 Good afternoon. My name is Nancy Lindbergh. I'm the president of the United States Institute of Peace, and I'm delighted to welcome everybody here today for very timely an important conversation. For those of you joining us for the first time, US Institute of Peace was founded just about 35 years ago by members of Congress as a nonpartisan national but independent Institute with the very singular mission of working around the world with partners to prevent and resolve violent conflict. And so we do this by connecting research with policy, training in education, and support for partners on the ground in conflict zones seeking to prevent conflict from becoming violent or resolving it once it does. And we use this headquarters here on the Mall in Washington, DC as a very powerful platform for convening people from across the political aisles, across various kinds of expertise, to come together to think deeply about how to solve some of the most pressing problems that we face as a nation, the essence of peace building. And that's what we're doing today and celebrating today because for the last year USIP has convened a series of senior study groups to look particularly at China's influence on conflict dynamics with an emphasis on conflict zones and fragile states that are of strategic interest to the United States. The China North Korea senior study group is the second in that series. You'll hear more about that in a few moments and it includes an impressive set of very knowledgeable, deeply expert scholars, former government officials, diplomats, and practitioners, some of whom we have with us here today for the conversation. And we're here today to launch their report China's Role in North Korea Nuclear and Peace Negotiations and as we saw from this weekend the release of this could not be more timely. We saw North Korea's latest weapon test, the first missile test from that country in more than a year, and it's the latest in a series of provocations that indicate a return to tensions with Washington while talks remain at an impasse. China, which wields considerable influence in Pyongyang and shares Washington's desire for a non-nuclear North Korea, very much wants to have a role in the negotiations with its neighbor. So the vital question is how to ensure that China can play a more constructive role in helping to move the discussion forward. Today we have the co-chairs of the senior study group, Ambassador Jo Yoon and Ambassador Stapleton Roy, and two of the group's members, Daniel Russell and Ambassador Kathleen Stevens, to discuss the report and its recommendations. As I said, we look forward to a very timely, very important conversation, and you can follow the conversation with us on Twitter at USIP using the hashtag ChinaDPRK. I also encourage you to check out USIP's new podcast network at usip.org slash podcast. It will include this event and a lot of other offerings featuring leading voices in violent conflict prevention and national security. And of course, I hope you download and share the report, which you can also find on our website. And with that, please join me in welcoming Jennifer Statz. USIP's director for East and Southeast Asia programs, who will introduce our very impressive panel of speakers today. Jennifer. Thank you, Nancy. And welcome everyone to USIP. And thank you so much for joining us this afternoon for the launch of our new report on China's role in North Korea's nuclear and peace negotiations. As Nancy said, we invite you to pick up a hard copy. If you're here today, they're right outside the door. And if you're joining us online, they're available on the USIP website for download. Here at USIP, our China program focuses on China's impact on conflict dynamics around the world and the ways that China's increased global engagement influences international communities efforts to prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict. Now, as you all know, China's influence is growing in all corners of the globe, but it is still felt most acutely in those countries on China's border. As China's neighbor, largest trading partner, I'm sorry, China is North Korea's neighbor, largest trading partner and closest political ally, and thus plays a particularly important role in efforts to address the ongoing nuclear crisis on the peninsula. This report examines China's interest and influence in North Korea and provides nonpartisan recommendations for ways that the US government and other stakeholders might take these factors into account when devising their own policies and strategies. As Nancy noted, the USIP China program is conducting a series of senior study groups or SSGs examining China's influence on different conflict zones around the world. And for each SSG, we convene again an expert of bipartisan experts over a period of about five to six months to examine China's role in a specific conflict. The first study group looked at China's involvement in conflicts in Burma, and it was chaired by Ambassador Derek Mitchell and Dr. Daniel Twining, and was released in September of last year. Over the winter, we convened a different group of experts to look at China's role in North Korea. And the product of those discussions is the report that you have in front of you today. We were incredibly fortunate to have an amazing group of experts participating in this project. First and foremost, of course, are our magnificent co-chairs, Ambassador Roy and Ambassador Yoon, who you will hear from very shortly. But we also benefited from the experience and expertise of our other outstanding group members. They were not all able to be with us here today, but I want to read their names to make sure that their contributions are recognized. Those participants included Frank Elm from USIP, Victor Cha from CSIS, Ambassador Robert Goluchi from Georgetown University, Bonnie Glazer from CSIS, Paul Hare from the George Washington University, Zachary Hosford from the Office of United States Senator Markey, John Park from the Harvard Kennedy School, Daniel Russell from the Asia Society, Oriana Schuyler-Mastrow from Georgetown University, Ambassador Kathleen Stevens from the Korea Economic Institute, Michael Swain from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Susan Thornton from the Paltzai China Center at Yale Law School. We also received excellent research support from our USIP team, including Philip Gassert, Lucy, Stevenson Yang, Patty Kim, and Jacob Stokes. And last but not least, before we go any farther, I want to say a special word of thanks to Rachel Vandenbrink. Rachel is a member of our China and North Korea teams here at USIP and served as the project coordinator for this effort over the last eight months from our very first meeting until the launch today. And we could not have done this without her and are grateful for all the work that she did to make this project a success. So thank you, Rachel. But without further ado, moving on to the substance of today's event, we will hear first from our two co-chairs, Ambassador Roy and Ambassador Yoon, and then turn to Ambassador Stevens and Mr. Russell for their comments and then finish with Q&A discussion from the audience. I imagine most of these folks are very well known to those of you in the audience here today, but I will give a short introduction before we get going. First, Ambassador Stapleton Roy is the founding director emeritus and a distinguished scholar at the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. He was born in China and watched the Chinese Civil War from the roof of his school in Shanghai. He attended Princeton University and then joined the US Foreign Service, where he participated in the secret negotiations to establish US-PRC diplomatic relations and later served as US ambassador to China. He also served as the top US envoy to Singapore and Indonesia, as well as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. Our other co-chair, Ambassador Joseph Yoon, served as US special representative for North Korea policy from 2016 to 2018 and is one of the nation's leading experts on relations with North Korea. With 33 years in the US Foreign Service, Ambassador Yoon also served as the ambassador to Malaysia, as well as the principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and the deputy assistant secretary for Southeast Asian policy. And most importantly, he is currently a senior advisor with Asia Center here at USIP. So we will start with opening remarks from our co-chairs and then turn to our other panelists after that. So with that, Ambassador Roy, the floor is yours. I prefer to speak sitting down, but I have trouble juggling paper and microphones at the same time. We're here this afternoon to launch the US Institute of Peace's new report on China's role in the North Korean nuclear issue. It's terrific timing. The harsh reality is that the North Korean nuclear issue is the most dangerous problem facing the United States and our friends and allies in East Asia. Through four successive US administrations extending back a quarter of a century, the United States has attached high priority to preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. Following North Korea's detonation of a nuclear device in 2006, our attention shifted to limiting North Korea's nuclear program and if possible, reversing it with the goal of again denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. These policies have been a dismal failure. After decades of determined efforts and in defiance of an increasingly rigorous UN-backed sanctions regime, North Korea has successfully developed nuclear weapons and is nearing a capability to target the United States homeland with nuclear-tipped missiles. When the Trump administration took office in 2017, on this issue of vital importance to the United States security, we had painted ourselves into a corner with no exit. North Korea had nuclear weapons. It had declared itself a nuclear power and taken denuclearization off of the table. We were only prepared to negotiate with North Korea on the basis of denuclearization, which was no longer on the table. That left us with no realistic options for addressing the problem other than extremely dangerous military ones that posed unacceptable risks to our allies. President Trump deserves credit. Indeed, I would say real credit for getting us out of this impasse and reopening a diplomatic track for negotiations with denuclearization back on the table as the goal of the talks. This put us in alignment with our South Korean ally, which favors direct U.S. engagement with North Korea. This has broken the impasse but failed to produce any progress toward denuclearization. After two summit meetings between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the negotiating process is in danger of breaking down. The U.S. breakthrough with North Korea also caused the ground to shift beneath our feet. North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un has emerged from his international isolation. In addition to two summits with President Trump, over the last year he's held several summits with South Korea, four summits with China, and his first summit meeting with Russian leader Putin just a few days ago. China is a central factor in this equation. It shares our goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, but its interests on the peninsula are not identical to those of the United States. China's top priority is to head off instability on its borders. Its goals are to, one, fend off foreign military intervention in North Korea. Second, to prevent the collapse of the North Korean regime. And third, to promote denuclearization in that order. Chinese leaders believe that North Korea developed nuclear weapons to deter the perceived threat from the United States. For that reason, it supports direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang as long as it is somehow involved in the process. But it sees clearly that North Korea's actions are negatively affecting China's interests by eliciting responses from the United States and its allies, Japan and South Korea, that worsen China's security environment and increase pressure on Japan and South Korea to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. The U.S. trade war with China has added its strains to an already strained U.S.-China relationship, and this has the potential to affect cooperation on Korean-related matters. Therefore, it takes considerable skill on the part of the United States to balance the fact that the country that is most relevant other than ourselves to progress with North Korea, that includes South Korea in the process, but the external power that's most significant is China, and we don't have easy relations with China at the present time. With the outlook clouded in this fashion, the Institute of Peace report looks at the role China could play in the three possible scenarios. First, if the talks produce progress toward denuclearization. Second, if the talks remain stalled. And third, if they collapse and tensions increase. At the moment, the Trump administration favors a quick resolution of the problem through a so-called big deal that exchanges immediate denuclearization for full normalization of relations with the United States. North Korea and China both favor a step-by-step approach based on reciprocal actions that move the process forward. Skillful and tenacious diplomacy will be necessary for either approach to succeed. It's probably a good thing that the big package is on the table, because if you fail to make progress in the step-by-step approach, which has been attempted over numerous years before, then there might be criticism that you should have put the big package on the table. But the transition from a big package to a step-by-step approach is not going to be easy, and that's why this report is so significant, because it explores the types of issues that are going to emerge as we try to keep this negotiating path alive and secure genuine progress, however slow, toward denuclearization. The stakes are very high. Thank you. So, you know, in my thirty-three years of Foreign Service, I've had several bosses, and I think four of them are here, you know? And anyhow, thank you very much. I wanted to discuss a little bit about the question that everyone is asking, which is, will North Korea denuclearize? Have they made a fundamental question to denuclearize? And, you know, my own answer is always that we don't know. I really doubt even Kim Jong-un himself knows, you know? But what I do know is that I don't think U.S. alone can do it. You know, I think it is just, we've tried it, we've tried it bilaterally, a number of times, and it is just too difficult. And this is why we've really taken on the project of, where else can we look for help? And, of course, the obvious place is China, and I do believe that the relations between China and North Korea is such that they will be vital if we are to really succeed at denuclearizing North Korea. And you look at our reports throughout, it mentions the leverage that China has over North Korea. That is very, very important. The second question that is often asked is, does China really want denuclearized North Korea? Or do they see it in their interest to annoy the U.S., to have leverage over the U.S., to have a nuclear North Korea? And to me, I think that our report answers that quite clearly. Yes, China does value denuclearization. It's clearly in their interest. Number one, China's strategic goal is to ultimately get the U.S. out of their back door, and they really see nuclear North Korea as something of a pretext or reason for us to be on Korean Peninsula. That's important for them. Second, they don't want to proliferate the area. I mean, they do value very significantly the fact that they are a legitimate so-called P5 acknowledged, accepted nuclear power. They certainly do not want another country, let alone a small country in the region having nuclear weapons. So I think for all those reasons, our conclusion is very strongly that China does want denuclearization of North Korea. But that does not mean that China wants to do it the same way as the U.S. And this is the fundamental disconnect between the U.S. position and Chinese position. And to put it very simply, China wants to see both the stability and the continuation of the Kim regime while denuclearization is going on. Call it parallel action, call it dual track, but clearly they want that. For us, for the U.S., it has always been important before we think about issues like peace, normalization, whatever, that there be denuclearization. And so I think that's a fundamental disconnect. As Ambassador Roy mentioned, I do think what President Trump has done is very important in trying to at least align a position between Beijing and U.S. In the sense that we are approaching, U.S. is now approaching both the issue of security and peace on the Korean Peninsula at the same time as denuclearization. But I think where we do differ fundamentally with the Chinese is the timeline. Nobody in China believes that this can be done quickly. Nobody in China believes that this can be done without some kind of compromise. And nobody believes that North Korea will completely denuclearize before we begin the peace process, normalization process and sanctions lifting process. So that does beg the question that I think we should all think about. Can we do this bilaterally alone? If not, what should be the next format? And so one conclusion we came to is that we really should develop a roadmap, how we get there with the Chinese. And of course you need then the input from both North and South Korea. So I think you will hear the debate coming up over and over again. Is it enough to approach North Koreans alone or should we do it multilaterally as the full party, something like that? So I think that's a question to me. I would very much support now having China weigh in a lot more firmly, a lot more powerfully and with a lot more influence. Thank you very much. I'm going to introduce you before you start. Okay, everyone's going to the podium, so I've been rebuffed, but that's all right. So our next speaker, I can get another member of the Careers Senior Foreign Service. Daniel Russell is Vice President for International Security and Diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute. As a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, he served all over the world. And his most recent posts here in DC were as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and as Special Assistant to the President and the National Security Council Senior Director for Asian Affairs in the Obama White House. Mr. Russell. Thanks, Jennifer, and thanks, Nancy. This has been a terrific group, and it's been my honor to be part of such an esteemed gathering of experts. My heartfelt conviction is, as this report points to, there is no prospect of a happy ending of the challenges of the Korean Peninsula without cooperation between the United States and China. And I'll just touch on sort of four big questions concerning China's role and then say just a word or two about U.S. perceptions or misperceptions of China's role on the Korean Peninsula. And I think the report makes some of these or asks these questions either in an implicit or an explicit way. So the first question is, what should we expect? What comes after Hanoi, after the setback in Hanoi? And of course we've seen not only the warnings from Kim Jong-un, his New Year's speech, his speech to the Supreme People's Assembly in April, but as Nancy pointed out, the rock through the window, the launch of projectiles into the Sea of Japan as an expression of impatience and of warning. I think we should expect that the Chinese would have a certain degree of sympathy for North Korea's impatience, although of course a lot of unhappiness and queasiness about the kinetic expression of that frustration. The Chinese are very supportive of the notion of the phased, synchronous action, action for action. They're very sympathetic to the idea that it's the big, rich America that ought to be offering more, including, as Joe pointed out, lowering the involvement and the presence of the U.S. military on the Korean Peninsula. Second big question is the effect of the trade war, and even if there is a deal and a truce, as is likely, the United States seems to have shifted to a kind of full-on strategic rivalry towards China. China's policies on North Korea are always going to be rooted in China's national interest. China is not going to shift gears on North Korea in a fit of peak because of other issues in the U.S.-China relationship, but as State Broad pointed out, this has at least the potential to seriously derail any prospect of U.S.-China cooperation. Certainly the friction in the relationship diminishes China's willingness to take risks or to cooperate with the United States. China is careful about linkages, but it does take a holistic and long-term approach. The question that the report tackles head-on is what happens, what should we expect, and what should we do if U.S.-North Korean negotiations begin. I won't even say resume because I'm not much less convinced than some of my friends that there really is a negotiating or was a negotiating process with North Korea. The Chinese, who are great believers in the principle that ja ja is better than war war, will be relieved, but I think that we will find them to be deeply deeply worried about being frozen out of a deal between Pyongyang and Washington. China will need to protect its own equities, which are very considerable as State and Joe have mentioned, to shape the outcomes and therefore will push hard to multilateralize the process. The report also asked the question, what happens if talks were to collapse? And certainly in the aftermath of Hanoi, that's a question that we have to take a hard look at. We already see that China is pushing to de-escalate the situation and resume some degree of diplomatic engagement. We should expect a push from China on North Korea not to test, certainly testing a nuclear device I think is highest on Beijing's do not do list, given its morbid fear of radioactive material drifting into China. I think we should expect more pressure on the United States as well in this scenario to ease off, to be more flexible, to offer more, to give more, and we've already seen that in the form of China's call for sanctions, left sanctions relief in the UN. What we don't know is how China could be convinced that the blame for a collapse of any hope for negotiations rests on the US side and not the North Korean side. And we also don't know the answer to the question, what would happen if in the aftermath of a complete collapse and a resumption of tensions or even fire and fury, what would happen if the United States actions included such things as economic sanctions against major Chinese banks that are perceived as doing business? With North Korea, and on that note, far be it from me to use this platform to plug something from the Asia society, but I just wrote a report on future scenarios in North Korea which you could find on our Asia society website. Real quick on US perceptions or misperceptions of China's role in the North Korea problem is there's a very long list, I'll mention three, that China wants denuclearization as does the United States and therefore we share the same goal. And as State pointed out, denuclearization is number three on the top three Chinese wish list and so it is often coming up short when China has to make tough policy calls, avoiding war, avoiding chaos being number one and two. Second, that China could force North Korea to capitulate if it only wanted to. Now there's no doubt that China has a tremendous amount of leverage, but the risk to China, the cost of using that leverage in Chinese eyes vastly outweighs the gamble and full-on pressure. And thirdly, because China wants the US to make compromises with North Korea to engage North Korea, the China will stand back and let the United States make a deal. And as I said at the outset, China has such profound equities on the Korean Peninsula and is at so much risk of things developing in a way that's inimical to Chinese interests, it can't afford to be sidelined. Stop there, thank you. Thank you very much and our fourth speaker is Ambassador Kathleen Stevens, who is the President and CEO of the Korea Economic Institute and the former US Ambassador to South Korea. She was also a career diplomat in the Foreign Service with postings all around the world, including in China. Here in Washington, she served as Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and National Security Council Director for European Affairs at the Clinton White House. Well thank you very much. It's an honor to be here on this distinguished panel on this platform and I thought I'd break the mold and try to be the bridge into a more interactive part of the afternoon by making a couple of comments from here and trying to balance my notes with the microphone. But thank you so much. It was an honor to be a part of this group. I thought the discussions were very lively, excellent papers contributed by many, and I congratulate everyone and thank everyone who actually wrote the final report. You know who you are. And I think the recommendations are really good. I'll get to that in a minute. I was asked to kind of comment on what's been said. I agree with all. These are very wise men up here and I think you'll see they're well reflected in the report. And I was asked to say something about maybe from kind of the South Korean perspective and there are many South Koreans and experts on South Korea in the audience so I don't want to be too presumptuous here. But what I would say again is I have to repeat a couple of the obvious points. One is, I mean the relevance of this topic, it struck me. We'll have to talk about American politics but I'm not on the Foreign Service anymore so I can. President Trump, even as a candidate, he was very focused on this idea. If we just get China involved we can fix this North Korean issue. He thought he was the first person to have this idea. He wasn't. President Bush was very focused on it. I was working in the Bush administration on the Six Party Talks and that was the insight there which I think was a very important insight was again China needs to be involved and let's make them the chairman of these talks. The Obama administration similarly understood the centrality of it. The challenge is, and again to quote President Trump I think in a tweet, it hasn't worked out yet or it hasn't worked out. So that's part of what we're trying to look at in the report but also recognizing that it is absolutely essential that the U.S. and China find a way to work together to make progress on North Korea. And also I would say to avoid it becoming a real flash point in the relationship which we didn't really focus on but cannot be completely discounted. But turning to I guess if you're looking from the Korean Peninsula, from South Korea in particular, a couple of thoughts and bear with me if I get a little bit sort of historical here. The report is obviously very much focused on what's happening now. I think it does do a good job of trying to look at least historically from the establishment of the ROK and the DPRK and the end of the Korean War at the relationships. But I think, and I don't want to sound too much like Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago here, but Korea and China do have a very long history. And some of you may recall that it was two years ago in April 2017 I believe when Xi Jinping was meeting with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago that according to President Trump's account to the Wall Street Journal, Xi Jinping spent a long time explaining, we've all experienced a bit I think, the very long relationship and history between China and Korea, of course unified Korea over that long history. And as received by Trump and transmitted to the Wall Street Journalists may not have been exactly what was said, well it's complicated and Korea used to be a part of China. This gets me into South Korea because that news went viral in South Korea. There were protests. And again, who said what? I think wisely both the foreign ministry spokesman and Beijing and in Washington just kept quiet on that one. But I think that the notion that there is a long history there and in some way Xi Jinping wanted to communicate that is relevant to the challenges today. Two more kind of little anecdotes to think about in terms of Korea's own development of a modern national identity. Many of you have probably been to the Chosun Hotel in Seoul and if you sit in the lovely Ninth Gate restaurant there outside, there's a little building that looks kind of like the Temple of Heaven and Beijing, right? It's like a little one. If my history is right, do you know why that was built? Well, it's when Korea, under pressure from Japan and Russia and China, a weak China, unable to really protect its interests, decided it needed to be an empire too and to be an empire instead of a kingdom. You had to have a direct channel to heaven so they built their own little Temple of Heaven. That's the Korean empire. That was part of it finding its own identity a little outside if you like the wing of China. If you go to Logan Circle, there's a building there called the Legation Building. I always get this in. It's like your paper. I've talked about the Legation Building. It's so interesting. And there, this was set up in the late 1800s with, again, the Koreans trying to build a relationship. The first time they tried to do that with any real country besides China in a kind of a modern way, if you like. And one of the things I think all former diplomats appreciate this is a seating chart from a dinner at President Arthur's, I think, White House for the Korean diplomats, the Chinese diplomats, and others in Washington. And the Korean diplomats are seated in a higher protocol position than the Chinese. Everyone's shocked. The state looks shocked by that too. So part of the experience of Koreans developing a modern identity was developing in, these are the certain amount of separation from China. Clearly, South and North Korea have had very divergent experiences since the division. But I think that underlying sense of what are the attitudes in South Korea and North Korea and in China towards each other is something that we don't all need to be, and I'm not, deep historians, but we need to be very broad. Very mindful of, I think. I mean, getting to, I mean, South Korea's relationship with China, I mean, this is still kind of old history for a lot of you. I was in Korea in 1988 as a Foreign Service Officer when the sole Olympics happened and Chinese athletes and Soviet athletes came. It was the first time they'd ever been in South Korea because there weren't even diplomatic relations in. I remember how euphoric South Koreans were. I wasn't in Korea then, maybe you were, but I remember how euphoric South Koreans were or how delighted they were when they finally established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1992 and subsequently built an enormous, as everyone has, but they in particular, economic relationship and partnership, utterly intertwined. And I remember all the South Koreans who kind of said to me, you know, we have a long history with the Chinese, we know how to manage this relationship. I think it's been a hard road for the South Koreans, particularly in recent years when they've seen that China imposes sanctions not only sometimes on North Korea but on other countries it doesn't like including South Korea. When China is not shy about using its influence and sometimes the U.S. has been accused of it, but I think the South Koreans included, we're not quite as, our elbows are not quite as sharp as the Chinese and we're not quite as close in trying to get its way. But at the same time the South Koreans certainly recognize, as do we and in this paper, that China is absolutely central to the future of the region, to the future of denuclearization and to their own future hopes. With that I just wanted to say, highlight that again I think the recommendations are quite good. It's great when you're out of diplomacy and you still make recommendations and get them out there. And to me part of what the recommendations try to do, I don't know if you all saw it quite this way, was a little bit of a trade off between with the Chinese if you like and maybe the South Koreans on process and to say rather than the big deal, we'll do a step by step. I mean that's kind of the negotiations that I think most of us know from our own heart and in my case not always successful or seldom successful experience. It's really the only kind there is. But at the same time you do have to have or it's certainly good to have a clear end goal. And even if you don't know exactly if Kim Jong-un is really going to deliver, some clarity of where you're trying to head is probably important. But there are many other elements to get you there and again I think the report because it sure just alludes to these but the notion as others have already said that you can't sort of solve the denuclearization issue in isolation. It would be really nice if this is a kind of purely intellectual non-proliferation exercise and we went about it in that way. But it is very much tied into the future of relations between North and South Korea, whether you call the inter-Korean relations or the peace regime, security architecture and the neighborhood, a number of other things that really have to be part of this process going forward. So I think if we can find a way to, one, recognize that China, if we're going to engage in this way, in my opinion anyway, is going to need more than like after action reports, you know, whether they come from a shuttling diplomat or from a presidential phone call, they're going to have to be in this process in a bigger way. But in a way that also ensures that from I think from a U.S. perspective that we are not seen as and not in actuality somehow forming some kind of great power condominium that overlooks the interest of South Korea or from that matter North Korea or of course other very concerned countries like Japan. Thank you very much. Well that actually leads me to one question I want to ask before we open it up to the audience. You ended by talking about Japan, which is a country that is clearly a critical part of this process but one that we haven't spent too much time talking about in the prepared remarks. So I want to ask a little bit about Japan but also Russia. Both of them are discussed in the report. I think Steve Began is in Japan today, if that's right, and obviously there was just recently the big meeting between Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin. Opened up to the panel, someone wants to say a little bit more about the role of Japan and Russia in this process. Well, thanks Jennifer. Like everything pertaining to North Korea it's complicated. So from Japan's point of view on the one hand it is most directly and most imminently in danger from North Korean missiles and potentially from nuclear warheads. Attacking Japan of course metaphorically is the one thing that all Koreans seem to be able to agree upon. So the threat to Japan has a unifying effect and it furthermore is part and parcel of North Korea's own strategy to align itself strategically with China and with Russia and the current environment. So Japan believes that it has a lot to fear from North Korea with some justice and that's reinforced by the fact that Kim Jong-un declared a moratorium only on long range and medium range missiles, not on short range missiles. And what we saw over the weekend were projectiles that landed in the Sea of Japan. So there's something real there. Secondly, Japan has the long festering issue of Japanese citizens who were willfully abducted by North Korean in the 70s and 80s and this has a tremendous political importance in Japan particularly under the Abe government. Thirdly, Japan right now in addition to being isolated in Kim Jong-un round of parties, round of summits has real concerns about the erratic, spasmonic and unpredictable quality of U.S. statements pertaining to North Korea and feels that it's important, number one, not to be excluded and number two, not to allow the Trump administration to rush headlong into some ill-advised deal that might compromise alliance efforts and Japan's interests in particular. With regard to Russia, I'd say simply that what we see is characteristic Putin opportunism and certainly the Russians perceive an opportunity to get back in the game so to speak and as a special side benefit to make some mischief for the United States. In the past, Russia took a pretty firm view on traditional non-proliferation issues and pushed hard for denuclearization consistent with its global equities and policies. That seems to have really dissipated over the last several years and right now although Russia may harbor hopes of economic benefits in the future along the lines of what President Moon Jae-in has been proposing, first and foremost I think that there is a tactical opening that the Russians see. Let me just add an additional point to Danny's very good points. The end result of denuclearization, we can't just stop there. The goal of both denuclearization and if ever we can consider Korean unification is to create a more stable situation in Northeast Asia. To get a more stable situation in Northeast Asia, that means that any denuclearization arrangements have to have the buy-in of all of the major powers whose interests are affected. And you make an enormous error if you think that you can somehow do it simply on the basis of the original four party without Japan and Russia buying into the arrangements. These are not countries with trivial capabilities to spoil a good arrangement if they don't think it's working in their interest. So I think you have to take into account these strategic issues. And that's one of the hopeful things is that as we saw in the six party talks, the five, with the exception of North Korea, were united in their desire to push forward a non-nuclearization process because this was before North Korea had successfully tested a nuclear device. And that was a very important factor. And again, it showed a recognition that the six major powers whose interests are deeply involved in the issue all have to be considered as part of thinking about outcomes. Right, thank you. We will now open it up to the audience for questions. We have a lot to talk about today. So I think we will take a few questions at a time. When we acknowledge you, please wait. We have folks who will bring you a microphone. And at that time, please stand up, identify yourself and then ask your question. And again, I think we'll have a lot to please try to keep questions short if possible. And we'll start over here. Eunjung Cho with the Voice of America. Soon after North Korea launched the projectile, Secretary Pompeo told media that at no point was there ever any international boundary crossed. They landed in the water east of North Korea and didn't present a threat to the United States or to South Korea or Japan. This sounds really different from previous U.S. government responses which criticized not only long range but also short range missiles and projectiles as a threat to not only the United States but also its allies. And soon after official responses from Japan and South Korea and the United States is that this is not a threat to any of the countries. All three countries seem to maintain low key to the latest projectile launch. So my question is, how is the latest response from Secretary Pompeo different from previous responses and what is your take on that? And are three countries condoning North Korea's bad behavior to keep diplomacy alive? Thank you. Okay, I'm going to contradict what I just said. And instead of taking a bunch of questions right out of the gate, I think this is obviously one that everyone's going to want to talk about because of the events over the weekend. So maybe we'll stop right now and pause and let the panelists comment on the question but also on perhaps the developments over the weekend and what that means for the process going forward. I know we've talked about it a little bit and I'm sure folks have more to say. And both what that means for China's role, which is obviously still the focus of this particular report, but also how that might change the dynamics in the coming weeks and months. Well, thank you very much. Maybe I can have a crack at that question first. I think we must remember there is an important distinction between short range missiles and long range missiles, especially short range missiles, practice trained within the international, you know, easy and outside. So I think that's an important distinction that Secretary Pompeo made. Second is the reality. There has been two summit meetings between US president and North Korean president. There has been what three summit meetings between South Korean president and North Korean leader and four between Chinese and North Koreans. I do think it is in the interest of the region to keep the current engagement alive. So I think what you said is partly true. They do want to give diplomacy a chance. Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair, accurate to say that there's an effort to perhaps downplay the actions over the weekend for the reasons that Joe suggests. And one hopes, and I am not privy to this, that there is some effort to be in contact through private channels and try to get a negotiation going. I think that is a shared interest at this point of the various parties in the region. And again, I would note that the part you didn't quote was that Mr. Pompeo underscored the continued emphasis on very tough maximum sanctions and enforcement of those and so on. So I think we're seeing a continuation of the effort post Hanoi to try to get something going again and not see it derailed. This is literally a warning shot by North Korea to the Trump administration punctuating the point that Kim Jong-un has made quite clearly first in his New Year's address and second in his address to the Supreme People's Assembly, namely my patience is not unlimited. You need to give me more. And while assuming that this was not a ballistic missile test, because all ballistic missile tests are explicitly prohibited under multiple UN Security Council resolutions, it's perfectly understandable why the Trump administration would seek to downplay the significance of this warning and instead try to redouble efforts to get the North Koreans to engage in a diplomatic format. But it also does raise the question if the message to North Korea is this didn't meet the threshold of truly alarming us, is that inadvertently a challenge to North Korea to up the ante and we may see the answer to that question in the coming weeks and months. We'll go back to the audience for questions. Let's start here. Sung Woo Rim and working at Wilson Center. I have two simple questions about China and Six-Part Talks. First question is I had a chance to attend a seminar in China. So some Chinese scholars said China's role to the North Korea is highly limited. So China cannot prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. How does Ambassador think about this opinion? Second question is is there any possibility to revival of Six-Part Talks among six countries in the Northeast Asia? Thank you. Thank you very much. And again, we'll start here at the back. It's coming. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Don Kirk. One thing I can't quite see why we hear this term step by step when it's never worked before. Why do you think it would possibly work now? And in addition to which, if you insist on using step by step, why doesn't human rights become one of the steps? Thank you. I haven't heard the term human rights mentioned so far today. Thank you. We'll take one more and then we'll turn to the panel for comment. Here in the front. Barbara Harvey, retired Foreign Service Officer, served in Seoul in the early six seasons, North Korean desk officer in the early eighties. My question is about China's relationship. Now that it has good relations with South Korea, how has that affected their approach to the question of the Korean Peninsula? And does it make them less nervous about unification? Well, thanks. Okay. We'll turn to the panel to comment on those three excellent questions. Does anyone want to go first? Let me take the question of China not being able to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. As a representative of great power, dealing with many countries that were not as powerful as the United States, I am very aware of the limitations on what great powers can do in forcing other countries to behave. If China had unlimited resources to force North Korea to do what it wanted, then I have no doubt that we would have been able to tell North Korea to stop the flow, to tell Mexico to halt the flow of refugees across the hundreds of miles of Mexican territory that they crossed to reach the U.S. border. We can't order Mexico around. China cannot order North Korea around. China was the first country to issue a statement condemning the North Korean nuclear test in 2006. It used language that is normally reserved for the United States. It accused it of blatantly violating its international undertakings. It was extraordinarily strong language. The Chinese were genuinely offended by it. They are offended by the fact that North Korea repeatedly has taken actions designed to thumb their nose at China on issues which China has told them were very important to China. So if one understands this background of the relationship, one has a better understanding of why China believes that it's necessary to create interests for North Korea to move in particular declarations. I was at a lunch in China a few years ago when the Premier of China was complaining about the fact that North Korea, when they used to ship their fuel oil to North Korea on railroad cars, North Korea wouldn't return the railroad cars. Well, China's response, it built a pipeline instead. Now you see the United States, we would have made a big issue out of the railroad cars. China just found a way around the problem. That's the way it tends to deal with North Korea. I think the good thing about this format is we can pick a question we want to answer. So I'll go ahead and pick the step-by-step one. I agree with you. I don't like it step-by-step or even calling it. What I would have if I was back, I would push for what I call an interim agreement. Because it is practically impossible to get from where we are to the endpoint of complete denuclearization, which includes dismantling, which includes verification. We just can't get there because they won't agree. So how do you get from here to there? And I don't think, you know, call it what you want, step-by-step, parallel action, action for action. You have to do it because of such incredible lack of trust. And there is no other way, you know, we have not been able to communicate with them except in these rare meetings. And really, you know, I remember when I was in the government, when I first started in late 2016, I was at the end of Obama administration. And I called them up and said, listen, you know, shouldn't we be talking at least? And their answer was at the point, we will never talk to anyone in Obama administration. So I mean, I don't want to go into long reason they gave, you know, they really didn't like Obama administration. And so I had to wait until January 20th. There is no communication, no trust. So only way we can get there is by little by little. So this idea, somehow we can do a big deal in which everything will be resolved in one setting. I think it's just fantasy. And so there are two ways of getting resolved, resolving in one go. One is do that, which is fantasy. The other one is, you know, military action, which is another fantasy. So you really do have no choice, I believe. I'll leave the South Korea China question to you at least, if I may, Kathy. I'd like to pick up on the hard question that was asked about human rights, because I think it's a very important question. There's no good answer, but it does lie in what Joe just said about step by step, because there's a fundamental tension between the options in terms of process. Does creating engagement and normalization and reconciliation also create the environment that will facilitate denuclearization? Or does denuclearizing North Korea create the environment that allows normalization, engagement, reconciliation? And there are very different perspectives on this, particularly between Washington and, say, Beijing. Step by step is a highly unsatisfactory approach. But as Joe points out, this big bang notion that you can take all of the difficult issues, it's not limited to human rights, it also includes chemical weapons, biological weapons, includes abductees, it includes cyber theft, as well as the many threats to critical infrastructure in South Korea and elsewhere. It includes the drug manufacturing, meth that comes out of North Korea, counterfeiting, and so on. I'm not merely putting human rights on a long list of offenses. It's central to American values and, frankly, universal values. But the notion that you could wrap all this in a mall and get right to the big deal, which has been the premise of President Trump's approach, is completely unrealistic. On the other hand, we know from experience that step by step with North Korea almost invariably has led to what's called the Zeno's Paradox, where you're always inching a half-step closer and closer, but somehow you never seem to get there. And step by step simply hasn't yielded results. But I agree with Joe that there's no viable alternative. What the report points to is keeping a clear-eyed focus on what the objectives are and what the end-state will have to look like, not only in terms of denuclearization, but more broadly in terms of the regional environment, and that includes human rights, while tackling those issues that are of highest priority, the wolf nearest to the door, so to speak, and tackling those issues that you can actually get your arms around. I have to pitch in again on Don's good questions, because I think this question of how do you structure a negotiation agreement, of course, is the heart of some of the frustrations we've had over the years. And I agree step by step doesn't sound like the right phrase. We maybe come up with another one, but when I kind of think about, in a way, why have agreements, and again, there'd be different answers to this, why have agreements with North Korea never held up? And if you look at other parts of the world agreements we've had, and I cherry-pick here, but I mean, let's say the Dayton Accords or the Good Friday Agreement, I mean, none of those were exactly comprehensive agreements, but they were kind of comprehensive. Actually, the Joint Statement of Principles in 2005 was kind of comprehensive. And then the question actually becomes the implementation. I mean, maybe step by step, in a way, is implementation. You know, I think it is a good idea to get as much upfront as you can, but you can't get everything. And I don't think I can think of the history of diplomacy, where we've had one, you know, agreement, big deal, that just took into account absolutely everything. But the key things, touch on them in some way, but implementation certainly is slow and uneven in every circumstance. But what I'd like to see is a circumstance where the whole agreement doesn't collapse, which is what tended to happen, not tended, it has happened with North Korea. With respect to human rights, and thank you for raising it, I think you didn't ask this, but I think there are a couple of things that the U.S., South Korea, others, the international community could do, and they're doing some of them. But one is I think the Trump administration should appoint someone to be special representative for human rights and humanitarian affairs. Two, I think we could look at things, it's not a long list here, but this is only my second one, things like suggestions, if you like, that could become eventually part of agenda for adjustments in North Korea's legal system that it would need to do in order to encourage the kind of economic growth, something else we have not yet touched on in talking about North Korea, but the kind of economic growth and development it says at once. Some of this could be labor laws, other could be very basic human rights issues that we used to have with South Korea, like the law on guilt by association. That wasn't eliminated in South Korea until the 1980s. Simply getting rid of that would be a huge step, and I think putting it on the agenda without waiting for an agreement on other things would be the right thing to do. Barbara, it's great to see you again. Your question about this burgeoning relationship between South Korea and China that has developed over the years economically, but also in other ways, and K-pop is very big in China, obviously tourism has gone back and forth somewhat, or much influence in the last few years, of course, by the tensions over the deployment of the missile defense system in South Korea and some other issues, and China's putting economic pressure because of that. I think you see over the years, I mean, since the 90s, and the normalization of relations, great hopes on the part of the South Koreans that China could be brought to understand. Park Geun-ae, the previous president, was very focused on this, and in fact was ready to irritate Washington. Danny could tell you more about that. To try to build that kind of relationship with China with the express goal. She was very public about this, of kind of acculturating them to the kind of Korea that she hoped to see and why that would be in China's interest. I think right now there is a sense of disappointment, to put it mildly, with some of China's decisions, particularly in that it's fundamental interest, do seem to certainly still go more to sustaining North Korea than South Korea's desire for improved inter-Korean relations. But the efforts continue, and are certainly on the agenda of any South Korean government. Go back out to the audience for questions. In the very back in the blue shirt. Hi, Ben Marks with NHK Japan Broadcasting. Prime Minister Abe has clearly stated he'd like to hold a summit with Kim Jong-un, but my question is, does Kim Jong-un have any interest in meeting with Prime Minister Abe? Does Japan offer North Korea anything that would incentivize the summit? Thank you. And then right next to him right there. Hi, my name is Renata Jani. I'm with TV Asahi. I did want to ask about the economic growth part that just came up in the last question. The Trump administration really seems to be pushing this idea perhaps just as a carrot, but maybe as a more fleshed out idea of making North Korea into more of an economically developed country. Is there possibly for cooperation with China on this? Like, could China possibly get interested in this idea as well? Thank you. A routine from Vietnamese people army. I have two simple questions. The first question is, what's the role of the U.S. and China in terms of setting up peace agreement in the Korean Bensuna? And the second question focuses on the procedure to the nuclearization in North Korea. How does North Korea lobby in order to improve cooperation with the U.S. in order to deal with nuclear weapons in North Korea without ambassador in the U.S.? I see this light up just between the two sides, North Korea and the U.S., to deal with the nuclear system in North Korea. The big problem is North Korea doesn't have ambassador in the U.S. So how do they do lobby in order to get agreement between the two sides? Thank you. Great. So questions about the Abe Kim summit, economic growth and U.S.-North Korea relationship. Stay pet the first choice. I'll have the first choice this time. Let me talk a little bit about the diplomat in exchange of embassies and so on. This will be a fundamental part, I believe, of any agreement we reach with North Korea. We were very close. U.S. was very close to exchanging liaison, diplomatic liaison offices, I would say in mid-90s when we had a number of people, a number of our colleagues actually were in training to go to North Korea to open a U.S. diplomatic office there. And we came quite close to it, probably in year 2000 when Secretary Albright went to it. And I believe we would have had in Hanoi an agreement to exchange liaison offices had it not broken off on how much sanctions and how much denuclearization issue. So we're very close to that. The fundamental question is that we have liaison office, which is the first step, and we have normalization, which is the last step in diplomatic recognition. In the case of Vietnam, I think it wasn't very long from liaison office to diplomatic office. In the case of China, it was a little longer, I believe. So I think these things can happen. I'm optimistic. As we go to something like a step-by-step or interim agreement, this will be one of the first measures we will take. Which question? Whether you use the terms step-by-step or not, here's your problem. If you could do the big deal, North Korea begins the process of denulking itself and we begin the process of establishing full relations with them, removing sanctions, et cetera. If you don't go that road, how do you sustain a negotiating process which has to be based on denuclearization as the end result when you're not going to be able to get significant progress on denuclearization as part of that process? Well, then you have to look at what do we have to play with, establishing representatives in each other's capitals, opening liaison offices. This is not like China where the liaison office was because we had a embassy in a competing government. We don't have that problem with North Korea and South Korea. We could open an embassy in Pyongyang if we chose to and they could open an embassy in Washington. You still have an armistice agreement. You could have a peace agreement. In other words, there are a whole series of steps that can be taken or I won't call them steps. I'm sorry, I'm trying to stay away from that. There are a number of stages that you can go through trying to work your way. But the idea is you need to show enough progress to sustain what you're trying to do, which is to get to a point of mutual confidence sufficient so that North Korea can actually consider denuclearization as a realistic prospect. Now, I'm surprised that people don't seem to understand this. How many Americans think that with China building up its naval and missile capabilities in the western Pacific that we should start drawing down our military forces in the Pacific because we can trust China that it won't try to abuse its power position. But North Korea spends how many years developing nuclear weapons in order to defend off a potential attack from the United States and we want them to suddenly decide, oh well, we'll get rid of our defensive shields because the United States is a trustworthy country and we therefore don't have to worry about whether we have nuclear weapons or not. No, that's not realistic. At the moment, there is insufficient trust between the United States and North Korea to sustain a big deal. That's why all four of us up here are skeptical that a big deal is possible. On the other hand, it's the best outcome. So I myself think that if President Trump has floated that idea to the North Koreans, I'm glad he has because it enables dreams of purple balloons and things to float around in North Korean heads. The idea of having Trump hotels on their Riviera there, not a bad idea, but it's not realistic. And so therefore we have to think in terms of what are the steps that we can take in order to move us in the right direction. At some point, as part of that progress, human rights has to be out there. But if you try to do things in the wrong order, you impede your ability to move in the right direction. And that's where diplomatic skill comes into play. You have to organize things in the best way to get where you want to go, bearing in mind that all of them have to be part of the final resolution. Maybe if I can comment on the Arbe question. Arbe has been wanting a meeting with North Koreans for a long time now. And of course, North Koreans haven't agreed. And in fact, I think this is more a statement on Kim Jong-un than anything else. So he's had two meetings with the US president, four meetings with Chinese president, and three meetings with South Korean leader. And it took one year for Putin to beg him to have a meeting with Putin. So how long is he going to take Arbe? I think he's going to take a while longer, you know? I'll address the other half of that question, which is, what does North Korea want from Japan? And while I'm engaging in a little mind reading, something that the North Koreans have consistently asserted is that Japan is like the Republic of Korea, essentially a puppet of the United States. And it's reasonable to believe that the North Koreans calculate that if they can make a deal with President Trump, then Japan will be forced to follow. And what North Korea wants from Japan is pretty straightforward. It's money. The North Koreans expect that they would receive a reparation from the war in some modern-day currency equivalent of the reparations that were paid to the Republic of Korea back in the 60s. And there's more, I'm sure, that they hope they can squeeze out of Japan in the context of a deal, but they are seemingly convinced that they're better off cutting the deal with the United States and forcing Japan to follow. I would also just say on the other question, relating to the possibility of cooperation on economic development in North Korea, I think in principle, certainly the U.S., China, Japan, and certainly South Korea can cooperate and have a lot, potentially, to offer in North Korea economically in the context of a process or a settlement. But we should remember that North Korea has and will, I predict, continue to insist on economic cooperation on its own terms. It's highly improbable that North Korea would be willing to open the floodgates of investment in a manner that would allow the infection by insidious Western values and ideas. As Kathy pointed out, the U.S. and others in the international community are going to raise rule of law, human rights, and associated interests just in the context of doing business in North Korea and frankly just keeping their businessmen and women citizens safe in North Korea. I think instead we should expect that if given the opportunity, North Korea would pocket the lifting of sanctions, the increased resources, and apply them where North Korea has always applied its resources, which is in service of building its arsenal and strengthening the regime's safety. Yes, please. We'll take a few more and then we'll do a lightning round. Thank you very much. Donghui Yu with China Review News Agency of Hong Kong. My question is for Ambassador Roy and Secretary Russell. Yesterday President Trump was threatening that he will increase the tariff on Chinese goods by the end of this week. I'm wondering what's going on here. Does he have anything to do with the talk on North Korea issue? And secondly, Secretary Russell has touched upon the possibility that the rivalry between the U.S. and China may affect the Beijing's willingness to cooperate with the U.S. on North Korea. But my question is on the U.S. side, how the result of the North Korea talk may affect the U.S. strategic to compete with China in the Northeast Asia? Or how will affect the U.S. mindset to have a big power competition with China? Or how the strategic competition with China may affect the U.S. approach to deal with the North Korea issue? Thank you very much. It's a great one to end on, so I'll turn to the panel's final comments. I don't know what lies behind President Trump's tweets. That is much broader than your question. I don't know what lies behind any of his tweets. But the first, I think it had nothing to do with Korea. I think it has to do with the trade negotiations that are taking place between the two parties. I think it is characteristic of President Trump when trying to get over hurdles is to put pressure on the other side. Both sides are being dishonest in terms of the effect of the tariffs on their domestic economies. My perception is both economies are hurting badly. Which one is hurting worse is what both governments are trying to disguise. We know that our agricultural sector has been hurt badly. If President Trump raises from 10% to 25%, tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports to the United States. That's a tax on the American people. And the danger is that he precipitates a sharp downturn in the U.S. economy. So in some ways, China has to evaluate whether he's bluffing or whether he's really prepared to take a step like that. On the other hand, China is probably disguising the degree to which its economy is being hurt by the tariffs because it certainly has constrained exports to the United States. And quite frankly, we are the best supplier of soybeans and other products that China needs. And it's awkward for China to have to find alternative suppliers. So this is your problem. It's a pressure tactic designed to try to get an outcome that you can then live with in terms of your own domestic factors. That's the restraining question on both sides. Which is to have an agreement that they can defend in terms of their own country's interests. I think we are still within reach of an agreement. I think that both sides need an agreement. But I think that they are very worried that they will, on the U.S. side, that they'll end up with an agreement where they have been saying, we are going to get something that no previous administration was able to get and they'll end up with people saying, China is still stealing our intellectual property, they're still doing this and that, bad things. And so they're no different from earlier administrations. I think they're trying to get beyond that and we'll see whether it works or not. There's unmistakably an interplay between the U.S.-China relationship and the growing friction and strategic rivalry and the North Korea problem. Although I'd certainly, China and the United States approach the problems of the Korean Peninsula from the perspective of their respective national security interests, not as a manifestation of the greater strategic rivalry. Because of the conviction that we all hold that U.S.-China cooperation is an indispensable ingredient of any satisfactory outcome to the situation on the Korean Peninsula, it would stand to reason that building a U.S.-China relationship that included strong policy and strategic engagement and discussion and collaboration ought to be a priority right now, given the exclusive, almost monomaniacal focus on the trade issue, the traditional mechanisms of coordination, exploration, cooperation between the two governments have largely shut down. There's no strategic or diplomatic security dialogue there. None of the normal processes. And I think that's certainly a problem that makes it even harder to get to the prospect of practical cooperation. But conversely, if and as the U.S.-China relationship continues to deteriorate and it's not at all clear that a deal on trade would stop the downward spiral towards strategic rivalry, that relationship were to deteriorate, it would stand to reason that we would see a further acceleration in the strategic competition between the United States and China for dominance, call it hegemony, in the Asia Pacific region generally and in the Korean Peninsula in particular. And that is a trend that should be very, very worrisome to us. Absolutely no good can come from moving in that direction among other reasons because North Korea has honed over the decades, if not the centuries, a genius for playing powers off against each other. It would increase our vulnerability while strengthening North Korea. I want to throw in a comment on the concept of hegemony in East Asia. Geography is different in different parts of the world. Some regions are subject to hegemony by single powers, some are not. In Europe for hundreds of years, various leaders have tried to establish hegemony over Europe and they failed, whether it was Napoleon, whether it was Kettler, they lost. East Asia is not subject to hegemony by single power. China never had it. It never controlled the maritime portions of East Asia. It was the land power and it affected the land powers there. Japan tried to establish hegemony in East Asia, it precipitated a terrible war and they failed. China is not going to be able to establish hegemony in East Asia. You have big powers like Japan, you have Vietnam, you have Korea, you have Myanmar that define their existence in terms of not being controlled by China, and you have the United States which has been a permanent factor in the security situation of East Asia for decades and decades and is not going to change. Why are we talking about Chinese hegemony in East Asia? The Chinese I talked to don't think in terms of establishing a military hegemony such as you might see in some other part of the world but they would like to have more deference to their interests on the part of regional countries. That is something that we can help to balance off. Countries don't want to be under China's thumb but they want to cooperate with China and if the United States is properly engaged in East Asia that is exactly what the dynamic will be. It won't be a question of hegemony, it will be a question of how far you have to go in catering to the interests of the United States or the interests of China. And that's a perfectly normal type of diplomatic contest that doesn't require hostile rivalry between the United States and China. Quite frankly, the people who keep talking about this hostile rivalry between the United States and China in my opinion are bad strategists, are bad Asian history students and are bad policy makers. Unfortunately, we have run out of time but this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. I couldn't have asked for a better discussion to launch our report. Again, I hope you will take a hard copy outside or please download it from the USIP website. I want to say thank you to all of you for joining us today. This has been a really great conversation and we appreciate your participation. Thank you to C-SPAN for covering this event. Thank you to the team at USIP. Thank you to all of the senior study group members who participated in this process and helped write the final report. And a final thank you to our four excellent panelists for the wonderful, wonderful discussion today. Thank you very much.