paul: well, let s put the issue of the american side on the bill, the president is a guy who shoots by an instinct, he operates by instinct, somebody who dives in briefing boats, plutonium program and what it takes of course, that s the jimmy carter strength. paul: no. i m not saying he can t therefore achieve right. paul: outcome, all i m saying this is something who is going to do it on his own instincts. i m not so word about that as he has mike pompeo and john bolton. i couldn t think of two better people to be advising me. actually denuke it is peninsula, if he doesn t he might get fear now and we will know probably before he s reelected that it was a failure. failure in this case would be a capacity by pyongyang to hit the
from the american side on the table, bill, the president is a guy who shoots by instinct. right. paul: he s not somebody who dives in briefing books, he doesn t understand nuances of plutonium program. that s the jimmy carter strength. paul: no. i m not saying he can t therefore achieve outcome, all i m saying that this is somebody who is going to go in there and do it a lot on his own instincts. i m not so word about that in the sense that he has mike pompeo at state and john bolton at national security. i couldn t think of two better people to be advising him. but my test is whether he achieves his goal, actually denuke it the peninsula. paul: yeah. the failure in this case would mean capacity by pyongyang to hit the u.s.
something that s different, but i think we none of us should be holding our breath. the proof is in the pudding. i was there in 2008 right after they blew up the cooling tower for their plutonium program. you know, they can do these dramatic things where they show they are locking something up or blowing something up, but what you really need ware inspection and you need to be able to go anywhere. north korea has nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and no longer the test sites where they come up with the weapons. are we paying too much lip service to the idea of let s dismantle some of the nuclear test sites and not putting enough emphasis on the nuclear weapons, their arsenal and their ballistic capabilities? ayman, yes, i think so. it s important that they are talking and important that kim has made this offer. looking back on arms control as i ve experienced it, one of the big things coming up here that one of the first steps that will
type of language that has never, ever been uttered by an american president in the modern era toward north koreans over anything? right. they see it as justification of their worst fears. that the whole point of the united states is to eliminate kim jong-un. they re very narcissistic in their own way. they think the whole world revolves around them. so when the president threatens them like that, they go, see? we told you so. what do they do? they accelerate their military programs. look, years of sanctions, of isolation, of threats, of ignoring them, hasn t worked at all. that has not stopped their program. it sped it up. the only thing that has worked is negotiations. we froze their plutonium program for eight years with an agreement. we froze their missile program for eight years with an agreement. but when we don t talk to them, they speed it up. when you threaten them, they just stiffen. they feel that they have to be tougher than you are. that s a chicken game that you can t wi
made the north koreans freeze the plutonium program. yes, they broke out in the beginning of the bush administration and they were confronted, we had the first breakdown with them. i think we can learn from those examples and if we cobble together an approach that s really strong on sanctions and then has a negotiating strategy where you freeze but you not only freeze but you address the regime, i like where bret was going with that. because ultimately the problem we have, even though you know i was executive director of a commission on proliferation, we don t want the north korean regime we could probably tolerate nuclear weapons if we had to, but we don t want them in the hands of kim jong un and the like. i m going to put you in charge of solving this. frank, let me get you in on the issue of patience. this is complicated stuff. this is a president who plays whack-a-mole. what granularity that president