 Welcome back to campus. I'm Michael Barr. I'm the Joan and Sanford Wildean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. I'm delighted to welcome all of you to this, the first event of a series of distinguished speakers to mark the launch of the Wiser Diplomacy Center. I wanna start by thanking Regent Ron Wiser and Mrs. Eileen Wiser who are with us right now today for their generous donation to establish the Wiser Diplomacy Center. Ron was U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia and Eileen served alongside him in their time in Bratislava. And they are both passionately committed to the importance of diplomacy and to the men and women who serve our country abroad. They are wonderful friends and we are grateful for their strong support of the Ford School and the University of Michigan more broadly. So let me begin and please let me ask you to join me in thanking Ron and Eileen Wiser. The Wiser Diplomacy Center serves as a unique hub for academic and practical training and policy dialogue, preparing our students to become the nation's next foreign policy leaders, diplomats and experts in foreign affairs. As a meeting point for practitioners, men and women whose careers span the apex of foreign policy and academics, the WDC provides a bridge between the University of Michigan and the foreign policy community. With Ron and Eileen's help, the WDC can become one of the country's leading institutions for the study of international affairs. Briefly, the mission of the WDC has three parts. First, hands-on practical training and mentorship for rising foreign policy professionals who have access to senior diplomats serving as professors of practice and international diplomacy and visiting professors here at the Ford School. Second, overseas study and policy engagement with internships and engagement opportunities that span the globe. This summer, students went to the organization for international migration in Geneva, the Asia Foundation in Timor-Leste, the US Embassy in Bogota and a leading development organization in India, for example. The WDC also funds shorter student initiatives. Over spring break, for example, last year, four students went to Guatemala to work with a leading human rights group on forensic anthropology. And third, engagement with the foreign policy community on a wide array of topics ranging from peace and security to development to human rights and the environment. Our lineup this fall reflects our commitment to exposing our students to a breadth of experience and policy perspective, including today's speaker, Steve Began, as well as Steve Hadley, Samantha Power, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as leading former ambassadors from many eras and countries. You will note that this launch series also supports our conversations across difference initiative. As you well know, these are challenging times in our nation with fractious political discourse, gridlock, and partisanship and an increasing lack of trust in institutions everywhere. It is in moments like this when the craft of diplomacy is even more essential and when talking and listening across political and other differences is really essential. We are thus honored to bring to a campus a wealth of expertise this fall and we could not be more delighted to begin with the insights of today's speaker, US Special Representative for North Korea, Steven Began. I'm gonna turn over the podium now to faculty director of the Wiser Diplomacy Center, Ford School faculty member, John Chachari, who will introduce our speaker. John. Thank you, Michael, and welcome to all of you. It's very much my honor to introduce Steve Began. He's a Michigan man and he embodies the leadership qualities and the commitment to service that we aim to foster at the new Wiser Diplomacy Center. Since his undergraduate studies here at UM in Russian and political science, he's been a leader in the practice of foreign affairs through several different channels on Capitol Hill in the executive branch and through business in the nonprofit sector. Shortly after the Cold War at a critical juncture in Russia, he was the in-country director in Moscow for the International Republican Institute, a leading nonprofit organization promoting freedom and democracy abroad. He's held senior positions in the House Foreign Relations Committees, as well as been chief of staff to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and national security advisor to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. In those capacities, he's worked on a wide array of issues, including the foreign aid budget, trade agreements with various partners, defense, intelligence, European affairs, and more. During the George W. Bush administration, he served as executive secretary at the National Security Council. This is essentially the NSC's chief operating officer. It's a crucial role in coordinating policies and fostering an effective interagency process, exactly the kind of practical foreign policy knowledge that we're trying to cultivate and that our students are learning in the Ford School's new course on the NSC this term. Steve Began also has extensive leadership experience in the private sector, having served for many years as VP for international government affairs at Ford Motor Company, overseeing Ford's interactions with governments around the world. He returned to government service just over a year ago as US special representative for North Korea, appointed shortly after the June 2018 Singapore Summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The summit was a bold and controversial step, one of the signature foreign policy initiatives of the Trump administration. The president and secretary of State Pompeo sought somebody who had the diplomatic skill to capitalize on the political opening and drive progress toward the very difficult issue of North Korean denuclearization as well as related challenges in the relationship. The fact that they chose Steve Began for that role testifies to the strength of both his diplomatic skills and his reputation. Over the past year, he's led US policy toward the DPRK, that's the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or North Korea, and spearheaded US negotiations with Pyongyang and engagement with regional allies and partners toward those aims. We're privileged to be able to hear from Steve Began today about the challenges and the opportunities in the diplomacy surrounding North Korea. And we're also grateful for the cosponsorship of this lecture by our friends and colleagues at the NAMM Center for Korean Studies here at U of M. Before he begins, just a quick word on format, we'll have some time toward the end of the session for audience questions. Please write your questions on the note cards that our staff will provide and collect. Ford School students, Ryan Van Wee and Zachary Shulkin will present the questions assisted by our own a professor of practice, Ambassador Melavitsky. And now on behalf of the Wiser Diplomacy Center and the NAMM Center, please join me in giving Steve Began a warm Wolverine welcome. Thank you, Dean Barr and thank you, John, for that kind introduction. And thank you all for inviting me here today. I had a long day already here on campus. I had an opportunity earlier today to meet with a group of students that started a program at the Ford School called We Listen. It's geared to have a civil discussion, thoughtful discussion, and to listen to each other on public policy issues. It's a truly inspirational group, student-driven. And if you don't know about it, I'd recommend you look up their website. If you're a student here, I'd recommend you think about it. They're doing great work for the university. I also had a chance to have lunch today with a group of students from the Ford School, an incredibly impressive bunch, many of them already well into successful careers. And it was a real privilege and honor to spend this time this morning with so many Wolverine students. I can't tell you what a great pleasure it is to be back here on the campus of the University of Michigan, where for me it all began so many years ago. Tomorrow marks exactly 38 years since I first sat down in a lecture hall here at the University of Michigan. Having left the small Michigan town where I grew up, I stepped onto this campus to begin an educational journey that has served me my entire career. It opened the world to me, and more importantly, it opened me to the world. I'm grateful for the incredible teachers, visiting instructors, guest speakers, the teachings, the rallies, the protests, and the vibrant, eclectic, diverse, and irrepressible student body that the University of Michigan has always attracted. I've learned to think in ways that have benefited me throughout my career. It's great to be home. Go Blue. I'd like to add my thanks to the University of Michigan's Ford School Public Policy and the NAM Center for Korean Studies for hosting me this afternoon. And it's an honor to be the inaugural speaker of the Wiser Diplomacy Center's speaker series. Ron Wiser has for many years been a friend and for a few years even a colleague in government. I know firsthand of his and his wife Eileen's devotion to public service and to the advancement of American interests and ideals around the world, this new diplomacy center is a fitting embodiment of that devotion. Thank you, Ron. In the three decades since I left Ann Arbor, I have had the opportunity to work on many challenging and interesting issues in government and the private sector, but none that approaches the consequences of the issue that I'll speak on today as the United States Special Representative for North Korea. Prior to taking this job, I wasn't really looking to return to government. In fact, I was quite happy in a job I loved at one of the great American auto companies, Ford Motor Company, located just up the road. It was there that my grandfather and his father before him made their livings and it was a great place to work. But as is the case with Ron Wiser and with so many other graduates of this great university who over the decades have answered the call of public service, last year I accepted the challenge of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to take up and carry forward a remarkable diplomatic opportunity and opportunity created by President Trump 15 months ago. In June of 2018, the decision of the president to meet at a summit in Singapore with Chairman Kim Jong-un of North Korea was truly momentous. At the conclusion of that first ever meeting between the leaders of our two countries, they issued a simple straightforward statement outlining a plan to change the course of events on the Korean Peninsula through the transformation of relations, through the establishment of a permanent peace and the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And while there is still much work ahead of us, if we are to fulfill those commitments, this act of bold leadership in the simple roadmap it produced may well prove to be the key to unlocking the puzzle of the Korean Peninsula that has bedeviled the world since the end of World War II. Since that historic summit meeting in Singapore, the president has maintained a strong and focused commitment to the search for a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. He refuses to accept the fact that 66 years after fighting ended in the Korean War, we have yet to find a successful path to transforming relations and establishing a permanent peace. But the president has also been clear that doing so will require the daunting task of eliminating the growing threat of weapons of mass destruction on the Korean Peninsula. The president has directed the Secretary of State, myself and the entire U.S. national security team to spare no effort in our negotiations to fulfill the commitments that the two leaders made at Singapore. We are aware that this diplomatic opening is fragile. We fully understand the consequences if diplomacy fails and we are clear eyed about the dangerous reality of ongoing development by North Korea of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them to the region and to the world. This is in defiance of international norms. It is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and it is in contravention of multiple promises made by North Korea to never possess such weapons. For us to make progress towards peace and to take major steps towards transforming our relationship, North Korea must be willing to fulfill its commitment to achieve complete denuclearization. North Korea will never be able to realize its full economic potential or enjoy true economic security and stability if it clings to weapons of mass destruction. The United States and the world will not accept that and we in other countries in the region need to understand that the outcome of this diplomatic process will have ramifications well beyond the Korean Peninsula. Last year, after taking on this assignment, I had the rare and special opportunity to sit down with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to discuss the way forward. As he shared his observations and thoughtful advice, one comment made a particularly deep impression upon me. Dr. Kissinger noted that we were charged today with working toward the elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons. But he said, if this effort fails, we will be working tomorrow on an Asia-wide nuclear proliferation challenge. It does not require a leap of logic to understand what Dr. Kissinger was predicting. A North Korea that retains the ability to threaten its neighbors with nuclear weapons risks breaking the international norms of non-proliferation built over 50 years. While a number of countries and economies in Asia have the scientific wherewithal and the technical capacity to develop nuclear weapons, they have made the judgment that possessing such weapons creates more risk for their security and for their people. Allies, such as Japan and South Korea, have foresworn nuclear weapons programs in part because they trust the protection of extended deterrence that is included in their alliance relationships with the United States of America. But how long will that conviction hold if such weapons are a mere short-range ballistic missile flight away from their own territory? At what point will voices in South Korea or Japan and elsewhere in Asia begin to ask if they need to reconsider their own nuclear capabilities? And what will this mean for a region whose prosperity and growth has been so inextricably tied to long-term stability and peace? It is very much in the interests of the United States of America and every other nation in the region to avoid this eventuality. If we are to escape an outcome that will press nations in the region to consider new and more dangerous strategic choices, we must work together as allies and partners in East Asia to achieve the vision that was laid out at the Singapore Summit. As always, there are consequences for failure and I fear Dr. Kissinger is correct that if the international community fails in the undertaking, in this undertaking, North Korea will not be the last nuclear weapons state in Asia. At this moment, to achieve further progress, the most important step we can take is for the United States and North Korea to work together to overcome the policies and demonstrations of hostility that compromise the simple ability of our diplomats to talk and to sustain the rhythm of negotiations. If we are to succeed, North Korea must set aside and search for obstacles to negotiations and instead seek the opportunities for engagement while that opportunity lasts. We have made clear to North Korea we are prepared to engage as soon as we hear from them. We are ready, but we cannot do this by ourselves. Between the United States and North Korea, there has been too little communication, too much room for miscalculation and misunderstanding and almost no room at all for error. Through direct engagement, we must create space and momentum for diplomacy. We must set in motion an intensive set of negotiations and only if we do that, will we be able to fulfill the commitments of our leaders and the desires of our respective peoples for peace. Once we begin intensive negotiations, we can directly discuss actions that each side can take to create more and better choices for our leaders to consider. Following the outline of the joint statement issued last year by President Trump and Chairman Kim at the Singapore Summit, we can construct a set of actions that are undertaken to elevate relations from a place of hostility and distrust toward an agreed end state that fulfills the vision of our two leaders provided that there is a clear commitment to fulfill all the requirements of the agreements made between the two leaders. Neither the United States nor Korea has to accept all of the risk of moving forward and there are immediate actions that we can take if negotiations make progress. Judging by the talks President Trump has had with Chairman Kim and those that our team has had over the past year with our North Korean counterparts, it is clear that both sides can quickly agree to significant actions that will declare to our respective peoples and to the world that the United States North Korea relations have taken an irreversible turn away from conflict. Actions much more than any words can infuse this diplomatic moment with more energy. 70 years of conflict and hostility on the Korean Peninsula and the orthodoxies and necessities of deterrence to which they gave rise make a peaceful US North Korean relationship hard to imagine. Hard in a way that our current strategic and economic relationship with Vietnam was hard to imagine a mere 20 years ago. Hard in the way that alliances with Germany and Japan were unthinkable in the waning days of World War II. Hard in the way the reunification of Germany and a Europe whole and free were difficult to imagine even as the Berlin Wall was falling. There have been prior iterations of negotiations with North Korea over the past 25 years to slow or reverse the development of weapons of mass destruction, but none have yet succeeded in overcoming the legacy of a brutal war and the decades of hostility that followed. Of course, we are mindful that there is no guarantee that our current diplomatic efforts will succeed where others have failed, but with the president's direction and strong support we are committed to try through diplomacy to do more, not less. Over the past year, we've been able to sustain political space and momentum at home with bipartisan agreement that diplomacy remains the best choice. Our team has invested significant time and effort in consultations with Congress and we continue to draw support from both sides of the aisle to continue to test this opportunity. Beyond our borders, policies on denuclearization of North Korea stand on a firm foundation of international support guided by a series of resolutions unanimously supported in the United Nations Security Council and actively supported by allies and partners in Asia, Europe and around the world. We are fully committed to bring an end to the vestiges of hostile relations on the Korean Peninsula, to find a path to assure the security of North and South Koreans and to build the trust that is a necessary foundation for a lasting peace and through this achieve the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery on the Korean Peninsula. And if we are successful, there is so much potential for opportunity ahead of us. Our two countries in the Indo-Pacific region as a whole would greatly benefit from enhanced connectivity through the Korean Peninsula. More open sea lanes and overflights in and around the Peninsula combined with high quality infrastructure investment in North Korea would diversify and shorten transport routes, open new export markets for North Korean goods and open up vast additional areas for economic development in North Korea and in neighboring countries. Energy flows in and out of North Korea would lift the North Korean economy and new diversified trading relationships would improve living standards throughout the Peninsula and the region. In terms of security, lowered tensions will mean that our military forces will no longer need to stand and train perpetually ready to fight a war. They could instead serve and cooperate to build a foundation to support a lasting peace. And if we can forge a sustainable peace, forge the modalities of cooperation, we will reap the mutual rewards that will spring from frank discussion on the many other issues that divided the United States and North Korea over all these many years. This is President Trump's vision and it is a vision he is confident that Chairman Kim shares. When the president took office more than two years ago, North Korea represented the most urgent national security priority waiting on his desk. What has moved the Korean Peninsula off of a path toward conflict and onto a path of peace has been the bold leadership of President Trump and Chairman Kim. Whereas the experts counseled incrementalism, the president understood that the situation called for a clear break with the past. We needed to do something different, something dramatic to head off conflict. The president's decision to hold two summits and to seek agreement at the highest levels with the North Koreans was not to say the least the conventional wisdom of the Washington DC foreign policy establishment. The decision two months ago to propose an impromptu meeting with Chairman Kim at Palmajong village had no guarantee of success. In fact, Chairman Kim could have rejected the last minute invitation out of hand, but he didn't. And as a result of each of these engagements between our two leaders, the door to diplomacy has been held open a little longer. Over the course of this past year, the president has made clear to North Korea and to the world that he has made this choice for the United States. He has given our negotiating team clear instructions to deliver on his deep commitment to transforming US North Korean relations through diplomacy as agreed with Chairman Kim at Singapore. And he has said that he is confident that Chairman Kim will not disappoint him. Bringing lasting peace to the Korean Peninsula will ultimately only succeed with the leadership of President Trump and Chairman Kim. Both must be able to see opportunity where others inside their respective systems do not. Opportunity that could blossom from the successful transformation of our relations, the establishment of a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula and the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. To succeed, both must choose this course and follow through with actions that will seize that opportunity. The president is fully committed to making significant progress toward these goals in the year ahead. And should Chairman Kim share and President Trump's commitment to advance the ideas I have laid out today, he will find our team is ready to turn this vision into reality. Thank you. To start off with our question and answer session, I'm gonna have a few questions for Mr. Began to give Ryan and Zach a bit of time to review some questions that you've submitted from the audience and then we'll open up the rest of the session to hear your queries. If I may, I'd like to start with a pair of questions, one that's more of a medium term question and one that's more an immediate short term question. The medium term question is this. For many years, the United States policy and the expressed goal of negotiations with North Korea has been to achieve a complete, verifiable, and not easily reversible denuclearization of the DPRK. And shortly, Kim Jong-un and other leaders in North Korea look at the cases of Iraq and Libya and think of the nuclear weapons program as both an extremely important bargaining chip with the international community and some form of insurance for a deeply disfavored dictatorship. And so I'm sure you would agree that even if the goal is realistic, it's a very challenging one to achieve. The question is, what do you see as the key conditions under which this North Korean regime would give consideration to the types of serious and potentially even irreversible reversals of their nuclear program that the United States is demanding? Thank you, John. And certainly it's something that we've spent a lot of time thinking about. One of the, there are several things that are different about this diplomatic initiative than how we've engaged North Korea in the past. But one area in particular that addresses the underlying question you asked is that we're seeing it do a lot more than address the issue of weapons mass destruction. On the Singapore joint statement that I referred to in my remarks actually has four parts to it or four pillars as referred to them. The first is that the two leaders committed to transform the relations between our two countries. The second is that the two leaders committed to the establishment of a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. I imagine not everyone here is an expert on the history of the Korean Peninsula, but it's worth pointing out that the war when it ended in 1953 ended in an armistice. Technically that war has not been concluded with a treaty and establishing a permanent peace regime is gonna be a critical element to changing the politics on the Peninsula itself. The third commitment that the two leaders made was the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, only part of our objectives in this diplomacy. And the last, the fourth pillar, which we don't talk about as much as a humanitarian initiative, it's to recover the remains of the US soldiers and Marines who fell during the Korean War is to work with other countries to also recover and account for their losses in the Korean War. And we've expanded it also in our discussions with the North Koreans to include finding ways for Koreans inside and outside North Korea to reunify as families to meet each other after a period of long division. It is challenging. As I said in my remarks, we're trying to overcome 70 years of hostility on the Korean Peninsula. That's a long time. One of the anecdotes that was mentioned to me that it has really amazed me was that North Korea has existed longer than the Soviet Union existed. Soviet Union now is a historical blink of an eye. North Korea and US relations for 70 years have been in a certain state. We have to find a way to solve more than just the weapons of mass destruction issue. We have to change the incentives. And by changing the trajectory of our policies, it's our hope that we can likewise change the trajectory of theirs. North Korea doesn't need nuclear weapons. The United States does not intend any hostile action towards North Korea. We're gonna have to build trust in order to get them to a point where that conviction is reflected in their policies. And I promised a shorter term question as well. And that is the immediate question of how to get the North Korean delegation back to the table. There have been periods of on again, off again diplomacy. Recently, the North Korean leadership has suggested that negotiations may be tied in some fashion to the nature and extent of US joint exercises with the South Korean military. What do you see as the key steps that the Trump administration needs to take to encourage or incentivize the North Korean delegation to come back and talk? After all, as you said in your remarks, there is a sense in which the window of time available for seizing this opportunity is not infinite. Yeah, so of course, we have to be ready. We have to be prepared and we have to convey to the North Koreans that we're prepared to have this discussion on all prior reasonable sides. We can, we have communicated that to the North Koreans. We've done it directly and indirectly. We've done it through third parties. We've done it publicly, we've done it privately. The North Koreans know where we are. The North Koreans know what the opportunity is. North Koreans have a decision to make on engagement. We're prepared to do so when they're ready, as I said a moment ago, and it's worth repeating that we're ready. North Korea has to make that choice too. I want to turn now to our two excellent students, Ryan and Zach, and allow them to ask some of the questions that you all have posed. Ryan and Zach, if you could each introduce yourself very briefly before you lead into the questions. We want to give everyone in the room on a little illustration of what some of our students are working on affiliate with the Center. Thank you, Professor Shih-Charr, and thank you, sir, for being here today with us. My name's Ryan Van Ween and the second year Master of Public Policy student at the Ford School. My focus for research has been on international security policy. The first question from the audience is to what extent has the Trump administration's withdrawal from that joint comprehensive plan of action with Iran impacted negotiations with North Korea? So the Iran Nuclear Accord or the JCPOA certainly is an issue that the North Koreans would notice and it goes to an underpinning concern that they will certainly have is how any agreement we reach together will be durable. I'm not responsible for Iran policy, I'm not responsible for the JCPOA, but I am undertaking the direction of the Secretary of State and the President diplomacy on that not entirely dissimilar set of issues and in not entirely dissimilar set of circumstances. But our answer on what's gonna be different about our efforts with North Korea is that we're trying to do much more than the JCPOA did. The JCPOA, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, targeted very narrowly the issue of Iran's nuclear weapons programs and suspended for a period of time those programs in hopes that some other changes might occur in the external environment that will allow for the progress, but also allow for the fact that Iran could revert back to full operation of its nuclear enrichment of its uranium enrichment after the conclusion of that agreement. That agreement was also intentionally, agreement intentionally excluded the broader set of issues in the US-Iran relationship. And so what the United States saw in the aftermath of that agreement being reached was that the increased economic resources and the immediate gains that Iran made in some of the settlements that came immediately after the agreement provided them with resources that they chose to spend to further engage in the destabilization of many nations in the region, including Yemen, Syria, where they had an active combat presence undertaking brutal, brutal treatment of the Syrian people and also to strengthen their hold on Lebanon through Hezbollah. And those eroded the environment in which progress might have been made with Iran, even with the tenuous nature of the nuclear agreement that had been reached in its temporary nature. In the case of North Korea, we answer that question in our engagement with the North Koreans because we're trying to do much more. We actually, the President has committed to transforming our relationship with North Korea, to bringing the permanent peace regime to the Korean Peninsula, to find areas of cooperation to move forward in this relationship at the same time that we're also addressing the compelling and dangerous threat of weapons mass destruction. It's gonna be hard. I don't, for a second, take lightly the mandate that the President has given us, that the North Koreans are willing to do the same. We have a lot of potential to put together a very durable agreement between our two countries. And I'm also very honored to help welcome you back. My name's Zachary Shulkin. I'm currently a fourth year undergraduate at the Ford School with a focus in diplomacy. And my first question to ask you is historically the North Korean problem is also a China problem. To what extent, in your opinion, have the tariffs, rhetoric, and adversarial posture towards China affected negotiations? Yeah, so a big country, like ours in a big country like China is, are gonna have a lot of interests around the world. And to simplify it, we have to be able to walk and shoe them at the same time. The economic issues that we're negotiating with China right now are very important issues. And they aren't just important to the President, they're important to the economy and to the future economic security of the United States of America. And that is a very tough negotiation because we're trying to shift the direction of China's economy and to try to convince them to shift the direction of their economy in a way that it has been established over the course of the last two decades. The, we work very closely with China on North Korea. Needless to say, China has the largest land border with North Korea, a country in the world outside of the demilitarized zone. And China is going to be instrumental in the success of international diplomacy with North Korea as we go forward. We have invested quite a bit of time in working with our Chinese counterparts. We've developed a close relationship. The Chinese, in our view, have sent the right messages to North Korea at every turn. And what my Chinese counterpart told me when we first met several months ago is notwithstanding the other areas of tension in the U.S.-China relationship, the China would compartmentalize North Korea and their cooperation on that. I told them that we would accept that until we had evidence to suggest otherwise and we don't have any evidence to suggest otherwise. That's not to say it's not a worry of course there are enormous tensions in U.S.-China relations. Not only do we have the economic issues that we're seeking to negotiate, we have various national security issues. We have differences over Taiwan. The street protests in Hong Kong have exacerbated tensions in the relationship. Even though we're not driving that China is feeling besieged, there are many things China's doing in places like Xinjiang and other parts of the South China Sea that are here, tends to us and that we've raised concerns about. So it's not easy to compartmentalize, but we've been successful so far and I'll tell you why. Because China's not pursuing its policies in North Korea as a favor to the United States of America. China's pursuing its own interests in North Korea. What I've told people before when asked this question is my assessment of China is they're 100% with us some of the way. China wants peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. China wants the elimination of weapons and mass destruction on the Korean Peninsula. There's a lot of things we won't agree on, our military alliance with the Soviet Koreans, other things like that. But China for its own interests parallels our interests and that's the basis for countries to work together. I'm a big fan of countries acting in their own interests and finding a way to work with other countries who share those interests. In the case of North Korea, so far we've been able to do that pretty well with Chinese. I'll follow up very quickly with that and just ask you to expand a bit on what you see as China's constructive roles with regard to North Korea. There's sanctions, enforcement, political pressure. I'd love to hear a bit more on that. First, just the messaging that comes from the Chinese leaders to the North Koreans for the need to engage in a intensive diplomatic process towards the achievement of a peaceful and stable Korean Peninsula and the elimination of weapons mass destruction. China's not shy about that. China voted for every UN Security Council resolution by definition because they can only pass with unanimous vote of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council. China has given voice to the policies the same as us. We share our objectives and our strategy to a certain degree with the Chinese. They give us useful feedback. They have a lot of experience in the region. But of course, above all, in the maintaining the pressure on North Korea as we search for a diplomatic solution, there's no country that's more important than China. China is North Korea's largest trading partner. It shares a large land border and has territorial waters adjacent to North Korea. So China's role in that dimension of the policy is critically important to the success. So, you know, we meet regularly with Chinese Congress. Many times, we just had a turnover in China of their lead representative on North Korea. We're just in the beginning stages of building a relationship. But my counterpart over the past year has been a tremendous partner and I'm looking forward to developing the same modicum of cooperation with their new representative. Sir, given the centralized authority of the North Korean regime, have you encountered difficulties when working with your counterparts in the North Korean diplomatic corps and having initiative and leverage to negotiate on terms without seeking higher guidance? So, in any system of government, ours included, there has to be some connection to the direction of the ultimate leadership. In our case with the several branches of government that includes me being very attentive to the interests of Congress. But ultimately, I served the pleasure of the president and the secretary of state. So I need to know that what I'm doing is consistent with the president's decisions on these policies. If that's the case in our system, which is a democratic system in which we have divided branches of government, multiple voices in a democratic debate, it's all the more so in the North Korean system, which really is a centralized rule where Chairman Kim Jong-un runs that country in every dimension. And as such, as the leader of North Korea, it's incumbent upon him to create the space that his negotiators have in order to enter into a discussion with us, in order to enter into the kind of give and take that's necessary to explore solutions to very complicated issues like the ones we're working on now. But that's also why it was so important for us to change the trajectory of diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula with leader to leader engagement. Hopefully, what President Trump can do with Chairman Kim is give Chairman Kim the confidence that if he opens that space to his team that he will find it will be a fruitful diplomatic process that will allow us both to achieve our goals as laid out in the Singapore summit just a year ago. So it is a strictly controlled system. It is a rigid system. It is leader driven in its entirety. But that also is why we think that it's a very constructive step forward for the president to engage directly and try to create that diplomatic space for the people inside the system. As a leader driven system, it's also been clear that despite how closed off it is, we've been able to see that North Korea is a major violator of human rights. So in this case and with your dealings, what place does human rights play in this sort of US policy? So the United States, of course, assigns high value to human rights around the world. We have historically, it's part of the core of who we are. And then this has been an issue of some tension and discussion between the United States and North Korea over many years. And it is and remains an issue of contention. United States has not lessened its voice through annual resolutions and international organizations through congressionally driven reporting processes and through the kind of designations that we undertake as the United States government not only to fulfill our ideals, but to fulfill our laws. But I should also be very clear that my negotiating priority is not the human rights record of North Korea. My negotiating priority starts with the elimination of the grave risk of weapons mass destruction on the Korean Peninsula. It extends into transforming relations. It extends into creating more peaceful and stable Korean Peninsula and to addressing some of the harder edges between our two societies that trace back all the way to the Korean War. In this process, we open up space for discussions on a number of issues that have divided the United States and North Korea over many, many years. We've got to start with the highest priority. We have to address all of our interests and ideals in the course of these negotiations. And the United States needs to continue to give voice to human rights around the world. So you hinted at potential lowered U.S. military operational readiness in the South Korean, in South Korea, if talks continue to progress and the question from the audience is, would that also be possible to decrease the overall footprint of the U.S. military in South Korea in exchange for total denuclearization? We're a long way away from that. But certainly in my speech when I talk about the U.S. military presence can move away from being in a state of preparedness and training for perpetual war to playing a constructive and stabilizing role towards a durable peace. It includes a lot of strategic reconsiderations that might be available to us as we make progress in all the issues I laid out. Again, we're a long way away from there. And I think we have to start with the objective of solving the problem, lowering the threat, lowering the risk. Then we need to leave it to our military leaders to make a sober judgment on the level of risk and the appropriate response that the United States has as an ally partner of South Korea. But of course, the forces are driven by the perception of threat. If we can address the threat, we give ourselves a lot more options. Now, going back to China, you spoke about forging ties with North Korea. Now, in your opinion, would China permit a border nation that they support to grow closer with the U.S.? And if so, how much closer, in your opinion? So I say China's 100% with us some of the way. Not that far, that is not the way. We in China, we have a lot of issues that the United States and China need to sort out as China rises and as we try to find a set of global norms that both of our nations are willing and able to support and abide by that will produce an opportunity for our people's, our respective people's to thrive. We're not there yet. That's underlies a lot of the issues. That general theme underlies a lot of the issues and points of tension with China. And those are unresolved. Of course, China would not welcome a U.S. military ally on its border and the Chinese have said as much in the past. But that's not our goal either. So this isn't gonna be a major point of contention. I think it's fair to say that the Chinese would judge that a stable and peaceful relationship between the United States and North Korea has attended benefits for the people's Republic of China. I laid out some of the security benefits but also the economic benefits a moment ago. The economic benefits of that region are enormous. This part of China that neighbors the Korean Peninsula is among the poorest areas of the people's Republic of China. It's an industrial area, heavy industries that historically had been something in the industrial driver of China. But like so many of our industrial cities here in the Midwest, time has taken its toll and an infusion of opportunity and cross-border trade and economic engagement would be hugely beneficial. The same goes for Russia instead. One of the most economically challenged areas of the Russian Federation is the Far East. Population is in decline, opening of trade and opportunity for that part of Russia would likewise be hugely beneficial. I've talked about the opportunities for South, I've talked about today about the opportunities for South Korea as well that we've all heard from that. You have to think about South Korea as an island. South Korea is one of the largest trading nations in the world but there's not a single good that comes into or out of South Korea that isn't on a ship or an airplane. There's no land rocks. South Korea is isolated from the rest of Asia by North Korea. Imagine the benefits that could come from the infrastructure that would be built across the Korean Peninsula, tying all of these economic challenged areas together along with infusions of international investment, international trade, United States would engage economically, it's not, it's a great outcome. But we have a lot of work to do to get there and it is a lot of work. It's gonna take us some time to get to that point. And the North Koreans are gonna have to decide on what terms they want to enter that world but that's the choice that they make and we hope it is. All of this is premised upon also addressing the national security risk. And as an American diplomat, I have to keep coming back to the central interest of the United States of America which is to address the issue of weapons of mass destruction on the Korean Peninsula. None of this vision is gonna really come to fruition if we can't make progress on that. But what we have to convince North Koreans is the benefit of that is the future for North Korea. That's what we're trying to do. Sir, in your speech, you talked about how the potential for talks failing could result in increased proliferation in the region if North Korea was able to develop and maintain a successful nuclear arsenal. The question is, has the administration's calls for an increased burden sharing or at least that perception among allies cast out on the long-term US extended deterrence policy? And does that have implications for long-term proliferation of talks failed? Well, we're not there yet and I don't expect we will get there. We're gonna work closely with our allies to try to find a balanced solution to address issues of burden sharing that have plagued the United States with its alliance partners around the world since World War II. The burden sharing debate didn't begin in 2017 when President Trump took office. I cut my teeth in Washington on European affairs for almost 15 years before I took on this portfolio and I can tell you that the issue of defense spending in Europe has been a plague on the US alliance with NATO practically since it's very founding. And it's an objective fact that in many cases the allies don't even meet the minimal commitment in defense spending that they committed to achieve in order to make those alliances real. The worst thing in the world for us would to be to have an alliance relationship with the country in which we were tied to their national defense but they didn't take adequate steps themselves to defend themselves. And so what we wanna see from all of our alliance partners is a full commitment in that regard. Certainly a modicum of stability on the proliferation front does come from confidence in the extended deterrence. But that extended deterrence can be brought into question for reasons other than the failure of the alliance. NATO was still a viable institution in the 1980s when the Soviet Union began to deploy new missile systems that were designed specifically to sever the security ties between the United States and Europe. The Soviet Union saw it in the 1980s to create a scenario in which one or the other might choose to sit it out in the case of a war because it really wasn't their business what was going on and they didn't wanna take the hit if they stuck their nose into it. President Reagan working with many of our European allies, President Mitterrand of France, Chancellor Cole of Germany, Prime Minister Thatcher in Britain made a very controversial decision to deploy the Persian two missiles, deploy the Euro missiles into Europe to signal the indivisibility of US and European security against the face of external threat. These are the kind of debates that we put behind us at the end of the Cold War. We were able to move into a much more optimistic posture around the world but we have seen the rise of new missile systems in other parts of the world and we've also seen the develop of new capabilities like those in North Korea with its weapons mass destruction. Any foreign policy expert, any national security expert will tell you that this will create stresses on the strategic choices that every country and the region makes. And that's to everybody's detriment. We do not want more nuclear weapons states in the world. Full stop. You know what China doesn't either. Russia doesn't want it either. So we have to work together even with countries like China and Russia that we have other areas of disagreement to sustain also this 50 year commitment to non-proliferation that arose out of the non-proliferation treaty. Each time we confront a breach in that, we face the possibility of a dam burst and so it's very much in our interest to cooperate and succeed, not just on the denuclearization of North Korea but in a broader sense in the full set of transformational steps that I've described. I feel like you guys are asking me these questions. I know they're coming from all of you but these are great questions and thank you very much for them. These are all issues that we really are wrestling with. These are real time. I'm giving you my opinion, my point of view but you should know that these questions you're asking are the same ones that we're asking inside the halls of government on a daily basis. And then we have to have answers to these because these are the stakes. So thank you, please, go ahead. Let me undertake to say that we have dozens of questions here and we don't have time for you to answer them. But we'll undertake to at least send you the question so that you have a sense of the audience and a sense of what our students are thinking and others in the audience. We don't expect an answer but just to give you a sense of the rest of the audience because we're never gonna give to the, whoa, more than two of the questions. Anyway, here comes the next question. Very perfect. Given the US decision to pull out of the JCPOA agreement and with the president calling it a one-sided transaction, at the same time, President Trump announced a decision to remove additional sanctions from North Korea despite having violated UN security resolution and having conducted recent ballistic missile tests. How would you explain these sorts of disparities in foreign policy with approach between Iran and between North Korea? So just a slight correction. And I don't know if it was a transcription or a mistaken perception. We have not lifted any sanctions against North Korea. In fact, the sanctions imposed against North Korea by the United Nations Security Council are comprehensive. But this comes back to the issue of the JCPOA which is a larger issue. And it is to some degree the question and answer in a moment. Let me just say that we're gonna have to do things differently. We're gonna have to, the mandate that I have and the mandate that the international community has agreed to in UN Security Council resolutions, dating back to 2006 is the complete elimination of weapons mass destruction. It's not the temporary suspension of Iranian enrichment for a period of time to test and see if other elements of the relationship will change. What we're trying to do with this diplomacy is transform the relations with North Korea in a way that also shifts incentives. When a country doesn't feel like it's at risk, invasion or under threat or subject to hostile policies, can we work together with them to also address dangerous technologies like weapons and mass destruction that ironically are also the source of that risk and that hostility. We got a lot of work to do with our counterparts in North Korea to test and see if this is possible. But what we're trying to do is much bigger than what the JCPOA represented with Iran. And it's probably not to foreshadow too much what my colleagues work on. It's probably very much the nature of where we go with Iran if engagement does in fact begin between us and the Iranians. I could, I'd like to interject a question to make sure we address a little bit of what's happening in Washington and what's different about this administration. You've got a lot of experience with the George HW and George W Bush administrations. You were serving in congressional roles throughout the Clinton years, certainly following and intimately familiar with the Obama presidency. This president conducts foreign policy in a very different way than his predecessors. That's each president is unique, but this one most obviously so in some respects. And I want you, if you would, to tell us a little bit about how that empowers you in diplomacy and what are some ways in which it causes you to have to adjust the way in which you conduct diplomacy. Thank you. In the case of North Korea it probably offers some significant examples to answer your question because the president is personally invested in this policy. President Trump very much feels ownership of the course of our diplomacy in North Korea. And he is personally given direction to me and to my team and to the Secretary of State on where he wants to go and what he wants to do with this. As an aside, I'm a public servant. I serve with the pleasure of the President and Secretary of State. I also have to think he's right. I think what he's trying to do here is long overdue. And I think there's a chance that we can do it. And so that's also motivating is when you are fully abused with support for the policies. Professionals in government work on all sorts of policies that they don't always agree on. I have a great, great opportunity to be right on the issue that in the place I live. Now, the advantages come from that. Of course, the President and our system has cleared the space. The President has given direction on what he wants done. That helps a lot. We have a big and sprawling government with a variety of views, well-informed views and well-substantiated skepticism or concern about various elements of policy but when the President has provided the direction, that's kind of empowering, to say the least. The President has consistently messaged to Chairman Kim Jong-un his commitment to do this in a way that, as I described earlier in our view, is important to opening up and changing the direction in North Korea to meet us and to achieve these goals. That's very important. Every time the President tweets our counterparts in North Korea read it carefully, they study it closely and the President has been consistent in his messaging about diplomatic opportunity. Some challenges do arise from this as well. We have, it's no secret that it's been challenging to get the North Koreans to engage at the working level and do the real detailed negotiations that are gonna be necessary to bring to life, to bring to reality the vision that the two leaders have laid out. They're gonna have to work with us. These are complicated issues. They require enormous expertise and thoughtful exchange in order to realize solutions that are acceptable to both sides. It has to happen. And that's my message implicitly today too, is that we've gotta get this going. It's time for us to get started. The North Koreans, not surprisingly, have won a detective prison. And so the Han-Oi Summit was an opportunity where the North Korean side brought their ideas directly to the President's meetings. And unfortunately it illustrated the challenges of reaching an agreement. We were unable to reach an agreement because we hadn't done the spade work necessary to really test these ideas and give sufficient feedback on what was viable and what wasn't. The process isn't gonna work unless it's got both the top and the bottom. The challenge, of course, is when the President is so directly associated with it, he's gonna own that as well. It works. With the totality of circumstances that we have, it works. We have space for diplomacy. We still have time to be able to resolve these issues and I'm confident we can do it. But I think it's quite clear in both my remarks and my answer here, John. We gotta get going. That's the good working relationship that you have with your counterparts in Russia and China. And the question from the audience is how does the isolation of the North Korean diplomatic personnel working on the negotiations impact the process and are there any frictions that you could elaborate on? Richard, I know you didn't ask the question, but let me address it more generally. So North Korea has a ministry of foreign affairs that has very skilled diplomats. It's got seasoned negotiators who've worked with the United States on these issues for 25 years. In fact, some of the very people that we're working with today in a more junior capacity were involved in the first iteration of these negotiations in the early 1990s. We agreed framework negotiations, they were called back then. And so North Korea has a set of skilled and experienced diplomats. North Korea has embassies around the world. They don't have an embassy here in the United States of America, but they do have a permanent representation up at the United Nations in New York. They have diplomats who live abroad, who work abroad, and they interact with many countries around the world. On a daily basis, North Korea has a number of, the North Korean government has a number of relationships historically that have been closer, including China, including Russia, including some of the other countries with whom it was in common cause during Cold War. So Poland and the Czech Republic and Bulgaria and these countries still to this day have embassies in Pyongyang. As incidentally, through the Germans, the British, the French, well the French have a diplomatic representation and the Swedes in many other countries. So North Korea is definitely an insular government and it's very difficult for us to communicate with directly and speedily, but I think both sides know each other very well. And I think, I know we have a lot of experience working together and there's a lot of work we can do together. More of a personal question, as a former Wolverine, what advice would you get to a current student to achieve a career in foreign policy such as yours? Well, you already made the first important decision. Being a University of Michigan student. The, and I will say this, in all seriousness, having on my resume at a young age, University of Michigan was a helpful and impressive credential, even when I had no experience in anything else. The, I can only tell you how I did it for whoever's asked me that question and there's no one way to do it. But what I, over the course of the years, I've had the opportunity to work very closely with the University and other capacities for many years. I was a board member of the Michigan and Washington program which is the University's semester in Washington program where a cohort of 25, 30 students will do a full semester coursework while interning working in institutional government and non-profit NGO in Washington, D.C. For those of you who might be interested in a career in Washington, I highly recommend that program. You can still do, still carry a full, full class load and you can have a very interesting career experience that opens doors for you later. So I'm no longer on the board of that. I had to resign from all my board seats when I took this but Professor Jenna Bednar from the Political Science Department in LSA leads that program. We have a, the university has a permanent team in Washington, D.C. So that's an option. But I mentor all of us who were on the board mentored Michigan students who came through and gave them career advice. My number one piece of career advice for any student who's getting ready to pursue a career in Washington is move to Washington. You can't phone it in. It is a land of constant opportunity. Jobs are opening and jobs are being filled on a constant basis but being there is half the chance. You're gonna have to take a chance. But chances are if you're a student at this university you have a friend or a former roommate or a classmate. It's got an apartment, it's got a spirit, it's got an open couch. You can get out there and you can knock on doors. Second is ask people for help. All of us, myself included, somebody helped give us a leg up in our careers. When I went out to Washington, D.C. I knocked on doors. Some people were kind enough to sit down, spend a little of the time with me. And they did it because there's a lot of interest in helping young people and it's a great spirit in Washington but they also did it in many cases because that's what someone did for them when they got their start. And so they're willing to do it as I'm willing to do it as I have done it over many, many years with other students as well but with a particular bias towards the University of Michigan students. I guess that's how I got my start. I started on Capitol Hill. And I know the Congress is the subject of a lot of derision. I know that the political stalemate and the caustic nature of our politics takes some of the shine off of our people. It is a great place to start your career. You will find that you can match up with a member of Congress or a Senator whose policies you support, whose issues you can be passionate about. And it's a great, upwardly mobile place. Virtually everyone who starts there, I don't care what your degree is. Everyone who starts there starts as a staff assistant, a phone answer, a secretary. But the advancement is fast because there's constant turnover as young people are moving to other jobs, other opportunities, grad school, and so on. It was a great place for me to start and that worked for me. But there's other great ways to start your career too. Of course, the Foreign Service exam, for those of you who are interested in international relations, take the Foreign Service exam. It's the doorway into our professional diplomatic corps. And by the way, it's a start to a tremendous career opportunity, particularly for young people, to see a lot of the world and to work on behalf of their country. So I commend that to you as well. I'm not gonna go on too much more with that, but you have a lot of great resources here on the university. My search started at the career planning office. I looked at the public service internship program. We didn't have the Michigan and Washington seminar when I was a student here, but it's a tremendous resource for the student body now. You've got a lot of options. You just have to go out and find them. Sir, given the public nature of the ongoing negotiations and the difficult problem set with implications across the U.S. interagency theme, could you expand on your role, your special unique role, and how it interacts with the National Security Council and the broader U.S. government? So optimally, the National Security Council plays a hugely important role in this. In any foreign policy issue, it is the location where all the views of the agencies are consolidated and synthesized into what one hopes is coherent policy. And so we have a process inside the National Security Council that I attend on behalf of the Department of State, at times usually with the Deputy Secretary of State. For those of you who are a little bit more informed of the ways of Washington, you know that the MSC actually is a stratified organization that has the principles, which is the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, CIA Director. It's got the deputies, which are the number twos in each of those agencies, and then it's got a whole set of foreign policy professionals of various ranks in different parts of government, assistant secretaries, deputy assistant secretaries, et cetera. So it's a layered process, and ultimately at the top, is the National Security Council. Really, the National Security Council is not the MSC staff. National Security Council is the President of the United States with his or her national security team surrounding them to discuss issues. So that process brings all those views from all those agencies in. In my issue, the issue I work on cuts across a lot of parts of the federal government. North Korea touches on economics and trade and sanctions. Treasury Department, Commerce Department are deeply involved in North Korea policy. Of course, the Department of Defense, all the attendant issues related to national security, the presence of those trips in the Korean Peninsula to our deterrent in the Korean Peninsula. We've got a lot of parts of the Department of State that have to come to the table and manifest themselves through our Deputy Secretary, John Sullivan, or myself at these meetings. And then of course you have the NSC staff, which is comprised of a lot of professionals. Not surprisingly, there are differences of views. There are people who have different responsibilities. They have different experiences. They have different points of view. And the goal of the NSC is to coherently forge that into a set of policies that can be recommended to the President of the United States. Now it's a push and a pull. I talked about my issue, the issue that I've been asked to serve in North Korea as one that has a lot of push to, because the President has kind of set out what he wants to do, so what we're trying to do is figure out how to infuse and succeed in the parameters that the President has laid out for North Korea policy. Of course, this can be contentious. It has been across administrations. You have people here in this room with me who like me have served at these levels of government and have participated in that process. But obviously it shouldn't be easy. These are heavy issues, these are important issues. We want to hear a wide set of points of view. I think it serves the President, it serves the country. To have those all vetted in North Korea policy, I think we have a strong policy and I think we're serving the President very well. Now, given the timing of the Vietnam summit and considering the fact that not long afterwards, North Korea began to test more short range missiles, what effect have those actions by the North Koreans had on our most recent dealings with them? So our view is that the most important thing we can do with the North Koreans is set aside any vestiges of hostile behavior and engage in the kind of diplomacy that's going to be necessary to build a stronger understanding and address the full range of threats and risks on the Korean Peninsula. We talk about that in recent weeks and recent months. There has been a lot of talk about the short range ballistic missiles because of the North Korean test, but this is against a backdrop of a system that's also tested intermediate range ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles that is clearly in possession of nuclear weapons through the demonstrated testing that has been done a couple of years ago that's enriching nuclear materials, radioactive materials in order to fissile material in order to build weapons. And also is why they reported to have chemical and biological weapons programs. So the threat is there, the risk is there. The challenge is to find a way through diplomacy to resolve it. And the president has made clear that the short range ballistic missiles don't make him happy, but it's not gonna disrupt our efforts in order to engage diplomatically to resolve the very issues that we're referring to. So these are the kind of things though that also challenge the diplomatic space we have in which we have to operate. So there's a whole set of circumstances we try to manage bilaterally, regionally, multilaterally, at home domestically in the interaction with our Congress, with our press, with our expert community and national security. It's a surprise a minute, and we're just gonna do our very best to work through it. This is a lot of people ask questions from the audience. As you seek and the administration seeks transformational change between the relationship of U.S. and North Korea, if you could just speak or expand on the importance of verification monitoring and what steps are being taken in the process to ensure that there is something that's actually forceful in the final agreement. We haven't got to a point in negotiations where we have discussed in detail an agreement on verification measures. Let's face it to say meaningful and verifiable steps are gonna be necessary for us to be convinced that we've made the progress that we need to make on the elimination of weapons mass destruction. It's not gonna be easy. Again, it's gonna be another issue that's going to be challenging for us to resolve. But there's an absolute international consensus including our partners in China and Russia that verification has to be part of any meaningful steps on denuclearization. We're gonna have to work to figure out how to do that. That's gonna be something that's gonna be an important part of our negotiations. But we don't have an agreement yet that would lead me to the confidence to say that we can do that. So just a question about process which is often very important for on policy. Could you talk a little bit about your team? You mentioned your team. So who are they and how do you, what do you do day by day? What's sort of the pace of work when you're dealing with an issue like this which is very tight and focused? Well, let me take this as an opportunity to give credit where credit's due. The president is obviously entrusted in, and the secretary of state is entrusted in being an important priority in U.S. national security. But I could not do this with the team of professionals working with me, both inside my organization inside the department of state, but also we have a second team. I really, we really have two teams. The second one is our negotiating team. On the first, in the side of the department of state, I have a mix of foreign service officers of civil service experts in their field. And also some people who came from outside political appointees in the department. And they work tirelessly. This is a tremendous, tremendously talented, motivated group of people, many of them young. And the hours they work and the commitment they make and the rewards, financial rewards compared to my experience in the private sector, it's just intimidating to see. Really tremendous talents. We get, don't ever lose faith in your government. We get the best and the brightest and we have a bunch of them. And I'm fortunate to have them on my team working on this issue on behalf of you all, on behalf of our secretary and our president, on behalf of our people. We have a negotiating team that we've brought on board that we've sought to draw from the best resources across the government. So we have the best missile expert in the United States government. We have the chief scientist of the Department of Energy and the University of Michigan graduate. I found out, I have two Ohio State Buckeyes on my team. Who are tremendous incidentally. We have representatives of the Department of Treasure, representatives of the Department of Defense, all the parts of it. And we've brought all this to bear in our discussions with the North Koreans. We've invited them to engage us at the same level of expertise in the same breath. And to date, I will tell you one of the frustrations has been that the North Koreans have not brought the same level of expertise to the table. And as a consequence, we know a lot more about some of the things we're negotiating with that are in their country than they have known at the table. And that makes it challenging too. But it's always an honor to serve our country. And I am deep grateful to the President and Secretary of State for giving me this opportunity. For me, it's a return to government for those men and women who are tirelessly working every day on this stuff. My hats off to them, it is a great team. This is wonderful. And we greatly appreciate you sharing all of these insights. I particularly appreciate the fact that you've discussed a whole number of the different levels or forms in which diplomacy occurs. It occurs working with your team in a complex interagency process in a set of relationships with allies, ultimately also, of course, with the North Koreans. Where in a moment, I'll ask the audience to join me in thanking you. But first, I just wanted to make a few comments. First is to thank the Weiser family again for making possible for the Ford School to welcome leaders in practice of foreign affairs to come to campus and share insights that we are sure are very helpful to those of you who are interested in the topic or those of you who plan to be practitioners yourselves. The second is to draw your attention, again, as D. Michael Barnett at the outset, to the array of activities we have coming this fall and beyond. We have a simple website to remember, diplomacy.umich.edu. Come visit, come by and see us in Wild Hall. Come to some of the other many interesting events we have from public forums like this to student-focused simulations and workshops and a whole array of other opportunities that the Weiser Diplomacy Center is able to make available for the University of Michigan community. And so in a moment, we'll start a reception across the hall. But before we head over there, can you please join me in thanking Steve Mead?