The Libya Model and North Korean Nukes

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

Washington, you want a friend, get a dog. 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 0:25

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Kariri Center for the Middle East.

Jeffrey 0:32

Hey, Aaron, have you ever stayed at the Shangri-La in Singapore?

Aaron 0:36

No, I've never been to Singapore.

Jeffrey 0:38

Now, see, I have stayed there, but I don't remember what the cancellation policy is.

Aaron 0:44

Usually it's 24 hours in advance, although, you know, maybe on this one it's a little longer.

Jeffrey 0:49

Yeah, maybe, maybe. So clearly we're joking about the fact that President Trump's summit with Kim Jong-un is in a wee bit of trouble. I don't think it's dead yet. In fact, I probably think it's still going to happen. But we had some exciting news over the past 24 hours that I think serves as a lovely reminder that this isn't going to be as easy as all the newbies thought.

Aaron 1:16

Yeah, I think it's proverbial shots fired at some of the talking points coming out of the United States and reminding everybody about the stakes and this question of leverage.

Jeffrey 1:26

Yeah, I think before we dive into like just how screwed up things have gotten and how they got screwed up and whether it's possible to unscrew them. I've been talking on Twitter lately about how old I feel. And the reason I feel old is because I have lived through all of this multiple times.

Aaron 1:47

This isn't your first rodeo with the Norks?

Jeffrey 1:50

No. You know, and so a lot of the things that we have been talking about, I think it strikes people as unnecessarily cynical. Or partisan.

Aaron 2:01

Yeah, but it's not cynicism.

Jeffrey 2:03

It is just hard earned misery. Like, you know, whether it's 2012 where U.S. diplomats insisted the North Koreans had agreed to something that the North Koreans definitely did not agree to, or 2008 when the North Koreans knocked down that flippin' cooling tower at Yongbyon. Or, you know, 2002, when the agreed framework collapsed, or 2000, when we were so close to a missile deal with the North Koreans, or 1998, when we went and looked at Kumchang-ri, which we said was an underground nuclear reactor, but was just a hole in the ground, or even the negotiation of the damn agreed framework.

It's never that easy.

Aaron 2:42

Well, of course, that international diplomacy, especially with a regime like North Korea, is difficult, despite efforts to raise expectations.

Jeffrey 2:52

Yeah. So, you know, I just I think sometimes a lot of us in the North Korea community come off as though we're against negotiations, which we're not. It's just that every time we go through this, there's some like fresh faced diplomats who haven't done this before. And there are fresh faced pundits who are just credulously believing it.

And it reminds me, I don't know, have you ever seen the movie Dig? I haven't actually, no. So the movie Dig is about these two bands, the Dandy Warhols, who became very, very famous, and their friends from Portland, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, who did not become famous. And there's this wonderful interview with Matt Shores, who at that point is like an A&R guy who's signing the Brian Jonestown Massacre.

And he's talking about like... How it's really easy. Like you just go out and you find a great band and you give them money and they make a classic record. And he's so confident that like he has outsmarted everyone. And just by, you know, giving this group of insane drug addicts a pile of money, they will build a studio and an incredible album will result, which of course it does not.

They do not. Become famous, I feel like that on North Korea, you know, we have people like, it's so easy, you just Kim said he's gonna give up the weapon, so you know, we'll go to Singapore and you know, voila, it's like, okay guys.

Aaron 4:28

Yeah, I mean, I think we should back up and give a little bit of framing to this. I mean, this has the feel of an emergency pod because, you know, news is becoming fast and furious. We're recording this on a Wednesday at 1 o'clock East Coast time. And, you know, basically for over the last 48 hours, North Korea has been kind of holding the summit hostage, you know, in response to some of the language over here in the United States causing some whipsawing about will we or will we not go out to Singapore, as you said.

Jeffrey 4:58

Yeah, so I mean, I think that, you know, the factual pieces for listeners who didn't follow it is the North Koreans announced that they were canceling a meeting with the South Koreans. And in the course of canceling it, they threatened to cancel the summit with the United States. The stated reason for the cancellation of the meeting with the South Koreans and the threat to cancel the summit with the United States is this ongoing air exercise that the United States is doing, which...

Japanese press reported would include B-52s. It's actually unclear whether it really would. But the Japanese press said it would. And the North Koreans got real bent out of shape, in part because, you know, they were talking about doing the closing of their test site on either May 23rd or May 25th. And the exercise was scheduled to run through May 25th.

And if the bombers make an appearance, they always make an appearance at the end. And so that's what the North Koreans said they were angry about. But I think as they have released more statements, including the statement from Kim Gagwan, who's the you know, vice foreign minister and, and, and just if you've ever followed North Korea's nuclear diplomacy, he's he's been an ever present force for, for more than a decade.

His statement makes clear that really the problem here is the language coming out of the White House, emphasizing how it was the maximum pressure campaign that has brought North Korea to the table, and particularly John Bolton's discussion of a Libya-style deal, which we've been quite critical of, not least because rarely when you're encouraging a person to do something, do you bring up a precedent where another person did the same thing and then got stabbed in the butt with a bayonet.

Aaron 6:49

That's true. I mean, I think we should start by telling listeners why the B-52s within this context matter, because the military exercises will go forward, but the B-52s, they come at the end for a reason, right?

Jeffrey 7:01

Yeah, you know, the U.S. has this continuous bomber presence in Guam, and we rotate bombers through, and then those bombers then participate in exercises all over the region. So actually, I think I've seen some denials that there ever were going to be B-52s, but it would not be unusual for bombers out of Guam participating in the continuous bomber presence mission to then make an appearance.

But, you know, they're simulating a nuclear attack on the North Koreans.

Aaron 7:29

Right, that's exactly what I was going for. And to overlap with the symbolism of overlapping with their dog and pony show to bring the international community, I think is the reason for the first statement.

Jeffrey 7:41

Yeah, and I've seen some people say like, oh, well, didn't Didn't Kim Jong-un say that it was OK for us to do the exercises? And here is where I should add an asterisk. Kim Jong-un was quoted by a South Korean diplomat who had had several drinks as saying, you know, and and and. While I actually do think that Kim was signaling that they weren't going to blow things up over the exercise, Bolton's comments, plus the possibility that there would be a bomber flight at the same time they were closing the test site, seems to have been too much for the North Koreans to bear.

Drunken promises of love and peace and happiness notwithstanding.

Aaron 8:27

Right. And now I think we should dig into the statement a little bit, because I sort of look at the King Gaguan, I sort of view that statement as like, like their opening positions, if that makes sense. And like those opening positions are vastly different than what the Trump administration's at least talking points about the US opening positions are at the summit, supposedly in Singapore.

Right.

Jeffrey 8:51

Yes. I mean, this has been something that you and I have been screaming about and no one else has really been, I shouldn't say no one else, but a lot of people have not been super excited to hear, which is we keep pointing out that the North Koreans have never said they will give up nuclear weapons.

Aaron 9:06

I mean, I think we should say like the arms control one community, at least I follow, are in lockstep with us. Like we sort of are in this small cadre of people who have seen this rodeo before and like, wait a minute, like what's going on here?

Jeffrey 9:17

All of Kim Jong-un's statements are the kind of general statements about how nice it would be to eliminate the scourge of nuclear weapons from the world that other North Korean leaders, his grandfather and father, have made. So they say denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which I wrote a little op-ed in the New York Times to make the point that that's as much about our nuclear weapons as theirs.

You know... Kim Jong Il used to say about his father, and then now Kim Jong Un says about his father, is, you know, it was my father's dying wish, which the implication is it will probably also be Kim Jong Un's dying wish. But, you know, I think the North Korean rhetoric has been a lot like President Obama's Prague speech.

It's aspirational in tone, and it holds out the promise of taking... You know, what Sam Nunn used to say, you know, disarmament's like a mountaintop shrouded in fog. You can't see the top or necessarily know how to get there, but you know if you're going up or down. I think the North Koreans are willing to say that aspirationally they would like the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

But they're really only there to talk about, I think, a much... More limited set of concessions that actually represent kind of the opposite of denuclearization. You know, what the North Koreans are bargaining for is recognition, and they're trying to set the terms under which we will accept their nuclear arsenal. Like, well, what if we don't test, right?

What if we don't do ICBM tests? What if we promise not to export things? What if we have a slightly nicer declaratory policy? Like, If all of those things get done, would you be willing to accept a vague aspiration for denuclearization without actually giving up any weapons? I think that's what the North Koreans are after. And I think Kim's statement is the most explicit statement yet along those lines.

And I think they've kept it a little ambiguous because they want the summit.

Aaron 11:19

Yeah, I'll read it. I mean, I'll read directly from the translation. I mean, it's, we have already stated our intention for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and made clear on several occasions that precondition for denuclearization is to put an end to anti-DPRK hostile policy and nuclear threats and blackmail of the United States.

Jeffrey 11:40

That's clear. Well, and I, you know, there are two other lines that I think are really important. One that's pretty unambiguous and one that I think needs to be teased out a little bit. You know, at one point they say the U.S. is trumpeting as if it would offer economic compensation and benefit in case we abandon nuke.

But we have never had any expectation of U.S. support in carrying out our economic construction and will not at all make such a deal in the future, too.

Aaron 12:07

It's clearly a reference to the Pompeo sort of thing on the Sunday shows last week.

Jeffrey 12:13

And then there's another thing they say, which actually I think is more... Direct, but it doesn't translate very well. It is a ridiculous comedy to see that the Trump administration, claiming to take a different road from the previous administration, still clings to the outdated policy on the DPRK, a policy pursued by previous administrations at the time when the DPRK was at the stage of nuclear development.

Okay, that's vague, but what I think that says is... We thought that you were different. We thought you were prepared to live with our nuclear arsenal. But in fact, you are just like Obama and Bush and Clinton, and you expect us to promise not to build nuclear weapons or not to have them, which was a thing that you wanted when we were still developing them.

But that's no longer true, right? The North Koreans say, no, they have them now. And so they're expecting to be treated differently. I, you know... I think that's awfully clear.

Aaron 13:18

Yeah, I think they make it clear. I mean, just one more direct quote from it is, you know, sick. World knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met miserable fate. It's absolutely absurd to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapons state, to Libya, dot, dot, dot.

Jeffrey 13:35

Which had been at the initial stage of nuclear development, right? I mean, again... Not Libya. Well, and I think that then transitions to what the real problem here is, which is a problem I mentioned in the column and we discussed on our podcast.

Aaron 13:48

Yeah, minute 30 of the last podcast.

Jeffrey 13:50

The reason that Bolton was bringing up Libya was not to help out. He was trying to sabotage the talks.

Aaron 13:57

Yeah, let's unpack that a little bit. I mean, because this goes back to the central sort of thesis or premise of this podcast is that we're not being cynical, but raising expectations and saying it will be easy is actually... That's the cynical part. Being realistic is being realistic and is actually more helpful.

Jeffrey 14:19

Yeah, I mean, this is one of those things where I guess if you don't follow arms control, maybe you don't know this... Really traditional trick because I've had a couple of conversations with foreign diplomats. It's called letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And whenever I say that, people are like, what's that mean? And the canonical example of that is Richard Perle, when he worked for Reagan, hated the idea of signing a treaty with the Soviets on intermediate range nuclear forces.

This is the same treaty that the Russians are now violating. He didn't want negotiations to succeed. He wanted to sabotage them. But Reagan wanted a deal. And so Perle's solution was not to be opposed to a negotiation. It was to demand what he called double zero. That the Soviets would have to agree to the complete elimination of their intermediate range nuclear forces, which was an absurd thing to ask for at the time because the US had none, our programs were still underway, and the Soviet programs were actually already starting to deploy.

And so what Pearl did was he let the perfect be the enemy of the good, it's just unlucky for him, Reagan was dealing with Gorbachev, who was like, okay.

Aaron 15:32

Right. In a more recent example, this is the whole debate about the fix-or-nix crowd of the JCPOA and the Iran deal.

Jeffrey 15:40

Yes. I mean, it is incredible to me how successful those people were in persuading... Credulous reporters that they actually intended to fix the agreement.

Aaron 15:57

Right. And it continues. But I mean, that's a podcast we're going to pick up later. But like, so when you go back, I mean, I think we have a statement from Bolton from March 9th, where he is at that point, just, you know, telephone buddies with the president, not the national security advisor. I've got it.

Jeffrey 16:12

It says that the upside of having an unproductive summit is to foreshorten the amount of time that we're going to waste in negotiations that will never produce the result we want.

Aaron 16:22

Right. Yeah, you got it.

Jeffrey 16:25

He literally said this is his plan. Right.

Aaron 16:30

Right. And so when he comes in and he is magnanimous now in his interviews where he says something along the lines of Trump is a great negotiator and he'll be able to size him up quickly when they get across the table from each other. This is not couched in altruism. This is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Jeffrey 16:48

And I mean, again, this is one of those things that, you know, you try to tell people and then they look at you like you're the crazy one. But in Bolton's memoir, He describes doing exactly this, right? He describes, and I actually think he exaggerates a little bit because we've got some of the internal documents now from this process.

But he basically talks about how he was opposed to negotiating with North Korea in 2002. And that the rest of Colin Powell's State Department wanted to go to Pyongyang and wanted to do a negotiation. And that he, once he got talking points that he thought were inflammatory enough, and this story is actually more complicated than this, but, you know, Bolton's version is all that's important here because it's what he's willing to admit.

He says that he actually then supported the trip to Pyongyang because he knew it would blow up. You know, and he, I actually have my students read this and they are scandalized. It's in his memoirs.

Aaron 17:51

Yeah, and then he's doing the same thing right now. I mean, people are juxtaposing his positions as a private citizen versus his comments now as a national security advisor, but there's a clear linkage.

Jeffrey 18:02

Oh, yeah. Well, and don't forget, even when he left state and actually was not even at the UN anymore, under the Bush administration in 2008, the people he left behind at state killed... The six-party deal, and Glenn Kessler wrote a wonderful story about this at the time. They killed the six-party deal by insisting on unreasonable amounts of safeguards access.

They wanted intrusive and humiliating inspections. And do you know what a delicious irony is? Glenn quotes David Albright at the end saying, no country in the world would accept these kinds of humiliating safeguards. No country would accept these sort of inspections. This is clearly an effort to sabotage the agreement.

Aaron 18:51

Right, and you bring that up because this is what's happened with the Iran nuclear.

Jeffrey 18:54

Because then David used precisely that tactic on Iran, yeah.

Aaron 18:57

Right, right, right. You have to be able to go anywhere.

Jeffrey 19:00

It's a tactic. And I mean, it's just odd to me because when I talk to reporters or I talk to students, people don't think of it as... Like, it's actually really hard for them to imagine... That someone would lie in that way that someone would say, Oh yes, I, I strongly support negotiations. Just here, let me help you draft the talking points, you know, you like, like they, they, they just, they can't imagine that people do that, but you know, it's Washington.

You want a friend, get a dog.

Aaron 19:29

That's right. It is Washington. The place is cutthroat. But if you then zoom out, you know, and to use your Richard Perle Reagan Gorbachev model is that Perle was ultimately big footed because the guy with the biggest foot was in favor of what became the INF. Yeah. We had some talk this morning from Sarah Huckabee Sanders about, you know, she was asked about this.

And she responded pretty forcefully. And John Bolton may find himself underneath the railroad car or the bus of of Team Trump. I think that at least for today. Right, today, 1.29 p.m. East Coast time.

Jeffrey 20:12

Bolton did get tossed under the bus. Yeah. And it was... I thought it was really interesting how they did it, because they did it in a particularly Trumpian way. They turned the fact that Bolton had been talking about a Libya-style agreement, which clearly was designed to offend Kim, right? Yeah. Yeah, we talked about last podcast, you know, because because Bolton actually when Bolton was arguing that NATO should kill Gaddafi, people asked him, like, hey, wait, didn't you sign this deal with him?

And Gaddafi said, you know, nobody believed it was a get out of jail free card in perpetuity. Right. And so when when when Bolton says this is a Libya deal, he is saying we are not going to give you a get out of jail free card. Right. But what Sarah Sanders Huckabee said was, you know, this will be a Trump style deal.

And it's a whole emphasis on how John Bolton's not in charge. Trump is. And so it seems like the North Koreans figured out how to needle Trump.

Aaron 21:05

You know, I mean, I think the sub and this goes back to my first things we're talking about, at least on my side, was this question about leverage because he's front loaded this and because he's made this such an important component now of his foreign policy, particularly with the scandals. He has a lot invested in this. And so the leverage has, I would say, kind of swung to their side.

I mean, am I crazy and thinking like that?

Jeffrey 21:31

Oh, I think this is the most interesting question because early on, I would have said that Kim wanted the summit more than Trump because it was such a big deal for the North Koreans to get a summit.

Aaron 21:44

Absolutely.

Jeffrey 21:45

I'm with you on that. And, you know, I mean, and in this way, I guess I'm a prisoner of, you know, now being old, like I still remember. At the end of the agreed framework, the North Koreans were like, the agreed framework is fine, but it's signed by an assistant secretary of state. Like, we need a letter from the president.

And they actually made Clinton write a letter and sign it. And then they were bent out of shape that it didn't have president of the United States below his signature. And they ran Clinton's letter on the front page of the Rodong Sinmun, right? So, like, I know how the North Koreans, or I am conditioned to see how the North Koreans want to use the visuals associated with the summit for their own internal propaganda efforts, and I have some sense of how much they value that.

But having said that, you know, there is this other piece, which is... Trump really wants a summit too.

Aaron 22:41

Right, it's really, this is really fascinating. He's really invested in it.

Jeffrey 22:48

And, you know, I mean, I have this whole hypothesis where because Pompeo, I mean, you know the way I think this came about is Pompeo was rumored to, when he was director of the CIA, be giving Trump really rosy assessments of how much maximum pressure was affecting North Korea. And it was really upsetting to a lot of analysts.

But I guess Pompeo was sucking up to Trump. And what he would do is he would tell him, oh, yes, sir, they're close to giving up the bomb because you've been so tough on them. And so in a weird way, when the South Koreans, when Chung showed up, Trump was preconditioned to believe that his pressure campaign was working and that the North was really going to give up its weapons.

And so then he agrees on the spot to go. And I think now Pompeo is totally in the tank for this, right? Because like Pompeo's ability to succeed at CIA and then push Tillerson out of the way and get the job as the Secretary of State is entirely based on telling Trump what he wants to hear. And if this all goes sideways, I think Pompeo is holding the bag.

So I think Pompeo is like... Pompeo is, you know, now on the same walk in the woods as the South Koreans are. He's desperate to make this happen. And, you know, I don't know if you ended up reading the Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury, that was so salacious.

Aaron 24:15

I did. I did.

Jeffrey 24:16

I think there was some really insightful stuff in there. And in particular, the stuff about how they viewed the Saudi trip. Right. It was a get out of get out of Dodge godsend. It allowed them to get out of the constant cycle of negative coverage and show the president in a presidential way, doing presidential stuff and winning, which, by the way, is something Reagan used to do.

You know, Reagan's advisors who were not crazy about summitry with Gorbachev used to be appalled that Reagan would, when things were not going great for him, would like turn around like we should do another summit. Right. So I actually don't know. Which of the two of them is more invested in this photo op, especially now that Kim has gotten so many of the little pieces, right?

He's gotten the two visits with Xi Jinping. He's gotten the inter-Korean summit with Moon. He's gotten multiple visits with Pompeo that resulted in pictures that went on the front page. Like he's gotten a ton of what he is gonna get out of this. And then, you know, I think today, I think he's getting even... I don't know if the bombers were ever going to be part of the mission or not, but he's got Yonhap reporting that we're pulling the bombers out.

Aaron 25:30

Yeah, or, I mean, or at least if it was a piece of disinformation or false reporting, no matter what happens, it will look like the United States backed down from the North Koreans, which flips the narrative again.

Jeffrey 25:44

And he got the president's spokesperson... To give John Bolton a big old Cleveland steamer.

Aaron 25:53

And reacting directly to that translated message we read where like the entire middle part of it was about the Libya model. Yeah.

Jeffrey 26:03

So, you know, I think you're Kim Jong-un, like you're feeling pretty good today.

Aaron 26:07

Right. If you're like, I actually don't know how he thinks, but like if you sort of take a gander at like their policymaking process, you could say that they just pressured the United States into another concession.

Jeffrey 26:19

You know, and I think for them, that's really important because their story has been like, you know, oh, look, Saddam gave up his nuclear weapons and you invaded and hanged him. Gaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons and then you used airstrikes to allow rebels to overthrow him and then murder him and his family in the most grisly way possible.

We completed our nuclear program, the North Koreans say, and guess what you're going to do? You're going to come and kiss Kim Jong-un's butt. And obviously, Trump has had this other thing saying, oh, no, it's the pressure. It's the pressure that made you come to the table. And I think the North Koreans like, oh, really? Well, so then how come you cancel the bomber flights?

How come you told Bolton to pipe down? Like, I think these are these are tangible deliverables that are probably useful, especially if there are politics back home in Pyongyang. I mean, Kim's got to look like the dude right now.

Aaron 27:10

I think, again, like, just repeating what we said in the last part, but I think it's a good way to close it out, is... I mean, I guess it now comes down to, if we assume the summit's going to go on, and we assume we'll get past this hiccup, which I actually think the two sides will, this will ultimately... Well, sure, they pooped on Bolton, and they've said they promise there won't be any B-2 overflights.

Jeffrey 27:34

Sure, sure. Or B-2 participation. B-52. Okay?

Aaron 27:37

Woo-hoo! But, yeah, no... I mean, I think we're coming down to how we'll define denuclearization. I mean, if it goes forward, right? I mean, that becomes the main question. And if they're willing to throw Bolton under the bus about the quote-unquote Libya model, what is it that they're willing to give on the denuclearization definition?

Jeffrey 28:02

Yeah, I mean, and I think you see that Pompeo has been so careless with his language. His Sunday performance last week was abysmal. I mean, we're still defining it. No one knows what that means other than, like, who was it? It was Adam Mound who said, like, you gave that interview on the eighth floor of the State Department, which means you literally took an elevator past seven floors of people whose full-time job it is to answer that question.

Aaron 28:27

Yeah, his performance was bad. It was all over the place.

Jeffrey 28:30

But the reason I think it's bad is because he doesn't care about the details. He's on the hook for this working. And so I think his goal is just to get Trump and Kim in a room and they'll do happy talk. And you know the president can't bear to admit that he's been taken advantage of.

Aaron 28:46

Yeah. I mean, that goes back to the thing.

Jeffrey 28:48

So, you know, Kim will probably say, yes, someday I would love to get rid of my nuclear weapons. And Trump is going to be like, I got them to promise to get rid of their nuclear weapons. I think that's I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, this is hard for me because. I actually think that we have to get on with the business of recognizing that North Korea has nuclear weapons and this kind of deal where we accept that fact, but then we ask them to undertake certain commitments like not to test is actually a good deal.

Like, I think we should do that. And if the president's going to do that, if he is going to, like, use his cachet with all the MAGA idiots to undertake this really left-wing policy of recognizing North Korea's nuclear arsenal in exchange for very limited concessions, you know, I guess I'm for it. I'm just, you know, I don't think Bolton's going to give up.

And I worry that this will be like where the president on TV says, yes, he is for some particular gun regulation, only to later be told by the NRA that, no, he's not allowed to be for that. And then this all ends badly. So I just, you know, I feel like you could really get something good here.

You know, you could shift our conversation and take denuclearization away as one of the impediments. And, you know, instead we could work on tension reduction and improving relations and really just limiting the threat from their nuclear weapons. But they're not honest that that's what they're doing, right? They have this story about how it's all maximum pressure and North Korean disarmament, and I worry it fails really dangerously.

Aaron 30:45

Can I play devil's advocate here? And then isn't that sort of the tale we told ourselves about the JCPOA, about maximum pressure, ultimately getting concessions, where it was really more... Oh, it's exactly the tale we told ourselves. I mean, granted, it got blown up because of, like, just... Outright motherf***ing stupidity. It got blown up over this perfect being the enemy of good.

What if we can end up at that outcome? And maybe our dire prognostications and predictions about mismatched expectations can be papered over, especially if his base will buy it no matter what, which they seem to be doing right now anyways.

Jeffrey 31:24

So my problem with that... Which is a conditional problem, right? Like people thought Reagan was a lunatic, but Reagan was basically able to get a pretty healthy chunk of the Republican base to swallow arms control treaties with the Soviets that they would have never swallowed from a Democratic president. And so, you know, there is that possibility. The thing I'm worried about is precisely because the Obama administration sold the JCPOA as this triumph of sanctions, which it was not, right?

It was a triumph of making concessions, right? They created, or at least fed, this myth of the better deal. That, you know, this all came about because we were tough, and if we were even tougher, we'd get a better deal. Like, that's how people were able to do this. You know, nobody is willing... To be honest about what I think is the core problem we face when it comes to nonproliferation and disarmament these days, which is actually we don't have that much power anymore, right?

That our tools for combating the spread of nuclear weapons are so much poorer because the technologies are more archaic every day. And so export controls don't do nearly what they did. And and the value of the weapon still remains high even as the difficulty of building them declines and so like I don't know I think I on Twitter I Said to a colleague like I think we're you know, we're out of the like coercion era of Arms control disarmament and non-proliferation and like into the asking nicely era And that doesn't really it doesn't really suit our political culture all that well.

I

Aaron 33:10

At least the current political culture. But we're going to have to see. I mean, I wonder if they can make overdone steak with ketchup in Singapore. I bet you they can.

Jeffrey 33:23

I'm sure. I mean, why not?

Aaron 33:27

And maybe Kim just gets really drunk and we know Trump doesn't drink. And maybe he flips the table on him with an inebriated Kim Jong-un. You know, that alone...

Jeffrey 33:37

Has got to be the most interesting subtext of this. Kim's got to sit through this meeting sober and maybe not even smoking?

Aaron 33:44

Yeah.

Jeffrey 33:46

It could be a short meeting.

Aaron 33:50

Our president is routinely cited as having a very short attention span himself, so maybe they'll be mutual enablers of a short meeting.

Jeffrey 33:58

Do you think he'll go for the hand-pull maneuver with Kim?

Aaron 34:04

One thing I'm actually interested in is the photo of the two men, because Kim is really short, but they somehow manage to hide it because he wears high heels and those billowy pants. But Trump is, what, 6'3"? He's pretty tall. You know, that one's a big...

Jeffrey 34:16

Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. You know what? I believe Trump's height was slightly exaggerated by Dr. Ronnie Jackson, a.k.a. The White House Candyman.

Aaron 34:28

Fine, even if he's 6'2", 6'1", he's still about... No, do you know this?

Jeffrey 34:32

Do you know this?

Aaron 34:33

I do know this. It was to get his BMI so he wasn't in the obese category.

Jeffrey 34:37

Yeah, the doctor said he was 6'3", 240 pounds, and so people started posting pictures of Trump next to other 6'3-inch athletes who weigh 230 pounds. But you know what I mean.

Aaron 34:55

The visuals matter in North Korea to the point where their leader wears high heels. I mean, lifts, right? Yeah.

Jeffrey 35:02

Yeah, although, yeah, so from one picture I'm looking at, Trump is the same height as Barack Obama, and Barack Obama is 6'1".

Aaron 35:11

Fair enough. Even if he's 6'1", 6'2", whatever, Kim isn't 6'1 or 6'2".

Jeffrey 35:17

No, that's true. Although, you know who... You're right. They managed to hide it. Actually, one, now we're just afar, but I notice, and, you know, God, I'm the last person to throw stones at weight. Pompeo is fatter than Kim.

Aaron 35:37

Have you noticed? I did notice, yes. I pay attention to these things.

Jeffrey 35:42

I think Kim's just got to be like, oh, please, thank you. Thank you for sending me.

Aaron 35:48

Pay attention to these things. You guys, it's your team who started doing all this analysis of the imagery, so I started paying far closer attention.

Jeffrey 35:55

But we're off the rails now. I didn't realize that, you know, Pompeo's a big guy.

Aaron 36:01

Yeah, we're off the rails now, though.

Jeffrey 36:03

Okay, well, you know, I mean, I think the thing to wrap this up is, you know, I still think that the dynamics at play are fundamentally the same as they were before this blow-up. It's just that we can see them now, you know? Like, all the things we had speculated, I think, have been... I wouldn't say confirmed, but our hypotheses...

Have been strengthened by what we've seen, which is that the North Koreans are not giving up their nuclear weapons. They're trying to negotiate for their recognition, and they're willing to live under some constraints to get there. And the White House is a show. You know, Pompeo is in the tank for this meeting no matter what, because he thinks his survival depends on it.

Trump really wants the meeting because it's a chance for him to look like he knows what he's doing. And Bolton is trying to sabotage it. And I just think what we don't know is whether Bolton's sabotage will work. So far, it has not worked. I mean, it clearly got the attention of the North Koreans. It clearly pissed the North Koreans off.

Aaron 37:10

The North Koreans very gently threatened not to go to the summit.

Jeffrey 37:14

You know, I mean, it was a pretty mild threat, but nonetheless a clear threat. And that elicited a statement from Sarah Sanders throwing Bolton under the bus. I think Bolton will keep it up. And I have this kind of, you know, fascination. Like, it may be that Bolton's wrong. Like, Bolton may succeed in sabotaging this only to find that the president's pissed at him.

Aaron 37:35

Yeah, I mean, or as we said, and just to wrap up, that the president really is committed to this thing, and therefore some of our hypotheses are interesting, but they're actually side. They're the side story to what is the main thread, what is the president willing to completely give up to have a successful summit.

Jeffrey 37:59

Right. I think that's right, and we just don't know the answer to that, and neither does North Korea. Well, we're going to find out in June, most likely, so we'll have more podcasts about this. Ah, all right.

Aaron 38:12

So you've been in the Slack channel lately? I have. You know, I'm bogged down in this massive assignment, so I haven't been as active as I should be, but I always check in, especially when things with North Koreans pop up, because it's a good news aggregator and a way for me to catch up from a whole lot of smart people talking about it.

Jeffrey 38:29

Yeah, I've been lurking, but it's been really good. Some interesting stuff. You know, not everyone agrees with us.

Aaron 38:39

I know, but that's why it's amazing. Sometimes, you know, despite our voice from God, people think, eh, no, you guys are kind of full of s***.

Jeffrey 38:46

But unlike my Twitter feed with its quality filter that manages to exclude most critical voices, when people call full s*** on the Slack channel, I have to encounter it.

Aaron 38:58

That's right. It's the busting of our own echo chamber.

Jeffrey 39:01

If you want to come give Aaron and I a hard time, it's only $5 a month through our Patreon page to get access to the Slack channel. And we'll give you a break if you're a student. We'll bust it down to $3 a month because, you know, ramen is not real food. We got to take it easy on you.

Anyway, we got some things planned for the Slack channel, but we got to get off our butts. It'd be nice if, you know, the world slowed down a little bit.

Aaron 39:31

Yeah, but then we'd have no more podcasts. Indeed. Hey, Aaron. Yes? Thanks for joining me. Always a pleasure. And thank you for listening.