Personal Commentary ~
I'm sharing the transcript
of this Fall event, which took place in September, because of the
focused experience of the panelists and, particularly, because I find
Sue Mi Terry's assessments, based on her background, to be of interest and because the panel, in its early conversations about North Korea, makes it very clear that Trump and
friends are war mongering while knowing nothing about
North Korea, but also because at the end, Terry, with all of her
experience, talks about how North Korea will only “negotiate”
with the United States yet, the fact is, it seems North Korea is
currently opening communication with South Korea -- a shift of note, providing even less clarity than a mere few months ago.
I am highlighting select excerpts of the transcript and I am adding the one-hour video of the event (both links are provided below). I am also leaving you with a more in-depth article that gives much more detailed information while, interestingly enough, arriving at a similar conclusion which is captured here:
I am highlighting select excerpts of the transcript and I am adding the one-hour video of the event (both links are provided below). I am also leaving you with a more in-depth article that gives much more detailed information while, interestingly enough, arriving at a similar conclusion which is captured here:
… Suddenly, the
prospect of a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the
most hermetic power on the globe had entered a realm of psychological
calculation reminiscent of the Cold War, and the two men making the
existential strategic decisions were not John F. Kennedy and Nikita
Khrushchev but a senescent real-estate mogul and reality-television
star and a young third-generation dictator who has never met another
head of state. Between them, they had less than seven years of
experience in political leadership. …
It's long but the bottom line is, GOP "foreign policy" is "might is right," without distinction and history does not back that up, particularly recent history...
It's long but the bottom line is, GOP "foreign policy" is "might is right," without distinction and history does not back that up, particularly recent history...
YIKES! ⬆
Focused Read in 3-5 minutes,
more if you read the article in full and the companion article
“North Korea: Next
Steps ~
Hosted By: Bob Schieffer
Transcript
highlights:
… And, with that,
Bob Schieffer. (Applause.)
BOB SCHIEFFER:
Thank you. Thanks, Andrew.
(Applause.)
Well, our topic today is North Korea, something that gets
attention at the White House these days when there are not other
issues that somehow seem to get in the way. ...
We’re fortunate to
have three real experts on this subject.
If I gave you a rundown of
their accomplishments, it would take up most of the time that we have
today. So I’ll just very briefly say
Sue Mi Terry is the
BowerGroupAsia senior advisor for Korea. She was a senior analyst on
Korean issues at the CIA. She was director on Korea and Japan at the
National Security Council, among other government posts. Dr. Terry
has also held various important research positions outside
government.
... Michael Green, senior vice president for
Asia and Japan here at CSIS. He was on the National Security Council
from 2001 to 2005. He holds multiple key positions at various
universities, such as Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, and he has also
been a part of other research organizations...
... David Sanger, the author and national security correspondent
at The New York Times, two times part of a Times team that won the
Pulitzer.
… I want to start by
quoting from a remarkable article in The New Yorker by Evan Osnos...after coming back from North Korea. He wrote, and I
quote,
“Our grasp of North Korea’s beliefs and expectations is
not much better than their grasp of ours. To go between Washington
and Pyongyang at this nuclear moment is to be struck by just how
little the two countries understand each other.” He goes on to say,
“In 18 years of reporting, I have never felt as much uncertainty at
the end of a project, a feeling that nobody – not the diplomats,
the strategists, or the scholars who have devoted their lives to this
subject – is able to describe with confidence how the other side
thinks or what they expect.”
So I would just like to
start to hear all three of you sort of comment on that.
SUE MI TERRY:
Well, I
would agree with that. Just from my own intelligence experience as a
CIA analyst from 2001 for about 10 years, the hardest thing to get at
is regime intentions.
First of all, North Korea
is the hardest target country. We call it hard target country for a
reason. It’s the most difficult country to figure out. And out of
that, I think the hardest thing to understand is regime intentions...
We don’t have enough human intelligence, it’s the
most isolated country in the world, and so on. So I think we are in a
very risky situation here where we don’t quite understand them, and
I think the regime has a really hard time understanding us ...
I would just also add
that when it comes – I think there is huge debate among the Korea
watchers community right now, and that’s because we don’t
understand the regime intention.
At the end of the day, if everything
fails – the pressure measures, sanctions, dialogue – if
everything fails and North Korea ultimately achieves this capability
to attack the United States with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental
ballistic missile, can we live with a nuclear North Korea? Can
deterrence and containment – traditional deterrence and
containment, that worked with – against Soviet Union – can it
work against the North Korean regime?
... There are several –
there are Korea watchers who say yes ...
There are other Korea watchers who say no ... because their end goal is
not just survival, but to unify the Korean Peninsula by force.
... and they are banking on U.S. not intervening
because we don’t want to risk San Francisco for Seoul.
But there is
a debate. And I don’t think we – we don’t really understand
because we can’t get at what Kim Jong-un is really thinking right
now.
MR. SCHIEFFER: Mike? MICHAEL J. GREEN:
... I agree with Evan Osnos’
observation broadly. … We need to communicate. But I say that with
a caveat that I don’t think we’re going to negotiate our way out
of this one. They’re clinging to these weapons for a lot of
reasons, and not because we don’t understand each other.
MR. SCHIEFFER:
You don’t
under any circumstances see them giving up the weapons.
MR. GREEN:
I
think – no ... Their constitution now enshrines them as a nuclear
weapons state.
MR. SCHIEFFER: David.
DAVID SANGER:
... I would agree with
what’s been said here.
And I think that for all that we discuss the
irrationality of Kim Jong-un and so forth, I think he has pursued an
incredibly rational, understandable policy here. That isn’t to say
I condone it, but it certainly makes sense – that if he looks out
at the world, he sees a few different things.
First, that his
grandfather and father started this program but didn’t’ really
put enough energy into it to turn it into a real deterrent to the
United States.
And if Sue Mi’s alternative scenario is right that
he has a view of it as a way to unify the peninsula or to achieve
other objectives in Asia, he’s doing the right thing.
The second thing is …
they look at what happened in the case of Libya,
a country that we
promised to begin to integrate with the West and bring economic
benefits to, and did a sort of half-hearted job of that,
and then the
first time there was an uprising by the Libyan people we moved in
with our European and some Arab allies and helped drive Gadhafi from
power.
And the next time the North Koreans saw him, it was on TV as
he was being pulled out of a ditch and being shot.
And I think that
message sort of resonated, and the answer was don’t believe the
Americans if they tell you that when you denuclearize they will take
care of you.
They’ll let you rot until you get overthrown. So what
he’s doing may make sense.
In the interviews that
you referred to, then-candidate Trump was in a very different place.
He said to me that he would go have a hamburger with Kim Jong-un,
that he could strike a deal with Kim Jong-un.
He came to it initially
with that very transactional sense that he has, that he can make a
deal with anybody.
What strikes me about his
language now, and particularly his tweets now, is that this is the
first case where I think he’s persuaded himself that maybe he
couldn’t make a deal, and that he’s got to do it all from the
bluster and threats part.
... And I’m afraid that what’s happened in the past
week or two is this has moved from a clash between countries to a
clash between two different leaders who have significant ego. And
neither one of them wants to be seen in front of their own people as
backing down. And that’s what leads to the kind of very dangerous
situation that I think leads to Mike and Sue Mi’s pessimism. And I
share it.
MR. SCHIEFFER:
So what
about that? What do you think the impact of the tweets is on all of
this?
MS. TERRY:
It’s very
counterproductive. And I think we’re giving a gift to Kim Jong-un
regime because you’re just giving the talking points and you’re
just showing it to the people.
And that’s why he was able to
mobilize public to protest against this, because the public is
already indoctrinated into thinking United States is the most hostile
threat, we’re out to get them. And all you have to do is play what
Trump said – what President Trump said about totally destroying
North Korea. ...
So by taunting him like
this, I think we’re limiting our options because Kim Jong-un has to
act...And he cannot back down, because now it’s his
credibility, his legitimacy, everything in his country. For the
domestic reasons, he cannot back down. So then what are we going to
do? Because North Korea, I 100 percent believe, would continue with
trying to complete the program, perfect their nuclear arsenal...
Are we going to
really act and take military option? It’s truly unthinkable option
because of all the casualties and so on. Or, do we not act, and look
like a paper tiger after saying all of this? So I do think we’re
boxing ourselves in and not productive.
MR. GREEN:
I worry about
it for another reason in addition to that. And that is the reason
North Korea wants nuclear weapons is regime survival.
… MR. SCHIEFFER:
So
what does he want?
MR. GREEN:
Well, if I can
start, I think his grandfather saw what happened when
the Americans intervened in the Korean War...So
he wants a deterrent …
And I think he wants them because of a fear
of absorption from China...
... for internal reasons saying: I
ultimately can unify the peninsula and defeat the imperialist puppets
in the South because I have nuclear weapons is critical.
… MR. SCHIEFFER:
So,
Sue, if we had a negotiation with North Korea, what would we
negotiate about? Where do you start?
MS. TERRY:
... I had a chance to
meet with North Koreans this summer in Sweden. We had a track two.
And they said: Denuclearization is off the table. We are very close
to completing the program. We’re this close to perfecting our
arsenal. Why would we give this up?
And to your point, is they talked
about Libya, they talked about Gadhafi. He’s dead. Look at what
happened to Iraq. And also, you – being a democracy – you have
change in government.
So they talked about we had an agreement, Bush
came in, axis of evil, things turned around. So we know we can’t
trust any agreement anyway in terms of – and look at even what’s
going on with the Iran deal now. I think they’re sort of linking
that too, if we backpedal on that.
... we’re willing to meet to discuss a peace
treaty or a peace regime, because the Korean War never technically
ended. We are still at war. But the problem is we can’t get there.
We can’t, obviously, get to peace treaty discussion from where we
are.
And the ultimate goal of peace treaty, honestly is for U.S. –
for North Korea to get U.S. to pull out U.S. forces from the Korean
Peninsula ...
MR. SCHIEFFER:
Mike, what
is the relationship between China and North Korea?
I did actually talk this
morning to Evan Osnos. And asked him this question and he said: There
was a time when Mao said we’re as close as the tea is to the lips.
But he said, he was recently in China, before he went to North Korea.
And he asked a Chinese official there if that was still the case. He
said, no. It’s more like dirt between the toes. (Laughter.) Which
is kind of gross, but.
MR. GREEN:
With the
reference to North Korea as the dirt?
MR. SCHIEFFER: Yeah. MR.
GREEN:
... There is clearly a fear…among the Chinese leadership
about pushing the North Koreans to the point where they might
collapse, which China could probably do if they were serious. They
provide over 80 percent of the food and fuel to the North. But
they’re very, very scared of how the North Koreans will react and
whether or not they’ll collapse,
because if they collapse you have
a million-man army, chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, separated
by the Yalu River from 5 million ethnic Koreans in the rest belt of
China, with the potential of a Korean Peninsula being unified under
an American ally right on their border. And so that’s part of the
problem we have with China.
… MR.
SCHIEFFER:
In fact, I have been told by – that some in North Korea
see themselves as simply a bargaining chip between the United States
and China. And they don’t like that.
MR. GREEN: And they worry
very much about that. They also, we have to remember 2,000 years of
history between the Korean kingdoms and China.
Koreans often point
out that Japan invaded Korea three, four times. But China invaded
Korea, depending on your historical accounts, 600 or 900 times. So
it’s geopolitical and its historical. It’s not just the current
problem.
MR. SCHIEFFER: David,
let
me ask you, how close do informed people think the North Koreans are
to having an ICBM that could reach the mainland of the United States?
MR. SANGER: Oh, real
close...
MR. SANGER:
… And then
the fourth thing is, you need to prove at least some level of
accuracy and ability to detonate a weapon as it’s being released,
as the warhead is coming down. So far every test they’ve done has
been underground.
So that’s what made this
test last week to do an atmospheric test so particularly chilling.
... they wouldn’t
do it the way we used to do them, which was largely put a weapon out
on a barge and set it off in, in our case, the Bikini Atoll.
They
don’t have any outside islands to go do this with.
So they would
probably launch it on a missile and see if they could make it
detonate. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed in 1963, just
before Kennedy was assassinated – just weeks before – that they
would never do that again. And they haven’t. The Chinese were the
last ones to do such a test. It was in 1980. So it’s been 37 years.
And I think this would
pose a huge problem for the Trump administration, because if you
actually saw a weapon being loaded up on a launch pad in North Korea,
first, you don’t know exactly what it’s aimed at.
Secondly, let’s
– you’d have to assume they were getting ready to go do their
atmospheric test. So even if it missed Guam, the belt of radiation
that would be created could go over Guam or hit some other populated
area.
And so it would be a very
tough decision about whether or not to do a preemptive strike ...
… And the danger we now
face is that Pyongyang will think because it has this capability,
we’ll be deterred and they’ll have a lot more room to do things,
like testing in the Pacific or what they did in 2010, sinking a South
Korean Navy ship in the West Sea, or cyberattacks.
... I think the administration was right
to send B-1 bombers off the North Korean coast, to do a lot of the
military steps they’re doing, because we need to demonstrate that
we are not going to be intimidated, that we are going to respond if
they try to do these attacks that we think – that they think we
might be afraid to respond to because they have nuclear weapons.
That’s the sort of dangerous new world we’re in.
MS. TERRY:
It seems to me
– I mean, just a little difference here. I think North Koreans
know, for example, proliferation of nuclear weapons is a red line.
MR. GREEN: That’s true.
MS. TERRY:
Because we’re
been saying that for a while. They just have this sense and they know
it. I’m not sure about this thermonuclear test over the Pacific
Ocean, because you’re not really killing people, you’re not
really – there’s no – I’m afraid that they will – because
we ourselves are not sure, is that really a red line? So we don’t
know. I don’t think North Koreans know. And I’m thinking that
they could potentially test a thermonuclear weapon over the Pacific,
but not, yeah, transfer the nuclear weapons. So I think it’s a very
tough question, because they themselves are trying to figure out what
our red line is.
MR.
GREEN:
This is why you don’t want to be communicating these things
by Twitter.
MS.
TERRY: Yeah. Right.
MR.
GREEN:
And why you do need a quiet – and it may be happening; I
don’t know – but you do need a quiet, confidential channel, not
because you’re likely to talk the North Koreans out of this but
because these kinds of things you don’t want misunderstanding.
MR. GREEN:
… though Sue
is right, the current South Korean government is much more riskaverse
and much more pro-engagement and suspicious of the military than the
previous government, nevertheless Moon Jae-in, the president, kept
the same rules of engagement his predecessor had
...if they get
hit like that they hit back one level higher. If they get hit by a
missile, they hit the headquarters. And those are still, I believe,
the South Korean military’s standing orders.
So probably not shooting
at our planes, but there are a number of scenarios – cyber, the
South Koreans, maybe a scenario involving the Japanese.
Which is why
we have got to be really in lockstep with our allies.
And we’re not
with South Korea right now. You know, the administration, for
example, is threatening to pull out of our free trade agreement with
Korea, and things that are very disruptive when we really need to be
knit together.
MR. SCHIEFFER:
I’d like
to hear from all three of you, how are we, as you say, threatening to
pull out of the trade agreement with South Korea. But let’s kind of
go around the Pacific here – Japan. How do our allies feel about
all this? And what’s the feeling in that part of the world about
this. Sue, what do you –
MS. TERRY:
Well, let me
just speak from a South Korean perspective. I know foreign minister
came here and said wonderful things about our alliance and so on,
but
there is high level of anxiety in South Korea by almost everybody,
because of this kind of rhetoric coming out of Trump administration.
And but also in Korea during summer the hottest buzzwords were Korea
passing. So, and different people are worried about this for
different reasons.
The more conservative,
hawkish folks are worried about U.S. and somehow China making some
sort of deal about North Korea.
Or the progressives or some other
folks are worried about U.S. unilaterally acting on North Korea
without consulting North Korea. So they’re worried about U.S.
unilateralism.
They’re worried about Korea passing. And it’s not
helpful with this kind of putting on the free trade agreement or sort
of saying that South Korea is not paying enough of the burden of
defense for shared burden sharing and so on.
So I think there’s a
high level of anxiety at least in South Korea.
MR. GREEN:
So, I mean,
the polls show our president is not very popular in Asia. He’s more
popular in Asia than in Europe, but he’s not very popular. And as
Sue said, there is anxiety. You know, they’re all watching this
rhetoric and it’s – you know, the first bombs to fall are going
to be on Japan and Korea and then in the region.
On the other hand,
you know, last summer in Australia there was a poll done before the
elections and Australians were asked, if Donald Trump becomes
president, what should Australia do. And over half said pull away
from the U.S. Same question two months ago and the answer was
overwhelmingly stick with the U.S. Same in Korea. A year ago, a poll
said if Donald Trump wins, what do we do? Pull away from the U.S. A
recent poll from, I think JoongAng Ilbo: Stick with the U.S.
In
Japan, I think in Australia to a significant extent, to some – to
the Korean defense ministry, I think they have quite a bit of
confidence in General Mattis at the Pentagon, in Harry Harris, our
Pacific commander, and McMasters at the White House. And I would even
say have more confidence in them in this crisis than they do in the
previous Obama team. But it’s what’s happening at the top that’s
creating a lot of anxiety.
MR. SCHIEFFER: David?
MR. SANGER:
… One of
the most striking lines in those interviews that you mentioned at the
beginning that Maggie and I did with President Trump came when I
asked him whether he would be unhappy if Japan and South Korea went
off together on nuclear weapons.
And he said: Well, I think it’s
going there anyway, don’t you?
And I don’t know if his view has
changed in the year since we did those interviews, but I suspect that
that was probably his gut feeling, that that probably is where it’s
headed.
And that’s why there was this little flurry of discussion
about whether we should put our tactical nuclear weapons back on the
Korean Peninsula. I don’t think that’s going to happen.
The
Pentagon doesn’t want to have it happen and there’s no place in
North Korea you can’t reach from a bomber in Guam or from a missile
in Nebraska.
MR. SCHIEFFER: All right.
So let’s have some questions … "
You can read the transcript here
( You can read the Osnos article here )
You can watch the panel video here ⬇
Focused Thought in 30 seconds
( Meme courtesy of Trump Resistance Movement on Facebook )
Focused Action in 30 seconds
You can share former Vice President Al Gore's Tweet here
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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
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📰📰📰 Mother Jones
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( ⬆⬆⬆ Wallace is new to the job but for right now
her work on Trump GOP has been credible, IMO)
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In honor of women leading the American Resistance ~
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Elizabeth was from a well-to-do family where boys were favored. Elizabeth married and began having children ... At that time, women had little opportunity to control whether or not they became pregnant, and it frequently happened that just as Elizabeth was about to attend a new round of meetings or take on a new push for voting rights, she would find herself pregnant and more or less homebound again. Despite this, Elizabeth attended everything she could and when she was needed at home, she served their team effort by writing speeches that Susan could use at conventions or on the road. ... "
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