we essentially have three options in dealing with north korea. we can negotiate, bomb or acquiesce. we can t bomb because it carries the catastrophic risk of escalating into a second korean war. when we won t negotiate, we end up aqueousing. my argue is we should pivot to serious diplomacy to bend the curve so that north korea by 2020 does not have a nuclear arsenal approaching one half the size of great britain s. i couldn t have imagined a north korean arsenal that size. $50 billion, that s about the size of the economy of dayton, ohio. north korea is a failed state with nuclear weapons. ambassador hill, yesterday you said president trump is trying to out north korea the koreans. how is that going? he certainly tried to play with them. it s a game they enjoy playing. the question is, are they going to call him on this? the concern is, of course, when you send a carrier battle group
keep trying to improve to deal with these launches throughout the entire trajectory of it. but you know, to piggyback on something phil said, this isn t this wasn t a failure. every time he tests something, even if it doesn t work for whatever reason it doesn t work, whether it is internal or external, he learns and keeps developing this capability which again is good point for it. the race against the clock right now. former u.s. ambassador of south korea christopher hill thinks this. he says president trump is trying to outnorth korean the north koreans with his rhetoric. what do you think he means by that. i think what ambassador hill is saying is that the u.s. won t get rattled by anything the north koreans say or do. the problem is and this is something that ambassador hill said is that a super power can t afford to bluff. and there in lies the challenge for president trump. to phil s point and admiral kirby s point, this is a
trudeau will meet on wednesday, prime minister of israel will be there. david wilkins is with us, former u.s. ambassador to canada, and christopher hill, former ambassador to south korea. let me begin with ambassador hill. to you, when you look at the response or lack of response, the 23 words the president spoke over the weekend about north korea, just saying we re staying behind japan responding to this missile launch, what do you make of it? it is uncharacteristic of the president to say the least because back in january he tweeted, north korea says it s in the final stages of working on a weapon capable of reaching the u.s. it won t happen. he spoke out then, not now. why? i think we re in a better place than we were a short time ago. we have the visit of secretary of defense mattis to south korea and to japan.
ballistic missile from north korea. the exact type of missile we don t know yet, the exact flight path we also don t know. joining us know, ambassador hill who headed the u.s. delegation to six-party talks and who has negotiated with the north koreans numerous times in his career. also with us, athena jones. i want to start with you, athena, as i understand the president has recently come before cameras. did he say anything in reaction to what we ve learned about north korea s missile launch? reporter: hi, ana. no, he didn t. but i want you to watch this tape and listen. you ll see exactly how it went down. then we can talk about it on the other side. go ahead and play that. reporter: north korea fired a projectile, do you know what happened, can you comment on that? reporter: so you can clearly hear that the president heard
his conversations would reveal the fact that no one country could solve this problem. that s why the six party process was made. it s so far gone well. and now he has to put together a strategy and i m sure part of that strategy has to be kind of a deep dive with the chinese on how we re going to manage this because no one wants in the next four years, north korea to be fielding a deliverable nuclear weapon. that s former ambassador hill there. i want to give you a sense of the status of these sanctions that have been talked about here. in november the u.n. slammed north korea with some of its toughest ever, placed a new ban to prevent the country from exporting certain metals.