Pivotal States: No Choice but Crisis? The Next President’s Options for North Korea

Event Transcript

Note: this is a rush transcript and may contain errors.

Stephen Wertheim: This war in Ukraine. This growing alignment of US adversaries diminishes even the leverage that the US had in the past that did not prove to be sufficient to achieve the stated and quite consistent US goal over the post Cold War period of achieving the denuclearization of the peninsula. So I think it’s a good moment for us to reflect on what exactly is the North Korea problem for the United States now. How should we think about it and of course, what is to be done. And to answer these questions, we have three terrific panelists who are going to give us their frank assessments. No sugarcoating allowed.

First to my right we have Markus Garlauskas. He’s currently the director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. Quite a handful. Markus served in the US government for nearly two decades, most recently as National Intelligence Officer for North Korea from the rather eventful years of 2014 to 2020. Welcome Markus.

Markus Garlauskas: Thank you.

Stephen Wertheim: Next to him, we have Jenny Town, the senior fellow at the Stimson Center. She directs Stimson’s career program and she also co-founded and manages 38 North, which many in the room will know as an indispensable source of policy and technical analysis of North Korea. And we managed to persuade Ankit Panda from this building to come down a few floors and join us. He is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the nuclear policy program here at Carnegie and among many other things, the author of an outstanding book that I heartily recommend, Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea that came out in 2020.

Let me just say also you have cards with a QR code on them. That’s how we’re going to transmit your questions to us. I am inclined to ask questions from the audience, including to our viewers who can put them in the chat function on the live stream. But for those of you in the room, please don’t hesitate. Keep your questions coming. So before we get to what the United States should consider doing, I’d like to ask each of you, what are the most fundamental US interests at stake when it comes to North Korea? Could you separate for us the truly essential things, the things that the United States needs to achieve from interests that we may wish to pursue but are more in the category of discretionary or nice-to-haves? So let me ask each of you and Markus if you’d like to start.

Markus Garlauskas: Well, first of all, thanks for this opportunity and it’s great to be on a panel with Jenny and Ankit, two outstanding experts that I love to engage with. And also I love it when you mention Kim Jong Un and the Bomb because I actually make that a required reading for the course I teach at Georgetown. And so I don’t get any royalties from it, but I’m always happy to sing the praises of that book. And I hope you do end up putting out a new version, updated version of that since so much has happened.

Stephen Wertheim: You’re going to insist on the hardback, right?

Markus Garlauskas: So you asked a very general question. I’ll try and break it down and without eating up too much of our time here at the beginning, but I think the place to start the conversation is a bigger strategic picture of the globe and the Indo-Pacific and recognizing how interconnected North Korea is to that. And so my view is we all too often consider North Korea in isolation and the objectives that we want to achieve vis-a-vis North Korea in isolation from what we’re trying to achieve, vis-a-vis China, Russia, or in the sense of defending this larger idea of the rules-based international order. And so I think countering the threat that North Korea poses to the rules-based international order by being one of its most flagrant violators of rules and norms, number one, but also recognizing that anything we do and anything vis-a-vis North Korea that’s at the strategic level and anything that North Korea does has huge implications for dealing with China and with Russia.

So we accept the idea that we are in a new cold war type era where China is maybe the primary adversary and Russia is the secondary, or depending on which person in country you ask, its flipped. That is where we have to start rather than thinking of North Korea a separate category. And I’m sure through this panel we’ll be talking about how that’s interconnected. So I think that’s where you start the premise. Now, when you narrow the range a little bit to what that means, I think first and foremost it means avoiding North Korea initiating a war, particularly a nuclear war or playing into the PRC’s initiation of a nuclear war or a war in the region and then making it go nuclear. And so not to belabor the point, but again, I think war initiation in the region is so intertwined between what Beijing would do and what Pyongyang would do that I think that’s all one problem set. And that’s something of course I’ve been writing and speaking on for a long time.

So that’s where it starts. But I think the other thing that we’ve forgotten about, which used to be a huge focus of our North Korea policy is the idea that North Korea could proliferate nuclear weapons technology or a nuclear weapon. And I’m actually surprised it doesn’t get mentioned more often, but if there is going to be a country in the world that is going to proliferate a nuclear weapon or nuclear weapons technology to a third party actor or the aspirational nuclear power of Iran, it’s going to be North Korea. It’s not going to be Russia or China. And so that’s another aspect of the problem. So those are the ones I think that are core is this connection to the new Cold War era, the confrontation with authoritarian powers and the defense of the rules-based international order, this idea of deterring, preventing managing conflict in the region and then preventing North Korea from proliferating a nuclear device to a third party or nuclear weapons technology.

So those are the ones that are really essential and core. And I think there’s a lot of other things that are subsets perhaps less important that are connected, but in that middle category of things that are important but not absolutely core, I would say the broader proliferation of non-nuclear weapons and technology by North Korea and then all of the corrosive things that it’s doing in cyberspace, its international illicit networks, all of these things. And so I think the objective should be we can’t realistically stop all of that, but to counter that effectively, to contain it, to control it and prevent it from having larger corrosive effects.

And then lastly, I think the more aspirational future-looking things that would be nice to haves, but really are in America’s interest would be to foster a fundamental transformation in North Korea to the point where systemic abuses of human rights are no longer the way that the system is run to the point where North Korea in some form, probably not under the Kim family, becomes a responsible member of the international community and certainly that this South Korean administration would like to see it unified with South Korea into one political entity. But again, that’s well off the rise. And of course with that would be the idea that we denuclearize North Korea and see an end to the North Korea’s weapons programs and an end to its nuclear arsenal. But I think that is a goal and that should be a goal, and I’m sure we’ll talk more about that, but it’s something that’s frankly far off on the horizon. So I feel like I’ve already gone on too long and probably preempted my colleagues, so I’ll stop there.

Stephen Wertheim: So really striking that the number one official stated goal of the United States was the very last thing that you got to, but I want to ask you Jenny, whether you would quibble with any part of that, how would you rank US interests now?

Jenny Town: Sure. I agree with parts of it. Most of it actually. I would come at it maybe at a little different angle and frame it a little different way. So for instance, I question if we really accept the premise that we are in a cold war era or if we’re moving towards a cold war era, but certainly all of these states and what happens, it is interconnected and that North Korea has in recent years more firmly aligned with China and Russia. But whether we’re really to a point where China, Russia and North Korea is in access or is an entity that really opposes what we’re doing in US, South Korea, Japan, for instance, and US alliances. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but we’re definitely moving in that direction.

But I think in terms of core interests, one, I think one of the core interests that we do need to grapple with is whether we want a cold war alignment, and if not, how do we better manage those relations across the board, including where we place North Korea in that policy. When it comes to safeguarding the region and preventing nuclear war, I think part of that is also as a core US interest is safeguarding our allies. South Korea and Japan, especially from the threats especially that North Korea’s nuclear program poses to them, especially as non-nuclear weapon states. And so this has really been the impetus for a lot of the enhancements of extended deterrence relations in nuclear cooperation with South Korea and really the driving force of US, South Korea, Japan greater trilateral security cooperation.

I think the proliferation risk is understated at the moment. I would agree with Markus on that, that it does seem especially now that it needs to be higher up on the list as the relations, especially North Korea’s relations with Russia in actual arms cooperation and arms transfers, growing relations between North Korea and Iran and growing cooperation between even North Korea and the BRICS countries. I think it really does pose a lot of questions of where that goes. Especially if North Korea is revigorating, its defense industries, emphasizing its defense industries, and building more of a military industrial base as the basis of its economic policy, which right now it does seem to be moving towards.

Stephen Wertheim: Ankit, what do you think.

Ankit Panda: Yeah. So I don’t think there’s a lot for me to add based on how thorough Markus and Jenny have been. And I think I generally agree with the ordering of priorities that we’ve heard. I’ll just put a finer point on the nuclear piece of this. For 46 years between 1971 and 2017, the United States enjoyed an international environment in which only two adversarial countries possessed the ability to strike the US homeland with nuclear weapons. Russia and China. 1971 was the first year that China tested an intercontinental missile that could hit the US homeland. 2017 North Korea joins that club. North Korea becomes a country that can pose a risk of nuclear attack to the US homeland. I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that the defense of the homeland against nuclear attack should be a primary consideration in the formation of US policy. In fact, I think success of national defense strategies have put that very much at the forefront. And that’s I think a very important point.

And of course, since 2017, the North Koreans have done a lot to make their nuclear weapons capability a lot more survivable. And so now we’re in this uncomfortable space where we have to, I think, contend with questions of whether North Korea is starting to look like a nuclear problem for the United States in the category that Russia and China have traditionally been in. Russia and China have larger survivable nuclear forces that we recognize we cannot comprehensively disarm and therefore we are in a condition of mutual vulnerability with Russia and China, which governs the ways in which we manage our relationships with them. Are we in that place with North Korea? I would argue that yes, that has started to happen even if Kim Jong Un doesn’t have the most survivable nuclear forces on earth, he is pursuing survivability in remarkably capable incredible ways.

And of course, this gets into a second consideration for US grand strategy that Jenny identified, which is the continued reliance that we have on a network of allies and partners around the world, and specifically in Northeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea. And so the question that we also need to ask ourselves is if we do need to continue sustaining alliances as I think we do, to maintain a variety of comparative advantages in the international system, then Japan and South Korea as smart countries that recognize now the United States vulnerability to North Korean nuclear attack are legitimately going to be asking some tough questions. And I think this is where the premium on assurance and extended deterrence deterring talk of proliferation by South Korea start to become pretty important considerations.

And I guess to agree violently with my co-panelists, I mean, yeah, the counter proliferation question I think is going to be a lot more salient. One of the big differences between Kim Jong Un and his father Kim Jong-il was that Kim Jong-il was a lot more interested in putting missiles on ships and sending them to various places. Kim Jong Un really focused on building up North Korea’s capabilities, but now his approach has changed. The Russians have gone shopping, and I think the world is starting to see that the North Koreans actually do have some fairly capable kit that’s cost competitive. And so we do need to be vigilant to the possibility that North Korean proliferation could start to create a significantly more dangerous world. And then, yes, pretty much everything I didn’t mention I would put in the category of a nice to have.

Markus Garlauskas: So before you go on, I’d just like to emphasize one thing that we touched on but didn’t explicitly call out as I think the alliance with the Republic of Korea and the mutual defense treaty we have the Republic of Korea as a central element of all this, and it’s a core interest to maintain the credibility of that alliance. Not only because of South Korea itself as a very important ally, but also the implications of not living up to those obligations would have in terms of US relationships and credibility in the eyes of adversaries and friends alike. That’s also really central, related to everything we just said, but I think it’s worth calling out specifically of how important that alliance is.

Stephen Wertheim: Yeah. So we’ve laid out a wide expanse of US interests that North Korea touches on. Implicates. Let me flip the question around for a minute again, just holding off for a moment on what exactly we think is the way forward for the United States. But first of all, what does North Korea want from the United States at this point? In the past we have seen a cycle in which North Korea would make provocations, build up its forces, and then periodically return to the negotiating table seeking various benefits, sanctions relief, legitimacy, et cetera. It’s not so clear that that cycle will repeat this time however, given what all of you have mentioned. It’s increasing relationships with Russia in particular. Is the current stance of North Korea unalterable or if we can better understand what North Korea wants, is there some way to change its calculus in the coming years? Perhaps start with you Jenny.

Jenny Town: Sure. The thing about North Korea is there’s no forever enemies and there’s no forever friends. And the relationships are constantly in evaluation as to where’s their greatest opportunity, how can they better achieve the goals that they want with the least amount of sacrifice and disruption to how they want to achieve their goals. I think if you’re looking at what does North Korea want right now, there has been a paradigm shift. In the past North Korea did want to normalize relations with the United States. They liked to play the triangulation game between us, China, Russia. They didn’t necessarily want to be tied to any one of those countries too closely, too dependent as this is the Korean stance for centuries is to how to play the big powers off each other to preserve their own sovereignty and interests.

I think right now what North Korea sees in the United States is not a lot of opportunity. And instead after 2019, we really did see them choose to align with China and Russia against the United States. And so they especially bought into the idea that there’s a cold war alignment and saw how much they benefit from that arrangement. So what they want now from the US potentially, I think the number one is they want respect. They’re trying to demonstrate that they should be taken seriously, they should be taken seriously, they want to be taken seriously as an equal. I don’t know that the US would ever see them in that way, but at the same time, it is a formidable threat that they pose that does need to be taken seriously.

Beyond respect I think they do still see value in the United States and in building a relationship with the United States eventually, because at the end of the day, they still do care about things like sanctions relief. But they don’t seem to have the same sense of urgency, first of all, to get that sanctions relief, especially to try and negotiate, to get the sanctions lifted, and instead are really cultivating relations with states that are willing to work with them despite sanctions. And as long as they’re having success with that, that gives them a lot of time to really build relations, political and economic without any sacrifice knowing that at any point, if they do come back to the United States, the United States is going to want certain things from them that aren’t required in their negotiations with countries like Russia especially and some of the other nations that they’ve been focused on. So I think eventually they do want to have a greater international standing, not just one of the pariah states or one of the network of Pariah states. And at some point that is going to require better relations with the United States, with South Korea. But again, I think that’s a secondary goal for them at the moment, whereas right now it’s to try and get what they can from the environment that exists now, which provides them a lot of opportunity.

Stephen Wertheim: And I wonder, Markus, do you agree with that assessment? I detected a sense of that it was more or less inevitable that North Korea would be increasingly aligned with Russia, China, et cetera, but there may be less to that difference than it seems, given the possibility for North Korea to come back to the United States in a serious way, may simply be an eventuality that is beyond the time horizon that’s relevant for policy.

Markus Garlauskas: So the great thing about being on a panel of Jenny is that we can agree on about 95% and then we can talk about the 5% of difference. And so a-

Stephen Wertheim: Precisely what I want.

Markus Garlauskas: Exactly. So I think that the key element is I think in the mind of the Kim family ... And let’s be honest here, strategic culture in North Korea is basically the Kim family’s thinking in history. There’s not really that much strategic culture in the broader North Korean elite that’s going to affect decision making. So you start with that premise. The Kim family does have this really effective history of playing great powers off against each other. And I think in the end of the day, maybe they do have this framework of no permanent friends, no permanent enemies. At the end of the day, they can’t trust Russia, they can’t trust China. In the Cold War, they felt they were burned. The Kim family’s personal relationships with these leaders, these leaders can change. And I think the same is true though of the United States. But I think that the characteristic that’s different is that I don’t think they’ll ever get to the point where US policy will satisfy them to nearly the degree that Russian or Chinese policy satisfies them. Not because of anything other than just the fundamental ideological and cultural indifferences of strategic interest, whereas just naturally with Xi Jinping and Putin running the countries the way they do and the interests that they have, the alignment is natural.

And the surprising part is that we didn’t get to this point earlier, and it’s probably because Xi and Putin were a little bit more cautious.But as it relates to the United States, they may not want the United States to be a permanent enemy. But I think in point of fact, it will always be a permanent enemy because the US is not going to make the policy decision sufficient and under any US president that I can imagine, and that includes both of the current candidates that would essentially abandon the role of the US has played in the Indo-Pacific. And their role may be reshaped, but I don’t think it’ll be abandoned no matter who’s in office in the United States. And then also North Korea would really, I think expect as they’ve expected of South Korea, the United States to restrain even non-government actors from things that North Korea doesn’t like or the regime finds threatening.

So in a scenario like an ideal world for North Korea is there’s no ROK US alliance. The US doesn’t have extended deterrence commitments to South Korea. The US doesn’t keep putting out reports about how terrible North Korean human rights are. And American people and companies and NGOs are not pushing information to North Korea that counters the regime narrative. All these things, they’re just fundamentally just not in the cards for the United States. And so for that reason, whether or not Kim Jong Un believes any of these things are possible, that’s beside the point. Because in reality, the North Koreans are never going to get what they want from the United States. And so the relationship can only go so far in my view. And I think that’s one of the key factors.

And at the end of the day, that because of Xi and Putin and who they are and their goals and how they run things, it’s a natural alignment. Even if there isn’t a whole lot of trust. Let’s go back to the second World War. I don’t think Mussolini and Hitler and the military leaders in Imperial Japan weren’t necessarily all that much on the same sheet of music in terms of being closely aligned and coordinating, but they had a lot of common interests that led to the Second World War playing it out the way that they did. And so I see these same three authoritarian states ... Unfortunately now they’re geographically connected, unlike the second World War. And so that’s what makes this so challenging. But anyway, again, I feel like I’ve preempted a lot of other conversations.

Jenny Town: Can I just add to that? I tend to agree with this notion that the US policy is unlikely to change because US values are unlikely to change drastically enough to make that possible. And I think the North Koreans have also come to that conclusion, which is also driving the paradigm shift that came about and really opened the door to the alignment that they have right now with China and Russia. But I think in terms of North Korean interest in their relationship with the United States, I know there’s a lot of policy prescriptions of how do we create a really robust, friendly, open relationship. And I don’t think that’s what North Korea is looking for either. I think they’re really looking at the end of the day to be left alone.

How do we remove obstacles that would stand in a way of North Korea, their own push for self-determination, their own push for economic development. They don’t necessarily want a robust relationship with the United States, but they want sanctions relief so that they can do the things that they think they need to do in order to have a better standard of life and raise their economic standing in a way that they want to do. And so it isn’t that we would have to do all of these things to have a better relationship with the United States. Some of it is we just have to get out of the way.

Stephen Wertheim: Let me get Ankit to react to that. I also want to add to it a question from the audience. Thank you. Keep them coming. Which is about the North Korean-Russia relationship and how we should understand it given their recent mutual defense pact. Is this a sustainable relationship from the perspective of either country? Could North Korea become a burden, a liability for Moscow in the coming years? If we imagine that the war in Ukraine comes to a halt over the next six months, 12 months, suddenly, do they not look quite so aligned as they did before? And are we back in something like the pre-war situation, or has a relationship been forged that will endure despite the immediate circumstances that brought the two countries together? Ankit?

Ankit Panda: Yeah. So let me just react briefly to this exchange between Markus and Jenny, which I think was fascinating. The thing I’ve just put a pin on is survival. That’s the most important goal for the North Koreans. Kim Jong Un cares about a fourth round of Kim’s succession to his progeny, and ideally a fifth. They have been around longer than the Soviet Union, been around longer than the PRC, and they intend to continue being the world’s most successful Marxist-Leninist state in many ways. And I think one other observation that I would make is that they are, in many ways, for anybody here steeped in international relations theory, possibly the most archetypal state in our real world that models neorealist behavior. They see a completely dangerous anarchic international system where institutions rules cannot save you, and great powers are to be taken seriously. And to foot stomp Jenny’s point about wanting to be left alone, I think the thing that really perturbs them about the United States is the insistence that we have on compelling objectives vis-a-vis North Korea. So denuclearization, economic reform, human rights, these are all ways in which the United States seeks to compel North Korea into changing the status quo that it wants to seek for itself.

He wants to pursue economic development in his own way. We don’t necessarily see eye to eye on that. At the Singapore Summit, we showed him a video showing a very different future for North Korea that I don’t think Kim really imagined. I guess that’s ancient history at this point so I shouldn’t assume people know what I’m talking about. But the United States showed Kim Jong Un a very strange video of what a future North Korea under different economic terms might look like. So just wanted to add to that. Russia-North Korea, it’s an issue that I think does deserve quite a bit of nuance because I think it’s wrong to describe it as purely transactional and also as the most profound strategic partnership between two leaders that you might imagine. It’s somewhere in the middle. Kim and Putin genuinely do share some views about the negative implications of the ways in which the United States carries itself in the world. And so that does bring a certain level of strategic convergence between the two of them.

Obviously, signing a mutual defense treaty that’s being subjected to legal processes in both countries, albeit rubber stamp processes in both countries does demonstrate I think a depth of seriousness. Neither leader was obliged to do that. They could have cooperated in more transactional ways. But at the same time, I do think you’re right that a lot of this is a function of what’s happening in Ukraine. And I think particularly my previous encounters in Russia, when I would travel there for dialogues on Korean Peninsula issues, it was very difficult to not sense this view among the Russian strategic elite thinking about the Korean Peninsula that the North Koreans were not a serious country. There was never ... The Russians in 2017 were even unwilling to acknowledge that the UN Security Council, that the North Koreans had actually developed an ICBM because let’s be real, there are North Koreans, they can’t do something like that.

And so now with the Russians purchasing weapons and purchasing missiles from the North Koreans, I think you’ve really seen a deep sea change. But I would hazard to guess that that deeper strategic culture, that sense that Russia has of itself as a great power and the sense that North Korea has of itself, I think that does make for a fairly longer term unsustainable partnership. That said, I’m not going to recommend that the United States try to pluck North Korea and Russia apart by pulling on some of those insecurities because I just don’t think the US is positioned well to do that. But over time, I do think we will start to see a natural realignment. The North Koreans, as I think has been pointed out, they are extremely good at hedging their bets with the major powers. We could go back to the Sino-Soviet split, which they played expertly. I would even argue one of the reasons they chose to engage with the United States in the 1990s was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the implication that if they didn’t engage the United States, they would’ve to put all of their eggs in the China basket, which they’re deeply uncomfortable with. And so similarly, today, having turned their back on the United States, they don’t want to put all their eggs in the Russia basket. They want to diversify as much as they can between China and Russia.

Stephen Wertheim: All right. Let me follow up with you on that. US policy has traditionally been framed around denuclearization, which I think you just referred to as a compelling objective at least perhaps as some North Koreans may perceive it. Is that a productive policy objective for the United States to take forward into the next administration? Should it be displaced or even abandoned? But maybe even more importantly, what are the kinds of specific constraints on North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities that United States should seek to achieve that would be meaningful for American security and also realistic? And if we want to make this scenario a little bit more realistic, we can imagine a post-Ukraine scenario in which there might be a little bit more leverage. But what practical threshold should the United States be interested in keeping North Korea from achieving?

Ankit Panda: So on the denuclearization issue, I think there’s an obvious tension between what I said at the outset today that North Korea is a nuclear deterrence problem for the United States and the category of Russia and China and the objective of denuclearization. We do not try to denuclearize Russia and China. We pursue global nuclear disarmament with them, but we-

Stephen Wertheim: We don’t use that phrase with respect to any other-

Ankit Panda: No, we don’t. And the history of this on the Korean Peninsula is really bespoke. It goes back to the 1980s, Kim Il-Sung is actually the person to introduce this phrase to the Korean Peninsula, and it later turns into an inter-Korean agreement, and then the North Koreans start building nuclear weapons. But today, we value deterrence. Deterrence is the preservation of the status quo. The avoidance of nuclear war is the preservation of the status quo. Denuclearization is compelling in the sense that it seeks to change what is already happening on the Korean Peninsula, which is North Korea sustaining and possessing a nuclear program. And so on the one hand, if we do value deterrence and stability and a stable nuclear deterrence relationship in North Korea, as I think we should be able to do, then there is a case to be made to de-emphasize denuclearization. We can talk about the reasons why it’s probably not a good idea to completely abandon denuclearization, given the normative consequences for the global nuclear order, the anxieties that our allies have about the implications or the messages that might send, but with denuclearization in many ways has I think become today a straight jacket for the United States and its allies. It prevents us from actually having a more fulsome conversation in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about the many tools we have in our diplomatic intelligence military and economic toolkit to deal with North Korea.

It is very much a product of events that occurred in the early 1990s that were sustained into the 2000s when we engaged the North Koreans. We temporarily succeeded in cinching agreements with them. But today, as the many things we’ve talked about, the changes geopolitically, the changes in North Korean capabilities, and the implications for our interest, I think there is a case to be made to not necessarily throw denuclearization out the window, but to talk about it significantly less than we currently do. The analogy that I do make in many ways and is that denuclearization in effect has started to look a lot like article six of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which of course the major powers of the five nuclear states commit to work in good faith towards negotiations on general nuclear disarmament. But we all know that the major powers aren’t about to get there anytime soon. And so we engage and we try to reduce nuclear risks.

And so similarly, we can have a similar understanding with the North Koreans. And I think that’s actually one of the signals the North Koreans might be interested in receiving from the United States to potentially test the waters once again. Again, I’m not very optimistic that they would want to negotiate with us, but if the next President of the United States did indicate that denuclearization no longer was the guiding lodestar of our approach to North Korea, I do think that would be a productive way to indicate to the North Koreans that the terms of our relationship might be able to change in a way that advances US interests.

Stephen Wertheim: Let me ask Jenny then Markus to react to that and answer the same question.

Jenny Town: Yeah. I think when it comes to the denuclearization issue, I tend to agree. It isn’t useful to put that upfront anymore because it’s not on the table on the North Korean side at the moment. And certainly the role of diplomacy is to try and make the impossible possible. But the bigger problem here is if we’re looking for the agenda beyond denuclearization, our objectives are unclear. What does the US want with North Korea beyond denuclearization? And I don’t think we’ve ever really had real clear objectives beyond denuclearization when it comes to North Korea. Our objectives are largely focused on South Korea, the protection of our alliances, the preservation of the international order of the rules based order, everything that we talked about at the beginning of this very little of it has to do with North Korea itself. And I think that’s what we’re grappling with now is if it isn’t denuclearization, what is it? Where do we start the conversation? What is realistic?

And I think what the North Koreans have done now is really thrown down the gauntlet and given us a challenge to say that, Hey, the basis of our relationship and the basis of our policy now needs to grapple with the future of the Korean Peninsula. Do we accept the notion of a permanent two-state solution? Everything that North Korea has done, especially this year in terms of changing their stance on unification, declaring themselves a sovereign state separate even in kinship from the South, and the changes that they’ve announced will come in their next SPA meeting in terms of redefining borders instead of boundaries and really creating a separate state really challenges the notion of everything that we think about the Korean Peninsula today in terms of the Armistice Agreement, the DMZ, the Northern Limit line, and how we manage all of those spaces.

And so I think going forward, we really need to think about what does that mean in terms of any future relationship with North Korea? Do we accept the notion of a permanent two-state solution? And if we don’t, what does that mean for our policy and what we have to do? But I just want to go back to the Russia thing real quick. Because I do think there is a deeper basis for relationship. And I agree it’s not necessarily, again, a forever sustainable. There are limits to the cooperation that these two states can have over time. But it isn’t just about Ukraine. Ukraine creates the urgency and the desperation in order to get North Korean weapons in order to supplement Russia’s warfighting abilities. But when Russia talks about North Korea, they talk about multipolarization. They talk about common goals and common interests in resisting sanctions, and they talk about a larger war against the West. And those goals are likely to continue beyond Ukraine.

I think the more pressing question though is as the war in Ukraine is escalating and now really moving into Russian territory with the new treaty that the Russians and North Koreans signed and the mutual defense clauses that are triggered by the attack of one of their states, there’s big questions now of what happens next. I think this is a real test of how far that treaty relationship really goes, how far either side really sees us as an alliance. And I think there’s no coincidence that Shoigu had gone to both Pyongyang and Tehran last week, and as the war starts to escalate into Russian territory, and I think we really need to be mindful of that.

Stephen Wertheim: So Markus, let me come to you. There is no shortage of items to pick up from the table, but I do want to make sure that we address directly the very good question that Jenny posed, which is, if not denuclearization, what is it that the United States the next administration should be aiming to achieve in terms of constraining North Korea’s capabilities?

Markus Garlauskas: Yeah. So two very simple topics, very, very easy to cover. So first on the Russia, North Korea piece, I think the premise that so many observers have that once the Ukraine war is over, once Russia’s attacks on Ukraine cease, then somehow we will return to some more normal situation. And my view is that ... And to be fair, very heavily influenced my colleagues at the Atlantic Council who focus on the Ukraine war and Russia’s invasion as a primary issue, is that things will not go back to normal in the pre-war environment. That there has been a fundamental change, and this has been a wake-up call, but it’s also driven the acceleration of this construct. Which maybe before Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine, we might’ve been able to avoid this new cold war. But I think because of that and because of the way that Beijing and Pyongyang and Tehran have all backed Putin’s play, that’s where we are.

And I don’t think the end of the war, unless it ends with the end of Vladimir Putin will change that. And I think that’s a key element here too, is that I could imagine with the strategic culture that exists in Russia, which is distinct, I would argue from Vladimir Putin, unlike what I described in North Korea, I could imagine a scenario where a different Russian leader rises to power and decides to distance himself from North Korea and decides to actually prioritize not relying as much on China. Whereas Putin seems to have a willingness to rely on China and all the risks that come with it.

So I would say probably not going to go back to pre-war status. Everything that Jenny said about the enduring reasons there are absolutely correct. But so much of it depends on who comes after Putin and how much longer Putin lasts. So I think those are all variables. But I do think under the current construct and the way things are configured in the world, there’s a lot of reasons that this would well outlast any foreseeable end to the Russian attacks in Ukraine.

So that’s the first one. The second one, denuclearization. This is a perennial topic, and I’ve spoken and written on this one for a long time. So I think we can find a way to maintain the principle that North Korea should adhere to UN security council resolutions, give up its nuclear programs and its nuclear weapons, while accepting the fact that that principle should be pursued and understood in a way that doesn’t interfere with doing things that are in the real world where North Korea is not giving up its nuclear weapons. So you asked what things could we get short of denuclearization potentially? And I think from a negotiation standpoint, that’s unclear. And that really depends on Kim Jong-un. And I think there’s a lot of ambitious ideas under the arms control banner. But I think there are things under the concept of arms control that would be more limited, that would be possible. But again, it’s very much going to be tactically dependent on what Kim Jong Un is willing to accept. But I think things like restrictions on weapons testing, different types of activities, but something that involves a more fundamental framework of a start type agreement with North Korea, I just don’t think that’s possible.

But under all of this though, what underlies it is the need to strengthen deterrence of North Korea. And so in many ways we talk about some negotiating framework we could have in terms of risk reduction and some arms control framework. But I think the key is to recalibrate our approach to deterring North Korea to account for the fact that it has nuclear weapons, it’s going to build more nuclear weapons, it’s going to diversify it’s nuclear arsenal, and it’s not going to give them up for the foreseeable future. And unfortunately, this terminology of denuclearization being the goal distracts from the larger issue of how do we reduce the risk? How do we improve deterrence and how do we adapt to the reality that North Korea’s got nuclear weapons and isn’t going to give them up? And so that alone could be like a whole our long panel discussion. But I think the key is you have to move denuclearization more into this long-term principle so that you can focus on deterrence and risk reduction, which is the real world that we’re living in now.

Jenny Town: I do think there’s a little bit of interest at odds here when we talk about strengthening deterrence while also trying to put limits on North Korea’s arms development of on one side you’re building up on the other side, you’re limiting. And so I think more and more that’s going to be a real impediment to negotiations as to if both sides aren’t reducing arms, especially on the Korean Peninsula, what is the impetus for one to and the other not?

Stephen Wertheim: Ankit, how do you see the most likely pathways to military conflict on the Korean Peninsula? If you look let’s say over the next four years? What scenarios concern you the most?

Ankit Panda: Sure. So I think the most plausible pathway to a serious kinetic exchange between the two Koreas, which I think would be the primary instigators of some conflict, would really stem from some limited clash along the ... Well along what will soon be new borders declared by North Korea that may be ambiguous. And so I think Jenny’s very right to flag that issue. The North Koreans have given up on unification. They will identify new borders. And if those borders don’t cohere to what South Korea can accept, the North Koreans may feel a need to press their claims. And that might lead to a very dangerous game of risk taking between the two Koreas where you have a North Korea that is confident in its ability to manage escalation and deter South Korea because it possesses nuclear weapons that are quite survivable and diverse. And we haven’t talked a lot about South Korea today, but we have a South Korean government currently that sustains plans that have really been built up over a decade now. Plans that were born of a very different era in the Korean Peninsula when it came to North Korean capabilities and then fundamentally emphasize preemption.

So preemption is also an important principle for the North Koreans, and this is the classic recipe for instability, the reciprocal fear of surprise attack as Tom Schelling once called it. When you have two sides that want to shoot first, they will each fear that the other will shoot first and therefore have all the more reason to go first and so on and so forth. And we don’t really have any mechanisms in place right now between the two Koreas that address this particular source of insecurity. And both South Korea and North Korea do continue to think that this is the strategy that will optimize their chances of limiting damage and protecting their interests in a conflict.

And so this obviously does have implications for US interests as a treaty ally of South Korea as a country with 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula and many American citizens, we do have an interest in making sure that our ally does not behave in ways or posture its forces in ways that increase the risk of conflict. And sadly, for all the reasons we’ve discussed today, while the North Koreans obviously have their culpability in these kinds of scenarios and are certainly likely to instigate these scenarios, the US ultimately does have a lot more influence with its ally than it does its adversary in this particular case. And so if we’re talking about the risk of conflict, the risk of conflict spiraling into a nuclear conflict, we have to also account for the fact that the most likely pathway to nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is a conventional war. I do think the US needs to be potentially having some difficult conversations with South Korea, which is very challenging given many of the assurance anxieties that we have on the Korean Peninsula right now. The fact that 70% of the South Korean public repeatedly polled to support an independent South Korean nuclear deterrent. So it’s not as simple as the United States sitting down with its ally, but I do think that is a really important piece of the conversation here.

Stephen Wertheim: And that’s a piece that several audience members have commented on, and specifically about the implications of South Korea pursuing nuclear latency, moving toward the development of its own independent nuclear weapons capability. When I talked to some people in South Korea who advocate such an approach, they say, "Why would the United States abandon us if we did that? Why wouldn’t the United States be pleased that US security had been enhanced by the acquisition of this deterrent by South Korea?" How would it change the equation if South Korea went in this direction and should the United States be trying to prevent South Korea through as strong measures as possible, as well as through reassurance? Markus, do you want to take that one?

Markus Garlauskas: So we have to proceed from the understanding that already exists in the Washington Declaration where the sitting US administration, the sitting South Korean administration have committed to closing out this possibility. And I understand from a variety of reasons why that was the case, but what it has essentially done is closed out the very conversation that you’re talking about. And so I often say I am reluctant to answer that question because I don’t think there has been a whole lot of analysis done on how this would play out if South Korea were to develop and field its own nuclear weapons, how that would be managed in the alliance, what are the pros and cons and these sorts of things because the conversation essentially gets shut down before it gets started. And then you have people opining, but you don’t really have an analytic conversation going on.

And so I’m reluctant to answer the question because I don’t think we have really thought it through. Intentionally we have not thought it through because there is a fear of even discussing the possibility and what it would mean. And personally, I think that fear is misplaced. And frankly, we’re giving the Chinese and the Russians a pass because it’s their empowering and enabling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons that could cause South Korea to choose to field its own nuclear weapons, say after President Yoon leaves office and has a different policy. And so clamping down on that possibility in such a way that we won’t even talk about it actually just as doing Beijing and Moscow’s work for them. Because if South Korea were to go nuclear, that would be bad for Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing, and it would be because of what North Korea has done. And so I know that’s a non-answer, but I think it’s my favorite analyst answer, which is-

Stephen Wertheim: I think it was somewhere between an answer and a non-answer.

Markus Garlauskas: Yeah. But really what it boils down to is ... This is my favorite analyst answer, which is it’s complicated and it depends. So I’ll stop there.

Stephen Wertheim: Any reactions to that?

Jenny Town: I can be a little more specific. I think this whole attitude of we don’t take it seriously, we don’t want to take it seriously, we don’t want to talk about it, we don’t want to game it out, has actually led to the reason why there is such high acceptance of nuclear weapons in South Korea in general. Because if we’re not talking about what are the actual consequences of it, what are the trade-offs of it, what will it mean for the Alliance, then what you have in South Korea is a pretty free-flowing narrative building about why they want nuclear weapons, why nuclear weapons make sense without any discussion of what are the actual costs and trade-offs of doing so. I think because of President Yoon’s comments earlier this year at the beginning of this year that really said, this is an option for South Korea to pursue in the future, it really forced the US to start to one, take it seriously and two, start to really think about what that could look like now. Even if they don’t want to talk about it they were really forced to do so in a more serious way.

And you have already seen some of that narrative about some of the consequences, some of the automatic sanctions, some of the adjustments to the alliance that would be required, and also the real consequences to South Korea’s nuclear energy industry have really now ... The economic and reputational hit that South Korea is likely to take if they were to go nuclear. Now that those are starting to infiltrate that discussion in South Korea, you are starting to see more variance in public acceptance rates about nuclear weapons in general. But I think the bigger questions here of course, are one, do more nuclear weapons make the world safer? And two, for South Korea to build its own indigenous nuclear weapons program for the cost that it’s going to incur what actual military role, military benefit, military mission does it play that South Korea doesn’t already have, especially because of extended deterrence?

And so really the only difference of them having their own nuclear deterrent versus the US know extended deterrence is of course the command and control. And I think there’s a lot of, South Korea wants nuclear weapons because they want nuclear weapons because North Korea has nuclear weapons and because of the prestige of being part of the nuclear club. Some of it is of course a lot of questioning of US credibility in the long run. And certainly during the Trump years, there was some rifts in the US, South Korean Alliance. But it’s not an easy answer anymore because in the 1970s when South Korea had a clandestine nuclear weapons program, it was a very clear-cut choice. If you could either have the alliance or you could have nuclear weapons. You couldn’t have both. And I just don’t think that’s a credible ultimatum anymore. And so the question now is, again, if South Korea were to go nuclear, I think we do need to be talking about what that would mean, what role that would play, what it would cost North Korea, what the trade-offs, would the alliance then ... How would the alliance react to that in order to have a realistic assessment of where we’re going in the future?

Stephen Wertheim: So we’ve got about five minutes left. I want to get Ankit to react to all the red meat that’s been dangled in front of him. And I also want to ask you to start with one question. Sorry. Be the first to answer a final question that brings the focus back to us in the United States. I think I’m hearing from all of you that the next administration should come in and take a hard look at North Korea policy, question the assumptions that have guided it, the habits that have formed for quite some time. And you could have said that about the current administration. You could have said that probably with the previous administration. There maybe are extra reasons now to reevaluate, but what are the constraints on our side that have kept policymakers from making a change over quite a number of decades? What are the sources of internal resistance to policy change? Ankit.

Ankit Panda: All right. Just two quick observations on the excellent discussion about South Korean weaponization. So the first thing is in South Korea, you do have essentially two categories of pro-nuclear arguments. I think you have one class that is generally trying to bargain with the United States to get further concessions, and they do have the true believers. And the balance between those two I think is in flux. And I think we are heading into a place where you do have more people that are true believers. Second observation, just to pull a little bit on an excellent point Jenny made. I actually don’t think South Korea having nuclear weapons solves South Korea’s security problems with North Korea. South Korea has the deep misfortune of sharing a peninsula with a country that is very risk-acceptant, very willing to do things like sending trash-filled balloons across the military demarcation line, launch missiles. And these are fundamentally behaviors that cannot be deterred by the possession of nuclear weapons or advanced conventional weapons.

And this has been a problem in our alliance because the US recognizes that we have been on the peninsula since 1953 to prevent a resumption of the Korean War, a resumption of large-scale conflict and nuclear weapons, American nuclear weapons are extremely good at deterring that conflict on the Korean Peninsula. And so South Korean nuclear weapons would be also very good at preventing that existential attack against South Korean society. But all of those other things that North Koreans do, the crypto stuff, the balloons, the northern limit line clashes, the artillery firing the missile launches, all of that stuff you still have to live with. It’s a very similar dynamic to Indian Pakistan. India has nuclear weapons, still has to live with a lot of unsavory things that Pakistanis choose to do. Nuclear weapons don’t deter all things. Why hasn’t our policy changed?

I think the simple answer is I think really rooted in political costs. I think there is political capital that will have to be expended by a president that will have to recognize that A, the Korean Peninsula matters to us security interest and it matters disproportionately so to the many other issues we currently are dealing with in the world from Ukraine to the Middle East, to strategic competition with China. Unlikely for that to happen in the near term unless we have a major crisis in my opinion. And the second thing is we’ll have to have a very tough conversation with our allies because the United States is not going to unilaterally rock the boat on the Korean Peninsula.

I will say as somebody that’s essentially been making the arguments that I just made on this stage for the last seven or so years, the needle is moving in the direction that I think I have been supporting today. I think we are moving in a direction where you have enough people within the establishments of the United States, South Korea, and Japan that I think are coming to grips with many of these hard realities we’re talking about that we may see this change happen in the next five to 10 years. But I fear that by that point, it’s simply going to be far too late for many of the things that we’ve tried to talk about today. North Korean nuclear weapons, geopolitical alignments. So I think this is going to remain a tough problem. And yeah. No easy answers in the short term.

Stephen Wertheim: Markus, could you give us 90 seconds on why we don’t change?

Markus Garlauskas: It’s all about risk. It’s this sense of anything that we do to fundamentally change our policy or our approach to North Korea is just too risky. And it’s an underestimation of the risk of allowing things to continue. So I think of the North Korean nuclear problem and the threats that it poses essentially as a growing tumor. And you can only get rid of it with surgery, and there’s a chance that the surgery will cause the patient to die. So instead of picking the moment and saying, "Hey, we need to get rid of the tumor," we’re just going to keep letting that tumor grow until the results are catastrophic. And it’s going to take a crisis, I think, to cause change, or someone who has a fundamentally different view of the risk calculus willing to take that chance. But I think we’ve seen moments where there’s been no willingness, but I think it’s going to take a crisis to get us there.

Stephen Wertheim: And Jenny, do you want to weigh in with maybe a non-cancerous metaphor?

Jenny Town: Well, I would just say I think it is increasingly risky for us not to adapt our policy to the current realities because at the end of the day, North Korea’s risk tolerance towards the United States and South Korea is incredibly higher than the US risk tolerance towards North Korea, and they’re always going to be pushing the envelope in order to upend the status quo.

Stephen Wertheim: I think that’s an observation that I’ve heard made in almost every major aspect of US foreign policy, at least where US adversaries are concerned. So look, this has been terrific. We could probably go on continuing this discussion until North Korea conducts its seventh nuclear test. I have other North Korea nuclear test jokes, but that’s the one I’ll use. Alas, our time is up for today. I thank you all for coming, and I invite you to join us for the next edition of the Pivotal State Series, as well as other programming from the American Statecraft Program. And let’s thank our panelists for giving us so much food for thought.