 This is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. I recognize the tone of it, the spirit of it. I'm talking to Ralph Kosa. This morning we had a program at the Pacific Club. Ralph spoke about Korea as a Pacific Forum program. Ralph is the President Emeritus of Pacific Forum and is an age-old organization in this town which makes this town a center for international relations and diplomacy and he and Pacific Forum have a following going on for what, three decades or something like that? Forty-three years. Forty-three years. But who's counting? Who's counting? Ralph, thanks for coming down. My pleasure, Jay. I get this exquisite opportunity to talk to you about the remarks you made this morning about Korea with all these high-flying people there. It was really a high-level group, no doubt, but I wanted to ask you some of the questions that popped into my mind. Sure. What we have is, I hate to use this term, but a whack-a-mole kind of meeting back in June with Kim Jong-un in Singapore, a meeting that it wasn't clear exactly what the meeting would be before and it wasn't clear afterward what it was achieved, if anything, at the meeting and we never really got a clear bilateral statement of what was agreed or not agreed of what we could take home with us. Is this the new kind of diplomacy going on? Because the same thing seemed to be happening with the Xi Jinping meeting not too long ago. Yeah, unfortunately I think it is, Jay. In the good old days, a president didn't meet with someone with another leader without a set agenda and a set of deliverables, particularly with North Korea. The first time the North Korean leader gets to meet with the American leader, the mere fact that he's meeting attaches a certain legitimacy to the North Korean leader. You would normally want to get something in return and get something assured in return. For that point alone. Right. I mean, Bill Clinton didn't go to North Korea when he was invited just before he left office because the North Koreans had trust us that it will be a great meeting and the U.S. or U.S. we want to know in advance what's the deliverables, what's the package. That's standard diplomacy. We are in the era of non-standard diplomacy. This was a let's go there and feel one another out and see how it goes and see what we can agree to. Now, clearly the U.S. had an agenda. There were things that wanted to accomplish, but there was no guarantees in advance that the North Koreans were going to agree with anything. After the meeting, there's been no guarantee that we're both saying or seeing the same things. It was a very vague statement that came out of the Singapore meeting, the Singapore Declaration, which talked about a need to improve relations between the U.S. and North Korea. It also talked about returning remains of servicemen, and it also talked about working toward denuclearization. Unfortunately, we have different definitions of what denuclearization means and what we've agreed to work toward and what the priority is, and that's the problem that we're facing today as we try to go from that meeting to some type of meaningful agreement to denuclearized North Korea. It sounded to me then and now like it was a grandstand meeting by the administration. I try to make people feel that they were making progress, but in fact, it's hard to see this progress except they're not yelling at each other anymore. But in terms of hard progress, is there any? Well, the fact that we're talking is, quote, progress. The fact that we're not threatening to blow one another up is progress. Now we started threatening to blow them up. They've always threatened to blow us up, so we've solved the problem that we help create. For the moment. Yeah, for the moment. But they're continuing to develop nuclear weapons, they're continuing to develop ICBMs. They're just not testing them, but they're still developing, still deploying them. So things haven't gotten better. Was it a wasted meeting? I don't know. Perhaps not. Perhaps. It depends on what the follow-through is. In their system, and quite frankly today in our system, you had to have leader buy-in. We had a number of administration officials go to China and cut deals with the Chinese, claiming they were speaking for Trump, and then they came home and the president undercut them. So it's very clear that unless you get the president to say, I agree to X, Y, and Z, and you get Kim Jong-un to say, I agree to X, Y, and Z, there's not going to be any progress. So this meeting set the stage for progress if we can now agree on what we agreed on. And that's now the North Koreans are asking for a second meeting with the president in order to decide what we agreed on. They're going to get one? I think so. It seems, you know, I mean, a surreal statement by National Security Advisor John Bolton. The North Koreans haven't delivered on their promises, on their commitments. Therefore we need to have another meeting with the president. Normally, you would say they haven't delivered on it, therefore they don't deserve another meeting. But the logic now is, well, they haven't delivered on commitments, so we need another meeting. Now, the question I would ask is, what commitments? There's no commitments other than this vague thing about working toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which from the North Korean standpoint, Korean Peninsula means the nuclear threat from the United States goes away, then we'll talk about getting rid of ours, then we'll talk about getting rid of ours. And complete denuclearization means global denuclearization will give up ours when you give up yours. It's not going to happen. Is that what we thought we were signing up to? Because that's what the North Koreans have, for years now, been saying these terms mean. And presumably we know that. If I know that, the State Department should know that. It strikes me that let's assume this is the new diplomacy where you go in and you, you know, you have a photo op. Everything seems friendly, but it's so vague, you know, it's like an agreement to agree to agree. Because all you're saying is we're going to talk to each other on a later date. And so, I mean, then it becomes a kind of kabuki because, you know, the agendas change. As you mentioned this morning, the principles of the government change, at least in the United States. And so how could you can't rely on any of that? It is all for show, is what I get out of it. Yeah, I think that's a little harsh, Jay, to be honest. I'm not a big fan or a cheerleader for the administration. I certainly wouldn't have conducted the summit the way we did, but it doesn't just show. Just the fact that the meeting occurred, the fact that the two leaders bestowed legitimacy on one another in the eyes of their respective people is a significant event and we shouldn't downplay that. The fact that we had the two of them talking and in general principles agreed to things sets the stage for something significant to happen. We can't walk away as the administration. This is a great success. There's no longer a nuclear threat. That's nonsense. But have we taken a step in the right direction? Absolutely. I applaud that. But it's not the first step that matters. It's the second, third, fourth, and fifth and final steps that it would say whether or not it's success. We're continuing negotiation and we're amounts to a long term continuum. And as long as we keep talking, that's a good thing. That's right. So I wanted to ask you, though, that one of the elements you talked about this morning was this, what is it, an end of war declaration. It's not a peace treaty. It's not a truce. I guess we have a truce in place of some kind. The armistice has been in place since 1953. So there is a quote. What is an end of war declaration? Well an end of war declaration is something either the South Koreans or the North Koreans made up or they made it up together. And it essentially says that the state of war between the U.S. and North Korea or between the United Nations and North Korea, since it's really a U.N. thing, has ended. And we are now entering a new peaceful phase. It is not a legally binding peace treaty which needs to occur at some point. It was supposed to occur three months after the armistice, I think, but we missed that in 1953. But it's, the North Koreans describe it as a confidence building measure. And that's what South Koreans say. This is not legally binding, it just, it sets the right atmosphere. It makes us all feel good as we go forward. So from that standpoint, you know, America, you should just sign up. The U.S. concern is that the day we say, okay, the war has officially ended and we're going to work on a peace treaty later. It raises the question, which the Chinese and Russians and other will immediately raise in the Security Council, then why is there still a United Nations command? Why is there still a U.N. commitment? Why are there still U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula? Shouldn't all of that go away? That's a reasonable question, isn't it? That's right. So that's the hesitancy to sign an end of war declaration. I can understand why the North Koreans want it. I can certainly understand why the Chinese and Russians want it. I could also understand why there's some hesitancy on the part of the United States. But the North Koreans seem to think that we agree to that in Singapore. There's nothing in the statement that says that other than this vague thing about changing the nature of the relationship. But that's the way the North Koreans appear to be interpreting it. It's an ongoing reinterpretation. Yeah. So what does the United States say in response to that question, that argument? That if you're going to have an end of war declaration, you have to take your troops out of South Korea. What does the U.S. say to make that work, if it can say anything? Well, I mean, the first thing that we should say is, what are you going to give us in return for an end of war declaration? And then the North Koreans say, oh, no, no, no, we're not swapping it. This is, you owe us that. And in itself, it's mutually beneficial. Of course, we don't believe that. So that's part of the problem, is that we look at this as sort of a quid pro quo, and they look at it as a quid quid quid that we've already given up our tests and et cetera, et cetera. So therefore, you need to reward us with this to set the right tone to end America's hostile attitude toward the North. Well, we would have to declare very definitively that this declaration does not impact the continued viability of the Armistice Agreement, of the United Nations Command, and of the U.S. presence on the peninsula. Because? Because it's still not a peace treaty. There is still officially a state of war that exists. And because the North Koreans still have the ability to create a great deal of damage in South Korea, and we have a defense commitment with the South Koreans, which is between us and South Korea. And neither one of us should be negotiating that away just to make the North Koreans feel good, because that would just embolden them to perhaps do something that they haven't done for the last, since 1953. And that's evade the South because they know of the U.S. commitment. So what we have, though, is they're still developing weapons and missiles, nuclear missiles. As they told us they would, yeah. In November of last year, Kim Jong-un said, our testing phase is complete, but now we're going to focus on development and deployment. And that's what they're doing. So suddenly we've discovered secret deployment sites. We knew. I mean, the intelligence community knew. Any thinking person knew. And the North Koreans never said that they would stop that. In fact, they told us they're going to focus on that. So it shouldn't come as a great surprise, because some guy using Google Earth now can find things that used to have to have access to all sorts of secret satellite photography to do. We can see it all. All of us can see it all. And then there's the cyberterrorism possibility, the bioterrorism possibility, and the hacking possibility, which we saw with Sony. And I presume for the discussion this morning, all those things are probably continuing unchanged by the meeting in June. Yeah. Yeah, none of that has changed. Now, the North and South have agreed to be nice to one another. And yet there's reams of evidence that the North is still conducting cyber attacks against the South and doing other things. But South Korean government doesn't appear to be inclined to call them on it. Why is South Korea being so solicitous? Because my guess, Moon Jae-in, sees his legacy as the man that solved the Korean Peninsula's standoff and created peace in our time. So he's prepared to give the North Koreans an awful lot of leeway in return for continued dialogue and the hope of peaceful coexistence down the road. Does that mean reunification, too? Define reunification. There's complete reunification like Germany, where the East collapsed and it all joined. And now there's under the political, social, and economic system of the West, there's one Germany. Now, that would be great if we could have that same reunification under the political, economic, and social system of the South. But that means the North Koreans have to go away and the Kim family has to go live in exile somewhere. They're not going to do that. They're not going to sign up for that. They may be forced at some point to do it, but they're certainly not going to sign up for it. That's not what they mean when they say reunification. Right now, both sides in the past have talked about a federation or a confederation, a Korean nation with two independent Korean states. And that may be what they're working toward. The challenge, of course, is right now both of them in their constitutions say that there's only one Korea and they're it. So they would have to essentially recognize the other one's sovereignty over half of the peninsula. The day that the North Koreans say that they're prepared to do that, then I'll say Kim Jong-un is really serious here and we ought to pay attention and follow up. So South Korea is not likely to have a, what kind of result in reality can South Korea expect from being solicitous? Can it really achieve any of these things or is it a kind of waste of time to be solicitous? Well, it's not a waste of time if you're lowering the threshold of war, lowering the possibility of war, which is our meeting. So that's the good news is, in my view, a North Korean invasion of the North or a South Korean invasion of the North was somewhere in the less than one percent probability. It's now less than less than one percent. Good news. Thank you very much. And it's always better when you're talking to one another than when you're calling each other names. So the atmospherics, if nothing else, have changed. Now they're starting to blow up guard posts in the DMZ. That could be good news. It could be bad news. They're talking about a no-fly zone area. Well, that area has been surveilled by American planes that are looking for a movement of North Korean troops toward the DMZ. You stop flying there, that's one less ability to see if the North Koreans are moving toward the DMZ. So now it's faith-based intelligence as opposed to fact-based intelligence. You don't want to... I don't think that's a positive gesture, but it's certainly reinforces that we trust one another. I think we've got a ways to go before we should be fully trusting one another, and that's part of the challenge. I think the South Korean, current South Korean government is more trusting than previous governments have been, and I think more trusting than they ought to be. But then again, I'm not president of South Korea, so he gets to call those shots. So how different is the US position on this than the position of South Korea? Are we together, and if we're not together, how far apart? Where do our differences lie? Well, that's the key question. Rhetorically, we're still fairly close to one another. The South Koreans still say all of this depends on denuclearization, and the US says denuclearization has to come before all these other benefits. Rhetorically, we're good. In reality, the South Koreans are already blowing up posts. They're already sending a train up to the North to talk about rebuilding the North's railroad system, which is the violation of sanctions. If they did it, they got a waiver from the UN to allow them to go and look, but these are all... This is giving the North Koreans the prize without them taking the irreversible steps toward denuclearization that are supposed to be the quid pro quo. That's, I think, the real concern, is that rhetorically, we may be on the same page, but South Koreans' actions show that they're trying to get ahead, push the process along, but also perhaps give the North Koreans more than the North Koreans have given back. Which it may not be in our interest. So the other thing is, you spoke this morning about... One of the elements in discussion was Kim Jong-un would have the opportunity to build his economy, to make this a more global economy, a more successful economy, or open economy, and so forth. Any sign of progress on that, and what do you think of the likelihood? Well, I think that he is committed to that, that he wants to improve the economy, but he doesn't want to be a Gorbachev. He doesn't want to open up economic reform along with political reform, because it didn't work out too well for Pearl Gorby. So they're looking more at the Chinese model, where you develop more of an open capitalism or socialism with Chinese characteristics, while still keeping very tight political control. And that seems to be... But Kim Jong-un has promised the North Korean people that they can have both nuclear weapons and economic development. Can they? And it depends. Up until last year, they couldn't, because we had very tight maximum pressure sanctions on them. In theory, we still have maximum pressure sanctions, but no one believes that the Russians and Chinese are still exerting that kind of pressure, because they're now having this kissy face with the North Koreans. And besides, Trump has already announced that the North Korean nuclear threat is over. Therefore, why should we be denying ourselves the opportunity to exploit North Korea economically, this is what the Chinese are in particular trying to do? Well, you know, since June, a lot of things have happened in the world and the whole affair with North Korea. Although sometimes I have to say that the media forgets what happened and that it's still, you know, an ongoing issue of phenomenon in the world. But it's on the global stage, it's on the global platform and we should be watching it. And it's a play. It's a play happening. And while that play is happening, other plays are happening. So we have the play with Russia, you know, with all of the manipulation of our election and all that stuff in Crimea, what not. And very aggressive things are happening. Russia is changing its position on the global stage. And likewise, China and the U.S. are involved in a trade war, which isn't over. And the meeting took place, didn't really end it. It just put it on suspension, I guess. Partial suspension, if you will. So our relations with Russia, Russia's position in the world, our relations with China, China's position in the world have changed in the past six months since the Singapore meeting. How has that change affected what's going on with North Korea? It's a wonderful question, Jay. And we're watching it play out now. In last year's national security strategy, the U.S. officially declared that we had essentially three types of threats. One was from revisionist powers, China and Russia. This is the new major power competition, which is alive and well. Secondly, rogue states like North Korea and Iran. And third, non-state actors, terrorists, et cetera, international crime. Well, which is the most important? Because if it's North Korea and Iran, then China and Russia are part of the solution. But if it's China and Russia, then that's the problem. So if you've identified them as the main problem and then say, okay, you're now the enemy, you're the guy that we're really most worried about. So how about cooperating with us on terrorism in North Korea? What's their answer going to be? Nothing. I can't repeat it on air. But obviously, we've sort of switched from North Korea being the main problem and terrorism being the main problem to Russia and China being the main challenge to the United States security. And I have no problem with that argument because I think you can make that argument. But you can't then turn around and expect the Russians and the Chinese to help solve your problem. Because they want to make your life as miserable as possible. And they've done a great job of that. And they're good at that. And if we ask them to participate in a process of reinstating or enforcing sanctions against North Korea, they're not going to do it. In fact, it's porous right now, isn't it, in terms of trade barriers? That's right. I mean, the mandatory UN sanctions have always been viewed by the Russians and the Chinese as options. This is a different definition of the word mandatory than you and I might understand. And clearly, when it served the Chinese interest, they really started tightening up not to help the North Koreans obey us, but to remind the North Koreans that at the end of the day, we can really hurt you. And they did. So now Kim Jong-un has met three times with Xi in the last six months. They had met zero times since he came to power. Chinese made their point and now they're whispering in Kim's ear. And I'm sure one of the things they're whispering in his ear is get rid of all the Americans on the Korean Peninsula. Hold out for that. That's what they want. Because that's what the Chinese want. They want us to go away. And if you do that, we'll somehow reward the favor. Yeah, we'll let you live. It's a favor. Yeah. That's, you know, the magnanimous Chinese foreign policy. China has a history of that kind of interrelationship. Speaking of foreign policy, we have a State Department, some people say it's decimated. Other people say, you know, you can hear a paper fall in the hallway because there's nobody there. And you wonder about that. That part's not true, by the way. I mean, there are some really hardworking, dedicated public servants who are working their tails off. They are not fully appreciated. I think that they're perhaps a little more appreciated under Pompeo than they felt they were under Tillerson. So morale has, you know, sort of improved. Although it's still not great. But the real problem is the disconnect between what the State Department is pursuing and what the President seems to think, or at least what he tweets, which may or may not be policy. It may just be what he felt like saying at four o'clock this morning. Yeah, tweets are not carefully drafted. And that's the issue I wanted to ask you about in that connection. So, yes, we have the difference between the bureaucracy of all the people in the State Department who presumably have some experience in dealing with this very complex arrangement and getting more complex all the time, it seems to me, you know, unraveling to more complexity, you know, and the President who may not listen to them or do what they have advised him. And so the question is, you know, are we as a nation capable of dealing with the, you know, the schematic you've described with all these countries involved? We haven't talked about some of the other ones like Japan, for example. But all these kaleidoscopic changes happening, very complex. You have to know the history. You have to know the diplomatic techniques. You have to know the people. Are we prepared? Are we effectively dealing with the complexity of the situation? Well, there's a couple of questions there. One is, are we capable of it? And that's yes. Okay. Are we effectively doing it? I would say no. But it's not because of a lack of expertise in the State Department or in the Defense Department. It's not that people don't understand the problem and understand how best to deal with it. It's right now we're sending mixed signals. We have a President who ran on a position of one of America's problems has been our foreign policy has been too predictable. And he believes that it's in our interest to be unpredictable. I don't buy that, but there's a certain value to keeping your adversaries guessing. I don't think there's a great deal of value in keeping your allies guessing. And we seem to be treating allies and adversaries alike and sometimes allies worse than potential adversaries. So it's not a matter of capability. It's a matter of process. Are we following through? Are we making sense? A perfect example was at the Singapore meeting. I wasn't there. I wasn't part of the preparations and all of that. But I'm convinced that Pompeo went into Trump and said, Mr. President, there are a lot of people that are nervous that when you sit down and talk with the North Koreans, you're going to give away the US troop presence. You need to make a firm statement saying that US troops are not on the negotiating table. The President said, got your mic. Went out before the crowd and he says, US troops are not on the negotiating table. Applauds. But then he says, but I'd really like to see him go away. So how many people heard the first half of that sentence? Three. I'm one of them. That's why I'm repeating it. How many people heard the second half of that? The press seized on that. Everybody, of course, because that's the new statement. Changed from status quo. We've always said, and the North Koreans, of course, heard that and said, oh, here's a guy that wants to get rid of US forces on the peninsula. Pompeo says, no, I don't want to do that. Mattis says, no, I don't want to do that. So the North Koreans say, we don't want to talk to Pompeo. We don't want to talk to Mattis. We want to talk to Donald Trump because we're kindred spirits. So the President sort of undermined his own stand, his own leverage by making that off-the-cup statement. How he thought that was helpful, I'm not sure. But he's the great negotiator, I'm not. So I'm sure there was logic somewhere. I just don't know what it was. I have one more complex compound question for you. Okay, all things being equal, all of the players on the board, as we've described, what's your prediction for the best case analysis? What would that look like? And what's your prediction for the worst case analysis? And the last question, I'll tell you the last question after you answer that one. First of all, under the premise that all things are never equal. So we can set that side aside. But I think the best that we can hope for right now is some type of peaceful coexistence agreement between the North and the South that is underwritten by a continued U.S. presence on the peninsula and which results in at some point a reduction and moving toward elimination of North Korea's nuclear capabilities. I think that that's the best we can realistically hope for in the next two to four years. The worst could be bombs dropping again. And nobody wants that. But there are an awful lot of alternative outcomes between those two. And that's the problem is that things could easily get a lot worse. And it's hard to see how things are going to get a lot better given the current circumstances. I think I know your answer to my last question, which is dealing with the words that came out after that meeting. You can all sleep better at night. Can we sleep better at night now? I sleep better at night because I listen to the ocean and it sounds very soothing and I try not to think about North Korea. So that helps me sleep better at night. Is there less of a threat? As I mentioned before, I thought there was a less than one percent chance that there'd actually be a war despite both leaders acting belligerent. Now there's a less than a less than one percent chance. There's always the possibility of stumbling into war. Quite frankly, there are other scenarios in Asia. There are no more troubles in India, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, et cetera, et cetera, than North South Korea. But I think that there is an opportunity to do long-term damage to U.S. national security interests if we don't play this U.S.-North Korea card correctly. That I do really sleep over. That's what I worry the most about. That has an effect later on and it's irreversible. Ralph Kosa, President Emeritus, Pacific Farm. Thank you so much for coming, Jay. Ralph at pacform.org or tweet thuy at pacform.org if you want to be part of the in-group and come to our off-the-record breakfast meetings. Just give us a call, become a member of Pacific Farm, and you too will be enlightened. Absolutely. Sign me up. Thank you, Ralph.