The Donald and The Nuclear Goblet of Fire (And Fury)

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

If you attack them after they have the nuclear weapons, it's not a preventive war. It is just a plain old nuclear war. You, you, you, you are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:31

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East. We're back. Well, you've been announcing to the world that you have been wine tasting up in the California wine region, Healdsburg.

Jeffrey 0:46

Yeah, this was the makeup vacation. I was in Tokyo and Hiroshima for a week, which in and of itself was sort of an incredible trip that we should talk about sometime. And since my July 4th vacation with Mrs. Lewis and the family was ruined by Kim Jong-un, I had set aside a couple of days of vacation up in Healdsburg to sip some wine and make it up to Mrs. Lewis.

That worked out really well.

Aaron 1:16

Yeah, you know, in ways, maybe they're trolling you for your sort of outsized media personality and for saying in one of our old pods about the DPRK about kissing Kim Jong-un's ample posterior.

Jeffrey 1:31

Yeah, we're square. I'm deterred now, okay? I'm very respectful of the Supreme Leader. I do not wish to insult his dignity. Please let me take a vacation.

Aaron 1:44

I mean, for listeners on this pod, we're going to talk about the Healdsburg wines. We're going to change it up a little bit, right? We're not going to talk about the DPRK.

Jeffrey 1:51

No, no. It's all vineyards and tastings.

Scott LaFoy 1:56

Please don't stop listening. They're kidding. It's all DPRK all the time right now.

Jeffrey 2:02

Yeah. Well, let me put in three pitches. If you find yourself in Sonoma, front porch, where our friend Sebastian is the winemaker. We named our son after him, so he's good. In Forestville, Rime, R-Y-M-E. That's very, very nice. And then down in Sebastopol, we went to Wind Gap, where the Rime winemakers had been prior to going out on their own.

So three unusual vineyards doing really interesting stuff. So that's it for the wine podcast. But I needed to drink because, you know, screw you, Kim Jong-un.

Aaron 2:44

Screw you, Kim Jong-un. You know, your Twitter pictures forced me to drink a little bit, too. But, so look, we were not surprised by the sort of hysterical media headlines that came out. We're recording this on Thursday. I think it was about 24 to 48 hours ago, where basically... The report that says what we've been talking about on the podcast for the past, I would say, year was simply codified and written down and then somebody leaked it.

North Korea can put a nuke on a missile and deliver it to the United States.

Jeffrey 3:19

Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that I have repeatedly said is whenever we talk about evidence, you know, there isn't a... There isn't an absolutely clear demonstration of any kind of fact about North Korea. We're always sort of, well, the North Koreans say this, and that seems plausible technically, and then there is this evidence that makes it seem credible.

But you never really know. And yet we, I think, often find ourselves in the position of arguing with colleagues who sort of dare the North Koreans to prove it. And I think I find myself often resorting to saying, like, it is really important to set people's expectations. Like, it's fine to say that, you know, there's some evidence that suggests that maybe the capabilities aren't as great as the North Koreans say they are.

But the thing I have always worried about, and I think we see it on full display at the moment, is when people's expectations are seriously misaligned with reality.

Aaron 4:18

Panic ensues. My Twitter feed is hysterical. I mean, hysterical. In terms of... Overinflated threat perceptions. Nevertheless, the threat is grave, but they exist. And then in the Atlantic Council offices by the coffee machine, and if anybody knows me, if it's not wine, it's coffee. So I spend a lot of my time at the coffee machine. CNN and MSNBC are also similarly sort of hyperbolic about what's been going on.

And so I joked on Twitter that they don't listen to our podcast.

Jeffrey 4:53

Yeah, it's very strange. I mean, the heartening part of the conversation has been people on Twitter going, why is this a news story? Those two have been saying this for like, well, since September, right? I mean, because for listeners, the backstory to this is that in February 2016, Kim Jong-un posed with a mock-up of a nuclear weapon.

He literally stood behind it. Which was jarring. Not the kind of thing you normally see. And the North Koreans made it clear, this is the weapon that is standardized to fit on the country's ballistic missiles. And so we had at that time a conversation about whether that's a credible claim for a country which, at that point, had conducted four nuclear tests.

And we thought the answer was, yeah, that this is what you would call a compact fission device. So it's the kind of thing that makes use of design innovations like levitated pits. But it's... The kind of reduction in size that comes from making that first series of innovation so comparable to what the United States was doing in the late 1940s, early 1950s, and so it didn't seem unreasonable to us, and then in September When the North Koreans did the last nuclear test, or the most recent, I should say, it almost certainly won't be the last, but when they did their most recent nuclear test, they said, we have tested the device that is standardized to fit on all of our ballistic missiles.

So it's like they showed us the object, and then they conducted a test, and they said, do you remember the object that we showed you? Well, that is the thing that exploded. So, you know, I don't know how you... Get the picture, and then see the test, and then note that it is the fifth test, which is really quite a lot, and you can look at where other countries were after five tests.

I don't know how you look at all that and have any, you know, any serious doubt.

Aaron 6:46

Yeah, and then we get on top of that, you know, the reason they screwed up your July 4th first vacation with Mrs. Lewis and the fam was a missile test.

Jeffrey 6:56

Yeah. Well, and so, you know, I mean, that's another case where, like, why were people surprised? Because the North Koreans, Kim Jong-un on New Year's Day said, we are ready to test an ICBM. They had spent 2016, they, you know, showed off all the components of an ICBM. They showed off an engine, which they ended up not using, but nonetheless, which they said was for an ICBM.

They showed off the bomb next to an ICBM, and they showed off their entry vehicle. So they showed you all the pieces that they needed, and then March rolls around, and then they tested that brand new engine.

Aaron 7:32

High-res imagery, by the way.

Jeffrey 7:34

Beautiful images, right? They called it the March 18th revolution, so we started calling it the March 18th engine. And they pointed to that, and they said, you know, the world will soon know what this means, which, you know, like... If that were foreshadowing in a movie, you would know what was going to happen. And yet we sort of didn't.

And then in June, they put out a press release, right? They put out an article in Rodong Sinmun that said, New York is 10,400 kilometers away from the DPRK. That is not far. We will be testing... I forget how they said it, but, you know, I think they replicated, you know, I think it says it's not a long way off.

Such a test is not a long way off.

Aaron 8:11

This is not to be smug, by the way. You know, this is simply to say, you know... You know, reality has caught up to their pictures, and so this has political and policy implications. If you delude yourself and you have elements within the sort of commentariat or the punditry class who downplay it, it's not to go to worst-case scenario planning or thinking.

It's that, you know, when it does happen, as you said, you set the expectation. People go, oh, fecal material, what are we going to do now? And I think what drives a lot of the hysteria that I'm seeing is that, you know, our current president does not inspire amongst the majority of the American population, at least according to the latest polls, much, you know, much confidence.

And so the big question a lot of people had is, you know, okay, you know, what's the Donald going to do when he faces his real crisis? And because this has become real, and we have to acknowledge that most people do not follow the DPRK all that closely, so this is the first time they're hearing about it, they're being smack dab with reality that, oh my god, we have the Twitter commander-in-chief, and we have Kim Jong-un-in-chief, and this is a recipe for combustibility.

Jeffrey 9:24

Yeah, you know, I think... I mean, the strangest part of this conversation to me has been the open discussion at this point of a preventive war, which is making me crazy because, you know, like, I feel like I'm, like, maybe this is pedantic, but the P-R-E in prevent means before. If you attack them after they have the nuclear weapons, it's not a preventive war.

It is just a plain old nuclear war. I think it's because people's expectations weren't set properly. Actually, I was having brunch with a friend. Friends of my wife and I. Friends of I. Friends of me. Friends of mine. My wife and mine? That sounds weird. But we were having brunch and You know, they don't really follow this issue.

And it was an older couple. And, you know, one of them was sort of like, you know, we got to take that guy out. And it was clear that, like, he hadn't gotten around to the mental adjustment of, yeah, that was a conversation for 10 years ago, right? Or better still, 20 years ago. That kind of talk now is crazy.

And, oh, by the way, also why the North Koreans wanted the weapons in the first place.

Aaron 10:47

So this gets to, you know, the president is now mid-vacation in New Jersey. Is it really a vacation if you don't do any work ever?

Jeffrey 10:59

Like it's a vacation from what? From visiting his other properties? I mean, I... So I'm saving this joke.

Aaron 11:10

You know, but this is where declaratory policy on the fact of the United States really matters. Do you know what I mean? Because the thing for prevention, as you say, is over. This sort of wonderful fantasy world where we can tank-plink, you know, a la 1990, as some people on my Twitter feed want to tell me, you know, in Saddam's army, is just loony tunes.

Prevention is not an option. So we have to start to grapple with declaratory U.S. policy about what to do with a nuclear-armed DPRK with ballistic missiles put out in the field with... Workable and tested designs.

Jeffrey 11:53

Right. And actually, I think that's why I mean, it's always dangerous to speculate on the motives of leakers, and it does make me a little uncomfortable that reporters are unwilling to do that. I guess because they're probably afraid of identifying their source. But I think a lot of people saw this leak to Joby Warwick that said, you know, there were these two assessments, and they do appear to be two separate assessments, right?

One that North Korea had as many as 60 nuclear weapons, which is a little higher than you typically see, although I don't think it's crazy high. And then the other, that North Korea had nuclear weapons that were compact enough to fit on missiles, including intercontinental range ballistic missiles. Some people thought that leak of those two facts was intended to create the case for, I don't know if you would call it preventive or preemptive action, right?

But to make the case for trying to do something. I actually suspect it's the opposite. Right. It's the president isn't getting his head around the fact that North Korea already has this capability, which, by the way, we saw quite clearly in that transcript with the president of the Philippines. You know, we're basically they're talking about North Korea and the president says, oh, all their missiles are crashing like it doesn't work like like in the president's mind.

This is a capability North Korea does not have. He said it on his Twitter feed.

Aaron 13:19

I mean, he made a declaratory policy on his Twitter feed that North Korea would not get nuclear weapons. I'm paraphrasing again. Right.

Jeffrey 13:26

So, you know, I think my guess is that actually the purpose of the leak isn't to create the incentive for military action. It's to do the opposite. It's to try to break through to the policymaker who has this really strong... Well, that's very annoying. Try to get through to the policymaker who has this really strong pre-existing notion that there are no nuclear weapons in North Korea and say, like, no, you lunatic.

There are, like, 60 of them. Some of them can hit the United States, and we... Don't know where they all are.

Aaron 13:59

Let's dig into it. Probably somewhere on the front of the back nine, somebody convened his people, whoever was there in New Jersey, and he said something. He said something.

Jeffrey 14:18

Right. And, you know, there was this immediate sort of discussion about whether it was scripted because people said he was kind of looking down at his notes.

Aaron 14:29

That was me, by the way, in our DM group. I thought it was scripted. I thought somebody wrote it for him.

Jeffrey 14:33

You know, I had a conversation with a reporter where I said, I think it's improvised because just the way he's talking. To me sounds like Trump when he's improvising. Like I kind of fancy myself a bit of a Trump whisperer. Like I, like I've known, well, I've known, I've known overconfident old men who don't listen very well all my life.

Aaron 15:00

Where's he from? From the outer boroughs or something?

Jeffrey 15:02

Is this New York subculture? I'm intimately familiar with this particular flavor of older man. I mean, we'll just leave it there. And not just one specimen. And to me, he sounds exactly like those men. Yeah. And so to me, he sounded like he was improvising, that he was, you know, he's frightened, and he doesn't know what to do, and he doesn't know what to say.

And so when you back him in a corner like that, he blusters. So I guessed it was improvised, and I had a reporter tell me really strongly, no, everybody thinks it was scripted. And I said, well, okay, if it was scripted, then that was something he dictated in 20 seconds. You know, and then repeat it. And then you saw the New York Times the other day said, no, no, no, it was in fact improvised and caught the staff totally off guard.

Aaron 15:58

Yeah, which is just, I mean, so, okay. I mean, let's put that aside. I mean, okay. The statement fire and fury and then frankly power, I mean, was sort of the money lines from it.

Jeffrey 16:08

Right. So, you know, I think this is what he does. He blusters. And he's blustering because it's not about, you know, we imagine that the President is making the statement with some instrumental rationale, right? He has some goal and this statement is the vehicle by which he will achieve this goal, and, and, you know, that there is some interagency process that supports this, but I actually think This is a much different thing, which is you have a president who watches TV and he hears about himself on TV and he hears what people are saying about him on TV.

And, you know, typically he doesn't like it. And so he wants to respond in a way that is very personal, that. Builds him up, that makes him feel like he has said something. And, you know, his hope is that it will then draw adulation from his supporters. And so, you know, the North Koreans actually don't factor into this at all, right?

This is like... You know, he has been emasculated on TV and he is trying to restore his masculinity among his supporters. And so I think it's a very personal thing. And, you know, the thing that, you know, this reporter said, which I thought was actually very insightful and I agree with, is, you know, we actually need a much better process model of how this administration works.

Aaron 17:38

Yeah, that's a good point.

Jeffrey 17:40

You know, like... Like, clearly he goes off script. Yeah. But, like, how does he go off script? Does he go off script with no briefing? Does he, you know, discuss some of this crazy stuff with his staff beforehand and they... Enable him. I mean, I think, you know, I'm sorry. You all love Mattis and... Not you, you, but people love Mattis and Kelly.

They're sycophants, toadies, and bootlickers. You know, they are... You do not reach this level of importance in DC without, you know... Knowing how to put your nose where it's dark and brown. So, you know, there may be some effort to rein him in, but I actually think we need to understand the process of how this happens. Because, you know, like with the, and I think we did a podcast on this, right?

Like with the statements about South Korea and Japan building nuclear weapons, People interpreted that like that was a real policy preference of his. And then when he would be asked about it, he would deny it. You know, and it's like, but you literally said it. But in his mind, he wasn't.

Scott 18:44

Would you say that such a guy is bereft of reason and only absolute force can work with him? Yeah, actually, I think the North Koreans have they've they've they've they've nailed the type pretty well.

Aaron 18:57

So what you want out of the interagency process and in that first statement after this becomes public and clearly you have a big media reaction that is driving questions. I was getting I was getting messages because people know I do the arms control podcast, you know, and even though I'm the turkey guy, I was getting questions. .

You know, but where's this going? You know, from people in the military, you know, who were actually deployed, you know, to support the war against ISIS, you know, like, there was, like, concern about this. And so what you want out of the interagency process is that first statement from the president to look more like Mattis's, you know, even though you call him a sycophant, you know, where you...

You consult, or at least the idea is that you take into the interests of the allies most in the quote-unquote ring of fire, the South Koreans in particular and the Japanese, and that you reassure on a level not of prevention, but of deterrence and recognition that this is the new way of doing business. And that's not what that statement did.

And so, you know, you had the next day. So if you're talking about deterrence theory and about sort of predictability in the use or at least the quasi, the theoretical use of nuclear weapons, you don't want your secretary of state to come out the next day and say, well, no, the president didn't quite mean it that way.

Here's what he really meant. When at the same time, you know, irregular warfare specialist Sebi Gorka, Ph.D., going on TV and saying something different as well because he's talking to the president, not actually talking about a common set of policy guidance talking points about something as important as U.S. nuclear posture vis-a-vis deterrence in the Asia Pacific region towards North Korea.

Jeffrey 20:39

Yeah, you know, I mean, I keep joking that Tillerson is actually dead and this is just a reboot of Weekend at Bernie's. He's not back. But, I mean, this is a case where I think he did the only thing that one reasonably could do, which is compliment the president because he's very vain and then say, and I think what the president meant was, like, I think you have to do that.

Yeah, he flipped. He did the classic PR stuff. I mean, I, you know, whatever. I have my doubts about Tillerson's influence and competence, but, like, he did that right. And, you know, I think ultimately the problem then that we run into, which is why I think we need to understand the process better, is you're not going to get any kind of message discipline out of this White House.

And, you know, the problem is there is a... The North Koreans do place an importance on rhetoric, and they do respond to rhetoric with actions. So, you know, we do run this risk of, you know, the president said no more threats, and then, you know, lo and behold, 24 hours later, like, KCNA is hold my beer, right?

Yeah, they escalated. And that's a really specific threat, and, you know, by being so specific, You know, you do run the risk that they are basically, as Tom Schelling would have recommended, burning their bridges, right? Or burning their ships and not really giving themselves the ability to walk back. So, you know, here we go.

Aaron 22:18

Well, let's talk about the threat, you know, because we talked about the Donald. We talked about... Nuclear and then sort of the problems with their process. And I completely agree with you. That's why every piece that comes out by like Maggie Hamerman or Glenn Thrush or their team at the New York Times about how chaotic this White House is, is extremely important for everybody to read, even though it reads like, you know, a gossip column every once in a while.

And that's not a criticism on them. That's because this White House is like a gossip column. You know, they're all trying to manage their own image through the press to the president because he is A 71-year-old man who would rather be on the back nine and probably spends more time quaffing his hair in the makeup room than actually getting his PDA.

PBA, excuse me. PBA getting... No, he gets no public displays of affection. That's his problem.

Jeffrey 23:04

Right, but you know what I mean. I mean, this is a guy who cared about what was written about him in the gossip columns and whose son-in-law bought a paper that was notable mostly... Right, for its society coverage. So, you know, I think that it's not unreasonable of them and probably not wrong of them to think about their press coverage in this other way.

I mean, it's effed up, but it's not, it shouldn't be a surprise.

Aaron 23:33

So let's flip it. So KCNA, you know, after Fire and Fury and Frankly Power comes out, you know, you had KCNA come out and, you know, I am not a North Korea expert. Listeners of this pod know that when we talk North Korea, you do most of the talking. I have learned a lot about North Korea in the past year.

One thing I have come to appreciate, and this is something that is that when they say something, it's exaggerated, it's a little crazy, the English is mangled, the translation is not very good, but there is hints of reality that come through, and they made a really serious threat to escalate this Right after the president, fire fury, frankly power.

Jeffrey 24:15

Well, you know, they ignored, if you remember, the thing that, I won't say it triggered all of this because there are other things driving us in this direction, but one of the important early features of this was when Kim gave his address in January and he said they were ready to do an ICBM test and the president said it won't happen.

Yeah, that was Twitter, the tweet. Right. Well, the North Koreans ignored that at the time because I think they had their own plan for things. But when they came back and released that press statement in June saying that an ICBM test was now going to happen, they referenced that tweet. So, you know, I think there are people who want to dismiss a lot of what's happening as being the president just sort of, you know, well, it's just words.

And, you know, to some extent, I think the North Koreans are headed in this direction because of actions in the past. But, you know, we really are closing off Any off-ramps, right? Like, we're shutting them down. And so even if the highway has been pointing us in this direction for a long time, there have been off-ramps, and the president keeps shutting them.

And then the North Koreans, right, shut them too. So, you know, I think there's a There's a very good chance, and we can talk about why, but there's a very good chance.

Aaron 25:42

Tell the listeners what the statement is. So tell the listeners what the statement, what they threatened to do.

Jeffrey 25:46

So North Korea has now, in incredibly specific language, said that the strategic rocket forces are going to draw up a plan for approval. People say they plan to do this. No, no, no. They're going to make a plan. They're planning a plan. They're planning a plan, and the plan will be submitted for approval, but that plan will involve bracketing Guam with four Hwasong-12 IRBMs.

Scott 26:14

Now I want to clarify bracketing, because some people have misinterpreted that as directly hitting, which is the opposite.

Jeffrey 26:22

Hitting in the ocean. North, south, east, and west of the island. You know, 40 kilometers, 30 to 40 kilometers out is what they said. So, you know, enough that it's out in international water. So it's not illegal. It's just kind of a dick move.

Aaron 26:40

And, you know, Scott's pointed out in our private talks that there was a level of specificity in there that's, let's say, irregular for their press releases.

Scott 26:53

Yeah, they talk about this from almost a programmatic standpoint. They highlight who is doing the planning, who is doing the launching, the details of it. It makes it, to me, sound very legitimizing. Like they're trying to show off the institutional and organizational nature of their missile systems. While also incidentally maybe leaving an out because technically the because I think the end of the statement says they'll submit it to the commander in chief and wait for his order.

Hypothetically, they can plan the plan, then trumpet the plan and then wait for that order for a year.

Jeffrey 27:27

Well, and I mean, I think that's the off ramp, right? They're giving us the off ramp, which is. We can avoid this. But, you know, Kim is expecting a little bit of to win a little bit. Right? He's expecting us to say something conciliatory so that he can say, well, you know, they're terrible imperialists, but in light of the thing they said, we're going to hold off on the plan for now.

Aaron 27:56

I think one of the provocative things about that is the flight trajectory of that missile out to Guam would take it over Japan. You know, and they've been hinting at that for a while.

Jeffrey 28:07

They put out a statement earlier in the year after Japan launched a reconnaissance satellite in which they said, you know, if you're flying reconnaissance satellites over our country, you don't get to complain when we fly missiles over yours. So this is brewing. And those, you know, again, the North Koreans do this escalatory threats like they do the little threats.

And if we don't listen, then they do the bigger threats.

Aaron 28:31

And so this has devolved into, well, what if they do it? Will there be retaliatory options from the U.S.? And I think you saw a leak to NBC News. I read it on my commute home last night. So I guess it came out yesterday on Wednesday about the sort of the spearhead. And we've actually talked about this in other pod is about how U.S. and South Korean war plans could actually be Incentivize others to go first.

And so they talked about the B-1 with JASM taking out missile sites. That was on the table, although I suspect that that leak was more an airing of somebody who wants that put on the table, not actually something that's really being talked about. And then, well, really being seriously talked about. And then two being whether you should shoot down the missiles again.

So with this flight path, you have SM-3 chances from Japan, and then you have THAAD chances from Guam.

Jeffrey 29:25

Yeah, I mean, the other possibility with the leak of the strike is it's such a monumentally bad idea. The only way you're going to get any... The only way you're going to get any... Deterrence out of such a threat is to have it show up in the press and then hope like hell that the North Koreans believe it.

Aaron 29:45

One of the justifications is so f***ing stupid is that the North Koreans will be able to tell a B-1 from a B-2 and that the JASM is not nuclear capable because it was fired from a B-1 and therefore you won't escalate with Russia or China. It's like you're putting a lot of eggs in a lot of baskets there.

I mean, granted, I don't think it would escalate, but it's dumb logic.

Jeffrey 30:03

Yeah, anybody who's studied any crisis knows very well that the flow of information in those situations is incredibly unreliable.

Aaron 30:12

Yeah, I mean, they're going to know that the B1 is...

Jeffrey 30:16

Like, you know, they'll get the plane wrong. Or there will be a flock of geese, you know, that makes it look like there are 12 planes instead of one. Or, you know, you just, you are running incredible risks.

Aaron 30:29

Or, you know, we light them up with so much electronic interference that, you know, they have no idea what's coming at them.

Jeffrey 30:35

Yeah, I mean, even if you think it's a 60% or 70% chance the North Koreans don't screw it up, the notion that you're going to take a 40% or 30% chance of, you know, getting Seoul and Tokyo and a bunch of other South Korean and Japanese cities incinerated is crazy.

Aaron 30:54

And what's the resiliency of their C2? I mean, their command and control. I mean, what is the line of succession there? We have absolutely, I mean, I have absolutely no idea. We put a lot of... And how is the ample posterior going to interpret incoming, assuming they can see them, incoming low-flying cruise missiles, of which one of the main plans that we keep talking about, going back, bringing this full circle, is decapitation.

And how do you do that?

Jeffrey 31:23

You know, this is precisely the same logic that led to, one, the decapitation strike at the beginning of the Iraq War, which didn't work. But also to the, you know, incredibly small military footprint, right? You can wishful think yourself into these Goldilocks strike packages, which in your mind are brilliant. But then when you get out in the real world are just based on assumptions that are terrible.

I think Luke O'Brien was sort of, we were talking to him about the scud hunt in 1991. And he was like, well, you know, the problem with the scud hunt is it was based on completely fallacious assumptions about how the Iraqis would operate their missiles. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. That's the point.

Aaron 32:01

Right.

Jeffrey 32:02

Yeah. You know, one of those assumptions goes wrong and then and then you're you're totally screwed. Yeah. So and by the way, the thing I would say about the North Koreans is we people forget that North Korea in 2010 calculated that they could sink a South Korean Navy ship, killed 46 sailors and that the South Koreans would just take it.

And by the way, the North Koreans were right about that.

Aaron 32:23

I was about to say, they weren't wrong on that one. You know, and so if they assume that the escalation ladder, if you bracket fire Guam, right, so let's say that Donald says something again in New Jersey, you know, he's got a little too much sun on the golf course, you know, his legs are a little tired, you know, from walking the six feet from his cart to the putting green.

And then you know he says something you know because he's watching fox and friends and and and he doesn't like on his twitter feed what's to suggest that that doesn't become the trigger for them to carry out on what they think you know and this is is would not escalate beyond that so just like our stupid assumptions about the b1 strike is they would they would They wouldn't escalate because they would get the message that we could impose harm on their missile program without crossing the nuclear threshold and therefore you don't want to play at this game.

There you go. We can impose harm on you by bracket firing Guam because you won't do anything in return, just like in 2010 with the South Koreans. And all we're going to get is a B-1 flyover and a practice strike on the South Korean field. And then we move forward. And let me pivot again. You know, when is the next big?

South Korean and U.S. military exercise. I mean, it's got to be coming up. It's yearly. And how is this going to factor into their paranoia? Every single year, you know, they say something about disrupting this big exercise.

Jeffrey 33:52

Yeah, you know, I think at the end of the day, when I step back and look at all of this, and Scott Sagan is writing a wonderful article for Foreign Affairs about this that will be incredible, and it's on lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis for the current situation with North Korea. I think it is just worthwhile to go back and look at the conferences that were held after the collapse of the Soviet Union when relations with Cuba started to thaw, because it turns out we had very inaccurate, Assessments of what nuclear weapons were in Cuba.

Very inaccurate assessments of the delegation of authority to fire. And as I think people discovered, very inaccurate assessments of how willing Castro was to push things. You know, I mean, maybe Castro was exaggerating as an old man, but, you know, he was sort of adamant that, you know, he wanted nuclear weapons and was trying to get them from the Soviets.

And if the, you know, U.S. had invaded, he would have done everything he could to get his hands on those nuclear weapons and use them, you know. And so... You know, I think people look at this and are like, well, that would be a crazy outcome, right? Nobody wants to get there. And so it kind of won't happen.

But, you know, you see failure all the time. You know, banks make terrible lending decisions and bankrupt themselves. You know, nobody in... Well, there is a school of thought, and not everybody agrees, but there's a school of thought that says nobody in 1914 wanted the First World War. You know... The idea that people are always going to opt for the rational way out strikes me to be an incredibly optimistic assumption, given the human beings that I know in real life.

Aaron 35:44

Because if in many ways, Donald Trump is the most transparent president in American history because he's such a blowhard. He can't just sit on his phone. Right. And then I've never seen leaks like this. Do you know what I mean? Like we are like literally voyeurs in the Oval Office and they're all leaking about each other. You know, as much as they blame other people, you know, it's clear a lot of these leaks are coming from inside the circle so that they can manage their own imagery images so that when they have to go back to being a Manhattan socialite, their Democratic friends will still talk to them.

And yet, we still don't quite know how the Donald, when he's cornered, what the process was that leads to the statement other than him improvising. But does the improvisation have some sort of consultation before it happens? I would posit that we have absolutely no idea what the decision-making process is in North Korea is, and how it all moves forward, particularly in a crisis.

All we know is that they make calculations based upon things that they've already done, like in 2010.

Jeffrey 36:53

I don't think we're going to get to a happy note in this podcast.

Aaron 36:55

No, I'm going to try, because I'm going to mention that.

Jeffrey 36:59

I'm going to try. I've got to run. I've got to run. I know. So if you don't get to your happy note quick, I'm reminding people that there's some lovely wine in Healdsburg, and it's not near any plausible North Korean nuclear targets.

Aaron 37:11

So I'm going to take a shot at it. Okay, so for listeners that don't know, I got dinged on Twitter from one of our new listeners after the This American Life episode really spiked up our numbers. So thank you to This American Life and thank you, Jeffrey, for being so prominent that I interviewed you. He mentioned that it screws up his day and he used a gif that was like a man sitting in the rain.

So here's the light at the end of the tunnel. I ultimately still have faith in basically the apparatuses of the U.S. government getting this right. And not that there's a constraint on the president to use nuclear weapons, but the president doesn't want to use nuclear weapons. And that we will ultimately end up at a policy that's similar to Mattis' statement, rather than the fire and fury and yada, yada, yada.

And so the system, we haven't forgotten how to deter. And so the systems will catch up with the tweeter-in-chief. And then we will ride through this sort of momentary thing. And so with that relative, I guess, stability, if you will, you can enjoy wine in Healdsburg, even though the Norcs can put a nuke in San Francisco. How's that for happy now?

Jeffrey 38:23

Yeah, maybe I'm not quite there. I guess I will say I think we're going to muddle through. But I also think when we get the first wave of memoirs from this administration and we get the first set of declassified documents, People are going to **** themselves. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is going... This period will be a case study that will be used to support the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Because this is like, you know, this... This is like the Cuban Missile Crisis run by some idiot mafia thugs.

Aaron 39:09

Yeah, and Jovanko. But, you know, do you want to know what my ultimate policy solution is? What's that? Trump needs to spend more time in the pool because he can't take his phone in the pool.

Jeffrey 39:19

Yes. Or he might drop his phone in the pool.

Aaron 39:23

He drops his phone in the pool. You know, so less on the golf course, more in the pool. And then maybe you can cut him out of all this, you know, and then you could have at least a coherent process that runs through some of this. Because, you know, he is a whack job. And we were kind to him in some of the earlier Donald in the nuclear series.

But, like, Jesus Christ, the man's a whack job. And the thing he said, just bluster, is stupid policy.

Jeffrey 39:50

Hey, I got to run, so I'm going to stop recording.

Aaron 39:53

Okay. So that was our best shot at a happy note.

Scott 39:58

I think that works. I had a neutral technical note that could work.

Aaron 40:00

Drop it in. For listeners, Jeffrey had to jump off because MSMEC is on the other line. Oh, fancy.

Scott 40:07

Just going to say the neutral note is maybe this is just a really high-profile guidance test. Remember when they did those ER scuds and we were all like, oh, hey, that looks like a shot at Iwakuni? I do, I do, I do. I mean... And then remember when, like, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, like, a week ago said that they don't believe North Korea can guide or reenter a missile at full range?

Yeah, never mind. We're good. Let's close out.

Aaron 40:29

So, you know, I think with that, Scott, I'm sure that there's been a lot of activity on the Slaft channel.

Scott 40:36

Oh, man. Just, yes. There has been quite a lot. So, if you are interested in joining our Slack channel and joining the crowd of folks who support the podcast and have fun stuff to talk about for missiles, arms control, non-proliferation, I always emphasize the missiles. I feel bad. That's me weighting that. Also, the North Koreans emphasize the missiles, so I actually blame them.

For $5 a month, you can get access to our Slack channel and come hang out. If you are a student with a .edu or outside the U.S., can just give me your school's email address. Send it over to armscontrolwonkpodcast.gmail.com. But head over to Patreon. If you're a student, it's $3 a month. If you're not a student, it's $5 a month.

And we've got some other bonuses at the $15 a month level, so check that out. But it's a lot of fun. We're currently doing a fundraising drive to reach $2,000 per month, at which point we're going to start regularly buying and distributing more satellite imagery of recent major events we talk about on the podcast and try to get that out, processed, and analyzed as quickly as possible for all members of the Slack chat.

Aaron 41:47

So, if you are interested, sign up, check it out. Jeffrey, good luck on MSNBC. Scott, thanks for joining us and thanks everybody for listening.