 Good morning, everybody. Good morning. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the President of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and I'm delighted to have everybody here with us for discussion on a very important topic. This is our third in a series of bipartisan congressional dialogues here at U.S. Institute of Peace. I want to give a special welcome to our board vice chair, Ambassador George Moose, who has joined us here today. There you are. And for those of you who don't know us well, U.S. Institute of Peace was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent, nonpartisan national institute dedicated to reducing violent international conflicts that pose a threat to U.S. national security. So we do this by working on the ground with local partners, providing people, organizations, and governments with the tools, the knowledge, and the training so that they can manage conflicts so they don't become violent and to help resolve them once they do. We were founded by a bipartisan group of veterans, mainly World War II and Korean veterans, who were in Congress and whose service on the front lines of war really instilled in them the conviction that it was essential to build peace around the world for our own national security and that we would be served well by an institute like this to focus on how we can do that. And that spirit continues to animate our work here at USIP and I therefore can think of no better venue than to welcome two distinguished veterans, great friends of the institute who share a commitment to working across party lines to address pressing national security issues. Congressman Steve Russell here with us is from Oklahoma's fifth district who served in the U.S. Army for more than two decades and Congressman Ted Lu of California's 33rd district served in the U.S. Air Force and continues to serve in the Air Force Reserves. Congressman Russell serves on the House Armed Services Committee and is co-chair of the Congressional Warrior Caucus. Congressman Lu serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and they're joining us here today for the third event which features discussions on foreign policy and national security issues as part of a bipartisan congressional dialogue. And today we have a very, very timely conversation on North Korea and the fine print of a deal. We know today that South Korean president is meeting with President Trump to discuss the potential nuclear summit on June 12th. This would be an historic meeting, the first ever between a sitting U.S. president and the North Korean leader. This could be a chance to peacefully resolve one of the most urgent threats to U.S. national security. We are seeing that day by day there are developments in this possibility. Public statements have exposed what might be a wider gap than we had hoped, and recent reports suggest that there may even be a reconsideration on the part of the Trump team as to whether to move forward with the summit. So I'm looking forward to a very productive conversation. What might we expect what should be in the fine print of a deal? So before we begin, I want to invite all of you to follow USIP on Twitter at USIP and join in today's conversation using the hashtag USIP bipartisan. And finally, I urge you to check out the USIP new podcast network at usip.org backslash podcast. That will include this event, so you can listen to this into the future. And with that, I ask you to join me in welcoming to the stage Congressman Steve Russell and Congressman Ted Lu. Thank you both for joining us today. And Congressman Russell, I'd like to invite you to kick us off with a few comments and reflections. Well, thank you. Distinguished guests, friend Ted Lu, he and I serve not only in committees together, but we've worked on policy together and it's always great to share any event with you. I guess the big question on most people's mind is what can we expect or can we even expect a meeting with North Korea? And then the other question is, should we have a meeting with North Korea? I look at it, I guess, as a warrior who, as we were joking in the green room earlier, I went from the most honored profession to the most despised. I feel like I'm the same person somewhere in there. But I think that anytime you can have dialogue, it's helpful. I've said in smoke-filled rooms where you have people literally killing each other and shelling each other's villages and whatever their differences are, they're pretty sharp at that point. But they all have something in common. There's a little bit of overlapping circles there that they can operate within. And if you can find that ground, then you've got a basis for something. And then once you do that, you build a little bit of trust in that ground and then it opens the circles wider. The problem that we have with North Korea is a 25-year track record of breaking promises. And so now we're going to ask, why should we go this next level? But what's different here is that there's not been good reward given for bad behavior. There's been no upfront deals. There's been no upfront conciliation. There's been no bags of cash. There's been no whatever it might be to bring about what we see. But I think it's important that all of us, whether Republican or Democrat, we approach this because of the danger that we see to the region and to so many powerful economies and everything that is at stake is that we do try to find some solutions that would get us there without us releasing the security posture. But it's important we understand a little bit about what to expect from what's on the other side of the negotiation. And in my limited experience with dictators, they all have a few things in common. One, they're not crazy. Most of them are actually above-average in intelligence. And they use that intelligence and those unique skills that they have to acquire immediate power around them. But they're ruthless, too. And so they will do that and they will expand their power. And once they've secured it domestically, they surround themselves with the survivors. Those that are there who go, oh, great job. Yes, Mr. Dictator, wonderful idea. Why didn't we think of that type of stuff? And so the advisors around them will continue to rubber-stamp policies that will go in with further acquisition of power. And they get away with it because the moves are bold. It's not what most of civilized humanity would normally do. And so everybody in the rest of the world starts reacting. And once they've consolidated internal power, they want to exert external power. And they usually get away with it initially until the world has quite had enough and then there's an overreaction by the dictator's part. And one of two things happens. They either check themselves and want to survive, which is rare, or they decide, you know, I'm the man. I've been doing this my whole life. I always win. And then, of course, the advisors around them, oh, yes, Mr. Dictator, wonderful idea. Why didn't we think of that type of thing? And it usually results in the destruction of their country, the destruction of their government, great human suffering among themselves and their neighbors included, and the death of the dictator. And that's been the march of history. What we have to ensure as we open these dialogues is that we don't end up with something of the latter when there is a possibility of something of the former. But there's a little bit of a check, and they say, you know, I do like to survive. Maybe I'll solidify my power. And I think that that's why we see, unlike times in the past, Kim Jong-un at a place where he's been willing to negotiate. And I think it's been important to see the unity of not only our allies and partners in the region, the leadership of China and the things that they've been able to exert and do. And so because of that, the dynamics are a bit different. It's human nature to say, oh, here we go again. But there are some different dynamics on this. And so on that basis, I believe that it's in our best interest to continue to try to have the meeting. And we can talk about what type of outcomes would be, but I'll just close with that. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you for that. Congressman. Thank you. Thank you for being here. It's honored to be here with Steve Russo. We worked on a number of issues together. And in fact, last term, we worked on the issue of their breach at OPM that resulted in over 20 million security clearance records being stolen by foreign power. Including ours. Including ours. A lot of people in this room. For both veterans, we've all here filled out SF-86 forms. But as a result of our award, we actually drafted legislation to Obama administration and said, it's crazy that a human resources agency is protecting all these records. You need to have a U.S. cyber command do it. They came back to us and said, you're right, and now U.S. cyber command is going to protect it. So, very interested to talk about North Korea. I think it's important to talk about the military option because that's going to inform every other option. Because the higher the costs of military intervention, the more you're going to have to look at other options. I served on active duty at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam under U.S. Pacific Command. We would always do a whole series of different exercises. Much of it directed against North Korea. It's very clear the U.S. has no good military option. It doesn't mean we don't have military options, just that none of them are good. And one of the reasons is because we're so very little intelligence on this regime, we don't know how many nuclear weapons they have, nor where they are all located because the regime hides them. And we are very concerned if you don't get rid of all those nuclear weapons, then North Korea in a conflict could launch them. So last year, Congressman Reuben Gallego and I wrote a letter to the Pentagon saying, your objective stated is that you want to denuclearize North Korea. If you do it by force, how would you do it? Can you just launch a bunch of cruise missiles and airstrikes and be done with it? And they came back with a letter that was so frank and honest, we thought, huh, they want us to publish this. So we did. And basically they said, we're going to need a full-on ground invasion. So there's a number of problems with that. One is a land war in Asia is going to cause a lot of lives. But more importantly, there's a timing element to it where you can't actually get rid of all the nuclear weapons at once in a ground invasion. And if you remember the Iraq war, we did this whole shock and all thing. And it was pretty awesome. It was pretty amazing. That didn't end in a day. That took a fair number of days to do because the first thing we do is we go knock out air defenses. We knock out the air force. We make it so that America's advantage and air superiority can occur. But that takes some time. In the meantime, North Korea could either launch nuclear weapons or if they don't do that, they could just start shelling South Korea and Seoul with their huge amount of artillery that they hide in the mountains. And they could put in 50,000 rounds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week into Seoul. I was at an Aspen conference with Steve earlier this year at Stanford on North Korea. And the major general sitting next to me, he was formerly chief of operations at US Forces Korea and he was telling me about war games they would do. And he said, you know, after about a week, half the South Korean army is eliminated because of the constant shelling from North Korea. We can't even do anything about because we're just knocking out air defenses for the first few days. So it would be a hugely costly and bloody conflict which means I think we have to look at everything else. So Steve Russell and I voted for the strongest sentience ever on North Korea. I think the Trump administration did a good job getting other countries to put sentience on North Korea. And I think these economic sentience have had an effect. I think it's caused North Korea to take notice. And if you look at the statements and speeches by North Korean leader, he talks a lot about the economy now. And I do think those economic sentience are working. We do have to give some time for that to work. And I support diplomacy. I'm glad it's taking center stage. I hope the summit happens. I think that would be a good thing. But we have these troubling statements from North Korea recently and it is sort of a pattern of behavior we've seen in the past. So we don't really know what's going to happen on June 12th. Hopefully it happens. I think that will be good. And I think there's incentive on both sides to try to have a summit. It's something that North Korea has been wanting. A one-on-one summit with the U.S. for a very long time. And I think there's incentive on both sides to declare victory and then go forward with the long process of getting to an eventual deal. So that's my sense. And happy to listen to any questions you may have. And thank you again, Nancy, for hosting this. And I want to thank Joe for inviting us to this event. Great. Thank you both. And before we dive more deeply into the whole topic of North Korea, I want to start with a question to both of you because you've obviously been able to reach across the aisle in a bipartisan partnership. And not only that, as an Army and an Air Force vet, you've been able to move across the inner-service issue. Yeah, that's probably harder. But how hard is that on this kind of topic in this political climate? And what motivated you and enabled you to create an effective partnership? I do think military service was helpful. The Warrior Caucus that Steve was talking about is bipartisan. You do see a number of times where veterans of both sides will get together on certain issues and either legislate or write letters. I think that's helpful. I think it's also because we were sort of taught and trained to put country first, that it's the mission that's important. So I think that's helpful. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think, too, those of us with the military background, we're used to taking whatever America sends us. And it looks strikingly like America. And when we're in the field conducting operations, they don't ask, you know, what's your socioeconomic background? What's the color of your skin, that type of nonsense? They don't. They just shoot at the American flag on your shoulder. And so I think because of that, when we seek to work a lot of foreign policy issues, what we often find is that we're strikingly on very broad overlapping circles when it comes to foreign policy. And that's particularly true among the veterans in Congress, even though our numbers are diminishing. Yeah, we were talking earlier about the Senator Vandenberg famous phrase that seems to have lost some of its power, that foreign policy has to be without the bipartisan coloration. Representative Russell, you talked about going into these talks without having released our security posture. And Congressman Liu just talked about the difficulties of the military option. There have been conversations that indicate, well, maybe the troops stationed in South Korea could be on the table in part of a negotiation. Is that something that we should be looking at at this point? No, in fact, presidents made it clear that that's not really an option. In my own discussions with Chinese leaders, we've had long discussions about this. And my counter to it was simply this. You want the United States on the peninsula. You want the United States on the peninsula. Why? Because we have all of the safeguards. We have all of the human rights record. We have all of the assurances and security apparatus to make sure that when we get into something that could be really nasty, that you've got calm heads that you can talk to. And this was a point that I made to China, that without a U.S. presence, do we think for a moment that the highly capable, intelligent, and industrial nations of South Korea and Japan could not proliferate nuclear weapons tomorrow? I mean, of course they could. They have the capacity and the know-how. That's not the issue. But no one wants to see that when you've got, what, six of the G... Well, not... I may be off on the numbers, but you have an awful lot of very strong economies in the region to include a number of the G7 that are in the area. And so you don't want instability in this region. You want stability. And the only way you're going to have stability is if you've got the same kind of key players that have been dealing with this kind of thing from the very beginning. And that's what we have. And so if you remove the United States out of that, that's not going to make it more secure or more stable. In fact, it will be just the opposite. Now, you know, that is subject to all kinds of political types of debate. But, you know, that's nice. But you need calm heads like the United States, like China, like Russia, or whatever, when it comes to nuclear weapons that have the safeguards there that have demonstrated for decades a willingness to talk if things got too close to being stupid. And I think that that's... And we've been exercising that from the very beginning. You know, my first look at the Korean Peninsula was over a pair of jump boots before I landed in a peanut field in Yeoju, South Korea on a team spirit in the late 1980s. And that's just my experience. We've been there a long time. My dad's regiment, 179th Infantry, served in Korea in 53. We've had an environment like this for a long time. But the commitment since our initial cross-signals in the late 40s have been very, very consistent ever since. And for us to remove that would not create stability. My argument is that it would destabilize on a scale that perhaps we could not control. And we know that President Moon is here in Washington today talking to President Trump about the prospects for the June 12 summit. Do you think that we've got a clear alignment of interests going into the talks with South Korea? And what do you expect will come out of today's conversations? Well, first, I'm glad that Steve Russell mentioned jump boots because the difference is in the Air Force we don't jump out of perfectly fine airplanes. Only if you have a perfectly good parachute. I also agree with Steve. I think it would be a bad idea for us to withdraw our true presence from South Korea. I do think the incentives are aligned to a certain point just from reading the public reporting based on articles John Bolton has written and statements of Trump administration has made. I do think the Trump administration is more willing to use military force under Korean Peninsula more so than the South Korean government is. So I think that they may not be quite aligned there but I think both are very aligned on at least having diplomacy and economic sanctions as the first option. And I think all three countries, South Korea, North Korea and the United States have a very big incentive to have this summit actually happen, at least have some talks and then to see what happens from there. So I think most of the incentives are aligned. And I think the huddle today will be very important to make the message singular. We've seen Kim Jong-un make some treks to China. We've seen a couple of meetings now with President Moon and President Trump. And that is an encouraging sign when you see kind of some preliminary things going on. That shows a forward momentum that we could actually get to something else later. So the other big news story of the last several weeks, of course, has been President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran deal and a lot of speculation about what the impact of that will be on the upcoming summit. Will it cast doubt on us as an unreliable partner? Will it strengthen our negotiation hand? How do you see the relationship of those two events? I look at it kind of like comparing an apple with a crescent wrench. No ordinary oranges. It's a completely different dynamic, completely different cultures, a completely different set of circumstances. They do have evil intent in common. We'll give them that. They do have dictatorship in common. We'll give them that. But I think that the dynamics are different in that what you see with Iran is a proliferation and an exporting of their brand of worldview and terrorism and a lot of other things. North Korea, on the other hand, is pretty singularly focused in their domain related to the Korean Peninsula. Sure, they want to be noticed and they want to be a player, but every time they stir up trouble, it is generally in that area. Now, that's not to suggest that they won't try cyber attacks on the United States, for example, or they won't try to lose the torpedo in the South or something of that nature. But I think that when you look at the outcome and the outlook, the mentality between Iran, for example, and what you have there and with the North Korean regime is different. That's not to say that they won't cooperate in technologies and do all kinds of sinister things. Of course they will. But it's kind of like the bad apples have a way of collecting. And I remember when I was serving in the military when President Bush was trying to articulate national security threats and he talked about the axis of evil and he mentioned in North Korea and Syria and Iran and everybody gaffed and said, oh, please, you know, really? And now they're not really saying that anymore. So we have to realize that these are people that are troublemakers. But in terms of how you handle them, you really have to look at the circumstances, the culture, the history, and the behavior of where they are at. And I think that those factors are much different. Congressman? It's hard to understand what a North Korean regime thinks and what they're actually thinking about this Iran deal. But if I were them, I think the phasing of any deal would now be incredibly important, which is that they're going to want to have any agreement happen where it's going to be the U.S. does something and then North Korea does something. They're not going to sort of want to unilaterally do everything with the hopes that the U.S. will do something because they sort of happen in the Iran deal. We don't know if the administration or another administration might reverse. So I think that's something that would be running through their minds. If I were them, I would demand a treaty. I don't think that's going to happen, but they may demand that and then try to get something in exchange for it or to say, well, how are you going to protect us to make sure that this deal is actually going to be executed if it's over many, many years. But I think the other thing it does is it does sort of... So I voted against Iran deal. I was one of the few Democrats that did that. I thought, basically, because of their sunsets in it, it was going to allow Iran to have an unlimited ability to enrich nuclear weapons in about 10 or 15 years. I thought that was bad. But it did have pretty intrusive inspections in the deal. It did cause Iran to ship out a bunch of its uranium. It did cause them to pour concrete into one of their reactors. So any deal now with North Korea would seem to have to at least exceed the Iran deal in terms of things that were put in. And I think that's a pretty high standard because you're going to have extremely intrusive inspections of a very close regime. Maybe North Korea will do that. I don't know. But I think the Iran deal does at least sort of up the bar in what's going to be negotiated in terms of what this administration, I think, would want to accept. If I could tag on to a point that Ted made, I think it's a good one, is the need for treaty when you're doing major foreign policy. Because when you don't engage the American public on an issue, it becomes problematic thereafter. We draw, as members of Congress, our power from the consent of the people. And if the people feel like they were not, you know, through their elected senators able to ratify some direction to go, then it becomes tougher to hold anybody to it because it's, you know, it's somebody's opinion or somebody's handshake or somebody's view, but it's not with the consent of the people behind it. And I think that's an excellent point that, you know, when we look at our future foreign policy on major things that will change the nature of things, there's reason that treaties might not be a bad idea. And actually it was just one important point on that. If you remember the Iran deal, a majority of both houses of Congress rejected it. It's just that there wasn't two-thirds of both houses. So I do agree with Steve that if you take representatives as representative of American people, the majority of the American people rejected that deal. And I think that's why you saw these problems with it afterwards. So I think you both just answered the question that I wanted to ask, which is, what is the role of Congress in this deal that might be negotiated? Do we need congressional ratification of an eventual treaty to really move out successfully from the eventual, either from the summit or eventual negotiations? I think really, I mean, the Constitution gives the President broad power in foreign policy as it should. It is his domain. But I think a lot of it will be the, really with the leadership of the United States in negotiations, seeing what is possible and then seeing what needs to be agreed to. We don't know the answers to that. We don't know what the possibilities to come. Now, we do know the outcome that we're insisting upon and that is no nuclear capacity, no ICBM capacity, no plutonium capacity. These are all things that are just non-negotiable. For their part, I think Kim Jong-un wants a regime recognition. He wants a legitimacy that he has not had. He wants the ability to conduct statecraft, which he has not been able to do. Some indication that he wants a peace treaty in the current hostess. And then you ask yourself, okay, 1953, 2018? Yeah, maybe it's time. You know, we look at some of that. But there are things on each side that can provide some type of legitimacy and stability that each side is desiring. The question is, how do you get to it? And then whatever that would become, then the president can choose to engage or not to engage Congress. But what we've seen in the past is that when presidents choose not to engage, whether it's with trade policy or whether it's with foreign policy, when they choose not to, inevitably, the people of the country push back on it. And we see that both in trade policy and in foreign policy, even recently. So Congress does deal a lot with economic sanctions. So that would be an area, if the ministry wanted to engage in, that Congress would have a pretty big role. We also get to hold hearings and ask questions. And it puts administration on the record of explaining to American people what their objectives are, how they intend to achieve their objectives. This Wednesday, for example, Secretary Pompeo will testify in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There will be a lot of questions asked of him in North Korea, and he's going to have to explain what he wants to do, what our objectives are, what the long-term and short-term objectives are. So that's something Congress also gets to do is simply just to hold hearings and ask questions. So last question before we open it, I know there are a lot of people who have questions, but this isn't the first time we've had nuclear negotiations. There was the 1994 Green Framework Agreement that collapsed in 2002, and we saw a flurry of other efforts, none of which have been successful. And we're also hearing speculation that in the absence of anything concrete, the winner is Kim Jong-un, who walks away having scored the first-ever meeting with the sitting president. How do you view the risk rewards going in to these talks and whether you see outcomes possible? I think it empowers the West and Western partners. Because if we are truly trying to pursue every line with all of the instruments of national and international power short of military force, what is wrong with trying to pursue those things? And I think that if Kim Jong-un is so foolish, I go back to my March of Dictators discussion, if he becomes yet another master of miscalculation, it will be to the point of his destruction. And there will be great human suffering. It will be unfortunate. The South Korean people will prevail. The Chinese will prevail. The United States will prevail. Kim Jong-un will be dead. His regime will be gone. And that's what's at stake, and that's what's got all of us so concerned, because this is what's at stake. And so for us to, and to what Ted had said earlier, I'm in total agreement, there is no good military option, but that does not mean that there is no military event that may occur because of Kim Jong-un's miscalculation. And so here he has to put on his big boy pants, and he has to act like a human being that wants to survive. And if he doesn't, then, you know, that's what got us to this point right here. China knows that. We know that. Russia knows that. Certainly the South Koreans and the Japanese and others in the region know that. And so Kim Jong-un, he can't use the tactics of 94 or 2002 or 2006. Those days are past. Why? Because he lied, he moved on, he proliferated nuclear weapons, and then he continued to do them. But now he has an opportunity to not only show a legitimacy, but to improve the status of his nation and his people. He can't sustain alert armed forces forever. You know, they have to bring in the harvest, or people starve. The military, they bring in the harvest. So you can't keep everybody on alert and watch your rise rot in the fields. It's just not going to happen. He literally is at a point where he must do something economically. He can act responsibly and secure a position that North Korea currently does not hold, and I think the world may be willing to tolerate that, but they will not tolerate it without a disarmament of nuclear weapons. I think you also have to consider that from the perspective of the North Korean regime, every year the U.S. and South Korea are doing all these military exercises against them. A lot of these exercises are about how we defend South Korea, but also how we attack North Korea, and it's got to be at least running through his mind if diplomacy fails. There's a reason we're doing all these exercises. At some point, we're going to have no option except a military option, so I think there's a strong incentive for him to at least see if diplomacy could work, unless he's just taking us all for a ride. He's just trying to buy time and then he wants to launch a nuclear missile at the U.S. and then kill himself and kill us. I don't think that's what he's thinking. So I think he has incentive to try to see if diplomacy can work. Questions. I'm going to take a few, and we have Mike Runners. So let's start with this young woman here and then we'll tee you up. We'll just work our way back. Yes, go ahead. Hi, Rachel Oswald, reporter with Congressional Quarterly. In the event that there is some kind of tit-for-tat concessions, some of the recent sanctions have been mandatory. So Congress would have to move to lift them. How confident are you that there would be the political willpower to lift sanctions? I mean, North Korea is still a repugnant regime. Do you think this is something Congress could move expediently on, particularly if it's necessary to maintain momentum in North Korean trust that the U.S. is acting in good faith? Thank you. Over here. Thank you. Tom Collina. Pleasure is fun. Thank you both for being here and I support the bipartisan support for diplomacy. It's tremendously important. My question goes to the one issue that is there's likely to be disagreement at the summit, which is the pace of how quickly all this takes place. We've seen John Bolton and the Libya model pushing for very quick results. Then we see the North Koreans pushing back, saying this is going to take some time with a phased approach. I think there's a possible compromise we're seeing in the media by front-loading some significant achievements, say before the 2020 election, but knowing that the ultimate denuclearization, the last warhead or two, will take years. I'm wondering if you can give us your thoughts on how fast all this has to happen to be security-wise viable and politically viable. Thank you. Those are two truly questions. Sure. Here. Yeah, I don't think Congress will act unless we see something verifiable and fairly significant occur from the North Koreans. I don't think you want to act based on promises or words or statements. We wouldn't have to see something pretty concrete. And then I think we would act. I think if they start destroying the nuclear weapons in a verifiable way, I do think we would start lifting sanctions. And to that point on our willingness to act, when we saw the dynamics in Eastern Europe change 25 years ago, Congress acted rather rapidly to take advantage of a lot of the things and the nature of things that were changing in the terms of trade, in the terms of lifting of sanctions, in the terms of doing different behavior because they saw results on the ground were changing. And so I think, again, I go back that Congress really, although we can be, you know, kind of in our own beltway bubble sometimes, but we really are connected to the will of the people. I think you would see the will of the United States. They would want to move on, you know, to try to get these things done. If there were concrete examples of something that had changed, you know, okay, this, therefore that, that's going to be, have to parse that out in the negotiations. Do you see any congressional thoughts on the pace, whether it should be quicker or slower, patience for a slower march of events? Well, I don't think that, again, I think the sanctions are effective. I don't think you lift it until you see a behavioral change. It goes back to how long can Kim Jong-un sustain an army that has to bring in the harvest? How long can he sustain not having key things that he needs for the survival of his economy? And, you know, so a lot of the pace will be determined by him. So if they want to go slow, the sanctions stay in place? If they want to go slow, they can go as slow as they can survive. I think that that has to be in the back of our mind to keep the sanctions regimen in place. And do you think that the alliance will stay together on the sanctions regime? It has so far. I do, unless we do an all-out trade war with China, then that'll, China does. But the other thing is, I actually think time helps the U.S. So if, so if you look at North Korea, the whole reason that the United States started to freak out was not because North Korea had nuclear weapons. They've had nuclear weapons for quite a while. It's because they started to develop ICBMs that could put a nuclear warhead on that could at some point perhaps hit Washington, D.C. That's what started freaking everyone out. But they don't have an indigenous capability to build ICBMs. It's not like they have this factory there that just rolls them off the assembly line. They've got to steal these parts. They've got to find ways to put this thing together. They're still not there yet with technology unable to actually miniaturize a nuclear warhead sticking on a ICBM, have it survive your entry. So if they can't do any, if they're not doing any testing and they're not doing any of this stuff that they need for their weapons program, in the meantime, the U.S. is continuing our pace of missile defense technology. We do have intercepted missiles in Alaska and California that North Korea launched one ICBM or maybe two. We could probably take those down. So over time, we keep developing that technology and at some point we can go to directed energy, lasers and so on that might be more effective. So we actually, in my mind, continue to get stronger in our defenses if nothing changes. The status quo holds and North Korea is just trying to delay but they're not doing their own launches or so on. So I'm not sure time helps North Korea. Okay. In the red dress. Did we answer your question? Yeah. Okay. Hi, I'm certain came from Radio Frasier. So recently, North Korea warned that they might reconsider attending this summit and Trump said, I mean, they're not obviously happy with Libya model that John Bolton mentioned and then Trump said we are not going to apply this model to North Korea but he doesn't really say anything specific. He just keeps saying we will see what happens and I believe that there should be some basic concessions or agreements before this summit because I don't think they're going to, you know, just like a seat on the table and they like a story, you know, talking about any specific. So what do you think the basic concessions or agreements should or could be made ahead of this summit? Okay. And why don't you pass it just too over? I'm Emma Chandler from the Congressional Research Service. I wanted to know to what extent Congress would take into account our allies interests. I mean, you mentioned the non-negotiables would be no nuclear capacity, no ICBM. Those are the elements that would constitute a strike on the homeland but short-range, medium-range, conventional weaponry still threaten our allies and as you also mentioned, South Korea and Japan could develop their own nuclear weapons capability if they were left to be vulnerable. So to what extent if Congress is involved in rolling back economic sanctions, ratifying a treaty, would they take into account those allies concerns? Okay. And then there was one, this gentleman right there. Hi there. I was wondering how... Do you want to identify yourself? Sorry, I'm Alex Burns and I'm between jobs. And I was wondering how do you reconcile complete verification and human rights in North Korea with these areas that are very sensitive for the regime, politically motivated incarceration and things like that, that are kind of a very important vehicle for control for the regime. How do you reconcile those two goals? Well, we can talk human rights for North Korea. It's deplorable. But, you know, is that what we're negotiating or are we negotiating nuclear holocaust? So I think you have to parse it out. You know, I guess I'm a prisoner of my own experiences, but as a soldier, you know, sometimes we would go into these godforsaken places and people would be talking about drug policy. It's like, really, you know, how about get a country first and then we can, you know, talk about drug policy. That would be Afghanistan. Sure. So, you know, sometimes you really have to put the most important things at the top. And that's not to say that human rights are not important, but you can't negotiate human rights when you've got a nation that's threatening to completely melt, you know, their neighbor to the south and completely melt, you know, somebody across the ocean. I mean, that's not, you know, you've got to take it in steps. With regard to concessions before the summit, I don't necessarily think there needs to be any. I don't think the termination is demanding any particular concessions. I think there's still in the center of both sides that have this summit happen. I'm fine with just the summit happening without any concessions beforehand that might bring, because again, there are no good military options. So I think just having talks is a good first step. And in terms of allies' concerns, I do think Japan and South Korea would not want us to withdraw troops. I think they would find that very alarming. And something to keep in mind is these countries, they don't necessarily like each other, right? Japan, South Korea, China. I remember this story. So my grandmother came to visit the United States, and I remember I was a little kid. My uncle had brought a Toyota car. And I remember she saw it and she started crying. She was upset. He had brought a Japanese car. And it was fascinating to me. And you still see very deep feelings among the folks in these countries against each other. And so the U.S. wasn't there. You don't know what might happen with an absence of sort of a superpower. United States being there. And it's also important to note that in Korea, with no official end of the war, it's still a United Nations mission. It involves all of the powers. And you had all of the allies that fought and sent troops to Korea. All of that is still in play. You can't act singularly in Korea. Now, obviously, the United States, when it doesn't lead, that's going to create problems. But here we have an example where the United States is leading. So I don't know how you could ever do anything in that region that didn't involve, you know, the people that live in the region and then also the major players outside of the region, the major economies. That all has to be done with that in view to not do it, you know, would be problematic. So in answer to the question of would allies interests be taken into account as Congress has to say? I think they already are. They're already... But I don't know any of our allies that go, no, we want North Korea to have nuclear weapons. I mean, that's fine. You know, it's not a big deal. I don't know any of our allies that think that's a direction that we should go. They also are very concerned about the cyber tax. They're also very concerned about, you know, even the human rights violations that you pointed out. There's a lot of things. And this is one of the reasons that North Korea is not able to conduct statecraft around the world. You know, they're not respected. They're not legitimate in terms of so many nations' eyes that they just don't allow it. So that is something Kim Jong-un actually could secure for his people if he wants to go in that direction. So final round of questions. Gentlemen, thank you for coming today. I'm Paul Hughes from the U.S. Institute of Peace and a 30-year Army vet. I knew that you had that warrior look about you. Yeah. But I'm going to focus on peace building. The question I have is that I've heard talk about getting North Korea denuclearized. I've heard North Korea being given incentives to move forward. I'm thinking nun Luger. I'm thinking a mini-martial thing. It's going to be expensive for us to do any peace building over there. As representatives in the house where appropriations bills begin, are you willing to put up money for peace building as expensive as it might be when we have been fighting wars for so many years on a credit card? The DOD is not getting well even with the two-year plan for the budget. I'd like your thoughts. Are you going to put more money out there? Well, I think the short answer to that is yes. I think the American people, if we got to some kind of deal that America could back, you know, rather than just a president acting unilaterally or some deal, whatever. But if this is something that takes us into a direction where we see tangible results, and again, this is assuming a lot. It's assuming that Kim Jong-un will choose to survive rather than go down the path of dictators. I still don't know what he's going to choose to do, and that's what's so scary about it. But whatever we can put in the former will be far cheaper than putting anything in the latter. But it doesn't mean that you go in there with some naivete and say, well, you know, we hope it. That's what makes this negotiation so much different. We've not conceded or given large amounts of treasure or whatever it might be to this point saying, okay, if you behave well, you know, here, let's help you behave well and we'll give you this, that, or the other in the hopes to get to the table. The table is happening because we've not done anything but take a hard line. And this is something that dictators understand. They understand raw power. And so I think whether we saw Libya, which had all kinds of internal reasons that Gaddafi lost power, when you go back and look at why he decided to unravel his nuclear program, he saw a better economic path and he saw a way to secure legitimacy as he reached becoming an older man and looking to have a legacy. It didn't work out for him. It rarely does with dictators. But I think that's the reason he went the direction that he went and we were willing to invest in that when that occurred, when Libya decided that it was going to roll back its nuclear program. Congress acted responsibly to try to assist in that and it was successful for a great measure of time and then you had all of the other factors. Kim Jong-un, however, is young and so we don't know how long. And dictators, if they're not killed outright or destroy themselves, they manage to live a long time. They seem to live into their 90s for those that roll back. But he could roll back. Really a lot of those cards are in his court on whether he wants to survive. But if he chooses to, in history, we've looked at other ways where we, yeah, Congress has responded to that if it's legitimate and we see tangible results. I don't have any objection to spending money for peace. I don't think we have to do that for a while because a lot of the pressure on North Korea has been sanctions. We just start lifting sanctions. It doesn't cost a U.S. taxpayer any money to do that. I also think, you know, it's more to know that Kim Jong-un went to school in Europe. So he's seen what Western democracies look like and the economic benefits of that. He doesn't live in a bubble like a lot of his population. So he sort of understands what a thriving economy could be and maybe that's running through part of his mind of what North Korea might look like 50 years from now. I mean, I don't know. It's hard to know what's going on in his mind, but at least he's seen it. He understands what economic investment could do. So we promise to end at 10 sharp because I know that you both have very busy schedules. So we've come to the end of our conversation. I want to really thank both of you for joining us here today and more importantly, for tackling such a critical, complicated issue in a bipartisan spirit. And I know you've both put a lot of time into really understanding the complexities of the issues and understanding what's at stake, not from a partisan position, but from what's at stake for our country. And so we thank you both for that. I think it's encouraging that as we move into a very, very important moment that we've got congressional members who are really paying attention in a constructive spirit. So please join me in thanking our two congressional guests. Thank you, everybody, for joining us today.