parties together to have a workable government that would not allow for terrorist organizations to find safe haven. that s achievable through hard work and diplomacy, not through american troop presence. the president did something we almost never see him too. yesterday he admitted he went into the office with one idea and pull everything out afghanistan. he said when you become president, realize that certain things are not as easy as they appear. he changed his mind and ended up listening to his generals. ultimately, it seems, sending more troops to afghanistan. with you you surprised to hear the president admit that he changed his mind? it was refreshing to hear him say that. of course, we do want him to rely on the advice he s getting from all sources, not just from our generals, but from our experts in the state department.
what happens. do you want, i think the answer is no, south korea and japan to say, we need our own nuclear deterrence. we don t trust the united states. that would be a recipe, potentially, for instability. that kind of a transition. so, what we want to do is be reassuring to our friends and our allies. at the same time, we push back against the north koreans. tom is exactly right. this is about china. if chinese want to stop north korea the guys at the border who see the goods going in and out, they can get the flu. the north koreans will get the message and not the chinese are worried about immigrants, they are worried about a unification of korea with seoul as the capital as part of the american security orbit. nuclear weapons and 40,000 troops one of the interesting diplomatic things we tell the chinese, look, we re prepared to negotiate about that. it doesn t have nuclear weapons. another possibility is that we can talk about american troop presence. we can talk about a lot
one of the interesting diplomatic things we tell the chinese, look, we re prepared to negotiate about that. it doesn t have nuclear weapons. another possibility is that we can talk about american troop presence. we can talk about a lot of things. but you have to be willing to use your influence. do you think the obama administration has handled this well? as painful and unnatural for me to say this, i think they handled it. superbly. predecessors george w. bush and bill clinton. both of whom fell for this both who fell for this story not understanding this is a regime that doesn t stay bribed. they manufacture crises in order to extract concessions from the west and then you have a period of a year or two. meanwhile, the crisis serves the purpose of kim jung-un, or however you say his name, because it helps consolidate his power base. you don t want that to happen. i agree with tom that china is the country that can solve this. but china is the country that will never solve
more troops and you have to get rid of the july 2011 deadline, what does barack obama do? how can he say, no, general i m cutting you off? well, i don t see how he can go along with that, given both his public declaration of beginning the withdrawal of american forces a year from now and this thing which came out in jonathan alter s book essentially the deal between the generals and the president. get away from the deadline. again, they will have this review and arguing for a longer term american troop presence. so many is going to depend on what we mean by withdrawal. we will have a hundred thousand american troops there in a year. the question is do we bring them back at the rate of a thousand a monday month, 25,000 a year. tlrge withdrawals and withdrawals. i think a big part of the debate is about the pace of the withdrawal and what is going to be the residual purpose and residual size of any american force presence in afghanistan. so the devil will really be in the details.