With a policy change just revealed today. And protecting the president up and down the east coast, wherever they go. Why this administration poses the largest challenge of the modern era. The 11th hour begins now. Good evening once again from our headquarters here in new york. Day 85 of the Trump Administration. And week 12 of this Young Administration is ending with all eyes squarely on north korea. The secretive nation says it is ready to go to war with the United States if thats what President Trump wants. These are pictures from this mornings military parade. Speaking to the Associated Press there, their vice foreign minister also said President Trumps tweets are making tensions worse. Pyongyang has determined that the Trump Administration is more vicious and more aggressive than the Obama Administration. Officials are trying to determine if north korea is planning a sixth nuclear test any time over the next hours or days, for that matter. The last such test was in september of last year. Pyongyang says it will conduct its next nuclear test when it deems necessary. And citing washingtons reckless actions so far, presumably navy ships moving closer to the korean pence peninsula, north korea says its ready for a preemptive strike of its own. As the Trump Administrations plans, the ap is quoting Administration Officials tonight saying they are looking to stress maximum pressure and engagement that reportedly means leaning on china to turn up the hooed heat. Weve heard the president say that much. And hoping that should another nuclear test happen both russia and china will acquiesce to more sanctions. U. S. Officials tell the ap if any military engagement occurs the goal would only be north koreas denuclearization. Right now its already nearly midday on saturday. And the reclusive state, it happens to be the biggest holiday of the year, known as the day of the sun, honoring the countrys founder, kim o il sung. There are giant likenesses everywhere. From childhood every north korean gets taught the mythic stories of their greatness. Todays day of the sun sunday celebrations like so many in the past featured an elaborate parade to display the States Military capabilities. Lets bring in our panel. Ambassador Nancy Soderberg who worked with president clinton and as ambassador to the united nations. David sanger fresh off a trip covering the secretary of state in moscow. And part of the New York Times team that we should add won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this week. Gordon chang is here with us in new york an expert on north korea and china. Written books on both countries in fact. And msnbc military analyst, barry mccalf re. A decorated combat vet plan vietnam. A ground commander in desert storm. And military experience throughout the world. You flew the most miles to be with us tonight. You get to go first. Where do you think we are, we with a new president veisavis north korea in your view . You have got a couple of dynamics going right now that add great unpredictability to all of this. The first is, as you suggested before, there is this consent that theres going to be pressure, and then engagement. Well, this is not exactly a new policy. This is what bill clinton tried in 1994 during the 94 crisis. Its what at various points the Bush Administration tried first by trying to freeze out the North Koreans in the first term and then engaging them in the second. President obama really never did manage to engage them. What makes it different now, brian . A few things. First of all, the North Koreans have made clear that no matter what, they will never give up their Nuclear Weapons and their missile program. And frankly, it looked at from their perspective they would be crazy to do it. They look at for example, the engagement that colonel gaddafi got involved in in libya. He gave up a much Smaller Nuclear program, one that had not deployed any weapons, of course. And got all these promises of engagement with the west. When the moment came and his people turned against him you saw what happened. The north korean view is we are never giving it up. And the marp view is we are not talking to you until you give it up the question is, whats going to give here . Thats why i think we are moving toward probably as big a crisis as we saw in 94, if not bigger. Ambassador, this is your line of work after all, are we missing something . Is there something we are not pursuing . Is there any new angle on this old crisis . I think President Trump has correctly identified the role of china as the linchpin to this issue. There really suspect a military solution here. Its going to be diplomatic. And really, back in 92, under the first Bush Administration the North Koreans figured out that their one piece of currency was their Nuclear Program and they have use itted time and time again to get more from the international community. I can remember meetings at the white house under bill clinton where we are looking at the options and they are all terrible. So you have to pick the least difficult of the options. And it tends to be a very difficult diplomatic route. And i think the president s right in trying to pressure china to step up here. They never really have. And it has to be a diplomatic effort. But china has to say, this is not going to stand. President george w. Bush tried to ignore and stand up to the north korean regime in the years of 2000. And the North Koreans simply threw a nuclear hissy fit and ultimately he made another deal which the North Koreans several years later violated. So i think we are entering a crisis because this Third Generation of North Koreans is more erratic than their predecessors. But you cant sort of just play whack a mole with the Nuclear Weapon system in north korea. Its much more complicated. They are much deeper. They are much more diffuse. And it would probably backfire. So there is very difficult options here. But i think the president is getting to the right answer here, which is to pressure china to step up and get a stronger diplomatic deal. But its a really tough problem. I want to let our viewers know this is not just file tape we are running on the side of the screen. These are live pictures of the annual military parade going on in pyongyang, coming up on noon their time. The square is designed to make the individual look and appear small and emphasize the power and size of the state, or in this case, the power of their mobile missile launchers. Walt disney could not produce a more lavish event outdoors with just thousands of people there. No one is missing their color card for the day. No one is missing their position. This is their job. And of course the maximum leader is in the reviewing stand watching it all. Gordon you made the most interesting point here in the studio before we came on the air, that you see something very significant in the Trump AdministrationCruise Missile attack on syria a week ago where it affects north korea and china. Yeah, before thursday i think everyone was saying it is a 100 chance that the North Koreans would dead nate their sixth nuclear device. What happened on thursday evening when you had President Trump announce the missile strike on syria, you had syrias good friend, xi jinping the ruler of china right next to him. I think the chinese were stunned by that. Also, we had the test of the mother of all bombs yesterday on an underground facility. And no country has put more facilities underground than north korea. So essentially, the North Koreans have gotten that message, that trump has a pretty low threshold for the use of force. General mccalf rkacaffery i g to facetiously say that wouldnt it be nice if the United States could in a big fashion drop a bomb that would destroy underground structure and get Global Coverage of it but that already happened. Do you think that was perhaps aimed elsewhere in the ground. I dont think it was. I think the general was trying to go after taliban and isis both of whom are winning the insurgency in afghanistan. Afghanistan is starting to come apart. We are not going going back in with ground forces, nato or the u. S. I think that was an air offense. I dont think this is a crisis. The crisis is in the coming five years for sure the North Koreans will end up with a hundred nuclear devices, probably an icbm that creditably can threaten the mainland u. S. , submarine launched Ballistic Missiles. They already have solid fuel, road mobile launchers. North korea is actually a desperately poor country with a primitive armed forces which by the way active and reserve is 25 of the entire population. Maybe 25 of gnp on defense. But now they have got 15 nukes. Id be less concerned about this weekend and the thought that an irrational preemptive strike would take place on north Korean Nuclear facilities. Im sure we are not going do that. But i am concerned about the fairly short period of time five, ten years we will be at great risk. David sanger, there you go, a kinds of review of the challenge that awaits this administration. As we said, you have just return fro traveling with the manifestation of the Trump Administration, and how other countries see us, specifically on this trip, moscow, the foreign minister and mr. Putin. What is the mechanism like of the state department under trump compared to the traveling state department you are quite used to . Well, the first is we dont travel with it very much. We travel alongside it because mr. Tillerson has decided not to take most reporters on the plane. I think at this point you are seeing Rex Tillerson have a little bit of a hard time getting across a thought that he truly represents the single voice of American Foreign policy because right now there is no single voice. And north koreas is an interesting example of that. You saw early tweets from the president even before he was inaugurated saying, the North Koreans say they are going to launch an icbm, its not going to happen, as if he would step in preemptively, and now that they have had to go look at the options that nancy and others just talked about, they are discovering, as nancy said, there are really no good choices. Brian, i want to take you back to the video you were showing, the live video of the parade for a moment. There were a couple of thing that jumped out at me as i was watching these come across on the monitor. Verse of all the very large number of mobile missile launchers these are carried on. These are meant to send a message. The message is if you think you are going to do a preemptive strike remember that most of our missiles now are sitting in tunnels underneath mountains all around the country and there is no way you are going to get at all of them. The second is some of the missiles they have been showing including the kn 08 there, which are some of their intermediate range Ballistic Missiles are the very same missiles that we described a month ago in a story that describe a secret program that president obama began to try to attack the launching systems with a cyber and Electronic Warfare methods. And you have seen a lot of these missiles go off into the ocean. That has not stopped him from turning out either these missiles or dummies. We dont know whats inside. But we are definitely in the midst of a contest in which they are saying we can produce these faster than you can defeat them or find them. Ambassador, if you had 60 seconds or 60 minutes with the new president to tell him something about the north korean character, what youve come to know about the people were dealing with here, what would it be . It depends on one man, the current president , kim, and hes irrational, erratic. He had his half brother assassinated. He is ruthless, doesnt care about his people and he will respond erratically to any kind of threat so it is a very dangerous situation. I think what the president is doing is recognizing that his Campaign Rhetoric doesnt fit reality as every president goes through and he is pivoting towards the geopolitical reality here which i think is a healthy thing. So listen to your advisors, tread very carefully on this issue. It is not an easy or quick fix. Gordon, is kim jongun suicidal on top of Everything Else . No, but i think he has a very low threshold of risk. Because since the ends of january and through the middle of february we saw four instances of suggesting instability, including assassinating his elder half brother. But more important, the demotion and the detention of the minutester of state security, and the execution of five the ministers senior subordinates. There is all sorts of trouble in this regime. I think that kim may feel he has less to lose these days. When you have an american president who appears to have a low threshold for the use of force you have a real issue because there you have two leaders with very different calculus of risk at this point. And look at the statues coming down the main ro. I also loved the kind of of the two ancient military commanders flanking kim jongun, one of them has a card at the ready in case he has to Say Something to the leader to mask whatever hes saying from lip readers. And the balloon release has been ordered. We will take a break in our conversation. Were asking our entire panel to stand by with us. Well resume our conversation after the break. From north korea to syria, to the bomb dropped on those isis tunnels just yesterday, the president who ran on America First has already shown great interest in reaching overseas. That and more when our discussion continues. Allergy symptoms distracting you . Doctors recommend taking claritin every day of your allergy season for continuous relief. Claritin provides powerful, nondrowsy, 24hour relief. For fewer interruptions from the Amazing Things you do every day. Live claritin clear. Every day. You totanobodys hurt, new car. But there will still be pain. It comes when your Insurance Company says theyll only pay threequarters of what it takes to replace it. What are you supposed to do . Drive threequarters of a car . Now if you had Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, youd get your whole car back. I guess they dont want you driving around on three wheels. Smart. With Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, well replace the full value of your car. Liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. And you know i tell this all the time, the word unpredictable. We have to be unpredictable, folks. Our military unpredictable. Obama gets up, we will leave iraq, and he gives a day. We are going to have an unpredictable. I get criticized because i say unpredictable. The enemy turns out to be ten times tougher than we thought because they know our plan. We have to be unpredictable folks. We have to be unpredict. We are too predictable. Dont you long for those days of the campaign. Welcome back to the 11th hour. As you just saw specifically on Foreign Policy, use of military overseas, candidate trump promised more than once to be unpredict lk. White House Press Secretary sean spicers version of the same thing, quote, we are not going to telegraph what were going do maybe used on a post of Foreign Policyish ice over these last 12 weeks including just this last tuesday when he was talking about north korea. The president has been very clear when he is negotiating or dealing with an issue you dont telegraph to people how you are going to handle it. We dont telegraph what were going to do. I think he has been clear he will not tolerate some of this action by north korea. But to answer your question, i think i have said this before on a variety of topic. The president is not one who is going to go out there and telegraph his response. I think he keeps all options on the table. He keeps his cards close to the vest. The same day that was said, the president said on twitter, quote, north korea is looking for trouble. If china decides to help that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them. U. S. A. Were back with ambassador Nancy Soderberg, goran chang and barry mccaffery. Ambassador, is unpredictable a Foreign Policy . No in particular the syria strike has broad support. No one knows whether there is a plan to back it is up of its fine to be unpredictable and not show your cards but you have to have a plan. I think thats the question with this president , what goes with these actions, military actions alone dont wo. You have to marry force and diplomacy, thats the prescription for success. He has time to do it. On north korea he asked for options the full range of options i think he needs to have a deliberate discussion of those and a plan. He can keep his cards to his