The Daily - Wednesday, Mar. 7, 2018

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

South Korea says that the North is willing to talk about giving up its atomic arsenal. What happened to the threat of nuclear war? Guest: Mark Landler, a White House correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Watch. Today, South Korea says that North Korea is willing to talk about giving up its nuclear weapons. What happened to the threat of nuclear war? It's Wednesday, March 7th. What happened to the threat of nuclear war? It's Wednesday, March 7th. On January 6, 2016, 10 o'clock, the first nuclear test in the Korean peninsula was successfully conducted. 첫 수소탄 시험이 성공적으로 진행되었다. intercontinental ballistic missile. The latest missile launch drew praise from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who said

through state media, the test clearly proved the whole U.S. mainland is in firing range. The Pentagon suddenly strengthening the country's West Coast defenses against a possible nuclear attack by North Korea. Are we now on the brink of nuclear war? They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. A potential major breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula. This morning, South Korean officials returning from talks in North Korea, including a direct meeting with Kim Jong-un, announced first the North Korean regime wants to talk directly with the U.S. government to discuss denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and normalizing U.S.-North Korean relations. Make no mistake, what's happened today represents an extraordinary new chapter in the tense standoff

between the U.S. and North Korea, and even perhaps a hopeful chapter. Mark Landler, what just happened? Well, Michael, after a really crazy year when you saw everything from threats of war to pictures of North Koreans sitting happily with South Koreans at the Olympics, you now suddenly have this announcement by North Korea via the South that they're ready to sit down and talk to the United States. But not just that, they're ready to put their entire nuclear and missile program on the table as a bargaining chip. I mean, they're talking about the idea of disarmament, of kind of giving up their nuclear program, not just stopping it or slowing it down, actually kind of handing over their weapons, right?

That's the idea. That's what they say, that they are willing to consider relinquishing all of that in some kind of a negotiation. Do you believe the North Koreans are prepared to give up the nuclear war? We're going to see. They seem to be acting positively. I think that their statement and the statements coming out of South Korea and North Korea have been very positive. That would be a great thing for the world. So, Mark, how did we get from talk of fire and fury by the president, what fell just a couple of weeks ago, like we might be on the brink of a nuclear war with North Korea, to talk of the North voluntarily disarming itself?

I think the easiest way to think about this is through the context of South Korea and what the South Koreans really want. And in this case, they desperately want to have a new form of engagement with the North. There has been a history in South Korea of periods when they wanted to engage with the North and periods in which they were very hostile with the North. There has been a history in South Korea of periods when they wanted to engage with the North and periods in which they were very hostile to the North. We've just come through a long period of hostility between North and South Korea. But with the election of President Moon Jae-in, a progressive, we're now entering into a new period of engagement. The constituency of this new government is a younger generation of

Koreans. And to a great extent, they're just fed up with the endless tension between North and South. And so the South Koreans are reaching out to the North, and the North is recognizing the change political environment in the South. And so really, it's an inter-Korean change that has sort of set this in motion. The games officially start on Friday in one of the most tense areas of the world, just 50 miles from the North Korean border. And what role did the Olympics play in this? Well, the Olympics were, for the South Koreans, an opportunity to showcase the Korean Peninsula to the world.

And so they were an enormous political priority for the Moon government. He wanted to have a good Olympics. Mr. President, Pyeongchang 2018, you have said that you would like it to be the peace Olympics. You would like North Korea to be involved in some way. Five months out, is that still possible? I mean, has North Korea showed an interest? There were a lot of concerns about security at these games. The North Koreans are going to use this for propaganda advantage. They're going to test

an ICBM or a nuclear weapon or try to hack these Olympics. North Korea is greeting the start of South Korea's Winter Olympics by showing off its military might. Soldiers paraded with tanks, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and other weapons in North Korea's capital Pyongyang. The security concerns here involve everything from terrorism to war. I think what the North did is very cleverly recognize that and went the other way. So not only did the North Koreans decide not to cause problems around these Olympics, they decided to seize on them as an opportunity to showcase unity between the North and the South. So on all sorts of theatrical levels, the North Koreans recognized the opportunity

to use the Olympics to mount a charm offensive. And they did it, by all accounts, in a very, very effective and successful way. There were fireworks all around the Olympic Stadium during the closing ceremony of the Games. But inside, it was a picture of peace. Athletes from both Koreas marched together, and North Korea's delegation was seated just behind Ivanka Trump.

The Winter Olympics ended today with a spectacular ceremony and a possible diplomatic breakthrough. The Winter Olympics in South Korea have come to a close, and so has North Korea's latest effort to make diplomatic inroads with the world. The hermit kingdom softened its typically belligerent international image during the Games, likely in hopes of opening negotiations to ease harsh sanctions it's facing. So building on the good feelings that were generated during the Olympics, the North and the South agreed to send envoys to speak to one another. They even then later agreed to a higher-level visit by President Moon to North Korea. And finally, with this announcement yesterday, they agreed to talk to the United States, but under these new terms of agreeing to think about giving up their nuclear weapons.

Mark, it's always been my sense that North Korea's nuclear capabilities are its main bargaining chip when it comes to its place in the world. So why would the North take the step of offering to kind of permanently give up this arsenal? I think the honest answer is we don't know yet. We have to stipulate that what we've heard so far is entirely through the South Koreans. It's their interpretation of what they thought they heard from the North. I think until we sit down ourselves with the North Koreans and assess what their motives are and how far they're willing to go, it's impossible to know yet why they would have taken this step. The fact that we're hearing all of this through the South and haven't heard a peep from the North, what does that indicate?

I think it indicates, above all, the eagerness of the South to see this happen. I think there is an element of wish fulfillment here. I mean, the South is pushing very hard, and I think they're trying very hard to close off all the exit ramps so that this process can only head down the highway. And this has been a pattern that's repeated itself throughout the process. If you recall, when Vice President Pence went to the Olympics, it was the South Korean president who tried desperately to broker a meeting between him and North Korean officials. They've been in the driver's seat at every step of the process. And I think the big question is,

at what point do we start to see the North signal itself to the United States? And if the South Korean interpretation of this moment is correct, and the South is not just wishing this moment into reality, but actually prodding it along into reality, how significant is this? Well, the North Koreans have not put their nuclear program on the table for many, many years. I think we're talking close to a decade. So if serious, this is a very big step forward in this story. The problem is, the important caveat is, we've been down this road before.

And each time it's ended in disappointment. We'll be right back. Today, I want to announce an important step forward in the situation in North Korea. This afternoon, we have received formal confirmation from North Korea that it will freeze the major elements of its nuclear program while a new round of talks between our nations proceeds. In response, we are informing the North Koreans that we are ready to go forward with a new round of talks in Geneva early next month. The earliest and perhaps the most ambitious agreement between the U.S. and North Korea was signed by President Bill Clinton back in 1994. And essentially what it said was that the North Koreans would halt the construction of two nuclear reactors that the U.S. believed they would use to manufacture fuel for nuclear weapons. In return for which the U.S. agreed to give them two alternate nuclear power plants that they could not use to create nuclear fuel. So the idea was, we will give you the basis of a nuclear energy program, a peaceful program,

if you'd agree to give up these plants that we think you're eventually going to use for military purposes. That was the basis of the deal. And that deal in the mid-1990s was viewed as kind of the blueprint for a broader disarmament deal that the Clinton administration kept pursuing and never quite achieved before the end of President Clinton's term. And what was the biggest obstacle? Why didn't it get done? Ultimately, the deal killer was that President Clinton left office, President Bush came in, and U.S. intelligence discovered shortly after Bush took office that the North Koreans had continued developing a program on enriching uranium. That made the Americans conclude that the North Koreans were acting in bad faith, and they essentially allowed the deal to collapse. faith, and they essentially allowed the deal to collapse. The next time North Korea talked about giving up their nuclear program was in 2006, and there was a very lengthy negotiation to try to make that happen. The United States was never able to agree with the North Koreans on verification

procedures that would allow the U.S. to be sure that the North Koreans were relinquishing their program, and the effort petered out at the end of the Bush administration. So basically, we're talking about more than eight years since the last time this was a real possibility. And Mark, back then, what did the North Koreans want in return for giving up their nuclear program? They wanted fuel. They wanted food and medical assistance. They basically wanted to have the heavy economic sanctions that have isolated their country and impoverished their country to be lifted. They wanted to be readmitted into the club of respectable nations. So what makes this moment different from those prior moments in the Clinton administration or the Bush administration is that the North Koreans are so much closer to having a full nuclear capability. They say it shows North Korea has crossed, quote, a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.

As the rogue nation pushes and rushes to develop long-range ballistic missiles able to carry nuclear warheads. pushes and rushes to develop long-range ballistic missiles able to carry nuclear warheads. So in a funny way, in a counterintuitive way, it's easier for them to come to the table and put the program on pause for a few weeks or months or however long the negotiation takes because they're really within sight of their ultimate goal. During the Clinton and Bush administrations,

when North Korea was much more of a fledgling nuclear power, they really needed the time to develop the uranium enrichment, to develop the missile technology. So for them, it was arguably a bigger deal to agree to a freeze 10 years ago or 20 years ago than it is today. So is the idea that because they might be totally finished or very close to finished with their nuclear program, that the question for them is like, what's a few more months for us? Exactly. I mean, I think that we're headed into a period where we're going to have to practice deterrence against them and accept them as a nuclear weapons state. I mean, I think that's where we're headed. And they may recognize this as their last moment, that they could extract major concessions. Because once they cross the threshold and the world recognizes them as a

nuclear weapon state, you're in an entirely different phase at that point. You're no longer negotiating for whether you can force them to surrender their weapons. You're merely then negotiating for curbing their behavior, making sure they do nothing crazy. That's a very different set of circumstances, and it possibly allows them to extract less in return. So in future negotiations, they won't be able to get very much because they've already violated all the rules. They've already created a nuclear program. So the negotiations would look entirely different, you're saying? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. the negotiations would look entirely different, you're saying? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So we're doing tariffs on steel. We cannot lose our steel industry. It's a fraction of what it once was. And we can't lose our aluminum industry, also a fraction of what it once was. And how does all of this relate to the United States now threatening tariffs on steel and aluminum, which I understand could apply to South Korea? Well, on the face of it, it would appear that they have nothing to do with North Korea. South Korea is the third largest exporter of steel to the United States. President

Trump has this trade agenda that he is in the midst of imposing, and these tariffs will apply to South Korea as they would to China, to Germany, to Mexico and others. The problem we have with South Korea is we are in the midst of this very delicate diplomatic negotiation with North Korea. We need to remain coordinated, to remain in lockstep, to remain unified. So if President Trump were to impose these tariffs on South Korea, he would cause a lot of anger within the South Korean public. He would box in President Moon politically, because Moon would feel obliged to retaliate for the tariffs. And all this would come at the very

moment that we're embarking on this negotiation with the North. So it would be, to say the very least, disruptive. So at a rare moment when there's a real possibility of peace on the Korean Peninsula and disarmament of this very, very scary nuclear program that everybody involved has been striving for, President Trump is throwing a wrench into this process over tariffs. Well, that's right. And there has always been this potential for collision

between President Trump's trade agenda and his security agenda. And in previous administrations, presidents have managed to keep these two things very separate. But President Trump has done something different. He's actually explicitly linked them. He has said to China, to South Korea, to other countries, our trade policy with you is going to be determined in part by how much you cooperate with us on security issues.

We're working closely with South Korea and Japan, as well as partners around the world, on a range of diplomatic, security, and economic measures to protect our allies and our own citizens from this menace known as North Korea. And that will make it even more complicated for the South Korean government to proceed with the United States down this very uncertain path if at the same moment, President Trump is hitting them on the trade front. So theoretically, this historic set of negotiations,

they could be disrupted over steel. That is theoretically possible, yes. Mark, thank you very much. Great to be with you, Michael. Here's what else you need to know today. He said, will Gary Coe continue or remain in the administration? I said, I hope so. Now, if he leaves, I'm going to say I'm very happy that he left, OK?

All right. Come here, Gary. Are you happy, Gary? Yes, I'm happy. How's that? President Trump's top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, resigned on Tuesday after the president ignored his warnings that the tariffs on steel and aluminum could hurt the U.S. economy. Cohn, a Democrat, former president of Goldman Sachs, and a longtime advocate of free trade, has repeatedly tried to steer the president away from nationalist economic policies and had told colleagues that he might resign if the president followed through on the tariffs.

And... On Tuesday, the statewide teacher strike that closed schools across West Virginia for nearly two weeks appeared to be nearing an end when the state's governor, Jim Justice, signed a bill meeting their demands for higher pay. The strike began on February 22nd with the support of union officials, but then morphed into a rare, unauthorized strike after the teachers rejected an earlier agreement made between union officials and the governor. What a good day. Today, we are making an investment. We are making an investment to

make education and to put education where, in my opinion, over and over it ought to be, and that is first. Under the deal announced Tuesday, West Virginia's teachers, who are among the lowest paid in the country, will receive a 5 percent raise. I feel like maybe our voices are being heard finally. These strikes aren't for nothing. And when you stand up against government, you can take a stand and we can use our democracy to change the United States. The same day, Oklahoma's biggest teachers union threatened to shut down schools in that state if its demands for higher pay are not met. Country roads, take me home to the place I belong.

West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home. Country roads. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.