The Daily - Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018

Episode Date: January 3, 2018

On New Year’s Day, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, surprisingly called for direct talks with South Korea. How could that dialogue shift the dynamics among the North, the South and the United States? And Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, is retiring. Is the way open for Mitt Romney’s return? Guests: David E. Sanger, a Times correspondent who has covered North Korea’s missile program for decades; Jonathan Martin, a national correspondent.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, how Kim Jong-un's surprise New Year's Day call for direct talks with South Korea could undercut the Trump administration's tough approach to North Korea and scramble the dynamics between the three countries. And Orrin Hatch is leaving the Senate, potentially clearing the way for the return of Mitt Romney. It's Wednesday, January 3rd.

David, tell us about this New Year's speech that Kim Jong-un gave a couple of days ago. In the same speech, he had two very different messages for the allied forces, South Korea and the United States. He did have two messages in this one. David Sanger has covered North Korea's missile program for decades. And the first was to the United States. And he basically said, if you thought we did a lot of missile testing and nuclear testing last year, this is the year that we're moving to what he called mass production of missiles and nuclear weapons. His second message, though, wasn't directed at the U.S. It was directed at South Korea.

And that was unusual because the North Koreans usually ignore the South Koreans. They dismiss them as sort of lackeys of the United States. They frequently say they're puppets of the CIA. And in this case, he said, let's get involved in direct negotiations with the South Koreans about everything, including the upcoming Olympics. The South Koreans are hosting the Olympics, the Winter Olympics, starting in early February. And the South Koreans have wanted to see if they could get a North Korean team to come in, not because they're particularly interested in their Olympic skills, but because they're interested in Kim Jong-un not conducting some act of terror or disruption during the Olympics.

And their theory was that if their own athletes are playing, he's not likely to mess with the games. So what is Kim Jong-un trying to do here with these two divergent messages for these two different countries? So the message for the United States is simple. We're in nuclear power. Move on. Get used to it. The message to South Korea is the unusual one because clearly Kim Jong-un, in a pretty

canny examination of the nature of the relationship between South Korea and the United States, has come to the conclusion that there's a lot of daylight between President Moon in South Korea, who just took office the middle of last year after his predecessor resigned in a scandal, and President Trump. Moon Jae-in spoke to his nation today, saying he's more open to dialogue with North Korea. Moon said he would meet with Kim Jong-un under the right conditions to talk about the nuclear weapons program. President Moon has said that he would open up discussions with North Korea basically without conditions. No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. President Trump has made it clear there would have to be conditions,

and missiles. President Trump has made it clear there would have to be conditions, including an understanding that any negotiation had to lead to a fairly quick denuclearization of North Korea. It is time for North Korea to realize that the denuclearization is its only acceptable future. Most importantly, President Moon told his own people last year. South Korea President Moon now is essentially claiming veto power over any military action on the peninsula. That after meeting with President Trump, he now had a veto right. President Moon had a veto right on any American military action against the North. The implication being that he wasn't going to let a war start up.

He wasn't going to let Donald Trump go attack North Korea. And the American officials, who I spoke to right after that statement, said he's got no such veto, right? This is a decision that will be made by the United States in the United States' interest. States' interests. So the U.S. and South Korea are genuinely divided in their approach to how to deal with North Korea and its nuclear program. And it sounds like Kim Jong-un knows that. It is certainly fair to say that the president of South Korea and the president of the United States have very different views about how to go deal with this. They start from a common point.

Both of them would tell you that ultimately we need to get to a denuclearized Korean peninsula. The question is, how do you get there? President Moon believes that the way you get there is by trying to lure the North Koreans out of their isolation, trying to lure the North Koreans out of their isolation, offer them all of the usual inducements, relief from sanctions, international investment, so forth and so on. President Trump's view is... The president tweeted out,

being nice to Rocket Man hasn't worked in 25 years. Why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won't fail. That's been tried before, and that nothing will lead the North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons in return for some promise of investment from South Korea or from the West. And so then the question is, do they have a common strategy

for dealing with North Korea? And right now, the answer is they don't. The United States has great strength and patience. But if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. President Trump's approach is to say, we're going to try some diplomacy with no expectation that it's going to work. And then when it doesn't work, I'll move on to my military options. Whereas the view of the South Korean president is... South Korean President Moon is urging open dialogue, saying, quote, President Trump and I will not pursue a hostile policy against North Korea.

We have no intention to attack North Korea. We do not wish to see the regime replaced or collapsed. We're going to make diplomacy work one way or the other. But what's interesting here is that it was evident to Kim Jong-un that the president of the United States and the president of South Korea had two very divergent strategies for dealing with the North. And he was nimble enough to jump on this and say, let's see what we can do to widen the gap.

And that was a pretty sophisticated diplomatic move. So let's talk about how he tried to widen the gap. He sees this opportunity, this divergence between the U.S. and South Korea. And what's he doing in this speech to try to capitalize on it? What he's doing is suggesting a meeting between the North Koreans and the South Koreans that basically excludes the U.S. The opposite of what he usually wants, which is a meeting between the North Koreans and the U.S. that excludes the South Koreans. And his hope is that North and South Korea would reach some separate agreement that the United States could not say no to. And as a result, it could lead to some agreement to relieve sanctions some, make it harder for the United States to threaten military action, do whatever he could to separate the U.S. from its ally of 70 years.

What was South Korea's response to this invitation from the North to start talking? The South Koreans seemed quite open to it. In fact, they turned around and proposed that they get a conversation going at the DMZ. That's the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries. And we'll see whether or not that conversation happens and whether the content of it is about more than merely whether the North might participate in the Olympics.

Is there a way of seeing South Korea's willingness to directly negotiate with the North as good news for everybody, including the U.S.? In other words, that North Korea cares to preserve its relationship with South Korea is arguably a good sign in this standoff. Any time you have conversation going on between them, you have to think that's a good thing. But you have to keep in the back of your mind the possibility that this is merely a delaying tactic, merely a way to go buy some time while Kim Jong-un gets ready to conduct more missile tests and more nuclear tests so that he can prove beyond a doubt that he can reach any corner of the U.S.

And, you know, even as we are having this discussion, there are reports emerging from American intelligence agencies that suggest that another missile is being loaded up for testing. And the result of that is that Kim may simply be saying, I'm going to buy a little time with the South Koreans while I complete my experiment here. In other words, that's not a good situation for the world. That's just Kim getting more time and more cover

to advance his nuclear program. That's right. And he sees the Olympics as a great opportunity because he knows that the Olympics have to go well for South Korea and he's the potential disruptor. So let's talk about the role of the Olympics in this because it's kind of fascinating and odd even. What is South Korea's concern about the North in relation to the Games? Well, their biggest concern about the North is that it would disrupt the Games in some way.

Imagine that they use a moment when all eyes and all TV networks are focusing on the Olympic Games, on the ski jumps, on bobsled, and everything else that goes into this. And in the middle of that, there are missile tests, or a big nuclear test. That would be bad. Right. And I think that Kim Jong-un has recognized that that spoiler capability gives him some huge

leverage for the next month or two. Which is kind of amazing. So Kim Jong-un's unpredictability means he has greater leverage with the Olympic Games going on than potentially any other time because the imagination runs wild with the possibilities of what he might do with the world focused on the South. That's right. So do the North Koreans actually have an Olympic development program like the U.S.? This doesn't feel like something they do. Well, in the past, Michael, the North Koreans have periodically sent athletes under the North Korean flag to the Olympics. So

in 2016, which was the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, they actually did send a good-sized team. I think it was about 31 athletes, more women than men, interestingly. The medals in the women's weightlifting 75-kilo division, bronze to Lidia Valentin Perez of Spain, Daria Namava of Belarus took the silver, and the gold medal awarded to Rim Jong Sim of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. I think they had set a target of 12 medals for Rio, and they came up a little bit short on that when they only got seven.

She cemented gold with this attempt. The oddity in this particular case, though, is that they only qualified two athletes, I think both figure skaters, for the 2018 Olympics in South Korea, and they never actually submitted the names for those athletes by the deadline at the end of October. Now, that's not necessarily dispositive here. They could say they want to send their athletes and the International Olympic Committee, which has made it pretty clear they'd like to have

some North Korean representation in the games, could let them in at the last moment and bend the rules. Right. Presumably all of this would be part of these discussions with South Korea that we're talking about. I think that would be the initial discussion with South Korea. Get the figure skating out of the way first, move on to nuclear weapons later. In the end, David, how much does all of this, this unusual change in the dynamics between these three countries,

have to do with our realization over the past year of just how far along the North Korean nuclear program has gone? Has that fundamentally shifted the dynamics here in a way that allows the North to do bold things like try to break apart a 70-year-old alliance between the U.S. and South Korea? Well, Michael, it's a good question because until now, the question was, would the United States come to the aid of South Korea if it was threatened by the North? Once the U.S. feels threatened itself, it may pursue a defensive policy that is separate from the one that South Korea believes that it must pursue. You know, in the past, we built missile defenses in Alaska and California on the thought that one day the North Koreans might be able to lob one or two or three nuclear weapons our way. But now you're looking at the possibility that if they so decided,

they might be able to lob a lot more than that. And of course, the missile defenses could be overwhelmed. And at that moment, the president of the United States has got to think about this issue in very different terms. Now, there are a lot of people saying to the president, look, this isn't fundamentally that different from the situation we faced with the Soviet Union starting in 1949 or with the Chinese starting in 1964. And in both those cases, classic containment and mutually assured destruction worked. What's interesting is that this administration says in this case, classic containment will not work. says in this case, classic containment will not work. That in fact, North Korea might use its weapons to blackmail countries, to try to take over the South. There are any number of scenarios that many in this administration spin out that they believe the North Koreans could try to enact

using the new power of a nuclear weapon that can reach the U.S., including the possibility that the U.S. would not come to the South's defense if the North can take out Los Angeles or Washington. Right. And do you suspect that these conversations between the North and the South in the lead up to the Olympic Games are really just about preserving the peace until the Olympics are over and that negotiations will more or less go back to normal after that? Or do you think, given what you're

saying, that these dynamics could forever be changed now? It's a fascinating question because it's very possible that this is all just a temporary thing. But it's also possible that if they got into a real discussion, it could generate a dynamic of its own that could continue past the Olympics. David, thank you. Thank you, Michael, and Happy New Year. On Tuesday night, President Trump responded to one of Kim Jong-un's provocations from his New Year's Day speech when he'd said that, quote, A nuclear button is always on the desk of my office. And this is just a reality, not a threat.

Trump replied, food-starved regime, please inform him that I, too, have a nuclear button. But it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his. And my button works. We'll be right back. When the president visited Utah last month, he said I was a fighter. I've always been a fighter. I was an amateur boxer in my youth, and I brought that fighting spirit with me to Washington. But every good fighter knows when to hang up the gloves. And for me, that time is soon approaching. On Tuesday, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican in

the Senate, said he would retire at the end of the year, depriving President Trump of a close ally on everything from health care to taxes. There have been very few senators who have been as supportive of President Trump as Senator Hatch. My colleague Jonathan Martin is covering Hatch's announcement. To the point that last month when the president signed the tax overhaul into law. I want to ask Orrin Hatch, a special friend of mine, I can tell you that. Senator Hatch stood up in the Rose Garden and effusively praised the president, even suggesting that Trump could go down in history as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

And we're going to make this the greatest presidency that we've seen, not only in generations, but maybe ever. God bless all of you. Because of this relationship that had blossomed, President Trump really sought aggressively to push Senator Hatch into what would have been his eighth term, Hatch into what would have been his eighth term, urging him repeatedly in private to run again, and even flying with him on Air Force One to Utah last month and using an event in Salt Lake City, the capital, to say he hopes that Senator Hatch would continue serving the state for a very long time. So the president really does not want to see Orrin Hatch leave the Senate. That's exactly right. And this is a safe seat. It's very unlikely that a Democrat could win Utah, which is a deeply conservative state, a heavily Mormon state. What the White House is concerned about, Michael,

is the prospect of Mitt Romney, who's the former governor of Massachusetts, stepping in and basically waltzing to the U.S. Senate unimpeded. And the reason for that concern is because, as you well know, Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. President Trump and Governor Romney have a long relationship of tensions dating back to the early part of the 2016 presidential campaign. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. The last election should have been won, except Romney choked like a dog. He choked. He went, I can't breathe.

So Trump and the White House staffs are very uneasy about the idea of a independent Mitt Romney in the U.S. Senate. And does it look like Mitt Romney will run for this seat that Orrin Hatch is giving up? Yeah, all signs point to Mitt Romney running. He's been thinking about this for some months, but according to my reporting, wasn't even talking about the Senate seat because he thought Hatch was going to run again. But now there is an opening and it appears like Romney will run. And if he does run, he'll be tough to beat in Utah. And what does it say about the state of the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate

and Trump's relationship with the Republicans in the Senate that he's so fixated on exactly who occupies a single seat in that body? Well, I mean, in Hatch, he had a reliable ally. And in Romney, he's got not only a question mark, but somebody who could actually represent a competing power center in the party. I think it's how Romney would vote in the Senate. I think even more than that, though, it's how Romney would conduct himself publicly, what he would say to the media, what he would say on television about the president. And also, would there be moments where Romney could help Democrats narrowly win a vote, given the fact that you've got a Senate that's now 51-49 going into this year?

Jonathan, thank you very much. Keep out. Here's what else you need to know today. After almost a week of nationwide protests, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has finally addressed the demonstrations, calling them the work of Iran's foreign enemies. In a message posted Tuesday on his Twitter account, they possess, including money, weapons, politics, and intelligence services, to trouble the Islamic Republic. No specific countries were named, but Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,

called the allegations of foreign interference complete nonsense, blamed Iran's leaders for the unrest and called for an emergency UN session on the Iranian government's crackdown on the protests. This is the precise picture of a long-oppressed people rising up against their dictators. The international community has a role to play on this. We must not be silent. The people of Iran are crying out for freedom. All freedom-loving people must

stand with their cause. So far, at least 21 protesters have died and about 450 have been taken into custody by Iran's security forces in Tehran alone. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.