Hi everybody, im jacob, editor of the National Interest and harry has magnanimously asked me to chair this discussion. Which looks like it will be a corker. It is can sanctions bring about denuclearization or are they, and i will play editorial prerogative, a bloody any waste of time . Our panelists today, first panelist to my immediate left is Lieutenant GeneralWallace Gregson who is retired former head of us marines in the pacific and a senior fellow here at the center for the National Interest. To my further left geographically but not politically is former Lieutenant Colonel danny davis who is a senior fellow at defense priorities and danny is also im pleased to say a regular contributor to the National Interest website and finally to my right henry farren, a senior fellow at the center for international policy. Im reckoning that with all the attention being the stowed upon tehran that pyongyang may be starting to feel a little lonely and so id like to ask chip, what are the prospects for a mother north korean icbm test and how effective have sanctions been in the past and how effective can they be in the future . Well, in short thank you jacob for the introduction and thank you all for coming and offering your time and attention and commentary and critique. Short answer to jacobs question is the chances for a new missile test, ballistic or otherwise would seem to be fairly high and what was the part . How effective have sanctions been in the past, how effective can they be in the future . They have not been effective in the past and unless were willing to put a lot more effort into it it will be effective in the future. Now, the question at the top of the agenda is interesting and david already brought it up but the two parts of the question dont match. Denuclearization is impossible unless we get a big change in conditions, but at the same time, sanctions can be effective if and only if they contribute to the greater security of japan and the republic of korea. The security of japan and the republic of korea should be our objective in this whole thing, not necessarily denuclearization of north korea, because that gives all the cards to kim jongun. Effective sanctions are hard. Weve proven that. Since the early 90s weve been in a cycle with every new administration. North korea commit an atrocity or provocation, we get all muscular and pound our chest and say that this cant stand. Was recent episode was fire and fury and then cooler heads prevail and we go to negotiations. We go from negotiations to agreements. North korea eventually breaks the agreement and we go to sanctions and we always say, this time the sanctions will be effective, and they havent been yet. Sanctions are hard because youre not dealing with an inanimate object. Youre dealing with cunning, devious people and political interests and profit interests that are opposed to the sanctions. So its a way to feel good. Its a way to excuse not being able to solve a problem. Its a way to kick the can down the road and say, just wait, the sanctions will be effective. If effective means freezing north Koreas Nuclear program, weve never had effective sanctions. Shared borders with the prc and russia work against effective sanctions and our lack of any cooperative effort led by the u. S. With many nations around the globe to shut down north korean organized Crime Networks works against effective sanctions. North korea is a Nuclear Power which like other Nuclear Powers can be deterred and contained, and kim has no intention of changing the fact that theyre a Nuclear Power. Consider the nature of the regime. Its a family dynasty. Its a hereditary communist family dictatorship. Core supporters estimated to be 1 million strong. These core supporters of the regime must be kept in a standard of living is high enough to maintain their loyalty along with their coercion, and no similar regard obviously extends to the rest of the north korean population. Its been alleged that that situation is more like a barricaded hostage situation than dealing with a member of the family of nations which is amenable to our usual instruments of diplomacy. Organized Crime Networks operate globally in support of the kim crime family. Narcotics, counterfeit currency and most importantly, embargoed Weapons Technology among other things are a great source of profit. World powers and International Organizations including the un and eu have pursued economic and financial sanctions on north korea for more than a dozen years to pressure it to denuclearize. These governments have also deployed sanctions to punish the regime for cyberattacks, Money Laundering and human rights violations. These sanctions may have affected the most disenfranchised of north korea, but their effectiveness has been undercut by countries and private interests, for politics and for profit. While these sanctions have been in effect, north koreas missile and Nuclear Capabilities continue to grow. The most recent north Korean Missile test over the sea of japan demonstrated new maneuvering characteristics that hadnt been seen before so this is yet another advance and it moots some of our antimissile capabilities. Last month was the time when all north Korean Nationals earning income abroad, estimated to be over 100,000 were to return home, a requirement levied by Un Resolution 2397, adopted unanimously on 22 december, 2017. Very Little Movement occurred, despite the fact that we said we have effective sanctions. North Koreas Nuclear ambitions are not new. Theyre thoroughly ingrained and historic. In the 1970s pakistani scientist a. Q. Khan went entrepreneurial with a legally proliferated nuclear Weapons Technology area. Khan was originally driven by the need for pakistan to match indias newly revealed capabilities. He learned that his patriotic drive could also lead to handsome renumeration. In 2004, he publicly acknowledged illegally proliferating nuclear Weapons Technology originally stolen from Great Britain to iran, libya and north korea over decades. Arms agreements dont last. Washington as examples we can consider washington disarmament conference in 1922, the Kellogg Briand pact about 10 years later, the inf treaty, which just passed into history and certainly north koreas various agreements and promises have not endured either. The Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty is challenged. North koreas ruthless, the better to intimidate adversaries both foreign and domestic. Past incidents include the murder of art boniface and another soldier in the joint security area, the shootdown of the us reconnaissance aircraft, the capture of the uss below, the attack on the south korean cabinet of rangoon, attack on the south korean blue house, the brutal execution of kims uncle, closest advisor and chinas man in pyongyang. Recently, north korea demonstrated both skill and will in the deployment and employment of a weapon of mass destruction. And the assassination of kim jong nam occurred when he was attacked with nerve agent in the kuala lumpur lumber airport. Kim jongnam was the eldest son of the deceased leader kim jongil and the halfbrother of the current leader. Vx is one of the most potent nerve agent weapons if not the most potent. Vx is odorless and tasteless, and orderly liquid that is amber in color and very slow to evaporate. It evaporates as fast as motor oil and is even more difficult to clean up after. Vx is the most potent of the nerve agents we know about. Compared with sarin, vx is considered to be more toxic. It enters through the skin and is even more toxic by inhalation. Any visible vx liquid contacting the skin unless washed off immediately, will be lethal. This was a sophisticated deployment in the airport that they only killed kim jong nam and it didnt kill a crowd. It was a perfect crime. Four north korean suspects left the airport and reach pyongyang without being arrested. Other north koreans were arrested but released without charge. Having endured a nerve agent attack in the biggest airport, one may assume that malaysia and the rest of Southeast Asia made calculations that they did not want to incur the wrath of the kim family. North korea is also active in cyberspace. In 2018 north korea was charged with cyberattack on Sony Pictures entertainment of the us and the wannacry attack described but there was no apparent wordplay intended as virtually unparalleled was another one of their gifts. But more importantly, to address directly the question of denuclearization, what could be a more effective survival and security guarantee that could be offered north korea then is Nuclear Weapons and sophisticated delivery means . Secondly, what have we gotten in return for the various concessions weve made . Third, what can we say the United States say that would be believed and trusted . Our record of fealty to agreements our government has made is not good. Are we willing to extend our Nuclear Deterrence to north korea . I submit unless we can get yes to all the answers we need to have another approach and the approach will be as was hinted at in the first seminar, changing our approach, recognizing reality that the objective reality that north korea is a nucleararmed state and by pursuing that as our sole objective, by pursuing personality diplomacy at the top of our government, and this is not the First Administration to do that, or not going to succeed. We need to go to first order of business, which is to protect the safety and the security of the republic of korea and japan and ours and then work the problem from there. Thank you. Thank you, chip. Now ill turn to danny davis for his thoughts and remarks. Sanctions are a tool. Like a pen. A pen and write something brilliant, it can write something stupid. It can write something confusing but its what you do with the pen thats going to matter and at the same thing is with sanctions. So sanctions can be a very effective tool. They can also be completely pointless and even counterproductive, and i think by any measure any objective measure we have been in the counterproductive sphere for quite some time, because the main power that sanctions can have is, frankly, in their removal. If i place sanctions on you and they are biting, they are painful, but i offer you the genuine legitimate opportunity to withdraw those sanctions, whatever the agreedupon or desired outcome is and you do that and then i remove those sanctions, i now set a standard that says this is what we think, this needs to happen, this is for our security, but we will follow through and do what we say we will do and demonstrate that and as long as you abide by these agreements, then the sanctions will be relieved and we will move on and i believe if our objective was the normalization of relations and if we wanted to say, lets engage in just taking the emotion out of it, take the personalities out of it, lets get into legitimate adult diplomacy, then theres no doubt in my mind that an agreement can be had here and peace is absolutely possible on the Korean Peninsula. I specified peace, as opposed to denuclearization, because i agree that in the current environment, the Current Situation as it exists right, now as it has for decades, theres no chance that kim is going to denuclearize and if anyone thinks that hes going to denuclearize before getting any sanctions relief, and any kind of relief at all, its worse than a fantasy. Its irrational. Its illogical and yet there are many in this town that pushed exactly that desire. Somehow we think that because we have a military thats a lot more powerful, that we can basically dictate terms and put pain on them until they do everything we want, but the problem is the sanctions almost never come off. Weve added sanctions and weve done this not just in north korea but across the board in many nations and they almost never come off. What the other side does what we want them to or not, we say well they cheated so will put them back on or whatever and the net result is nothing ever gets resolved. Nothing moves forward. Now, the primary objective of the United States department of defense is the defense and security of the United States and our citizens and i can assure you that our military, our global power, our ability to project power is unmatched, unrivaled on the planet right now anywhere. We can reach out and defend ourselves if anyone watches an unprovoked attack with our existing force structure, without any additional deployment, certainly with our Nuclear Deterrence and our ability to move conventional power are that they are unrivaled and Everybody Knows that. We dont need to send signals, we dont need to send a message, theyve got. Everybody on the planet understands, believe me that well use force if we think our interests are threatened. I mean, we do it all the time. So we dont need any new messages there. But what we do need is a recognition of what is reality. If we have successfully deterred stalin and his force in the soviet union with Nuclear Power and you talk about a blamer, kim is nothing, hes a neophyte compared to that or mao zedong and any of the other chinese leaders after that. They were murderous people, many of them. They had Nuclear Weapons and yet they were successfully deterred because what underscores all of them is they want to live. They want their regime to continue to thrive and they want to operate in the confines of the country so you see now, we have, compared to what it used to, be good relations with russia and with china, with our former director war partner in vietnam, were not improving relations there and yet those governments havent changed, their relatively what they were before you just there existence is not a threat to the United States. The military power that kim jongun has is just a fraction of what we have and it can be deterred easily. He knows that. His Nuclear Deterrence is for selfdefense and selfpreservation so that wants to communicate that if we ever tried to do something to him what happened with qaddafi and saddam and some of these others that he wants to communicate i have the ability that they didnt to take out millions of people, whether its on our soil or in the region, whatever. He wants to make sure thats the case to prevent that very outcome but thats the intent. Its not to have this authentic capability that one day i will launch a missile that would be suicidal and if theres anything you can say about kim he is brutal, he is murderous, the general talked about what he did with his brother there. Kim jong nam. Kim jongnam. His morality is, he doesnt care about this kind of stuff but he does want to live and he does want to continue to have power and maintain it and he doesnt want to commit suicide, and if anything you can see hes wanting to expand the economy. Hes wanting to improve the quality of life for his country, all those things can work to our advantage because we can see this is not an irrational actor. Hes very calculated, but he understands the dynamic of power and he understands hes way on the bottom and we are way on the top and if he goes too far, he knows we can eliminate his regime and kill him and hes not going to do that. Now, armed with that we can say lets start working more cooperatively with our south korean allies. I was in hanoi last february when there was a deal on the table and i had met with some south korean officials and id met with some other americans who had some understanding of the negotionations and there was a deal on the table. Rge papers were in the process of being finalized and had already been written for what the agreement was. So the south korean side, people said they were disappointed and it wasnt a bigger deal but a full deal is fine because within weeks they told me they were already ready to launch in to the next kim moon summit to continue the process and continue the momentum because they want to improve interkorean relations, deepening economic ties, make more friendly stuff with relocation of family members that have been separated, all those things were positive and would have continued the process. North korea wants a stepbystep operation. South korea is happy and still to this day advocates a parallel stepbystep movement. That makes sense and thats in our interest. Anything we do that moves towards peace, that moves away from confrontation, that moves away from them shooting missiles and testing Nuclear Weapons potentially, is a win for us, and we dont have to trust kim, we dont have to trust our security to anything he may say or any promises because our military deterrent, nuclear and traditions, is that guarantee. We guarantee our security like that. We dont need to use force. We dont need to threaten the military option. What we need to do is recognize they are a Nuclear Power. They are, not that they might be or we can try to prevent them, thats one of the biggest holes in the logic of john boltons comments of recent weeks, because you cant stop them from what they already have, so all you can do is potentially start a conflict and a war in which potentially hundreds of thousands or millions if nuclear would die for no reason, no purpose and its definitely not something thats necessary. The opportunity for peace is on the table. If we are willing to recognize that reality and recognize our security is not threatened and move towards really working much more closely i think with our south korean allied because they have a better understanding of this than anyone, and we can work in parallel with that and say, hey one of the things we have to be willing to do to make all this happen, let me clarify that, we have to recognize we dont get to issue dictates and say, here are the terms, sign here. Any negotiation of any size whether its something youre negotiating with your company or sometimes with your kids, as ive sometimes done, its, all right, ill do this and then you do that and in the negotiation, each side has to be able to come out with something that wants in order to have an agreement that all can live with. For me to get what i want youve got to be able to get a little bit of what you want and thats what we havent been willing to do on really a broad number of things across our foreign policy. We just wanted to be all our way and iran is a great example. We want them to do what we tell them to do and we dont give them the opportunity to even possibly have a success or else its called weakness and capitulation and all kinds of other silly stuff, that prevents a peaceful outcome area. If we can get the point to where we are willing to say north korea, whether i like your governance style or not, whether i like your leader or not, they are a valid, independent nation and they have their own needs as they see, it and if we can allow them to have something they want that doesnt threaten us and that we can get them to give something concrete that we want and that wont hurt them, then i think youve got the possibility that over time they can move towards and we can get an actual peace that maybe five, 10, 15 years down the road. That is possible, in my view. That was a bristling analysis and one i will come back to because while i agree with those sentiments, i think they are totally unrealistic in the present context. Next up we have and i should say for the benefit of those watching on television that that was former Lieutenant Colonel danny davis, senior fellow at defense priorities. We are hosting at the center for National Interest a daylong seminar on the north korea conundrum. Our next and final panelist is henry ferrand, a senior fellow at the center for international policy. Thank you for having me. Its an honor especially to speak on a panel with such illustrious speakers. So ive been asked to talk about sanctions, and to me its clear that any Serious Research on north korea has to fight a coherent explanation as to why, despite decades of sanctions and pressure, the country has neither surrendered nor collapsed. And, in fact, my very first paper on north korea many years ago was precisely on that question. It was on the north korean economy, and the conclusion that has crystallized for me over the years is that sanctions, however strong, simply do not represent an existential threat to the country. They cause damage but not nearly on the scale of previous challenges the country has overcome such as postsoviet economic crisis and the horrendous famine of the 1990s, and since sanctions do not represent an existential threat, they cannot force north korea to give what it sees as its ticket to survival, namely Nuclear Weapons. Administration after Administration Bets on sanctions and ends up overestimating the ability of sanctions to subdue north korea. President trump just found this out the hard way. He believed so much in sanctions that he refused at the hanoi summit a Nuclear Freeze deal that would have improved u. S. National security, thinking kim jongun could be pressed for more. Evidently that didnt happen. North Korean Leader kim jongun gestated in his de facto new years speech that he would not discuss denuclearization until the u. S. Agreed to peace, and called on north korea to call for protracted conflict in the meanwhile. The logic of sanctions may appear convincing when divorced from its history of failure. The Trump Administration has repeatedly stated in the past week that sanctions are designed to impose on north korea a choice, a choice between prosperity if it denuclearizes, and poverty if it doesnt. That seems easy enough, but thats clearly not how kim sees the situation. In kims speech, he in fact, reiterated that Nuclear Weapons were north koreas ultimate guarantee us security against a u. S. Military intervention and that it was no use bartering them away to be rich today and dead tomorrow. Trumps maximum pressure did cause significant damage to north korea. As my coauthors and i found in an october 2019 report assessing the impact of sanctions on the population. In effect, he took what was supposed to be a socalled smart sanctions regime designed to target the military and the elite, and expanded it in 2017 into a global and almost total ban on any north koreanrelated trade, investment and financial transaction. Now, this has consequences of course to the population. It is interfered with the ability of both International Aid groups and the north korean government to address the humanitarian needs of the population. We estimated notably that the isruption to un programs alone costs about 4000 deaths in 2018. These adverse consequences raise serious legal and moral concerns that should be further investigated. That said, if were going back to the question of whether sanctions are effective i dont see any evidence the sanctions are successful in changing the Government Security policies. Kim in his speech called to foil the enemies sanctions and blockade by dint of selfreliance, and called to return to military to development. That is precisely the opposite of what sanctions are supposed to achieve. He did acknowledge certain economic difficulties but visibly they werent enough to change his mind. Now, if we want to try to have the picture of the north korean economy we have to work with very difficult data sets. Yheres very little reliable information. One often quoted figure of the gdp as of the south Korean National bank. Estimated the north korean gdp fell by 4 in 2017, at about the same in 2018, so it paints the picture of a recession because thats linked to maximum pressure. Pyongyang itself painted a different picture. It doesnt was gdp estimates. The next best thing we have from pyongyang itself is reports on the state budgetary revenue every year. There, it paints the picture of a slowing of growth. It went from 6 from 2016 to 4 in 2017, and plus 4 in 2018. Which of the two are we supposed to believe . What we can see otherwise that Foreign Exchange rates remain stable, that pump prices for oil and diesel appears to have stabilized, and there is no reports of significant unrest for what its worth in country. One has also when one talks about the impact of sanctions one also has to talk about china, north korean trade. Chinas north korean trade partner since accounts for for 90 of its trade. And im going to give you some numbers to illustrate the impact of maximum pressure. At its peak in 2014 china north korea trade was about 7 billion. According to chinese customs. Four years later in 2018, basically the year after maximum pressure was adopted, it dropped to 2. 4. Going from seven seven to 2. 4 sounds like a scary drop, but do you know what the number was in 1999 at the height of the famine . 0. 35. Basically, theres been a skyrocketing of north koreachina trade in the past decades, and so what maximum pressure has done in practice is just set north koreachina trade back about ten years, and thats more or less at the time of the sunshine policy. That doesnt look like an existential threat. Moreover, chinas official reports understate how much economic help is actually undergoing. First, they dont include smuggling. They also dont include tourism, and there has been reports that Chinese Tourists have been flooding north korea, so much so that north korea has had to refuse some because theres too many. The numbers also dont include chinese aid to north korea. Just a couple days ago, there was a report that china was planning to send hundreds of thousands of food aid, hundreds of thousands of tons of food aid over the next few months to north korea. And the reason chinas doing this is quite simple. It doesnt want a collapsed state with Nuclear Weapons adrift at its doorstep. So what we have seen from 2017 to today is beijing flip from agreeing with maximum pressure to being the primary force against it, not just on the ground but also at the un where it is pushing for sanctions relief. So we have sanctions in north korea and china is poking a big hole in maximum pressure. What do we do . I do not believe doubling down on sanctions with a maximum pressure 2. 0 would succeed either. Theres little left to sanction at un level, not to mention chinese and russian opposition now, and the logic of maximum pressure 2. 0 proposals hinges instead on stronger u. S. Enforcement of sanctions which means mostly finding chinese entities complicit incented im highly dubious this could transform sanctions into an existential threat for north korea or its just a cherry on top of the cake. A report on the impact of sanctions found evidence thousands of deaths, not merely the hundreds of thousands of deaths of the famine. Then theres the question of how much resources the u. S. Wants to pour into this. Is it willing to escalate up to which point is willing to escalate this with beijing . I will conclude with to change north koreas Security Policies and thereby to improve the security of the United States and its allies, we have to address what pyongyang actually considers an existential threat. The risk of demilitarization of the United States. Kim has stated throughout his speech that he will not denuclearize until quote, iws rolls back hostile policy and a lasting and durable peace mechanism is in place, end quote. Its clear to me we cannot convince north korea to lower its weapons without giving them adequate assurance that they will not be harmed afterwards. So the question now for the United States is, that, is a better to be faced with hostile Nuclear Power or a nonhostile one, if we cannot get rid of the nuclear part . Thank you. Excellent, thank you very much. So the issue of sanctions is actually been around for decades, proceeding even iran, and one of the big issues was south africa, whether the United States should impose sanctions on the apartheid regime. Seems to be one of the distinctions, one of the reasons that sanctions worked on south africa but they wouldnt necessarily work on iran or north korea is because there was also the aspiration on the part of the south african regime to be part, perceived as part of the western democracies. Now, if youre a authoritarian or totalitarian regime and are simply indifferent or hostile to the notion of being a democracy or being perceived as a partner or ally of the United States, then the symbolic impact of sanctions is totally nugatory. Youre reyling solely on the economic impact, which history does suggest these regimes can gut it out, and thats what theyre doing right now. Id like to return to danny daviss, a senior fellow a defense priorities earlier remarks about how we should be working more with north korea. Now, i agree with principal, and i think hes right, trump couldve had a deal in hanoi, but the problem is President Trump for the most part doesnt accept deals. Its, its my way or the highway. Theres no compromise. So he actually hasnt made very many deals. So, i would ask danny, and especially in the light of whats going on in iran now, we have trump breathing now fire and fury at iran, not north korea, and actually appearing to back it up and backing himself at least rhetorically into a corner, that it will be difficult for him to extricate himself from. So, danny, is it in fact, pieinthesky to hope that things will change in the u. S. Posture towards north korea . Or does it really depend on given how mercurial trump is, if you had a democratic president , maybe trump has broken enough ice that you could crack a deal, or if trump is reelected in the second term, does he perform another uturn and figure that he wants to keep the pressure on iran so needs to cut a deal with north korea . What i described was what is possible. Given the pieces that exist and history that exists and the capability on all sides that exist, this is what is possible. What i didnt even talk about was whether its probable, given the current political leader here in the United States. He would have to go through a major change, and i am very closely aligned with what youre saying in terms of trumps, you know, its my way or the highway, its my way or the missiles, as hes been doing lately with the fire and fury. If trump comes to the position to where and he has if anybody is able to do a pivot or uturn even and not think twice, its trump because hes done on some other issues, domestically especially, and its conceivable he could do that. If he comes to the calculation in his own mind that this is something that can end up with a political win for me or it can help me electorally, then i can see where he could make that statement becuase, look at fast he went from fire and fury two hey come hes my best friend, i love them, you, with kim, so he has done it before and so its at least theoretically possible he could do it again but it is much more difficult now because he started with fire and fury and is easier to start a a part and come back soft rather than to go backwards again. Of course what i think kim jongun has to be careful of is that he doesnt do anything that will make trump look stupid or embarrass him. Because now it will be much more difficult for trump to do anything else. One of the reasons why we had this whole switch in the first place is because kims willingness at at olympics in 2018 to soften himself a lot, to be a lot more accommodating and make it easy for trump to make his move in there. I dont know if kim can do that now either. It could be he may calculate kim, may calculate that its just, were going to wait out the next year and see what happens with the election. Maybe a new person can come in from ground zero and we can start off on a new chance or new chapter and move forward, or he may say, maybe he throws another olive leaf out there to see if trump can maybe send another beautiful letter maybe even or gives him a vase, who knows, Something Like that to break yes, and they can say hey, im willing to make a deal but something has to change on the current dynamic because i just dont see trump being the one to initiate a softening of anything because he is loath to appear weak. Well, with that id like to solicit michael, fire away, as it were. Please, as it were. You need the microphone, michael. Yes. Yes, were on now. By its very nature given where we are, our discussions going to be at a tactical level, so were all talking insider baseball, and i understand that, but change continues and for the longerterm there is an embedded existential assumption that all americans share, that this is going to turn out eventually our way and were basing that not just on the mythology of the outcome in the cold war and elsewhere, but generally our millenarian beliefs and cosmology. Were looking at a situation where we anticipate at some point north korea would become weaker and weaker and eventually something will happen. They will crack or theyll cave or theyll give up or theyll see the light, but one of the things we havent done is take away the blinders. And for a moment look at a situation where it is north korea that south korea, the rok, that begins to dissent with north korea in a situation longterm of advantage. Why would i say that . South korea has the lowest fertility in asia, and like japan, which is losing people at over, i think at least a half a million, if not more now, every year, a korea that is losing people and enters a phase of societal demoralization. Changes the dynamic in the relationship between the two koreas, so i would want to ask as a question, what would the dynamic have to be in the longerterm future for north korea, the pdrk, to be able to reunite the peninsula on its terms, and the reason i ask such a strangesounding question is that if indeed were beginning to see or will in future see a decline in the optimism of south korea, and this would be something similar say to what happen in the era of stagnation, which was decisive, in the last days of the soviet union, what would we need to do to prevent a north korea that was suddenly becoming stronger from being able to achieve the longterm strategic victory and to make the great vision of juche the way of the land . Michael vlahos from Johns Hopkins university is never at a loss for provocative question. Who wants to general gregson looks like he wants to take that first. Michael, thank you for the question. The extended question. One short answer might be we go back to the principles that we established at bretton woods, that democracy is a value. We are accused by various nations of establishing a global system. Youre right we did. We based it on free trade. We basted on democracy. We based it on freedom. We are campaigning against, imperialism, hegemonism, all of these things, and we set up a system where we profited because our allies and friends profited. We decided somewhere around the collapse of the soviet union that we had nobody left to fight so we quit talking like that. If were going to get and consequently i would argue the number of functioning democracies around the world is in decline. If we want to prevent a north korean absorption, takeover, finlandization of south korean, then we have to start working much more productively with our allies and friends than we have here 24. I think it was henri who mentioned kims what, seven hour presentation to the plenum . How many times that he mentioned the republic of korea . Zero. This should be frightening to us. While we engaged in a penny ante dispute with the republic of korea over changing the amount of money they provide for host nation support as if us having forces for the put in korea is not in our interest also, then were missing the point. South korea is a functioning brilliant democracy we fought for once, we got it set up but it started off as military dictatorship, famously transitioned to a gogo productive democracy and this is worth saving, but we are not gonna get there by concentrating on having a relationship with kim jongun to the detriment of a relationship with japan and the republic of korea. Any henri . So on north koreas intention regarding south korea, frankly, we its very hard to know what they really are. The official position of north korea is to have confederal reunification. It would basically be one country, two systems in a way that probably does bad press right now giving all thats happening in hong kong. That said, i find it difficult to believe that north korea could reunified by force because you cant if youre going to nuke a place down, thats really not much to liberate after that. I didnt say by force, i said on its terms. So what i have been seeing nationally from the Trump Administration in the past two years is originally south korea had been sort of the motor to keep the conversation on good terms, basically. And starting towards the end of 2018, there started to be worry within the Trump Administration that south korea was going too fast, especially what seems to have been the elements that led to the september Korean Military agreement. The reason the Trump Administration reacted to this, i believe, is that it was still operating on the assumption that sanctions had brought north korea to the table, rather than the opportunity to actually reduce the military threat. I think the moon jaein administration was operating on the assumption that the crucial what north korea cared about was a reduction of military threat. So from trumps perspective interkorean reconciliation was not helpful because it would poke a hole in maximum pressure, whereas from the Moon Administrations perspective, reconciliation was helpful because it reduced the threat level, and i think the fact that kim jongun now decided to go back to military development is what is the element that shows that ultimately the Moon Administration had a point there, that north korea doesnt care as much about the threat of sanctions as it does about the military threat, and so there is a way now to just let interkorean reconciliation happen, and to see how it evolves in a controlled manner. So yeah, that would be my answer to your question. Thank you. Danny davis. I think especially if youre taking the potential reunification bt force, if that part is off the table i dont think the other part in the foreseeable future is even possible because i think the drink train has overlooked the station. South korea is used to powerful and every aspect, whether its modernity, certainly economic and military power, too. I think thats undervalued too often. I served on the Korean Peninsula and i was an american advisor to the second republic of korea army down in the south, and gosh, that was back in the 90s and i can tell you that theyre evolving and developing since then. Theyre quite a potent force on the own right and theres some debate as to whether they even need is there to defend themselves in or because their conventional power is substantially higher than that of north korea, you know, acrosstheboard really in any category you want to talk about. I think what can mitigate that, having to be concerned about it is, is if we can again kind of reshape the terms of the discussion, the engagement with north korea and look more on saying hey, lets put this back in the primarily in the diplomatic and Economic Development sphere, because i do think President Trump has been right in some of his, about what north korea could become. At any we have seen that happen with china. We have seen it happen with vietnam and certainly with south korea. With the help and engagement from the International Community on an economic basis, theres plenty of opportunity there. North koreas so much further behing than those others, probably made in decades but its something that can be measured. We dont have to have kim jongun change anything else. S. B. Frank with the government we deal with on a regular basis in turkey and in saudi arabia. I mean, theres not a whole lot of happy and democracy and people not doing nefarious things we otherwise dont like in there, and yet we find a way to work with them especially when its mutually beneficial kinds of things but we dont turn them into an enemy because they dont do what we want, and the same thing can be true with north korea as well and theres opportunity that can be had i can see them develop and, of course, the more youre developing, the far less likely you are having any interest in going to the military path. Do we have another zinger from wayne, merry American Foreign policy council. I i wouldnt say a zinger in this case. You discussed sanctions as a policy rather than sanctions as enforcement. And i have long thought one of the most lucrative activity in the world must be sanctions busting. If i were young man and would want to make money quick, i would go into sanctions busting if i could get away with it. The u. S. Treasury does a phenomenal job of identifying and enforcing financial sanctions. I mean, they really are good at this sort of thing. But if youre dealing with an economy that is not vulnerable to that kind of advance sanctions, you the sanctionee have significant disadvantage. I used to watch north korean diplomats in east germany smuggling quite only from the diplomatic store across the street into their embassy from which they use the special status of west berlin to move this stuff, and i mean including narcotics, all over europe to find all the diplomatic activities in europe and the mediterranean, africa, and the near east out of their seoul diplomatic post in east berlin, which is now a youth hostel, as it happens. It fits somehow. laughs my point is that the dprk is now in the third, fourth, or even fifthgeneration of total shamelessness when it comes to sanctions busting, and experience and cleverness in knowing how to deal with, find and deal people are motivated by money. And since they do this at a level that falls below the financial radar screen with which we are most sophisticated, i come to my basic question, how do the two or three of you evaluate the level of practical enforcement with the dprks two land border neighbors . Because if they aint enforcing it rigorously, i dont see that sanctions have much of a chance. So how would the two of you evaluate prc and Russian Federation practical enforcement of the not the american sanctions but the internationallyagreed u. N. Sanctions . General gregson . Were not effective at all, and your anecdote about east berlin and west berlin and the use of the diplomatic pouch and the channel and everything to smuggle i think supports that. Recall, i mentioned that Un Resolution 2397, unanimous approval that all the nations that were hosting north korean laborers had to send them home. Zero. The episode in early 2000s when we sanctioned Banco Delta Asia that went after the luxury goods, if you will, budget the ruling kim then. China objected because it hurt some of their interests so we back off it. There was a brief moment time where maybe we were effective with a targeted sanction in my opinion but politics would not allow that to go on. More broadly we have ample experience from our own shores during the revolution and during the civil war, and during world war ii with the axis, of the extreme difficulty in trying to sanction or Blockade Movement of goods and services, people and Everything Else. Is really hard. In my impression, we boldly declare sanctions and this time it will be effective. We do in with the un, we do it nicely. We do it with other International Organizations and they we say, my job here is done. Done. But as you point out with the postulating a bright ambitious person, Good Business to get into is sanction busting, were dealing with cunning, sophisticated, very capable people that are going to react to what we do and find ways around it here and unless were willing to go to a lot of effort and expense to shut down the koreachina border and the korearussia border on land, as hard as that is, were not even doing it i dont think effectively at sea with all the heavy traffic that goes there, so sanctions are not an answer. Theyre just a last resort after we try Everything Else after north korea commits a provocation. The only way out of this, i i submit, is to go back to what is really important here, and its a Safety Security of the lights and values of our allies and friends, and work outward from there and what falls out of that might be negotiation. What falls out of that might be some otherwise targeted sanctions. What might fall out of that is on the military science side, some more sophisticated deterrent so we can to deterrence by denial as well as deterrence by threat of punishment. All of these things, and if were taking care of our allies and friends, i submit the rest of it will work out in some sort of fashion or other. We didnt know how the cold war was going to end with the soviet union either. There were certain doubts along the way, and the ending kind of surprised us when it came up. You were probably there. But were no going to change the objective fact that kim has Nuclear Weapons and we need to craft policies that deal with it. My point about kim not even considering mentioning the republic of korea, this indicates we have, in my opinion, a lot of work to do with one of our principal asian allies here to get our policies more in some sort of agreement, even if we have differences in how to do it, but weve personalized this with the kim potus dialogue that completely dismisses the concerns of our allies and france. I recall we said that short range missiles dont bother us. Japan is within range of shortrange missiles of the republic of korea as well as guam and parts of alaska, but its to tell japan that kims shortrange missiles dont bother us after japan, sorry, after north korea shot a missile over japan august 31, 1998, is not helpful to Building Alliance cohesion here. Go ahead. We have one question here. Thank you. We have one question here that i want to get to. I guess the irony of sanctions, u. N. Sanctions is that ended up just pushing north korea into the unsaturated. The only things that, the dealings of other countries with north korea are heavily monitored and policed. The dealings that are going on between china and north korea, there is this chinese saying that the mountains are high and the emperor is far away, so really beijing will say and will insist theyre applying the letter of the sanctions even though they also insist that theyre fundamentally opposed to u. S. Unilateral sanctions. And but the level of enforcement that goes on has fluctuated widely. And as i was mentioning before, we have seen things going from strict enforcement just when the sanctions were adopted to now a situation where i mean, we dont have the numbers of chinanorth korea trade in 2019, but the first half was saying it was up 14 . And again, these are figures that dont include all the smuggling that might be going on, so i would think that the trend is toward more smuggling and now. We have a final question here. Could you please identify yourself . Connie kim from voa. I have two questions, one towards general gregson you mentioned the sanctions can be effective only if they contribute to the scared of koreajapan. I was wonder what kind of sanctions you would suggest in order to protect the security of these two allies . And then for lieutenant davis, i believe you suggested a stepbystep approach in terms of north voa korea sanctions release antinuke was a process is a practical way forward. In terms of the u. S. Even considering some kind of sanctions relief, what do we need to get from the north korea site in terms of their actions . Very quickly on your first one, i dont have any crystal ball on exactly what sanctions would look like that better protect the republic of korea and japan, but this is part of the issue, i think, that we should be working much more closely with our allies than we seem to be now. We have to be working with president moon and his government on what we can do that both nations support, rather than as dr. Moon said this morning, that president moon feels hes caught in a in a box between the United States and that dprk. I think in that terms of some potentials that could be stepbystep at least to start the ball rolling and then you can get into subsequently bigger and larger and more substantive chunks, but some of the things that of talked about already, north korea could potentially offer up the dismantlement of the nuclear facility. They could potentially provide a listing of their Nuclear Weapons capabilities. They could potentially move some forces back, some of sorry, the artillery forces, they could physically move them back out of range of seoul. That could all be validated and verified, and on the other side we could offer up moving some of the American Forces back from some of the areas where they are. We could say hey, we will not just suspend the major drills, well suspend all the drills as long as we get some sort of concrete something in response. Everything is conditioned on both sides, as as each side does with their say, you keep moving things for the back from conflict and to potentially build confidence to move to the more challenging the more difficult things later on. Another one is an actual Peace Agreement or maybe started off with the cessation of hostilities to formalize that because again, everything that moves in that direction, some of the steps can be small, maybe some can be bigger but right now we need to start with something just to get the ball rolling. It turns out we do have time for another question. Our respondents were so lucid and terse. Right here. Please identify yourself. Wait one second. We have to get the tim shorrock with the nation magazine. I have been writing about to make a koreas since the 1970s. It looks like i been coming for a long, long time. I lived there and i have written very critically about the role of the u. S. Military in south korea, particularly 1980, 1979, 1980 were 1980 where i made i believe the United States military made some critical, terrible mistakes in dealing with the south korean situation at the time, but i have also talked the last time in korea with harry in 2018, at the summit with the pyongyang summit where we covered it from seoul and ive also talked to a lot of military people and i have sort of aggravated some people on the left here by saying that i dont think over the last two years, by saying i dont think the pentagon, people in america, is military do not want war with korea. People automatic is a yes, u. S. Military, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, ive heard from loss of motor people ive spoken to both here and when i been in korea is that they know the lessons from they know north korea the lessons of the korean war and im wondering what to make people here, especially general gregson from the marines, the u. S. Marines suffered a terrible, terrible defeat in the chosin reservoir. Just unbelievable suffering when we were surrounded by the chinese military. How much does that play into how one currently serving American Military in south korea, that the experience of the korean war, how does that shape your views toward the potential for war and the real danger of war . Well, those conditions that you describe are abundantly evident, and history lives. One small anecdote, the marine corps spent more hours teaching history in boot camp and we do on any of the subject. Of course its history by our definition, designed for a certain purpose, but any conflict in koreas going to be terrifically brutal, and before we even i get to worrying about the people in uniform, youve got some korean expert helping you here either the Worlds Largest megacity or secondlargest, seoul come within range of uncounted numbers of tube and rocket artillery up in the kaesong heights which by the way has not been subject to any one of the negotiations lately that i have heard. Were tight but nukes. But north korea has got the capability to create massive casualty affects very quickly with all the conventional artillery. I dont think youre going to find anybody in the pentagon or in uniform out of uniform thats been in uniform that is arguing much about in favor of a conflict in korea. Its not what were trying to do and its also, back to the point i keep trying to stress here, that whats important here is the safety and security of the republic of korea and japan, whos also very, very much in range, and its not necessarily a one on one, us versus kim jongun. I could just tell you from my personal experience, everything from highintensity conflict in desert storm, tank on tank come to survey on the eastwest border during the cold war, on active patrols with the second u. S. Calvary and counterinsurgency stuff both in afghanistan and iraq since that time come at the time i was in korea where i spent a lot of time studying history and going and walking the battlefields, looking at the actual combat plans we had, various scenarios, if this happened what would be the response and heres the contingencies and all that kind of scenario, the look of what north korea has on the other side. Anyone in uniform who just does the this most cursory understanding of what would be involved with even a relatively small scale engagement would quickly say thats thats something we want to do because visually nothing to win. Which side will have world war i type mentality victory . Once the thing is engaged its just bloody, whos going to outlast the other one. Because unlike, like in desert storm where the ability to have really take sweeping maneuvers and we could like these guys come come up behind come whatever and then unseat them and move them over here, or in the counterinsurgency stuff where its a night raid something that affect, small click here and at with helicopters inc. 82nd, thosekind of things, ive been involved with all those, done come here. Everyone recognizes the cost of conventional conflict would be just catastrophic on anyone who is involved with it. Quick interjection, one of the thing i might add with regard to that, we tend to think as result of our experience from 19501953, that any conflict in korea now would remain confined to the peninsula. Thats abundantly not true. The range the and accuracy of weapons available to everybody now indicates a conflict in korea would be a conflict everywhere, japan, taiwan, south east asia. And thats armageddon. Well, i think this is a good segue since were talking about the military. I would note that napoleon said that an army marches on its stomach, and is i believe time to break for lunch here. I would like to thank all three of our panelists for the insights and comments today. Thank you. Welcome to our afternoon panel. Hope lunch was well. Our topic for our panel today is, the trump approach to north korea, effective or not, and we have an amazing panel that i will introduce shortly. I dont start every think tank panel with a quote from the 19th century philosopher