Hi, everybody. Im Jacob Heil Brun editor of the National Interest and harry has mag nan nussly asked me to chair this session 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 waste of time. Our panelists today, first panelist to my immediate left is Lieutenant General wallace chip gregson, retired former head of the u. S. 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 im pleased to say a regular contributor to the National Interest website. And finally to my right henri feron a senior fellow at the center for international policy. Now im reckoning that with all of the attention being bestowed upon tehran that pyongyang must be starting to feel a little lonely. And so id like to ask chip, what are the prospects for another north korean icbm test and how effective has sanctions been in the past and how effective can they be in the future . Well in short, well thank you, jacob, for the introduction and coming to offer 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 second 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 whole lot more effort into it, they wont be effective in the future. Now the question at the top of the agenda is very interesting. And jacob already brought it up. That the two parts of the question dont match. Denuclearization is impossible unless we get a big change of 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 of 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 commits an atrocity or provocation and we get all muscular and pound our chest and say this cant stand. Most recent episode was fire and fury, then cooler heads prevail and we go to negotiations and 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 interest and profit interest that are opposed to the sanctions. So it is a way to feel good. It is a way to excuse not being able to solve a problem, a way to kick the can down the road and say just wait, the sanctions will be effective. If effective means eliminating or freezing north Korea Nuclear program, weve never had effective sanctions obviously. Shared border with the prc in 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 regime. It is a dynasty and family communist dictatorship. Core supporters estimate it to be 1 million strong, the core supporters must be kept in a standard of living just high enough to maintain their loyalty along with the coercion and no similar regard obviously extends to the rest of the north korean population. It is 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, counter fit currency and most importantly embargoed Weapons Technology among other things are the are a great source of profit. World powers and International Organizations including the eu the u. N. And eu have pursued economic and financial sanctions on thork f on north korea for more thon a dozen year to pressure it to denuclearize. And they punish the regime for sooish attacks and human laundering and human rights violations. The sanctions may have effected the most disenfranchised of north korea but theyre effectiveness has been undercut by countries and private interest for politics and for profit. While the sanctions have been in effect, north korea missile and Nuclear Capabilities continued to grow. The most recent north Korean Missile test over the sea of japan demonstrated new man ufring characteristics that havent 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 u. N. 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 thoroughlien grained and history in the 1970s ab deal khan or aq khan went entrepreneurial with with Weapons Technology. Khan was originally drin by the need for pakistan to match indias newly revealed capability. He learned that his patriotic drive could lead to handsome remuneration. In 2004 he publicly acknowledged illegally proliferated Nuclear Weapons tug originally stolen from Great Britain to iran, lib yu and north korea over decades. Arms agreements dont last. Washington has examples, we could consider the washington disarmament conference in 1922, the kellogg breean pac10 years later. The inf treaty which just passed into history and certainly north koreas various agreement 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 bona fis and another shoulder in the joint security area and shoot down of the u. S. Recognizance aircraft and capture the uss pueblo and the attack in rangoon and the attack on the south korea blue house and the brutal execution of kims uncle, closest adviser and klines man in pyongyang. Recently north korea demon vated both skill and will in the deployment and employment of a weapon of mass destruction. The assassination of kim nom occurred on february 13, 2017 when he was attacked with vx nerve agent in the cokuala lump airport. He is the half brother of the current north Korean Leader. Vx is one of the most potent nerve agent weapons if not the most potent. Vx is odorless and tasteless and amber in color and slow to evaporate. Itt it evaporates as much as motor oil and difficult to clean up after. It is the most potent of the nerve agents we know about compared with sarin it is considered much more tox. And enters through the skin and more toxic through inhalation. Any contact in the skin unless washed off immediately will be lethal. This was a so fit sophisticated in the airport that they only killed kim jong nom and not anyone else. Four north korean suspects left the airport shortly after at sassination and reached pyongyang without being arrested. Other North Koreans were arrested and released without charge. Having endured a nerve agent attack in the biggest airport, one may assume that malaysia clk made calculations they did not want to incur the kim family. In 2018 north korea was charged with cyber attack on Sony Pictures entertainment of the u. S. And the ransom tear attack with no word play intended is virtually unparallels with another one of their gifts. 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 than his Nuclear Weapons and sophisticated delivery means. Secondly, what have we gotten in return for the various concessions that weve made. Third, what can we say, the United States say, that would be believed and trusted. Our record of fealty to agreement our governments have made is not good. Are we willing to extend our noigs our new clear deterrent to north korea. Unless we could get yes to all of those answers that we need to have another approach and the approach will be as was hinted at in the first seminar, changing your approach and recognizing reality and that is north korea is a Nuclear Armed state and by pursuing that as our sole objective, by pursuing personality deployment at the top of the government and this is not the First Administration to do that, were not going to succeed. We need to go to first order 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. Excellent. Thank you, chip. And now ill turn to danny davis for his thoughts and remarks. Yeah, sanctions are a tool. Like a pen. A pen can write something brilliant and write something stupid, write something confusing. But it is what you do with the pen is what is going to matter. And i think that is the same thing with sanctions. So sanctions can be a very effective tool. They could also be completely pointless and even counter productive. And i think by any measure, any objective measure, we have been in the counter productive sphere for quite sometime. Because the main power that sanctions can have is frankly in their removal. If i place sanctions on you and they are biting and theyre painful, but i offer you the genuine legitimate opportunity to withdraw the sanctions if whatever the agreed upon or the desired outcome is and you do that, and then i remove those sanctions, i now set a standard that said, hey, this is what we think needs to happen, this is for our security, for whatever the purpose is, but well follow through and well do what we say were going to do and well demonstrate that and as long as you abide by the agreements that we both agree to, these conditions, then the sanctions will be relieved and well move on. And i believe that if our objective was the normalization of relations and if we wanted to say lets engage in just taking the emotion and the personality out of it and just get into some legitimate adult top diplomacy then there is no doubt in my mind that in a agreement could 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 they have for decades, there is no chance that kim is going to denuclearize and if anyone thinks that hes going to denuclearize before getting any sanctions relief or relief at all, it is worse than a fantasy. It is irrational and illogical. And yet this are many in this town that pushed exactly that desire. Somehow we think because we have a military that is more powerful that we could dictate terms and that well put pain on them until they do everything we want, but the problem is the sanctions almost never come off. Weve added sanctions and done this certainly not just in north korea but across the board in many nations. And they almost never come off. Whether the other side does what we want them to or not. And then of course we say, well, they cheated so well put some back on or whatever. And the net result is nothing ever gets resolved. Nothing ever 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 thousand anywhere. We can reach out and defend ourselves if anyone ever launched an unprovoked attack with our existing force structure without any additional deployments with our certainly with our nuclear deter ents and our ability to move conventional power. Theyre unrivaled and Everybody Knows that. We dont need to send signals and send a message. They got it. They already understand that. Everybody on the planet understands, believe me, that well use force if we think that our interest are threatened. We do it all of the time. We dont need any must messages there. What we do know, though, is recognition of what is reality. If we have successfully deterred stalin at his worst in the soviet union with Nuclear Power and you talk about a bloody murderer, that is kim is nothing hes a neophyte compared to that and mount saint tongue when he had weapons or any of the other chinese leaders after that, they were murderous people many of them. They had 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 thin to thrive and to operate within the confines of the country. Now we have compared to what it used to be fairly good relations even with russia and with china. With our former direct war partner vietnam, were now improving relations there. And yet those governments havent changed. Theyre still relatively what they were before. Just their 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 could be deterred easily and he knows that. His Nuclear Deterrent is for selfdefense and selfpreservation so he wants to communicate that if we ever try to do something to him like happened with ghadafi and saddam and others, that he wants to communicate that i have the ability that they didnt to take out millions of people. Whether it is actually on our soil or in the region, whatever. He wants to make sure that is the case to prevent that very outcome. But that is the intent. Not to have the offensive capability that one day ill launch a missile because that would be suicidal and if there is anything you could say about kim, hes brutal, he is murderous and the general just talked about what he did with his brother there in kim jong nom. Right. Clearly 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. Because if anything, you could see that hes wanting to expand his economy, hes willing to improve the quality of life for his country. All of those things could work to our advantage because we see that this is not an irrational actor at all. Hes very calculated but he also understands the dynamic of power and he understands that hes way on the bottom and that were way on the top and if he goes too far, he knows that we could eliminate his regime and kill him and hes not going to do that. Now armed with that, we could say, all right, lets start working more cooperatively with our south korean allies and i was in hanoi last february when there was a deal on the table and i had met with some south korean officials and i met with some other americans who have some understanding of the negotiations and there was a deal on the table. As a matter of fact, the papers were in the process of being finalized and had been written forwritten, basically, for what the agreement was. The south korean side said they were disappointed it wasnt a bigger deal, but a small deal is fine because within weeks, they told me, they were ready to launch into the next kimmoon summit to continue the process and momentum toward that because they wanted to improve interkorean relations, deepen economic ties, make more friendly stuff with the relocation of family members that had been operated. North korea wants step by step separation. South korea still to this day advocates a parallel step by step movement. That makes sense, and thats in our interest. Anything that 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 conventional 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 just recognize as apparently was in the first panel here, they are a Nuclear Power. They are. Not that they might be or that we can try to prevent them. Thats one of the biggest holes in the logic of john boltons comments here 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 which potentially hundreds of thousands or millions if it went nuclear would die for no reason, no purpose, and definitely not something thats necessary. Peace, the opportunity for peace is on the table. If we are willing to recognize that reality, recognize that our security is not threatened by this and move towards really working much more closely, i think, with our south korean allies because they have a better understanding of this than anyone obviously, if we could work in parallel with that and say hey, one thing we have to be willing to do to make all this hap