Panel with a quote from the 19th century philosopher, but im going to do it here because i think it is relevant. He said that, you know, life is best understood backwards, but you need to live it forwards. And i think what were going to try to do here today is to try to understand trumps north korea policy backwards and think about some of the things that have happened in order to understand how were going to be living it forward and whats coming in the coming year. And i think thats really important because for several reasons. One, this is one of the most the Biggest International issues of our time and at stake right now in whether the approach is effective or not is not just whether we address the north Korean Nuclear threat but also a chance of reconciliation between north and south korea and the efforts to stop the threat of Nuclear Weapons are also at stake. In addition i think its a critical window into understanding how President Trump conducts Foreign Policy. This is his signature Foreign Policy issue. And i think its also important because it will help us understand what the trump era means for future american president s, what precedents have we set here that will inform how we engage with north korea going forward. Just to introduce myself, i am you are urie friedman. I want to introduce fellow panelists here. Im going to start to my left. Colonel Douglas Macgregor is a decorated combat vet man. Hes executive Vice President of burkeman llc. He was commissioned in the lets just go on here. Okay. Im going to cut it short. Im going ocut to cut it short. Its not a funeral. You can also catch him on tv a lot. I think i just caught him on Tucker Carlson the other night. Ill try to be a little more brief but cut me off if you want. Tell the truth about ruger. Dr. William ruger tell serves as Vice President for the charles coke foundation. Before that he was most recently associate professor in the department of Political Science at texas state university. Thats good. All right. And that is all. Scott snyder is senior fellow for korea studies and director on the council on foreign relations. Hes the author of many books including south korea at the cross roads. Thats good for me too. There we go. Consider everyone introduced. Just to tell you a little bit about how were going do this, well start with opening remarks. Then well have a time for question and answer and have time for all of you to ask questions as well. To start off, colonel, i would like to start with you. Im wondering, you know, as you think about trumps approach to north korea, how are you assessing it at this moment in time . Okay. Is this working . Are we using this . Can you hear me . Okay. During the introduction, i was reminded of something that happened to me just before i left the army. I received this decoration for the kosovo air campaign, not that i was very happy to be part of that but nevertheless. They gave me the Defense Service medal. Somebody in the room said what did you get that for. Somebody else said 18 to 20 years of undetected crime. I think that pretty much sums up the truth about everybody at some point. Were all concealing something, so keep all the intros short. I think the best way to think about where we are is the first meeting that President Trump had with president moon. He, of course, was the brandnew president who had obviously no foreign experience, Foreign Affairs or military experience. And suddenly hes meeting with arguably one of the most important men in the larger Security System or Alliance System for the United States in the world. And president moon comes in and he knows absolutely nothing about korean politics at this point. Hes had no real briefing other than superficial observation. So, he doesnt understand where president moon came from, why his election is a tremendous achievement and a break through. And shortly into the conversation, president moon says to President Trump, you know, we koreans would really like to have operational control of the peninsula. And President Trump says what do you mean . He said we would like to have command of our forces and all the forces on the peninsula. We call that ot con. And President Trump said ot con . He looked up and one of his special assistants went out of the room and shortly thereafter in came mcmaster and others. Oh, thats not up for discussion right now. Lets not worry about that. Thats not an issue. That is probably one of the most important issues for the Korean People today. The president of south korea, in order to be taken seriously as the head of state for a sovereign country, must be viewed by everyone as in command of his armed forces and what happens on that peninsula. Now, theres talk about eventually moves to ot con and theres been discussions for years about it. But this is something that the president wasnt aware of. Now ultimately he becomes aware of it. And in subsequent discussions in the white house, he said, well whats wrong with giving the South Koreans command of their armed forces . They should have that . He said, by the way, whats the problem . Somebody says we cannot allow anyone to command American Armed forces but americans. He said then why dont we pull them out . What . Remove forces from the Korean Peninsula . And he said why not . Theyre very prosperous. Theyre very powerful in their own right. You know, koreas economy is larger and more robust and capable and diverse than russias. And, you know, theres no particular reason why they cant defend themselves. So, these were the kinds of arguments inside the white house. President trump came to Office Understanding that he was at a strategic Inflection Point, that the International System had changed. It actually had begun changing in the 80s. There really was an end to the cold war, contrary to popular belief, and that there was reason to question wisdom of distributing u. S. Armed forces all over the world in 800 bases. And he also saw this as a way to save money, to extract savings on the defense budget. All of these things came into play. But what he never understood, and im sure my colleagues will talk about this as well. He never understood the reactionary nature of washington, d. C. And the large federal bureaucracies that are permanently invested in no change. And i think thats been his greatest failure, if you will, to figure this out too late, to the point where hes been unable to affect very much change, to be blunt. Well, my remarks will follow nicely, i think on the colonels. In fact, in many ways i agree with him. In important respect, i think trumps policy has been successful because it has avoided war and has opened up space for, you know, more jaw jobs as they say instead of war war. And despite people like john bolton throwing sand in the gears of what President Trump has tried to achieve. I think especially this week we see some of the ways in which President Trumps advisers have attempted to box the president in from making the changes the colonel talks about. His discussion has opened up the peninsula which is valuable because of how stagnant the conversation has been going particularly when it comes to u. S. Commitments and what our allies should be doing to share the burden of collective or common defense. So, in many ways, like i said, trumps been successful at avoiding what we could imagine being the worst result on the peninsula which i think as we saw in our last panel would be a devastating conflict, conventional conflict or worse, you know, which is almost unthinkable, hopefully. But unfortunately when people are talking about bloody nose strikes or the libya model, this starts to become a little bit more real, unlike i think some of the sound voices youve heard today. But that they put denuclearization as not merely an ideal state that is worth mentioning but not taken too seriously, but the goal and a measuring stick of u. S. Foreign policy around nukes in north korea. A couple of things on this. It is unrealistic, and idealistic, right . We are at the center for the National Interest, connected to president nixon, to henriquez endure and to those ideals of realism, looking at the world squarely as it is and the problem with denuclearization is that it does not take that realism seriously, you know, especially in light of how the United States and others have treated states theyre giving up Nuclear Weapons for Nuclear Weapons programs. Think about libya, or ukraine or the question of iran today. With those examples in mind, why, rationally would kim give up Nuclear Weapons, give up that program . It does not make a lot of sense rationally, and so whether we like it or not, i think that Nuclear Weapons are great equalizer. There is a nuclear revolution, as they say in security studies, and that is meaningful to the context of the current discussion around north korea. So, i think it would be better for the United States to focus on testing, issues on Missile Technology so like with the soviet union during the cold war,, and it is important context youre, and students of asia understand that when china, under morale, first came to Nuclear Capability, this was not someone that most people would have thought of as being extremely rational in the sense of doing things good, right . He was rational in the sense of being procedurally rational, but was clearly an evil character in the kind of mannequin spirit looks at foreign leaders, but china behave responsibly since the day him in a clear power and so oftentimes the kind of worst fear of people who want denuclearization, which is that you have some have used by an irrational actor, and the rationality is reduced to the domestic sister, that is not really the way to look at international politics. But if kim wants to use the benefit, of this position of power in north korea, why would you want to commit suicide engaging in a nuclear war against United States . It would be an utterly suicidal movie would only do if you had some kind of odd ecological view. That is not the case with kim and so, i think that because of what it would take to get denuclearization from him, either assumes a different world then came that we live in would be too costly to achieve relative to our interests and therefore, the kind of scene approach here would be to be much more realistic about what our desired and state can actually be. Now, focusing on arms control rather than denuclearization i think shows greater realism around north korean incentives and interests and our own. I mean, our primary interest to make sure that north korea does not use Nuclear Weapons against United States of homeland or our troops abroad and so the best way to get that is to reassure kim that we are not pushing for regime change and to make our deterrent threat Crystal Clear so both reassurance on one hand and making it absolutely obvious to kim that if he to use Nuclear Weapons or he attacked the United States and our troops abroad, but this will lead to something that will be intolerable, and that is how deterrence works and i think the cold war shows the kind of work and it can work here. And that much lower cost aggressively nuclearization so no, to conclude, i think it is important that north korea in the context of u. S. Reggie as a whole. You cannot look at a country in isolation from that larger approach the world the United States and other countries try to set. So i would argue two things here. Lets say that we continue on with our path. We continue with primacy. We will continue to face difficult resource allocation challenges. That is just a clear. We are seeing that in the sense of a desire under obama to pivot to china but the fact of the United States was bogged down in the release met the resource allocation constrained what changes could be made. So, if you are a premise or it would be good to take some unlike the north korea issue off the table get it into a stable footing so that the u. S. Can continue to use resources in the middle east and europe and elsewhere, so, you should still walk this, and that means more diplomacy and more kicking the can down the road or north korea. Of, course i think that this grand strategy of primacy is a recipe for trouble and for hegemonic decline but again, even if he were to stick to the approach, there are better ways to diplomacy so if you are a promises, you want north korea to settle down in that means more diplomacy and less talk of bloody no strikes in things like that. Now, if you are for real is a magistrate like i do what many people in this room do, the u. S. Would be wise to settle issues with north korea so that we can focus on more important priorities while meeting our security needs visavis the Nuclear Threat and that largely could be through deterrence and that also means the United States will be able to help solve in some way some of the more challenging issues with north korea, that we can move offshore and our troops will be less critical relative to south Korean Forces on the peninsula and maybe even move towards some normalization of the south korea and north korea situation but again lies most realist i think that is largely a job for south korea and north korea and we can be helpful in our diplomacy but i do think it is important that we shift gears from where we are, but either way, again, i think that deterrence and defense needs compellings in offense. Im a supporter of deterrence and defense versus compel its and offense but i also believe that denuclearization remains an important objective, for u. S. Foreign policy visavis north korea and i think at the same time the Trump Administrations engagement with north korea has had some positive effect and so in a way i feel like when harry asked me to join this panel, i was checking my calendar i thought it would be january 6th 2021 rather than 2020 because here we are assessing the Trump Administrations approach to north korea and there is still a year left but my standards for assessing whether the Trump Administration has been effective is, as the administration been able to produce the north korean threat or capabilities that threat not only u. S. Allies but also the United States . And in fact, the threat to the United States has been a distinctive element of progress that we have seen during the Trump Administration. I am sympathetic to secretary pompeo when he is asked questions about north korea these days, he says, well, we are not doing what we have done in the past. This field approach to the, past we are not doing but i believe we are on the verge of the Trump Administrations approach also being in that dump a heap of failed policies because in fact, we so far are not achieving denuclearization. We are also not achieving peace and there is a risk that north korea is morphing into a potentially even more dangerous strategic threat that could actually hold hostage the entire region and so for that reason i believe that although trump brought needed rhetorical innovations and cemetery, we really have not seen the results that we can call effective, and some of the prior discussion gets into issues of u. S. Foreign policy beyond whether or not we are effective with north korea, we can talk about those. The Trump Administration is put those on the agenda in very unique ways but what i want to do is just to go back and take a look at war turning points into u. S. Policy towards north korea under trump and evaluate the parts lives and the negatives and actually, there is one a year so, 2017, fire and fury, i think that trumps speech at the un threatening to annihilate north korea was quite striking not only for its rhetoric but also for the fact that it drew for the first time a personal response from kim jongun. Trump got kims attention. And arguably he did in a way that plausibly raised questions for him about whether his Nuclear Project was going to generate the desired results. He even said as much in his public response to trump and so i think you can argue that that set a framework for a dialog approach, for diplomacy. The singapore summit tree is a second, i think, turning point but i think this one has had mixed effect. On the one hand, the Trump Administration in 2017 in early 2018 was leading a relatively Effective International coalition that was imposing maximum pressure, and most notably as we discussed earlier today, china was imposing very severe restrictions on north korean exports but the minute the trum