News Update: Mark Bowden on North Korea

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Hi, I'm Matt Thompson, Executive Editor of The Atlantic.

With me in the studio is my co-host, Jeff Goldberg.

I'm the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.

And on the phone, we have Mark Bowden, whose cover story in our July-August issue, How to Deal with North Korea, has just gotten pushed right back into the conversation by recent events.

Hi, Mark.

Good morning.

So, to very quickly recap some of what pushed your gray cover straight back into the forefront of U.S.

anxiety, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday on an intelligence assessment from late July indicating that the country has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles.

A prior intelligence assessment, the Post reported, estimated that there are far more nuclear weapons available to Kim Jong-un than we'd previously thought.

President Trump followed up with a response that surprised a lot of observers with its bellicosity.

North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.

They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.

He has been very threatening beyond a normal statement.

And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.

This is the week that Donald Trump is supposed to be vacationing in Bedminster, right?

And laying off.

You know, my question is, and Mark, maybe you can,

you're the expert here.

My question is, Bill Clinton, in one of the unsatisfying rounds of negotiation with North Korea, made a statement, it wasn't quite as bellicose, but he basically threatened war on North Korea if they crossed certain lines.

We've been in this drama before.

How new and unprecedented is Trump's level of rhetoric?

Well, I think he is

a little more blunt and is given to the theatrical as we know.

So in that sense,

you know, his comments were

unique.

But accustomed as we are to Trump shooting his mouth off about things, I actually think what we're witnessing here from the American side is a fairly coordinated effort to move the North Korean problem off of the dime because no one's mentioned it, but a few weeks ago Secretary of State Tillerson floated the possibility of direct negotiations with Pyongyang

and now we have Trump

making his threats.

I think it's a carrot and stick thing and I think it's very calculated.

And it remains to be seen whether anything decent will come of it.

Well, do you think we're heading to war?

I don't.

And I don't because I think, most importantly, war would be so catastrophic to North Korea.

So I think it's a fair bet that

they wouldn't push things to that limit.

And I also think it's really smart to open the door to a

more peaceful resolution of the standoff.

I have a step-back question, Mark, for you, which is what has changed in our understanding of the situation from when you were reporting earlier this year and from when our cover story, July, August cover story, was published.

Well, since I wrote that story, North Korea has demonstrated success with an ICBM beyond anything they'd been able to do before.

And I think most national security estimates in the month or two since have been bumped up so that the estimate now of when Pyongyang would have an ICBM ICBM with a nuke on it

ready for use has been shortened.

The time has been shortened from like four years to now one year.

In fact, I think I was reading today some the new Japanese analysis is that they may already have a

nuke that will fit an ICBM.

Whether it can survive the re-entry is another question.

But clearly, they've demonstrated that they're a lot closer to having this capability than we believed when I wrote that piece just a few months ago.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: And

have any of the ⁇ you laid out four scenarios in the story for how we could deal with North Korea ⁇ prevention, turning the screws, decapitation of the Kim Jong-un regime, and acceptance that North Korea is becoming a nuclear power.

Have any of the odds tilted in favor of any of those scenarios since you wrote the story?

I don't think so.

I think that the

heat has been turned up on the whole question, but the harsh facts of the situation haven't really changed.

And the consequences of any kind of military attack on North Korea haven't changed.

So,

you know, I think it's just coming to a head is all.

Do you think, Mark, that America is ready for a war with North Korea if it should come?

No, I mean, I don't think any country or any people in the world are ready for a nuclear conflict.

In fact, this is something that scares me about what's going on.

I think when we listen to Kim Jong-un and now Donald Trump making these threats back and forth, what we're talking about is nuclear war.

And I think it's useful to recall that through most of my lifetime, through all of my lifetime, the primary goal in international affairs has been to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

And I think here we're actually talking about a nuclear war.

And frankly, I don't think any society

is ready for a nuclear war.

I don't think the United States would be hit by nuclear weapons at this point.

But we have lots of troops in Guam and in South Korea.

The South Korean people, the Japanese people, the level of death and destruction would be unprecedented in human history.

And I don't think anybody's ready for that.

Why Guam?

Well, because Guam is close enough to be within range of North Korea's missiles, and we have major military installations on the Transport.

The reason I ask that is the threat against Guam would provoke a catastrophic U.S.

response, but Guam, it doesn't exactly frighten Americans in the same way that talking about Los Angeles or San Francisco.

It just seems like

why if he's going to threaten the U.S.

with a potential nuclear attack, would he or a potential attack, would he limit himself to a place that would provoke a a huge U.S.

response, but wouldn't be hugely damaging to the U.S.?

Aaron Ross Powell, because I think he's just looking for places where there are Americans.

And, you know, if he had the capability to hit Los Angeles, he'd be saying Los Angeles.

I agree with you.

I think, you know, any strike against an American base in that part of the world, not to mention a strike against Japan or Seoul, would prompt an overwhelming American response.

So that's why I I think it's unlikely that North Korea would launch that kind of first attack, no matter what they say.

But I think that's the reason why he chooses Guam.

Mark, the situation sounds as unstable as it ever has has been.

You don't sound notably more panicked.

The level,

the flurry of attention that we're seeing now on the internet and in the media, I'm not hearing that in your voice.

You ended your story on this interesting note.

You said there's no sign of panic in Seoul.

You cited Matoko Rich of the New York Times, who is talking about walking around in the city in South Korea, finding residents busy with their normal lives, eating at restaurants.

This morning,

Elise Hu, NPR's South Korea correspondent, said, because this is a question I get a lot, she tweeted, yep, all common soul.

This summer, a trend is handheld battery-powered fans, people walking around fanning themselves.

Well, I think, you know,

the answer to your question, Matt, is that I don't think many people in the United States follow affairs in Asia very closely, but you know that they will when things heat up and it makes the front page of the newspaper, but or it makes the, more importantly, I guess the nightly news or the you know internet

you know

hits or whatever you call them.

But the truth is that this situation has existed for decades.

The capability that North Korea has to wreak havoc in South Korea has existed for generations.

And I think there's a logic to it that those of us who have paid attention for a longer time understand

and

are

more inclined to believe that logic dictates against an all-out conflict.

So, you know, the fact that it's heated up right now, as I said, has focused a lot of people's attention on it.

But I don't believe that

other than North Korea's reach, nothing much has changed.

North Korea has required a lot of diplomatic attention.

We have to be not only attuned to the signals that the U.S.

is sending diplomatically to the country itself, but to all of our allies in the region and around the world.

What's your sense of how

the State Department is engaging now?

What's the sense of the back and forth with our allies and with other actors in the region?

Well, I hope that there's a considerable amount of work going on because certainly President Moon Jae-in of South Korea

has indicated that he would like to

reopen negotiations with North Korea and would like to back away from the

brinksmanship here.

I think that Japan

has,

I think, become more concerned.

And you've just read, I think, today that

there are

leaders in Japan calling for beefing up their defenses and even possibly developing a nuclear arsenal of their own.

We've been reading about the

efforts that the United States has been making with President Xi Jinping in China to try to get China more engaged in pressuring North Korea.

And in fact, those have yielded some success with the UN sanctions that passed, I believe, last week.

So I think

this is a big concern.

And I expect that a lot more is at stake here than just

the leaders in Washington and Pyongyang.

Can I let me ask you this,

Mark?

Donald Trump seems to have just set a red line.

Am I mistaken?

Well, Jeff, he has,

and he did actually months ago when he said he would not allow North Korea to develop this nuclear-tipped ICBM.

So

is this what we saw this week, just a rhetorically embellished version of the red line that he already set?

Yes, although I do think he's backed off it a little bit.

You know, he was responding, I believe, to this similar, you know, bellicose rhetoric coming from Pyongyang in a way that most American presidents would not, and in fact, a way that President Obama deliberately refused to respond to.

But he's you know, I think by offering to negotiate with North Korea, the United States has taken a step back from the red line that Trump established earlier this year.

I think he's, as I said, I think his statements, which sounded off the cuff, are part of a calculated carrot and stick strategy, and I hope it works.

Who do you think is making our North Korea policy now?

My guess is that General McMaster is the architect of it.

Do you think that they have calibrated the way I think you calibrated in your article the fact that the North Korean leadership might be irrational?

Sure, I think that they have, but I think they also understand,

as I tried to point out in the piece, that as nutty as Pyongyang seems to be, Kim Jong-un shows no signs of being suicidal.

So I think a part of that strategy would be to try to convince Kim Jong-un that Trump is just crazy enough that he might

attack them militarily and damn be, you know, the consequences be damned.

And as terrifying as that is to contemplate, I think it probably is worthwhile for Pyongyang to believe that that might happen.

One of the criticisms of President Obama was that he didn't scare anyone because they assumed a level of rationality.

Adversaries assumed a level of rationality on his part,

and he would frequently tell the world what he wouldn't do rather than what he would do.

I know how you feel about President Trump generally.

Is there some utility here to the crazy Nixon approach

to foreign policy?

Do you think that a North Korean leader actually says, hmm, maybe this guy is crazy as I am?

I think there's something to that, Jeff, and that may be somewhat useful.

I think

the usefulness of it, frankly, is diminished because Trump says so many stupid things.

And he says things that turn out not to be true.

And so he has done a great deal to diminish the

clout of his office over the first six months.

But the pure strategy itself does,

I think you could argue that

there are legitimate reasons for

being this confrontational?

And I'd add one more thing.

I think it is important again to note that we're not talking about a conventional conflict here.

And I think it's really important to draw the line, at least mentally, between what we're talking about when we're talking about going to war in Syria or going to war in Afghanistan or

another country where nuclear arms are not on the table.

This is a potential nuclear exchange.

and the consequences of that are so unthinkably huge that to me it's frightening that we're even having this conversation.

Just to be clear, you think there's little chance that we could prevent an escalatory cycle from taking place if there was a conventional

conflict,

if we wound up in a kind of skirmish of some sort with the North Koreans.

Yes, I don't think that we can

beyond a certain limit, I'm not talking about the little exchanges of fire in the demilitarized zone or maybe a little

confrontation in the seas.

Any sort of major conventional attack on North Korea or by North Korea and South Korea, I think would rapidly escalate.

And that's because the conventional capabilities of North Korea alone are capable of wreaking such havoc on Seoul and frankly on American bases within reach that the the co the cost of any kind of military action like that would rapidly become so high it would be unacceptable and I think it would just spiral out of control.

Aaron Powell so North Korea is already capable of a lot of conventional damage.

I'm curious about, on its path to being a quote-unquote full-fledged nuclear power, what's next?

What are the next dominoes that

observers are watching for to tell the extent of North Korea's capabilities?

Well, two things.

One is their attitude.

And I think if they were, for instance, to detonate another nuclear bomb,

that would be an indication of

their determination to proceed.

And also these

missile launches.

I think they are

rapidly making progress.

And they are definitely tapping at the edge of the limit that the United States and more recently the Trump administration has set.

So they're kind of forcing the issue.

So I would look for those kind of things

happening on the negative side.

On the positive side,

I think, for instance, I think that

those UN sanctions last week were really helpful.

And I think that if China were to

step up a little bit,

you know, that we could see some movement in efforts toward opening negotiations with Pyongyang.

You know, I think this is all under the rubric of what I called acceptance.

If we accept, you know, that they are going to eventually have these weapons, I think that, you know, we need to establish a context where they might back away from their use.

The only other thing that I would ask is, of the other options, what would indicate that

we are stepping towards either turning the screws or decapitation beyond the rhetoric of President Trump.

Are there actions that you would look to that would indicate, oh, no, this is taking a turn in another direction?

No, I think by definition, if the United States were going to

take military action, that they would work very hard not to telegraph it in any way.

I think tensions are pretty much

at that point right now.

The United States is certainly capable at any time of,

as is South Korea, of launching an attack of some kind on North Korea.

I think that it won't happen, though.

You know, it won't happen because the consequences would be too

stark, too terrible.

Mark, I'm going to ask you to take a big guess here.

But how does this drama end?

I think it ends, Jeff,

anticlimactically, I hope, anyway.

And I genuinely think it will.

Because, again, I think the reality of conflict is so stark and horrible on the Korean Peninsula and in the area that

it won't happen.

And I think that that is going to mean the United States and South Korea are going to have to live with a nuclear armed ICBM-equipped North Korea, because I don't think that can be prevented.

So I think if we simply take a deep breath and realize that it really does not substantially alter the standoff there when that happens, it opens the door, I think, to more

avenues of

cooperating with North Korea on some things and possibly creating a context where this whole crisis can ease.

Trevor Burrus, these sorts of regimes, these terrible regimes like the one we see in North Korea, they don't last forever.

How long do you give this regime?

Boy, Jeff, it's like hard to predict.

If you would have asked me in

the end of the 1980s how long Castro would stay in power in Cuba, I would have said I'd give him a couple months.

You know, a well-run, authoritarian society

can

exist for a long, long time.

And, you know, I think a lot of people, for instance, in Iran

hate their government and they hate the way their society is run, but I don't predict there's going to be substantial change there anytime soon.

And yet having said that, it could happen next week.

Because I think by their nature,

these kinds of coups or radical changes happen by surprise.

It certainly that was true of the Iranian revolution in the 1970s.

So it could last for our lifetimes and beyond, or it could be

overthrown within the next two years.

Who knows?

Mark, talking with you is is oddly calming.

It's like

learning to live with a state of perennial, but not particularly heightened eternal panic.

I dissent from Matt's view.

I enjoy our conversation, but I'm dissenting.

Fair enough.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mark.

Thank you.

This special bonus episode of Radio Atlantic was produced and edited by Kevin Townsend.

Thanks, as always, to my co-host, Jeffrey Goldberg and to Mark Bowden for his insight and level-headedness.

I will be saying the serenity prayer after that conversation.

The theme music for our podcast is by the one and only John Batiste and you'll hear it in full if you tune in for our episodes that drop every Friday.

This coming Friday, Jeff and I will once again be joined by our co-host Alex Wagner.

Our guest this week is Kurt Anderson, the author of our September cover story, Tracing a 500-year history of how America Lost Its Mind.

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