 Okay, we're live. We're back. I'm Jay Fidel. We're here at Think Tech, and we're talking about Think Tech Asia today with, guess what, Ralph Kosa, Pacific Forum, the president, CEO, and also the Honda Chair of Pacific Forum. And he's been spending most of his adult life, my right to say this, thinking about Asia, thinking about American relations with Asia, writing, thinking, visiting, talking, schmoozing, rubbing elbows with all of Asia for many, many decades. And boy, he's the guy I want to talk to about what really happened in Singapore a couple days ago. Welcome to the show, Ralph. Thank you, Jay. Thanks for coming down. My pleasure. Yeah. Can't wait. So we entitled the show The Real Meaning and Effect of the TK Meeting. Let's call it the TK Meeting in Singapore. Singapore is almost an irrelevant here. It doesn't matter where it was. Okay, and, you know, after you deal with all of the pyro techniques that led up to it, and the name-calling and all, so now they sit down for 20 minutes, 20 minutes, I did the math on that, 20 minutes with actual face-to-face, and they'll speak the same, maybe they do speak the same language, but I doubt it. Oh, I don't think so. And you wonder what, how that happened, what came out of it. So there was a thing on 60 Minutes this past Sunday where they had some senior nuclear scientists and military talking about what they thought, you know, real level of nuclear threat was from North Korea. It's almost as if they wanted to educate Trump because they didn't feel that he was properly educated before the meeting. And it was pretty high level of threat, somewhere between 30 and 60 nuclear weapons, and possibly the ability to do reentry without burning up on the mainland, on the U.S. mainland. So we, you know, we can have a serious threat, and if the government does know about that, then certainly that would factor into this meeting. If it doesn't know, gee whiz, he didn't do his homework, did he? Do you think he did his homework? Yeah, I think he did. I mean, you know, this bravado, oh, I don't have to prepare and I don't have to take those. That's nonsense. He's playing to the crowd and we bite every time. So, you know, it just sort of distracts people and they're all sitting there talking about, oh, he should have done this. He should have done that. The man's not an idiot. You know, I mean, in some cases, I wish he was, you know, because he's smart enough to beat Hillary Clinton and he's smart enough to keep the news cycle focused on him every day. So I don't, you know, I don't worry about that. I worry about the fact that his values are different. His views of the importance of U.S. as the security guarantor in Asia are different. His view of the value of U.S. military presence in Asia is different. And his belief that somehow or other he can talk anyone into anything is at least concerning. You know, I had joked previously that one thing that Kim and Trump had in common was that each one thought he could outsmart the other. And I'm not sure who won the first round, but I would give Kim a lot of points for how things have turned out so far. But, you know, this is a process. Anyone who says it's been a complete failure or a complete success is nonsense. This is the first, you know, it's one small step for mankind. Now we've got to, you know, put the meat behind it and it could either turn out to have a really good outcome or it could be more of the same or it could be a really bad outcome. And right now all we know is that there's movement and nobody is threatening to kill one another. So that's probably good news, although I didn't lose a lot of sleep about the North Koreans attacking when everyone was worried about it. But now there's perhaps even less concerned about that. You know, I just, I wonder on this sort of thing whether Kim is as well prepared as Trump. Whether Kim, you know, understands. I mean, he doesn't come from the same level of experience. And he's avoided diplomatic experience. How well prepared was he? And how much of the work was done? You know, we have 20 minute meeting that the agreement was drafted in advance by probably by other people. And it's a very, what do you call it, threadbare kind of agreement. It's an outline, not really terms. So how did that happen? This sounds like what you always hear about diplomatic meetings in this nature, that all the work is done by the bureaucrats in advance. On the other hand, Trump is unique. And he doesn't operate like a conventional diplomat at all. And he doesn't let his State Department operate like conventional diplomats. And so, you know, a guy like you would be within the framework of conventional diplomacy. But we don't have that here. So it's hard to understand exactly what an unconventional guy is doing. Right. And you know, the reality is they're both unconventional guys. And I think the reality, I was one of the few, I think, who thought the summit was a good idea. And the reason why is because we've tried the standard diplomatic practice. We've had the American diplomats sit down with the North Korean diplomats and come to a great agreement. This was called the Leap Day Agreement under Obama. And then 16 days later, the North Koreans launched a satellite, undermined everything because the diplomats were doing their job, but they weren't in sync with the military who had different marching orders from the big boss. So you've got to get the two big bosses lined up. Because otherwise, you've got Trump tweeting little rocket man. And then that insults it and it undermines everything. So you had to get the two guys at the top, both say, in principle, we are going to agree to, quote, complete denuclearization. In the real world, in the old world, we would have come up with the definition of complete denuclearization, how are we going to get there from here? And then the two bosses would have come in and pat it themselves in the back. But this is not business as usual in either country. So this is what had to be done. That's fine. We just need to understand that. But you don't come home and say, the world is now safe. Sleep tight tonight, America. There's no longer a North Korean threat. How is there no longer a threat? They had all of these missiles before. They still have them. They haven't given up anything. So they said, you know what? This week, we're not going to attack you. Thank you very much. You probably weren't going to attack us anyway, because we could kill you if you did. Yeah. I mean, if you went back and started doing little rocket man insults again, I suspect just as a matter of humanity and psychology, it would be worse than before, because now he would be returning from a point of relative peacefulness and re-insulting the man. And the man's going to get all the more angry. And then you have even a greater possibility of a confrontation. Yeah, but this is all a reality show, Jay. I mean, this is what frustrates me, and I think frustrates most foreign policy professionals is this sort of game of chicken that's been going on and, you know, the tweets which may or may not be policy and may or may not reflect any kind of sanity. And we all react to that and we all, you know, stop what we're doing and sit there and scratch our heads and say, how could he have just said that? And meanwhile, it captures the news cycle for the next 12, 12, which is 24 hours, which is exactly what he wants. And fortunately, you know, I was not a big fan of my Pompeo when he was in the Congress, because I thought he was sort of heading in the wrong direction. But he is a hard-nosed realist. And he's the guy that's actually doing the leading the negotiations with the North Koreans. I don't believe he believes for one second that you can trust the North Koreans or that the problem has now been solved. So, you know, the boss has said the problem has now been solved. Now you go solve it. And so this is, you know, now the hard work is is going to be gone. And we've got some real hard-nosed realists doing that hard work. So, you know, we could still have a happy ending. But I'm not sure. We're sure ain't there yet. No. But but if you be a realist and look at the terms as revealed to us, however vague they are, this is an outline. It's an agreement to agree, is all it is. But on the one hand, we apparently, at least on a moral level, have agreed not to do any more joint exercises with South Korea. And he, Kim, has agreed or he's agreed to explore the possibility of not doing nuclear anymore, pulling all his sights, which are numerous and all around the country and hard to find. And somebody on 60 Minutes said, well, that the best of it would take 10 years to actually do the nuclear rise in South Korea. So how do we come out? Is that a good deal? Is it a good deal for them? Is it a good deal for us? To whom is it a better deal? You know, it doesn't matter if one side has a slight advantage or the other side has a slight advantage. What you're looking for is something that's win-win. And in win-win, the win-win implies lose-lose. Because each side has to give up something. So we shouldn't, the problem in the Middle East is everyone wants a win-lose solution, so no one will ever agree here. We're trying to find a win-win. And that's good. But there's the agreement, the joint agreement as stated, which is a two-page piece of paper that literally says very little other than general principles. And then there's all these news conferences and everything else. So the president in the news conference says, we're going to give up military exercises. And the military says, oh, say what? They didn't know. And the vice president says, well, no, we're not going to end exercises. We're just going to end this. And then someone else says, no, what the president meant to say. So we still really don't know what... It sounds like so many things about the past. But none of that's in the agreement. The agreement just says denuclearize and work toward X, Y, and Z. So do I believe that there will not be a U.S. military exercise in South Korea? And I sure hope that that's not the case, because you've got to continue to train and exercise. Will we stop flying B2 bombers over in North Korea to scare the hell out of the North Koreans? No, but that will probably stop doing. And, you know, when the president was in his stream of consciousness talking about war games and provocative, those are the types of things when I meet with the North Koreans that they say they're concerned about. They remember bombs dropping on them and they don't like the idea that we're practicing with nuclear bombers and that it's denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. That means they get rid of their nukes, but we stopped the nuke threats on our side. Fair deal. But so far they haven't given up anything. All they've done is blow up a test site after they stop testing. And that's better than keeping the test site, but it's not doesn't make me sleep any better at night or any worse. There's there's got to be here's a list of all of our nuclear capabilities. You know, you, you said the experts on 60 minutes and they said 30 to 60. Why there's a big difference between 30 nuclear weapons and 60 nuclear weapons? This is this is the experts guess. So if the North Korean Samar hand us a piece of paper and say, we have 24 nuclear weapons and we're going to turn them all over to you. You can believe that. Yeah, if you do, I've got a bridge in Manhattan. I want to sell you, you know, so so that's that's part of the challenge. You know, we've got to first of all, we've got to come to agreement on what they have before that, you know, they can say, well, you know, we were joking. We only have to we only have two nuclear weapons. Here they are, you know, hand them over. Here's three jars of plutonium. Have a nice day. And then what do you do? Well, you know, you can say, peace in our time. There's no more threat. Or you can say, Well, you know, I think we need a little more of this verification. And that's where everything is falling apart in the past. It hasn't been on making the kind of agreement that we made here on Monday. It's on the follow through on the verification part. And that's the that's the tough part. It's tough for the people because the people again have to get their information from the White House. And so we've had a problem getting information from the White House. We've had the war on the press. We've had information withheld or distorted. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see this process you described going forward, where we get only piecemeal information, we don't really find out what's going on. Yeah. And you know, the important thing is that the negotiators know what's going on, and the negotiators know what the president has promised or not promised. And there's even some question about that. And I think that, you know, the the rest of us all would like to know, but that's not really critical. But if the negotiators sitting there and saying, we want X, Y and Z, and the guy on the other side says, Oh, President Trump said that didn't matter. That's sort of undercut your bargaining position. So they, you know, we better be real clear on what it is that the president has promised. That's where the experienced diplomats come in. That's right. And we better find some really quick. And that's where at some point you get the what the president meant to say was, you know, did he say exercises? No, what he meant was he's going to stop doing pushups and jumping jacks. So and then you're going to sort of go from there. It's Ralph Kosa Pacific Forum. We take a one minute break, we'll be back. And then we're going to find out the implications of this on other countries in the region and the world. Wow. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, your host on think tech's likeable science show. Every Friday at 2pm, we delve in the magical, magical, fascinating world of science. How science applies to your life. Why you should care about science. What impact science has on you and on those around you. Why you need to know some science. It's a fun, interesting, painless way to learn some good science that you can use. See you there. Hello, I'm Cynthia Lee Sinclair. I have a show called Finding Respect in the Chaos. It's all about women's rights and gender equality. It's a place for survivors of abuse to come on and tell their stories. And a place for advocates to come on and share important resources so that people can get past the abuse and into the hope and healing that's on the other side. I hope you'll join me every other Friday at 3 o'clock for Finding Respect in the Chaos. I'm Cynthia Lee Sinclair on thinktechaboy.com. We are honored to have Ralph Cosa here because now this is like one day after June 12th when all this was supposed to happen in Singapore. And you know, it's like Puff, something happened. A 20 minute discussion and a two page document. Now what? It was like one of those agreements in a business sense where you have this very short agreement and everybody says that's not an agreement. That's an agreement to agree. And now as you said, that fun begins. But you know, it does have an immediate effect on people. For example, I'm just throwing an example. South Korea was not notified of the provision that said no more joint exercises. And South Korea should be pissed off, excuse me, ticked off. Is it? There are people in South Korea right now who are beating their heads against the wall or digging tunnels deep. There are others who think this is delightful. You know, the current government, the progressive government, if we had wanted to continue military exercises, they are so eager to have North South for Approach Month that they may have said we won't agree. We can't hold, the U.S. can't hold an exercise with the South Koreans in South Korea unless South Korea agrees. So we may have been making a virtue out of a necessity. We don't know because we don't know what Trump and Moon have been saying. There might have been discussions. Yeah. And you know, Moon may have made it very clear. Look, we don't, we don't, you know, we want to hug one another and you're standing in the way of that. So that's, there's a, you know, that's, he's the interested third party. You know, I mean, it's the Korean Peninsula, the South Korea, North Korea. And at the end of the day, he's the one that's 30 miles from the border. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I thought was a shortcoming of, of the agreement was that there was no reference in the agreement to the need for the DPRK and the Republic of Korea to work on peace issues on the peninsula. Oh, interesting. And that to me is, you know, the final solution. First of all, North Korea has to recognize South Korea as a sovereign equal and go forward. And that's where we need to be insisting on things. And obviously in the, in the agreement, it wasn't there. And we still keep talking about this as if it's all about us. And it's not all about us. We're a key player. We worry about the fact that they may have one or two missiles that might be able to put a warhead on it and might be able to reenter the atmosphere and might be able to hit us. But they've got artillery that's within range of soul and 25 million South Korean inhabitants. Mobile artillery that can't be found so easily. Yeah. So, you know, let's remember whose peninsula it is. And we've got to keep the South Koreans engaged. And, you know, the Japanese are concerned because that in mind about the South Koreans a week closer or further away from reunification. There were, you know, there were dreams here in the last few weeks that maybe this would somehow wrap around reunification. Is it less or more likely to define reunification? I think that what first of all, it's we're not going to wake up one day and the wall is going to come down and Kim Jong-un is going to hop on a plane and disappear. So the best I think we can hope for is peaceful coexistence in some type of a confederated Korean states where each keeps its own identity and you start opening up in the Helsinki process, if you will, begins so that maybe 20, 30 years from now there's a peaceful reunification. To have reunification otherwise, either the North has to surrender or the South has to surrender. Neither one are prepared to live under the system of the other one. Maybe a lot of North Koreans they'd be willing to have given the vote, but they're not going to have that chance. And certainly Kim Jong-un is sort of happy where where he is and is not looking for a chalet somewhere in Switzerland to go back to. So when we talk about reunification nowadays, really what they're talking about is peaceful coexistence, some type of confederation where each still exists as a sovereign state, but they recognize the other one's legitimacy. And that's a big step because both sides have in their constitutions that they are the legitimate government of both of the entire peninsula. This is like China and Taiwan, both of whom pretend that they control all of the Chinese people, although there's 47 million people in Taiwan that don't quite agree with that. So well, you there's also suggests that we have an armistice now. We don't have a peace treaty and it's going to stay that way until some other aspect is renegotiated. That's right. And you know, who's going to sign the peace treaty? This was one of the reasons why the peace talks fell apart back in 1999 under Bill Clinton. They were trying to work on the four party agreement. And the North said we'll only sign a peace treaty with the United States. And the United States said, South Koreans have to be part of this. And the Chinese said, hey, hey, how about us? You know, we're a player here. And now in the North South Declaration, after the Moon Kim meeting, they talked about the three sides, U.S., South Korea, North Korea, sitting down and talking about a peace agreement or maybe four, including the Chinese. So the North and South Koreans, for their own reasons, don't trust or like the Chinese and are, you know, they don't want to completely alienate them, but they're not real eager to have the Chinese part of this anyway. So there's all sorts of dynamics. It's complicated before. It's still complicated now. It's still it's more complicated now. Yeah, right. Because nobody knows what that thing means. The other thing, it comes up in the notion of, you know, the 30-year process of opono-opono, if you will, okay, is economic interaction. Economic development, joint economic projects. And there was a lot of press about that. There's nothing in the agreement about it. That's right. And again, if you listen to some of the things that the president has said, it's like there's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow as soon as you denuclearize. But we've also said, until you denuclearize, you're not getting a penny. And we've also said the U.S. isn't going to pay for all of this. South Koreans and Japanese and Chinese will pay. Well, you know, we're very generous with someone else's checkbook. Maybe the Mexicans will pay. Yeah, maybe maybe the Mexicans will pay. I wish I had a thought of that. So at any rate, it's going to be expensive. And the North Koreans aren't going to give away anything for free because that's not who they are. And they're already talking in their propaganda about how the president is going to lift sanctions and help provide economic assistance and etc, etc. That's also not in the agreement. So, you know, so what else what else happened during those 20 minutes or two hours and how long the two, you know, what kind of things that they whisper in one another's ear beats the hell out of me. And until in our system, until the Congress says, yes, I'm going to write that check, you know, the president can can promise everything in the world, but the Congress has to pay for it. And, you know, the Congress isn't particularly eager to start writing checks for the North Koreans. They're also not particularly eager to bring US forces home or to stop readiness and training. So we're, you know, I remember we're both old enough to remember Jimmy Carter saying, you know, I'm taking all our forces out of Korea. How long ago was that? And how many are still there? So, you know, when the president says jump, the Congress does not say how high. But you raise, you know, the issue of the effect of all of this on politics and political processes and public opinion in the United States. What kind of effect do you think, Ralph, this is going to have on on the midterm elections coming soon, four months? God only knows, you know, I mean, I one of the things I'm very happy about is that I'm a foreign policy analyst, so I try to figure out what easy things like what the North Koreans are doing or what the Chinese are doing. I don't have to I don't have to predict American politics, because I would I would be unemployed if I was predicting American politics. So far, at least in the last couple of years, my track record has not been all that good. At the end of the day, I don't know how many Americans are going to vote based on what's happening on the Korean Peninsula, to be honest with you, they're going to vote based on what's happening in their neighborhood. And, you know, whether they've got a better job or whether the tax cut has really helped them or hasn't helped them. And whether the other side is so demonized or the other side's candidate is so off the fringe that no one will vote for him. But, you know, the criteria as to what's electable has changed considerably. Yeah, right. Well, I mean, you think it's possible. Is there any real chance between now and November there's a Nobel Peace Prize in this for Trump? Is it possible? I would find that hard to believe for a number of reasons. One, because the Europeans don't like Trump, so they'd have to really be holding their nose to give that. Secondly, I think most people understand we're not there yet. There's, you know, a mouse ago before we sleep, the kind of phrase. So you've got that involved. And then third, you know, the Trump brags about the fact that he got the North Koreans to the table by threatening to bomb them and kill them. That's normally not one of the criteria is for the Peace Prize. It's, you know, it's more an aspirational and and everything else. Who knows? Who knows? You know, I mean, I would be less surprised if the Nobel Committee turned around and gave it to Moon Jae-in. There you go. As the sort of the architect of all of this. There you go. And that would probably drive our president crazy if that happened. But again, you know, this is, you know, just ask me what's happening in Myanmar or something. I'm more comfortable. I want to ask you what's happening in Europe, because Europe, relations with the U.S. have changed. For that matter, Canadian relations have changed. I mean, all of our allies, the G7 was the G6 plus one. And he made enemies. I mean, I mean, he he insulted those leaders to the point where the people in those countries were insulted. How does this now what happened in Singapore or didn't affect that? I think it's a great question, Jay, and the answer is it beats the hell out of me. I'm on my way to London on Tuesday for an Asia conference with a lot of our European friends that I'll have a better feel for that. You know, I think we haven't yet refocused Pacific Forum to concentrate on the Canadian threat rather than the North Korean threat. We're still we're still going to sort of look at North Korea and China as the primary challenges. But who knows, we may you know, we may need to change that. And you know, those French, you can never trust them in the first place. Anyway, so, you know, maybe all of that will change. But for for right now, I you know, I think they're all disappointed. It's it's not the way I would prefer to see diplomacy conducted. I've always, you know, been brought up to believe that you treat your friends better than you treat your enemies. Reasonably, yeah. But you know, that doesn't seem to be the case. On the other hand, you know, we've got enduring relationships and mutual interests that may cause us to smile and grin and bear it and hope for their best or hope for change and just sort of muddle through. And that's probably mostly what's going to happen. Yeah. Well, yes, I think so. I agree. One last question. This is a really interesting and provocative question. I ran a little piece about this. So, you know, one of the things that Trump has done in his campaign and now in his office is to criticize ongoing criticism of the Iran deal, the Iran nuclear deal that Obama negotiated over a long time. Great detail, as opposed to two pages. So. Which one is a better agreement, Ralph? Well, it asked me in two years whether or not this agreement has turned into something. I think it was a great mistake to walk away from the Iran deal. We hear these criticisms that the deal allowed Iran to do X, Y and Z. Deals don't allow countries to do anything. That would imply that without the deal, Iran wouldn't be doing it. Well, we're going to find out what Iran is prepared to do without the deal very quickly. And we're going to say, oh, wow. You know, so my view has always been you don't get rid of a deal until you've got a better one laid out. You don't do it in hopes of having a better one. You know, I'll give you all my money in hopes that I'm going to hit the jackpot tomorrow. Hit the jackpot tomorrow, then you start talking about what you do with your old money. So to me, it was it was a bad move. There are a lot of people that are worried, probably more worried about what the future lies as far as U.S. Iranian relations are concerned because here you've got a hostile power that is not particularly intimidated by us and has a lot of friends who can help them a lot more than North Koreans friends. So but, you know, at one time in my prior life in the military, I worked on the Middle East. I was so happy to stop working on the Middle East because it's an area where no one will accept the win-win solution if you can find it. Yeah, talking about complexity. Yeah. It's unfortunate, but let's hope for the best here, but I think we need to be prepared for the worst. And that's why places like Pacific Forum exist to sort of prepare for the best and prepare for the worst. That's why I think TechLog, Pacific Forum, so much. Thank you, Ralph. Good. They're coming down. Thanks, Jay. Any time.