Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On U.S. Policy Toward Nort

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 General Wallace 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