 It's Martha E. Randolph time here on Asia in Review, or Think Tech Asia is what we're talking about. Yes. Martha and I had a very, what do you call it, provocative conversation on the street in April, I guess it was, and I met her there on the street. And I realized early on that she's a very unusual person because, and you all know, people like this, honestly, she grew up at a table where her family argued stuff. Yes. And when she came home from school, there was an argument. There was a discussion. A discussion. There was a testing of the mind, a testing of the intellect, all through her childhood, her student experience. So at the end of the day, Martha became an inquiring mind. And you can tell that right away when you talk to Martha. In my life, I have known not many people that fit in this category, but I have learned to recognize it. One of them, interestingly enough, is Cynthia Thielen as the mother and Laura Thielen, they're both in the legislature, as the daughter. They had this kind of table. I could name other names, but the point is that you come from that table. And now you're at this table. Thanks for coming down. My pleasure. Today we're going to talk about something we talked about on the street. And it is an issue you spotted as very important, and since April, it has become all the more important. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we're here to sort of get an informed citizen's view of what is going on. And I want to add one other point, which I had a discussion with one of my buddies about this morning, is do you need a sophisticated diplomatic corps, you know, well-educated person, to understand what's going on in the discussions between Trump and Kim? You know, the point is that we haven't been to this place. This is unconventional. This is beyond our experience and beyond the experience of a diplomatic corps. Do they know more in an unconventional world than we do? Well, this... And your view is therefore very important. Absolutely. And I think it's important for people to remember that because of the Cold War, there has been a storyline that the United States government has been putting out for a long time. And as part of that storyline, they have adjusted historical facts. They have adjusted the public approach towards a wide range of countries, especially any of those that were influenced by the Soviet Union or Soviet-style communism. And because of that, you have this long-term, gradual adjustment of the facts till you get to a point where, unless you really are the kind of person that does deep research, you won't even know that you're being deluded by a lie. I have heard incredibly intelligent reporters on television talking about the current events of between Kim and President Trump and this discussion of anti-nuclearizing the peninsula. And they are talking what I would call the party line of the United States that has been so deeply ingrained that not a single one of them has gone back and done their research or their history. Now, I am not saying that it is untrue that Korea is run by a single family unit. They happen to call themselves communism, but I'm not sure these terms make any difference anymore. The point is it's a single family in charge with their compatriots and their little cadre of generals and security people. You know, it's a whole study, Martha, how that works. Exactly. How could it be? I mean, how did Hitler get to be one man running Germany? Watch. How did Kim get to be one man running North Korea? That history is, again, it's available. Go online, go to a responsible website. And by that, I don't mean to downplay Wikipedia. I have used it often, but usually to give me the access to other sources of information. And you go to a responsible website and you ask about the history of Korea. And you will find out that back in World War II, Korea as a single country was part of the Empire of Japan. But when World War II was over, the Korean peninsula was divided in terms of supervision between the Soviet Union and the United States. And that's what became North and South Korea. And the Korean War— It was aligned on a map. It was aligned. The 40th parallel of 30— It had nothing to do with culture. Nothing to do with jurisdiction. No. And it was all about the Soviet Union getting what they considered to be their fair share of world power and recompense for the losses in World War II with the United States. Something similar happened in Germany, when you had the Division of Germany into the German Democratic Republic or East Germany and the Federal Republic, also known to us as West Germany. What you have is the Korean War was begun because there was a group of people in the northern sector being influenced by communism that wanted to reunite Korea under that type of banner. Then you have the conflict that we all know about. But it was not ended with a peace treaty. It was ended by an armistice, which simply meant we agree to stop fighting because we are not getting anywhere. But everything is going to remain the same, meaning a divided Korea. What's interesting about that, too, is that the Russians could have played a more active role in the Korean War, but they faded. They backed off. They did. And they let the Chinese come in. So if you look at the net effect of that war, such as far as it went, it put the Chinese much closer to North Korea than the Russians. Well, absolutely. And remember at that time that you had Mao Zedong was in charge, and he was very much a dictator who went a little bit crazy in his political adjustment. But also during the Korean War, American troops were moving perilously close to what was considered China territory. And that's why China became more actively involved. And yes, the Soviets backed off, because none of them really wanted this to become World War III, except Douglas MacArthur, the general, who was very convinced that we should really invade North Korea, invade China and Russia and everything. And if Truman hadn't been president and hadn't called him back, we would have been recovering right now from the effects of World War III with atom bombs, which were less explosive than the ones that came after, but still. So here it is, Monday the 11th. And on Sunday the 10th, we had one of those really remarkable 60-minute shows. Yes. Sometimes I think, and I watch 60-minutes, I think that they're not talking to me. They're talking to other people who may be running things. For example, the two significant segments they did last night, one was on the state of nuclear research and development in North Korea. But I think the implication to me, I don't know if you saw it, I think you did, the implication to me was Donald Trump may not know these things. And I think they were... Donald Trump does not know these things. He does not even know basic history. Donald Trump has never done research in his life. He doesn't need to prepare for this meeting. And he doesn't need to prepare, because frankly, he's not going to accomplish anything. There is no way that North Korea is going to simply disassemble everything, because until they are absolutely sure that no United States government will invade their country or try to destabilize the government, they will not give up the only little lynchpin they have to protect themselves, which is a threat of some kind of nuclear option, which as far as my political science teacher Jarius Groh from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, has clearly told me is not... This is not your hydrogen bomb that you saw being tested on TV. This is not that kind of weapon. They don't have that carrying capacity. They don't have that explosive capacity. And believe me, if there was ever a launch that came towards us as the recent scare we all experienced indicated, it would have been an appalling accident that nobody wanted to have happened, because no one in North Korea is foolish enough to think they would come anywhere near surviving. They're no threats are needed. They know. And besides, they're right next door to South Korea. Neither of those Koreas wants a war. Well, there's only 18 million people in North Korea. It's really small when you think about it. That's true. 18 times the size of all of Hawaii. It's really very small. Yeah. And in the Korean War, five million civilians were killed. So, hey, no, excuse me, half of five million civilians were killed during the Korean War, just incidentally. And that's only in three years of standard fighting. Well, it would destroy the country. You wouldn't have to destroy every man, woman and child. You know, it's held together by tissue paper anyway. Yes. And it doesn't have a real economy. And so I think if there was any kind of nuclear exchange, it would be over easily and quickly. The problem is there would be huge damage on our side of it. And also in China, remember, people remember if a nuclear bomb goes off in your territory, the radiation will spread for miles. Hello, do you remember your novel? It will go on. It will be carried by the winds. People will be affected in countries that were nowhere near this. You that is why a nuclear option is so horrific. That is why it is. I don't think Trump understands this. I think he's so much the bully and, you know, negotiator, the art of the deal or the bad deal. He doesn't even go. Yes, he does good, bad deals, good, bad deals. I mean, there was a list of all the bad deals he's been doing in his lifetime. It's pretty sad. But here he is and 60 minutes is telling him, you know, this is the level of their sophistication. And they are pretty sophisticated and they have achieved things we didn't think were possible. And they have somewhere between 30 to 60 active nuclear weapons right now bombs. And so if he thinks he's going to push them around the way he pushed Trudeau around the other day, you know, I think he's got another thing coming. And the other thing is your point a minute ago. It's very interesting. You know, you can undermine a country in more ways than by physical force. You can undermine a country the way Russia undermined us in the last election and the way that that second segment on 60 Minutes Portrait with social media. You can get in there and change the way the people think. It can change. You can make them stupid through social media. Well, you can make people stupid who agree to let themselves be stupid. True. Here's the reality. I don't consider myself an exceptionally intelligent person. I consider myself to be an academic in that sense. I do my research. I do not believe everything I read the first time. And if I have a theory, I go about trying to find other people who have done the research to support that theory. The common person in the United States has become so accustomed to believing what is said, especially if it's said frequently and often and repeatedly over and over that they just begin to accept it. I have never seen a political situation in the United States like the one we have now since the pre-civil rights movement. I have never seen officers of the law so freely and blatantly attacking people of color for little or no reason and getting away with it. I remember I was there. I was watching on TV when dogs were let loose on peaceful protesters. My mother was born in Greenville, South Carolina. I have heard all the stories. It is happening again and there is no action being taken. There is protest, but the government should be taking actual action. The government's AWOL and Trump is AWOL on these issues. Yeah. But one of the things that we need to talk about is a point you made when we exchanged email a day or two ago. And that is the relationship between what he did in the G7 meeting in Quebec just a couple of days ago and how that sort of feeds into what he is likely to do. Nobody knows what he is likely to do in Singapore. And let me add one other thing that came out today as far as I know is that he said he was leaving early. He was going to Singapore, but he was leaving early. He hadn't even started the meeting, but he's leaving early. Well, he has nothing to say. This is a stunt. Trump wants to do something that makes it look like he's a great statesman he's done something that no other American has done, and he actually has taken no action. This is like Ronald Reagan claiming to cause a better detente between the U.S. and the Soviet Union when it was really Mikhail Gorbachev who did all the action. This is the same thing. Kim Jong-Yung has been in power. He was brought into power shortly before his father passed. The staff he inherited from his father were all his father's men, okay, or even left over from his grandfather. Any, if you do your research, you will discover that he has slowly but surely been firing generals, firing security personnel, and putting in people who support him. I have no reason to think that- That sounds like Trump, doesn't it? Well, in a way, except what we're talking about is if you're going to make a change in a country that has been under a dictatorship for such a long time, the people who are in power don't want to lose power. Look at Russia, the same thing happened. When Gorbachev tried to begin to initiate reforms, his generals rose up against him. That's how the whole situation fell apart. They didn't, they want the status quo. And then you have Baryshnikov, you have the next, I'm just, all right, who didn't do her research. I forget the name of the guy who came in to help Gorbachev. But he was the alcoholic who took over, his deal was, I want to be in charge of the Russia part of the Soviet Union. He got that job, the whole thing broke apart, and America immediately declared victory over communism. We did nothing. And the same thing is here, Kim Jong-il- I expect that he's going to wind up, Trump's going to wind up declaring victory, maybe so- He will, he will. And frankly, I don't care. After we come back from this break, Martha, Martha E. Randolph, was it? Martha E. Randolph. Martha, we're going to talk about what is likely to happen and the implications of what is likely to happen in the environment that Trump has created where he's lost all the support of all of our long, long time friends. Yes, I have some interesting thoughts about that though. Okay, we're going to come right back. One minute, we'll see you. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, your host on ThinkTech's likeable science show. 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Okay, we're back with Martha Randolph and informed citizen talking about what's going to happen, well, right now and especially tomorrow in Singapore with Trump and Kim. Yeah. And we sort of rolled around that for a while, the first part of the show, but now let's talk about what you think is going to happen. And that goes to the question of predicting two unpredictable people. And their organizations around them are not predictable either because they were one-man shows in both cases. So have you had a prediction for us? Well, yes, I did some research. I recommend foreignpolicy.com. There are a number of interesting well-researched scholarly articles at that website. The general idea will be that Kim will make an overture, but he's going to make sure it takes time to implement all these things because, again, he cannot trust Donald Trump or the United States of America to back up what they say. He can trust them to try and take advantage of him. Kim Jong-Yung and his administration play at being crazy. They play at being uncontrollable. The mouse that roared with two sellers. But they do that because if the world thinks they're not sure if you're going to do the crazy thing, then the world is a little more careful. The difference is we have Donald Trump who really is unpredictable. He is not playing a political game where he actually knows more and he's pretending he doesn't know stuff. He actually knows nothing. This is a man who would push a nuclear button because one of his colleagues said, oh, it's all an illusion. There really is no nuclear mushroom crowd. And he would believe it. This is the danger. Now, Kim Jong-Yung and his people have researched America. They followed the politics. They know their facts. So I think they will come to something that sounds like a great agreement but has to be implemented over time, because if I were him, I would do absolutely nothing to undermine my power base in the world until Donald Trump is out of office. And then I'd wait for commitments from a new administration and I would know enough about America to know that unless there is something that is passed in Congress, there's a firm commitment not to invade North Korea, not to try to meddle in their affairs. You have no guarantees about anything. And I don't know no individual, no country, friend or foe can trust Donald Trump. And that includes Mr. Putin, who may have bitten off more than he can chew when he let that man take office. I think so. You know, one interesting comment that came out that popped out in the 60-minute segment on this is somebody said, you know, Kim has a very sophisticated nuclear system. So over the country, it's secret, it's not easy to find. It's very hard to monitor whether they're actually cutting back if they agree to do that. And furthermore, it will take a long time, even if it's all in good faith, a long time to actually denuclearize the country. Ten years, this particular speaker said. And that goes right to your point. This is not overnight. Even at the best, it's not overnight. True. And happily so, I think. Well, yes. But I also think that even on 60 Minutes, I think their specialists have an exaggerated view of the actual nuclear power that North Korea has. You know, you can bury radioactive material and call it nuclear. So the question becomes, is any of the nuclear material he has, are any of the weapons heads or the rockets that can go a certain distance, do they actually have the capacity to take a weapon of significant power and deliver it to any place that we really care about to cause the kind of damage that would make us stop and say, we don't want to get involved in a nuclear war? Well, actually, no. According to my professor, who I happen to think is far more brilliant and has been studying this all of his life, that's an exaggeration. But yes, it will take time. And excuse me, but we have nuclear weapons in Pakistan. There's nuclear weapons in India. There's nuclear weapons in Israel. And all of these are volatile places. Russia has plenty of them. Iran. Iran has. Well, Iran has the research. They don't actually have a viable nuclear weapon. Coming soon. And these, but the ultimate goal behind all these is not to use them. The danger is, are you ever going to have someone in power in any of these countries that would say the heck with it and would let it go? You know, just me, Martha. When I saw that segment last night, I thought, maybe they are exaggerating the extent of Kim's development of nuclear weapons. Well, because... But for a reason. Of course. Because they want to make... They weren't sending that show to me. They were sending that show to him. And they were saying, look, buddy, this is serious. You don't play around with this kind of weapon. I disagree, Jay. It has nothing to do with him. It has to do with keeping the American people frightened so that we're more willing to let our government officials do whatever they want and receive a humongous military budget to make a weaponry which is questionably defective, possibly. And it's how you keep power in this country. Witness the recent George Bush Jr. administration. How do you make sure the people do not challenge your facts? You scare the heck out of them. Weapons of mass destruction, which from the beginning was proven to be an illusion. They pushed it through because America's been going on since forever. That's right. And Americans were frightened because of the 9-11 events. Let's go in our remaining time, which is about five minutes, to the question of what impact this will have, whatever happens in Singapore. In the short period of time, he's going to allow it. He's not giving it as much time as he said he was going to give it. He could be here spending his time. I don't know what he's going to do here. He hasn't got anything to do here. Well, the longer he's there, the more danger it is that he'll make a fool of himself. Or get into an argument that he can't take back. And storm out. Like what he did with Trudeau. You can't take that back. So, I mean, how does the world react to what he does? How is the world going to react? How has the world reacted? How will it react to what happened in the G7, or as some people put it, the G6 plus one? Right. And how is the world going to react to what happens in Singapore? Where do we stand now? I think that the major countries of this world have got to stand up for what they believe in on their own. I think for years, since World War II, again, everyone has looked to the United States to lead the fight, to be the big boss, to come over and be the one who stands against oppression. And guess what? America has its own problems. It's falling apart. I believe that we should participate in the world. But I think a lot of the world has gotten used to the fact that America is the big brother standing behind them who's going to chase the bully away. And it's time for them to stand up and turn to the big bully behind them and say, no, I don't need your help. I don't want your help. We are going to stand together and we will make things right. And I believe that that's the way it has to go. Well, I think it has a way to go for survival. Which doesn't mean that we shouldn't participate. It's not happening in Europe. It's not happening. No, they have to, though. And Italy is decompensating just the way Greece did. The EU is at great risk. What's going to... How can they get together if they can't even get together on financial matters? Well, guess what, children? It's time to grow up. And I'm sorry, but if you have a solid leader in Russia, like Putin, who actually has power, Kim Jong-un has power, but his power depends a lot on his support network. Putin has personal power because the people who support him are people who work for him directly. Mr. Putin is a multi-billionaire. He's got money. He's got power. He's got nuclear weapons. If you are going to stand against someone like that and America is a questionable commodity, you have got to be united. You've got to be firm and you've got to be willing to stand on your own. America is arrogant. We think we can do it all by ourselves. We are about to find out that we can't. America is exceptionalism, they call it. It is almost a blessing to have someone like Trump who is going to show America that if we screw up, we will pay a price. And the rest of the world may be shocked, but we are the ones ultimately who pay a price. Well, we may in fact pay the price, Martha. We do. We are paying it. It may be coming soon. If you don't go to the polls and vote, then you get what you get. If you are going to believe a series of lies told by the Republican Party over a number of years about other candidates and you're not going to do your research, then you are going to get what you get. If you decide that you want the ideal politician to be your candidate and if you can't get the ideal you're not going to vote, you're going to get what you get. That is playing out. This is exactly what has happened. I'm hoping that when we have the by-elections we will see the result of younger people who are beginning to recognize that their entire future is at stake here. It's not too late for you to put your papers in, Martha. That's Martha. Martha Randolph, Martha E. Randolph. And she's talking to us from her own educated approach as an informed citizen. She cares deeply about these things. And we'd like to have her come back on the show and talk some more about it. We can talk about how democracy has been a mess since Athens. And next time she has promised me that when she comes back she is going to tell us how she really feels. Oh, yes, yes. This has been a very big exercise in subterfuge. But I think I've made my position very clear. I think you have. Okay, thank you very much, Jay. Bye.