aside.
And so then what happened was, when it came to a deal, you know, Kim Jong Un offered to close this one major facility that's been around for a long time.
It wasn't all their facilities, but he was proposing to do that.
And then he wanted to have some of the more recent sanctions that have been imposed by the United Nations at the urging of the US that were passed in 2017 and 2016, that have basically completely stifled his economy by banning coal imports, exports, and basic goods and bringing them into Korea and preventing South and North Korea from exporting them.
You know, he wanted those sanctions lifted.
And as Bolton wrote in his book, you know, he just, you know, strongly opposed this and, you know, demand your urge demanded whatever Trump not agree.
And Trump acceded to Bolton.
And when you read Bolton's book, you will see just how the utter contempt he held for South Korea and its own vision for unification.
I mean, he just insults Moon Jae-in up and down, and he's just as far left, you know, etc, etc, right?
He did not take the Korean interest in peace seriously at all.
You can't trust North Korea.
So the talks fell apart.
And that was largely Bolton's doing.
So who knows what, you know, I guess, you know, Biegun just got, you know, cut out of the decision making and could not make any of these proposals.
And they've never really changed from that hard line.
You know, no, we're not going to give up any kind of sanctions until you, you know, definitely show you're getting rid of all your nuclear weapons.
And like you say, that's a non-starter.
So what I see, you know, there's been a lot of talk recently about, okay, if it's not going to be denuclearization, how about at least, you know, arms control starting there, right?
Let's maybe recognize that North Korea is a nuclear power, which they are, a nuclear state, and then, you know, try to have an arms control agreement at least start there.
And there has been some talk from the Biden side, including, you know, Tony Blinken, who's going to be a Secretary of State along those lines.
But if you read what he has, what Blinken has said, it's really not much different than what he was saying during the Obama administration, which was basically, you know, they just thought that North Korea was going to collapse, as I wrote in this Responsible Statecraft article.
And they just sort of thought it was going to collapse and go away.
And then, you know, and the U.S. role would be, if there was a war, you know, I talked in this article of the woman who's going to run U.S. intelligence for Averill Haynes, who's Biden's nominee.
I mean, during the, you know, I quote from a speech she made, where she talked about, you know, military intervention with both South Korea, Japan, and China, sort of to replace the regime in North Korea, and to, you know, clear the way for a united Korea.
And that's basically, yeah, read the article.
I mean, I found this amazing speech.
Yeah, so she's saying that she thinks that China's going to take our side with Japan and South Korea to invade North Korea together and install a new government there?
Yes.
And has she run this by Beijing to see whether they said that, yeah, they were interested in that?
When she made that speech, it was like, I guess it was early 2018.
And, you know, relations with China hadn't, you know, deteriorated like they have now.
But like, yeah, yeah.
But actually, what stunned me more from that was that she actually thought it was a good idea to have, you know, Japanese military involved.
And I can't believe a senior American intelligence official would actually take that seriously.
I mean, that is just, anyone who knows anything about Korea knows that, you know, having the Japanese military involved in the Korean Peninsula is just outrageous, ridiculous.
I mean, you know, South Koreans would go after the Japanese soldiers.
I mean, it's just outrageous and stupid.
So who knows what they're planning.
But, you know, when they're in power, the situation is very different now.
So, you know, but they're very, you know, I just I don't know what to think about this really until we hear what they have to say.
And, you know, the Senate hearings when they're brought up, you know, to talk about what policies they'll follow for their confirmation, then we might hear, you know, clearly what they think and what their plans might be.
But I'm going on some of the things Biden has said.
I mean, he did send a message to President Moon before his election, actually, before the November election.
He reached out and wrote this op-ed in the Korean public wire service, Yonhap, which is owned by the Korean government.
And he wrote this article, which was very conciliatory, and said, you know, he will work for, you know, for solid negotiations for diplomacy, principal diplomacy, he said, you know, to resolve this situation.
So, you know, maybe there is some hope there.
But, you know, if he comes in and starts making the kind of demands that Obama made, you know, pre-conditions for talks, and, you know, or North Korea decides to do something like, you know, test a intercontinental ballistic missile or something like that, then the situation could really deteriorate.
But that's why if you, you know, like peace groups like, you know, Women Across DMZ and others, are urging Biden to make an initial, you know, reach out to the North Korean side, and they can do that easily through the UN embassy in New York, it would be easy for the Biden administration, the incoming administration to make some kind of contact and, you know, sort of get the ball rolling on negotiations.
And I think, you know, some kind of statement, you know, that's his intention would really help the situation.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I sure would like to see that too.
Let me ask you this, you know, John Bolton, first of all, just as an aside here, it's all his fault that North Korea has nuclear weapons in the first place.
And do you have a specific article about that?
Because I have a couple.
I can recommend Gordon Prather.
You have to go, in my view, you know, the party responsible for the nuclear crisis is the United States, because after all, we're the ones who introduced nuclear weapons into the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s.
Well, I mean, in 2002, we had a deal, Bill Clinton had a deal and John Bolton personally ruined it deliberately, right?
Well, it wasn't just no, no, I wouldn't say it was just Bolton.
I mean, it was this was, this was the Bush administration.
Well, I didn't mean to say he didn't have Bush's permission.
I just mean, he was the hatchet man and the proud one in charge of ruining it, right?
It wasn't, he was, he was the UN ambassador, right?
Under Bush.
But I think the- Well, he was in the State Department, the Secretary for, Undersecretary for Arms Control or whatever in 2002, when he ruined the agreed framework deal and accused them.
Well, they accused them, they went over there for a meeting to follow up on, you know, they had this agreed framework that had been agreed to actually in 1994, that by the way, North Korea stopped its nuclear, you know, production, its production of plutonium altogether for 12 years.
So, you know, that agreement actually held for quite a long time.
And then as you say, what happened was, you know, so that was like, and at the end of the Clinton administration, 2000, before the election, and just before Bush came in, they were very, very close to an agreement with North Korea that picked up on the earlier agreement to stop their nuclear production, their nuclear force.
They almost reached an agreement on ending all missile tests and ending their missile program.
I mean, they came within a hair of that agreement.
And if you recall, the Secretary of State under Clinton, Albright, went to Pyongyang and met with Kim Jong Il at the time.
And they, you know, that was almost, that was like the meeting before the final agreement.
And then, you know, the election happened, and it was in the Supreme Court.
And, you know, Clinton was thinking about going to North Korea and finalizing it, but he never made it for various reasons.
And so the agreement, that agreement was never made.
Bush came in and said, we're not going to negotiate with North Korea, we don't trust them.
And it began to fall apart from there.
And then, like you said earlier, he sent this sort of lower level State Department guy over there, and he accused them of, you know, building a bomb through uranium, a uranium bomb.
But actually, all they were doing at the time was, they were thinking about it, they were importing parts for a uranium facility, but they didn't have a uranium production facility at the time.
And even if you read, you know, like South Korean intelligence that have been, that have talked about this period say, they, they believe that was a mistake by the US.
The North Korean side did not at the time have a uranium facility.
They do now.
Right.
And none of their nukes have been made out of uranium.
They've all been plutonium nukes.
And then what was funny was, it was aluminum tubes, right?
Gordon Prather called it aluminum tubes, the sequel, only this was some stuff that they bought from the Pakistanis from AQ Khan, but none of it was in operation.
Yeah.
And then, and then, you know, so they said, then they blew up, then they just tore up the agreement after that.
And so, and you know, it's important to note that it was shortly after that, it was during the Bush administration that they exploded their first nuclear bomb.
Yeah.
I just like filling this in, because it's easy to memorize if you hear it a few times, that first the Americans, in the name of the uranium program, you mentioned there, the non-existent one, abrogated our side of the deal.
So the deal is off, the agreed framework.
Then they added new sanctions, and then they created the proliferation security initiative, which said, we have the right to seize all your boats on the high seas, if we think they might be selling missiles to Iran or whatever it is.
And then they released the nuclear posture review that said, we're considering, you know, we have North Korea on the short list for who gets a nuclear first strike.
And it was only then that they withdrew from the non-proliferation treaty and, or announced that they were withdrawing in six months as per the deal and kicked the inspectors out.
And only then they started making nukes out of plutonium.
Four big provocations by Bush and Bolton to, to, to do what, what did they think they were going to do?
They're going to go to Baghdad and then they're going to be in Pyongyang by August.
And so we're going to kick them out of the treaty, but don't worry, they never will get a nuke.
Do they even have a plan?
All they did was push them into the possession of A-bombs.
Well, a lot of it was, a lot of it was Cheney and Rumsfeld because, you know, you know, in the, in the Clinton administration in the late nine, you know, 98, whenever it was, there was this big, you know, study group on missile defense, right?
And Rumsfeld was the chairman of that, of that, of that study group.
And the whole thing was the U.S. has to build missile defense, et cetera, et cetera.
So they came into office thinking, you know, well, we've got to, you know, really confront North Korea and, and that was Cheney's position too.
And so, you know, that was, and then, and, you know, we're not going to negotiate, you know, we're just going to go with the sort of missile defense and confront them and try to, you know, contain them as far as, and not negotiate any kind of, you know, moving forward a negotiated end to this.
But, you know, at the end of the Bush administration, after Cheney was sort of, you know, had lost clout because of Iraq and, and Condoleezza Rice, you know, came in as secretary of state.
I mean, she got negotiations going.
I mean, as you recall, it was at the time, it was the six party talks.
But, you know, actually, you know, and Bush at that time, you know, agreed to participate in those only, he actually opened those talks, agreed to those talks of only a couple of weeks after North Korea exploded its first bomb.
So, you know, his approach was, you know, really damaged the, the, you know, I mean, totally ripped apart that previous agreement.
And he had a bit of a deal there in 08 before then he ruined it and put them on the terrorist list, which ruined his own diplomacy.
Right.
He took them off and then put it on, put them, put them back.
And then, you know, during Obama, like Obama came in saying, you know, I will talk to dictators and, and so on.
And, and then early on in the, in the Obama administration, the North Koreans, they tested a rocket for, they tried to launch a satellite.
And, and the, and that became, that was after they had signed an agreement as part of the six party talks.
And then they, they said the satellite did not violate, you know, any of the sanctions or any of the previous agreements on, on IC, on missiles.
And they said it was just, you know, a civilian satellite and, and that blew it up for Obama.
And after that, they just said, you know, we can never trust them.
And then they did, they actually successfully launched the satellite not long after that.
But that was just seen as a, you know, a test of a missile and they were just covering it.
They were just pretending it was a civilian satellite, but actually, they actually did launch the satellite.
But that became the reason to sort of move away from any kind of negotiation.
And after that, and then, then after that, when, when it looked like talks were just completely off the table, they tested, I think it was two or three more nuclear devices under Obama.
And, and there was many overtures made by the North Korean side.
And then some delegations came from the U.S., you know, former officials to talk with the North.
And they were actually at that time, under Obama, they were reaching out and they were saying, we'd like to sign a peace agreement, peace treaty, and so on.
But by that time, you know, Obama administration, with these people who are now going to come in and work for Biden, were convinced that that would not work.
And then North Korea was actually going to, was on the verge of collapse, and there was no point in talking to them.
And so that, you know, by the time Trump came in, you know, the situation was very, very dangerous.
And actually, during the Trump election, when he beat Hillary Clinton, 2016, I wrote an article for The Nation about, I think it was October 2016, about a month or two before the election, where I was, it was called, you know, Hillary's Hawks, you know, and I talked to all these people and was quoting people that were advising Hillary Clinton, and that would have become part of her government, that were saying, you know, well, maybe we have to consider preemptive strikes and this kind of thing.
Right.
So the US and North Korea were actually quite close to war at that time, which is something Trump has said.
And of course, the liberal press has said, oh, that's not true.
We weren't anywhere near a war, blah, blah, blah.
But actually we were.
Yeah.
Well, the National Security Advisor at the time, McMaster, was pushing what he called bloody nose strikes, where we'll just hit their missile program real hard and then we'll stop, and they better know better than to respond.
And that was where he was going to place his bet there.
And Trump, of course, at the time was threatening nuclear war, fire and fury like the world has never seen before.
And by the way, this is really important, I think, and it did get a mention in the news cycle for a minute, I think, but on page 71 and 72 of Bob Woodward's latest book, Rage, he says, and this is directly from James Mattis, who was the secretary of defense at the time and former head of Central Command, four star Marine Corps general.
And he said that at that time and he wasn't this was not a political thing against Trump.
He was talking about the situation where the North Koreans missiles are getting better and they're still testing nukes.
And he's saying that he had to consider killing, quote, a couple million people.
And he says, no one has the right, but that's what I have to confront in my job as secretary of defense, that I might have to kill, not that I have the right to, but I might anyway, kill a couple million people.
And you know, what's funny about that to me is honestly, Tim, I really don't understand.
I mean, is his point, is he implying there that all of their entire nuclear weapons facilities are right in downtown Pyongyang and there's nothing that we could possibly do to destroy them other than kill every man, woman and child in the capital city?
Or what is he even talking about?
Two million people have to die for America, for America to be able to take out North Korea.
Why would we need nukes at all with all of our bunker busters and all of our B1s and everything else we have there to bring to bear?
Well, another thing, another thing in Woodward's book, which I noted in this Responsible Statecraft article, was that, you know, he said that they had revived this plan called OP Plan 5027, you know, that had been in the planning stage for a long time, that called for strikes on the North's, quote unquote, core military facilities and the removal of its top leaders.
And they updated that plan that had actually been originally drafted in, you know, years ago in the 1970s.
And they were studying it.
And Woodward said that he was told that the U.S. response might have included the use of 80 nuclear weapons, eight zero nuclear weapons.
So under this plan, it would have just been, you know, it would have been totally destroying North Korea, like Trump was talking about at that U.N. speech.
So it was a really, really dangerous situation.
And, you know, when you mentioned McMaster, you know, at that time, he was talking about these so-called bloody nose strikes, you know, some kind of, you know, but it would have been a unilateral U.S. military strike.
And I reported around that time, I mean, you know, of course, you know, NBC, which is always getting all these intelligence leaks on everything, they ran this story saying that the U.S. at the time was planning unilateral American strikes from like B-1 bomber, B-1B bombers, that would be, of course, off the Korean coast.
They wouldn't be flying over.
They don't have to fly over Korea, right?
They can launch cruise missiles from off the shore.
And the plan was to launch new weapons from these B-2s and just have a unilateral strike on some of their nuclear facilities.
And when Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea got wind of that, he went public and he made this very strong speech saying there cannot be a war on the Korean peninsula, and there cannot be any kind of attack without consulting South Korea.
And that was a real turning point.
And I think it was from that point on that, you know, the Trump administration saw, okay, well, you know, South Korea is not going to put up with this.
So we're going to have to maybe take, you know, take the advantage of this opening and start talking to Kim Jong-un.
Yeah.
And that's, you know, that's- Back where we started with the failed talks.
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All right, one last question.
I'm sorry because I kept you so long here, but something I really want to understand because Bolton to everyone represents some kind of winger, right?
He's not really a neocon, but he sure does love neocons because he's just as bad as them on every single thing.
But so it seems more like, though, his position here in sabotaging Trump's diplomacy with North Korea actually represented the centrist point of view in D.C. and that they would rather not have peace.
They would rather keep a divided Korea.
They have Bill Clinton's same policy from 1993, which is they're going to fall pretty soon, even though that was almost 30 years ago and they haven't fallen yet.
And it seems like a pretty stupid bet to base a policy on.
But, you know, anyway, I just wonder whether you think that his sabotage of Trump there in Hanoi was, you know, kind of a real right wing hawk sabotage or that was really just the entire national security state's consensus and he was coming through for them?
I think it's the latter.
And I think it's a position held by lots of liberals and Democrats in Washington.
I mean, you know, the distrust of South Korean progressives and left is sky high in D.C.
I mean, the contempt that Biden held toward Moon Jae-in is held by all these, you know, Korea experts at CSIS and all these other think tanks in Washington.
I mean, I've heard him.
You know, Moon Jae-in is, you know, he is on the left.
He came, he was a progressive activist during the period of authoritarian rule.
He was arrested by the military junta in South Korea in the 70s.
He was a labor lawyer and a human rights lawyer.
And he was the chief of staff for Noh Moo-hyun, who was the second progressive president who had a summit with North Korea.
And so he was very involved in that summit in 2007.
And the people around Noh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in at the time were all kind of, you know, had come from the Korean left of the 80s, organizing against the dictatorship.
And they wanted to have a different approach to North Korea.
I have heard people at CSIS, these big experts that are always quoted in the New York Times and the Washington Post, make incredibly insulting remarks about these people.
One time I heard this guy, Michael Green from CSIS, laughingly call the people that were around President Noh Moo-hyun, he called them the Taliban at the Blue House.
The Blue House is the Korean equivalent of the White House, right?
So he associated them with terrorists and the Taliban, right?
That's how he saw the Korean progressive movement.
So, you know, yeah, you're right.
It's a commonly held view.
And basically, they all think that South Korea is our colony, and it's always been our colony, and they should do whatever we say.
And things have changed.
And even I think, you know, these right wing Democrats on foreign policy are hopefully starting to see that.
Well, you know what, one thing that we do have going for us is he might have squeaked through, but Joe Biden is no Barack Obama when it comes to flashing a big smile and making liberals and progressives swoon and stuff like that.
He is known to the left as one hair to the left of the Republican Party, which otherwise he would have belonged to for the last 50 years.
He's like George W. Bush if he'd been a senator his whole life.
And everybody knows that nobody really likes the guy and everybody doesn't believe in his smile at all.
And so I know that there are a lot of leftist groups that, for example, are loading for bear right now for the afternoon he's sworn in to hold him to his promise to get the hell out of Yemen right now and call off all support for the Saudi UAE war there.
And for that matter, Korea and the rest of these things, you know, he's no Obama.
He's more just Lyndon Johnson.
And so, you know, everybody on the left, put up your dukes.
And for all libertarians and good antiwar right wingers to, you know, we can get these guys in a real pincher strategy where this is the thing that we agree on, as we want to quit messing around in the Middle East and Asia and Europe and everywhere enough already, right?
Well, you know, Biden keeps talking.
He's one of the things he's talked about is, you know, supporting allies, right?
Let's, you know, let's reinvigorate our alliances.
Well, let's start with South Korea.
What do they want?
Close, close allies.
So, right.
You know, let's listen to our South Korean ally, and let's move these negotiations forward.
You know, that's the thing.
One of the differences I see between Biden and Obama is that, yeah, you know, Obama had this way of, you know, really making liberals swoon by saying, making all these kinds of promises and talking in a very progressive way.
But his, but, you know, behind that was always this, you know, hard line, right, on everything.
And I think there's, so I think there's less of that with Biden.
I think, yeah, he does have the smile, but, you know, he makes it really clear.
I don't agree with him on this stuff.
Like, he made it very clear he doesn't support the Green New Deal and that kind of policy.
Whereas, you know, Obama would probably have said, you know, yeah, I support it.
And, you know, we're going to move that way.
But then he wouldn't do it at all.
At least Biden's honest about his opposition on certain things like that.
I think that's the difference.
I think he's less easy to fool.
I mean, I don't think he fools people as much as Obama did.
I think it's more clear that he has a more, you know, conservative position.
And that's true for a lot of issues.
So on this one, we'll have to see.
I do think that they are, you know, I mean, obviously, they're going to have a policy review of Korea like they will do on everything.
And hopefully, they're going to listen to some new voices.
And there are some new voices in Congress.
I mean, there are, you know, the first Republican House member recently signed on to a resolution to end the Korean War and have a treaty that the U.S. would support.
I didn't know that.
So I forget, I forget his name.
But like, you can find it on Women Cross DMZ because they've been lobbying on this.
But there's now something like 25 co-signers, or maybe even I think it's up to 40 now, people who have signed on to this bill.
And that's a huge step.
Because like, you know, Christine Ahn of Women Cross DMZ was telling me recently that a few years ago, they could get like no more than like two or three Democrats to sign on.
So, you know, I think, you know, times are starting to change.
And there have been some good people elected.
And, you know, Democrats elected to the House, you know, you know, that have much more progressive ideas.
But the thing is, on this on foreign policy, you know, the some of the people who are supposedly, you know, super left on the Democratic House side, are not very good at all on foreign policy.
And they've been silent on Korea.
So we shall see.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, man, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time on the show as always, Tim.
Okay, thanks a lot.
Great.
Happy holidays.
Yeah, you too.
Aren't you guys?
That's Tim Shorrock, regular writer at The Nation.
This one is at Responsible Statecraft.
Old Obama hands on Korea policy could pose new problems for peace.
And his book is Spies for Hire.
The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, apsradio.com, antiwar.com, scotthorton.org, and libertarianinstitute.org.
