Pod Save the World - Can’t out-crazy Kim Jong-un

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

Tommy talks with Asia expert Danny Russel about reports that North Korea is willing to begin negotiations with the US about abandoning its nuclear weapons.

We have breaking news on Potsave the World. We are releasing this episode a couple days early because today the New York Times reported that Kim Jong-un told a South Korean delegation that he is willing to begin negotiations with the United States about abandoning its nuclear program. We should approach this announcement with some skepticism, with some caution, but it could be a pretty big deal. So I got an Asia expert named Danny Russell on the phone to talk to what it all means and to really level set on how hopeful we should be and how the United States should proceed from here.

Please excuse the phone quality audio. We did this quickly, but I think you will appreciate Danny's take on this announcement, his experience negotiating these things in the past and what he made of President Trump's press conference today. So without further ado, here's the interview with Danny Russell. I am very excited to welcome back to the pod. Danny Russell, the diplomat in residence at the Asia Society in New York. He was also Assistant Secretary of State for Asia during the Obama administration. He was an Asia director on the NSC when I was there. and is a long-time diplomat and a hell of a smart guy. Danny, thank you for doing the show. My pleasure, Tommy. So we're talking on the phone today.

We didn't go with the excellent sounding studio quality audio because there's breaking news. Today, the New York Times reported that Kim Jong-un told South Korean diplomats that he is willing to begin negotiations to the United States about abandoning its nuclear weapons and that they would suspend all of their nuclear and missile tests while engaged in those talks. So this is a potential breakthrough that came at the end of a two-day meeting in Pyongyang between North and South Korean officials.

And believe it or not, these were the first South Korean officials to meet with Kim since he took power six years ago. So this would be a major departure from Kim's previous position that their nuclear weapons are not negotiable. Danny, I didn't see this coming. What do you make of this announcement today? Well, Tommy, I think there's sort of two schools of thought in the North Korea analyst community. community. You know, one is that Kim Jong-un is basically Lucy with a nuclear football. And, you know, Charlie Brown or President Moon of South Korea, or Donald Trump, for that matter, can take another run at the football and try to kick it, but he's going to wind up flat on his ass like every other time.

But then there's another school of thought that thinks maybe like Bambi and Thumper and the care bears must have staged an intervention with Kim Jong-un. And, uh, Kim woke up the next morning and decided that, you know, he wanted world peace and to give up all his nukes and so on. That possibility, as far as I know, hasn't been confirmed yet by U.S. intelligence. But, um,

the Bambi scenario is probably the most plausible explanation if you think that the clouds have, have parted. Okay. You know, I'm joking aside, you know, there's,

there's always going to be a cynical view of North Korea. There's always going to be a hopeful or wishful or, even naive view of North Korea. You know, it's important, it's as important not to fall into cynicism so that you miss an opportunity as it is to avoid falling into some of the obvious traps that the North Koreans laid. But look, this is super early innings. And, you know, it is a good thing that Kim Jong-un is finally meeting with somebody that's kind

of not in line to be executed, you know, not one of his flunkies. He's met with very few foreign officials or dignitaries. That's a good thing. If it's true, and all, you know, at this point, we've got the moon government's somewhat hopeful interpretation of what they think they heard. And if they heard what they think they heard, that sounds like a pretty profound reversal of Kim's fundamental principle of not relinquishing his nuclear sword and shield, like you point. pointed out. But if he is even hinting at this, yeah, that's a good thing. But I'd say it's far from convincing that we're on the path to some kind of peaceful settlement or credible negotiation. We've got to put it to the test. Yeah, I think you're exactly right that like it's not cooler to be

cynical about potential progress. It is good to be cautious and prudence, but we should allow for these openings to emerge. That said, our president at a White House press conference this afternoon, definitely took the Bambian thumper perspective. He said he believes that Kim Jong-un's offer was sincere. He half-joked that the reason for his change of heart is, quote, me. Kind of funny. And then he went on to not joke that this was because of pressure from sanctions and help from China. Is that a fair assessment? Well, he also told the gridiron club, apparently, that he'd gotten a phone call from North Korea recently, which, was half true because he got a phone call from the president of South Korea, distinction worth

noting perhaps. Look, it is to be hoped that the kind of corrosive effect of the sanctions over the years in aggregate and the improved enforcement in recent years driven by North Korea's egregiously bad behavior is starting to have an effect. The whole point of the strategy that was pursued by the Obama administration, and despite denials, is actually being pursued by the Trump administration. It's the same basic approach of applying sanctions, bolstering deterrence and defense, tightening cooperation, coordination with allies and partners, and trying to keep the door open to diplomacy. The whole purpose of that kind of strategy, of attrition was to move or to push Kim Jong-un to the point of recognizing that he was going

to have to start down the road that he really did not want to go down, which is negotiating a halt and a rollback and ultimately an elimination of his nuclear program and of his ballistic missile program, both of which are illegal under the UN Security Council resolutions. That's what we're trying to do. But this is at most a first tentative early signal that maybe, just maybe, he's looking for some relief. Yeah, yeah. And if we start, you know, swinging for the fences at this point, we're going to strike out, I predict. I mean, the thing to remember, Tommy, is that what's happening now is Kim Jong-un's play.

You know, I'm sorry, but it's not President Trump's play. It's Kim's play. He's the guy who got up on New Year's Day and rolled out this offer of deploying a joint team to the Olympics and of Inter-Korean dialogue. He's the guy who suggested maybe a summit would be possible. Why don't you – we're going to send envoys to Pyongcheng to the Olympics. You can send your senior envoys to Kayang. this is his agenda. He's driving the action. And if you take a step back and look at what has been the tradition, the playbook under Kim Jong-il, the playbook under Kim Il-sung, you can see some

similarities. So, you know, driving up the fear factor, you know, bringing it to a crescendo. When it gets to the apex, you know, playing the, hey, maybe, you can make the pain stop game and, you know, release a flood of endorphins in the bloodstream of South Korea and the U.S. and Japan and so. Like, this is a pretty familiar overall pattern. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be possible to make something of this, and I'm not ruling out the possibility that we can use this as an opening to begin to get something going.

But we should be mindful of the fact. that there are more steps to the, you know, North Korean square dance than just these two, because usually it goes on to demand more and more concessions from the West without giving up anything in return, start getting to the point of being ridiculous where we put our foot down, and then suddenly, oh, North Korea is the aggrieved party again, it's the American hostile policy, you know, back to the escalatory phase, and now we're seeing ICBMs, now we're seeing nuclear tests again. You know, he wants to be bought off. And so what we may be starting is the haggling phase. And that means that it's very important because the Koreans are by and large

pretty good negotiators. It's very important that we stay firm and focused on what North Korea has to do, ultimately, to be able to get out from under sanctions and to avail itself of the many good things, diplomatic normalization, economic aid, peace treaty, and so on, that the U.S. and R.K., Japan, and even China, have on offer. Right. So you made an important point, which is you don't want to try to hit a home run and strike out and end up getting nothing done. And I've heard Ash Carter, former Secretary of defense make a similar point that the way you conduct diplomacy with North Korea is to have sort of small specific concrete steps, right? So I say that as a caveat to the following question, which is nitpicking

at all these details, because a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests doesn't mean that North Korea would have to stop building more nuclear weapons, right, which makes experts concerned that this could be a way to buy some time while they increase their arsenal. Is that a deal breaker? Or should we be cool with the progress that this deal would constitute, even if it meant them, you know, increasing the aggregate number of nuclear weapons they have? Well, Tommy, I mean, you know, in isolation, a moratorium is a very good thing. You do definitely want North Korea to stop testing. As you are pointing out, the testing is the one-fifth of the iceberg that's above the water, and the rest of the program continues unabated unless there is inspection by the IEE, et cetera,

and pretty stiff provisions, and those are provisions that in the past have tanked efforts to reach and sustain a deal. So a moratorium, while talks are underway, is a necessary condition, but it's not a sufficient condition for making real progress and making real headway. Look, North Korea, in my view, doesn't want to wage a nuclear war. It wants to, in the first instance, if it can swing it, negotiate a rental deal where we basically pay off North Korea month to month, week to week, to tamp down its misbehavior and not to scare the horses. But their nukes on layaway? Right, exactly. Okay.

And, you know, potentially the North Koreans can, I'm sure, envisage being able to make compromises in the guise of mutual arms reduction and sort of responsible management of nuclear arsenals and all that. And you can always construct a scenario in which there's an even worse option, the unfettered expansion of North Korea's nuclear arsenal, and say, hey, isn't this good? isn't as worth it. But the question is always going to be, what are we paying for it? And what are we really getting for what we're paying? So the principle that guided us in the Obama administration was we won't pay for something reversible and hypothetical like a promise of a moratorium with something that is irreversible and substantive. But if North Korea will do something, will take an irreversible step to walk back its nuclear and missile programs, to begin coming into compliance with the Security Council resolutions in a way that can't be just switched back at a moment's notice,

then for sure we want to respond positively. It's the difference, Tommy, between trying to bribe North Korea, what I call a doggy treat, right? I mean, if North Korea takes a step in the right direction, we should respond positively. But we should not be paying North Korea or bribing North Korea to forego the next provocation. And that's just a losing proposition. These analogies are working on me because I have a five-month-old puppy, and I get it. Lots of treats.

Please don't poop in the house at all. It makes sense here. Mark Landler from the New York Times broke this story, so a lot of credit to him. And in that piece, he talked about the fact that the U.S. and South Korea do these big annual joint military exercises that piss off the North Koreans, in the Chinese, really, to no way. And they hate it. And in fairness, it kind of looks like we're preparing an invasion. so I get that. We delayed those joint military exercises with the rocks with the South Koreans during the Olympics this year.

I was surprised to read in Landler's story in New York Times that apparently Kim Jong-un didn't demand that the exercises planned for April be suspended again. That is another seemingly remarkably flexible position, no? Well, again, remember that we're hearing the secondhand so far. Yeah, like fifth hand. And, you know, I've certainly learned, as you have, that particularly when you're dealing with an authoritarian or, you know, a Leninist system, you know, the slogan, world peace, win-win, all that stuff, has to be unpacked pretty significantly before you know what you're really dealing with. So are the South Koreans kind of putting an optimistic gloss on traditional statements by North Korea? that, hey, if only America would give up its hostile policy, then, you know, anything is possible. Who knows? Maybe that translates into South Korean as, okay, we're ready to give up our nuclear weapons.

But to my ear, it means, you know, first the U.S. needs to withdraw of its troops from the Korean Peninsula, and then, you know, the president of the United States needs to crawl over a field of broken glass apologizing. and then maybe. So that's why I keep saying that we're in very, very early innings here, and it's way too early to know. But it's wrong to assert that the U.S. Rock annual exercises, and there's sort of two packages of annual exercises each year, it's wrong to assert that those are necessarily deal-breakers

because the record shows that when North Korea, which after all is kind of a one-man man, man, when the leader of North Korea found it convenient to ignore the exercises, he ignored them. And by the way, North Korea conducts the same sort of exercises more or less concurrently. So like, what about that? And then conversely, when the leader of North Korea

found it convenient to make this a big, causes Bella, ideal breaker, woe is me, the world is unfair, he turned his propaganda machine on that as evidence of the hostile policy. So North Korea can go either way, depending on what it judges to be in its interest in the short term. Secondly, if the U.S. and South Korea accept the premise that defensive exercises that are meant to protect Seoul from a sneak attack or a sudden attack from the thousands and thousands of rockets, and artillery pieces that are lined up just a few miles north of the DMZ, that those normal

defensive exercises, which, by the way, as I said, are partner to the ones that North Korea itself conduct, if we accepted that is on a par with North Korea's illegal nuclear and ballistic missile programs, then, hello, kind of, what kind of negotiators are we? Those are fundamentally different things. One is straight up legitimate defense. We've been doing it for decades, and guess what, we have never chosen to invade or attack North Korea. The other is explicitly outlawed under a mandatory Chapter 7 of the UN Charter Resolution of the Security Council. Like those are pretty fundamentally different propositions and we shouldn't buy into it.

The last thing I'd mention is that these exercises are a critical piece in training the conscript army of South Korea. These soldiers turn over every 18 months. It is not a professional volunteer army like the American is. And so to skip one year of this training exercise, which, although it has a field component, is really more sort of tabletop computer classroom and logistical training stuff, means that you have a whole generation of South Korean conscripted soldiers who don't know what the fuck they're doing. Fair point. And the U.S. and the Iraq military are going to have a tough time conducting the defense of Seoul and South Korea if the South Korean conscripts don't get their training in.

So dispensing with the exercise entirely is no small matter above and beyond the principle that, you know, you're trading an apple for. a poison orange. Yeah, fair point. We don't want these guys getting up to speed as rockets are literally being fired. And we will all wait with bated breath to see if the Sean Spicer or Sarah Huckabee Sanders of North Korea clarifies this South Korea readout of the meeting. But a slightly different question for you. Okay, so let's say this is all true and we are going to get to talks.

Who the hell is going to lead them? The State Department's top North Korea negotiator Joe Yun just returned. tired, I imagine you know him well. The guy who was supposed to be Trump's ambassador to South Korea, a person named Victor Shaw, who was a seasoned professional, was just pulled out of the nomination process. Who is the chops to do this? How senior should the U.S. negotiating team be? Like, is Dennis Rodman available? Is he the right guy? What do you think? Well, Dennis Rodman, I'm sure, is available. Look, I mean, look at who Kim Jong-un sent to.

the Pyongchang Olympics, not to mention his sister, the princess. You know, he sent for talks with the South two very, very senior officials who are quite close to him and, you know, who are probably number one and two on the next to be purged if they look at him cross-eyed list. Yeah, look at who President Moon sent to Pyayyang to, you know, conduct the next round. his spy chief and his national security advisor, the two officials who are closest to him, who have his trust, who've been with him the longest. You know, this is, and by this, I mean, dealing with North Korea isn't an amateur sport. And the problem for the U.S. side is not that we lack expertise either on Korean affairs or on negotiations. We've got terrific people.

We're all sorry to see Joe Yun leave, but they're very, very competent people, knowledgeable people in the State Department. But that's not really the issue. The issue is who would Kim Jong-un see, and for that matter, who would Moon Jae-in, the President of South Korea, see as incontrovertibly, credibly, authoritatively,

representing the president and the government of the United States. And could that person engage in some kind of diplomatic effort without a reasonable fear that Twitter was going to, you know, pull the rug out from under him at any moment? Right. Let's talk about a incontrovertibly credible source or option here. John Bolton. Trump reportedly met with the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton today. Ambassador Bolton still believes that invading Iraq was the right choice. He has already gone on Fox News to say that the North Koreans aren't serious about the talks.

We'll give him a pass for that. What would it mean for North Korea policy, do you think, to have John Bolton installed in the White House potentially as H.R. McMaster's successor as National Security Advisor? Well, I think, first of all, and most importantly, Tommy, it would introduce into the national security decision-making process, a Bush mustache, the likes of which has really never been seen in the West Wing before. Apparently a deal-breaker for Trump, too, right? I kind of suspected maybe.

Yeah. What an asshole. I mean, fuck. It is a little scary. Like, I am fully in the camp that I believe Trump is Trump and will be Trump, no matter who is around him. But on national security, H.R. McMaster swap for John Bolton, or John Bolton generally, does scare me. He is firmly in the neocon camp that seems to still want to invade everything despite the results from the last round.

Well, if it's any consolation to you, Tommy, Donald J. Trump did not get elected by listening to either the experts or his staff. True. That's very true. And that seems to be a model that he has taken the heart and has applied with. vigor in U.S. government. Yeah. I also haven't noticed four stars on John Bolton's shoulders, and that seems to be an unimportant credential when it comes to winning the trust of President Trump on matters big and small. That's a good point. But look, I mean, this is all quite speculative.

What we do see is that the president, in turn, seems to regard other foreign, leaders or certain foreign leaders as peers and may be open to listening to them and learning from them. He learned from President Xi Jinping that Korea is actually part of China. But he's also learned, I think, important and valuable things, you know, not limited to geography from other world leaders, notably from, you know, the Japanese prime minister and the Australian and Prime Minister and so on. Let's just hope that he doesn't get schooled by Kim Jong-un. Let me ask you one other question about a Washington expert.

Senator Lindsay Graham recently said that a war with North Korea would be, quote, worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security. He continued, if there's going to be a war to stop Kim Jong-un, it will be over there if thousands die. They're going to die over there. They're not going to die here, he added. And Trump told me that to my face. Two questions. What do you make of this assessment that a war with North Korea will be worth it?

And two, do you think this is a winning message for our allies in the region? Well, I think the answers are pretty clear. First of all, the United States has successfully, importantly, prevented war on the Korean Peninsula for now six decades, in part because people had a memory of what the last one was lost. And we should be mindful of the warnings of credible senior U.S. military officers current and former, who warned that the First Korean War would look like a cakewalk compared to what we would face if we did battle on the Korean Peninsula again. Now, I'm not suggesting for a minute that military options should be or are often. table, they can't be. And no president of the United States can be sanguine in the face of a North Korea that's moving at breakneck speed towards the capability of being able to

deposit a viable nuclear weapon on U.S. soil via an ICBM. And President Obama was not prepared to sit by and watch that happen, nor is President Trump. But the notion of a surgical strike kind of overlooks the fact that in surgery you wind up with a lot of blood, a lot of organs, a lot of gore, and unfortunately a lot of deaths. And the over-the-per-their-parts, not only undermines the important, deterrent capabilities of the United States, which is really what's stopping Kim Jong-un from actually drawing blood, but it also misses a very fundamental point, which is, we're over there too.

Yeah, no kidding. In addition to 28,500 American servicemen and women who are stationed in the Republic of Korea and have bullseyes on them, you know, there are hundreds of people. hundreds of thousands of American citizens who live in Seoul alone. And then when you get to Japan, the numbers go up significantly. And the notion that we would absorb hundreds of thousands of casualties of our allies and of our citizens and that we wouldn't rush to the rescue just beggars belief. It's not true.

Yeah. It's not. So I can't speculate what was in Senator Graham's mind when he says this. Some people think that you can out-bluff Kim Jong-un, that you can do the Gila Monster Act and puff up or the Nixon crazy man. But as I said before, you're just not going to succeed in out-crazing Kim Jong-un. Yeah.

You know, we have too much to lose. We've got a track record that proves that we care about human life and human dignity. And that is something that he will use to his advantage. Yeah. It's just such a glib, stupid comment. You know, it's like if I'm a U.S. service member living in the region, or if I'm one of our allies. And I read something like that. And then I realized that this is supposed to be one of the serious people who's providing what little change.

there might be on Donald Trump from the Republican Party. And he has recently turned into his golf buddy. It would scare me a little bit. But this is just my hobby horse. My final question for you, I just want to switch gears a little bit. The Communist Party of China did away with the 10-year presidential term limit recently, paving the way for Xi Jinping to be president for life. They said the reason was because the people demanded it.

Is this a big deal, Danny? Like, what do you make of this from your seat up there in New York? I mean, I'm not the world's authority on the Chinese Communist Party, but it did not come as a giant surprise to me that the guy who has dispensed with collective leadership, who has used an anti-corruption campaign to eliminate literally and figuratively his rivals, who has begun a program of direct authoritarian control over all aspects of Chinese life within and frankly beyond China's borders, that this guy wasn't planning to commit to retire at the end of his second term. It's a little surprising to me that it has generated apparently quite a bit of turmoil and some backlash within China.

I had maybe foolishly assumed that people generally saw this coming. And I admit to not having been sufficiently erudite to have realized that this decision would have to be made now on the cusp of the first meeting of the National People's Congress at the very beginning of Xi Jinping's term, I think I just sort of carelessly assumed that it would gradually become clear that he wouldn't go anywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But his firm control, his one-man rule, his centralization of power, his kind of cult of personality is pretty evident just by the freaking gift shop in Beijing Airport where you can buy

an uncle she, you know, cup and saucer as if it was the 50th, the golden centenary of, you know, Queen Elizabeth. That sounds cool. I'd like one of those. You know, if you're over there. We only have 40, we only have 40 more years to go to Tom. That's good. Good point. I guess get him while supplies last.

Danny Russell, thank you for bringing decades of experience dealing with North Korea and all our allies in the region, a sense of humor and a sober, but not wholly unoptimistic take on what's happening here on this breaking newsday on POTSafe World. Thanks again, man. Well, thanks, Tommy. I'll admit that this is the first time I've been accused of being sober. A story for another day. Thanks again for tuning to POTSafe the World. show, please rate and review us in the iTunes store, and please check out the Potsave the World Facebook page for more exclusive content. See you guys.