Bruce Klingner: What a second Trump presidency would mean for the peninsula
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Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News Podcast. I'm your host, Jack O'Swetslut, and this episode was recorded here in the NK News studio on September 30th, 2024. My in-studio guest today, Bruce Klingner, is Senior Research Fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation. Before that, he worked for the CIA and the DIA, including as the CIA's Deputy Division Chief for Korea. He's on Twitter at Bruce Klingner, one word, we'll put the link in the show notes. And he was last on the podcast

in May 2019. Today we'll be talking about the U.S.-Korea alliance under a MAGA presidency and about U.S. policy towards North Korean denuclearization as well as Northeast Asian regional security. Bruce, welcome back after five and a half years away. Yeah, well, it's great to be back. Now, I'm going to start today by asking a question that I asked you back then in May 2019. How is the KORUS alliance relationship

right now, as of September 30th? I think it's the strongest that I remember in the 30 years I've been covering Korea. That's no mean feat. That's quite a statement. Yeah, it's sort of, I often ad lib off of, you know, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and, you know, misquote it, but saying, right now it's the worst of times, but it's the best of times in responding to them. So as the Chinese and North Korean threats keep getting more dire,

at least now, the U.S.-South Korea-Japan trilateral relationship is really the best that I've seen it. Yes, and we'll definitely be going into the trilateral relationship, particularly the Korea-Japan part of that later on. But okay, so you're very upbeat. Now, let's assume for a moment that Donald Trump wins the presidency again, or that in the next presidential election, another Republican Party candidate in the MAGA-slash-Trumpist mold becomes

becomes president. How safe is the Corus Alliance likely to be under a second Trumpist or MAGA presidency? Well, I think we always have to preface with sort of we don't know what Mr. Trump would do or what his policies would be. So do we just extrapolate from the first term? He's got a lot of advisors and we've seen some people that we would presume would be in a second Trump administration disagreeing with each other.

And really, Korea has not come up much in his speeches other than to highlight his relationship with Kim Jong-un. And then, you know, in the Republican Party platform and in the Trump campaign platform,

Korea doesn't appear or appears, you know, just a little bit. So that always leads my Korean colleagues to say, you know, are you going to ignore us? And I don't think that's the case. But the details aren't there yet. But if we look back on the first term, there were certainly strains in the bilateral alliance and the relationship there.

There was the very strong push to make a profit off of American servicemen and women stationed overseas during the special measures agreement. There was some insulting language about our Japanese and Korean allies. And then the outreach to North Korea was done in a very untraditional manner without first

sort of defining what the parameters of an agreement would be before the leaders. - And also if I can add one more point, there was also a spirit of sort of transactionalism in which alliances today may not be alliances forever depending on whether or not they benefit us.

Right. But I think a change now is there's a much greater focus on the China threat. Both political parties in the U.S. are very tough on China. There may be disagreements about certain policies, but I think there's a collective epiphany that

reaching out to China in the old way didn't work and so that now there's a need to confront China on its economic practices, its coercion of its neighbors, its growing military threat. So in that way, I would hope that the U.S., any administration would see

the benefit, the utility of having strong Indo-Pacific allies, not only against the North Korean threat, but more broadly throughout the Indo-Pacific, whether it's Taiwan or East or South China Seas.

Going beyond President Trump, is there a MAGA or a Trumpist philosophy that will extend beyond him that has a particular line about how alliances are seen? Well, I was at the Sejong Institute conference last week, and Jennifer Lin from Dartmouth, I thought, made a very good point, is that she pointed out that President Trump tapped into a feeling in the U.S. of...

sort of a being tired with forever wars, and an overall dissatisfaction with globalism, that it had not delivered on what many people thought would be sort of floating all boats, and that it didn't really provide the benefits that many had predicted or hoped for. So there's, I think, both of those have led to a number of people wanting to...

if not be more isolationist, be a bit more withdrawn or more heavily prioritize U.S. strategic interests, which is quite different from what we might call the Reagan Republican of the shining city on the hill. We go forth to defend other smaller nations sort of for the benefit of all, which also was in U.S. strategic interests. Like it's clearly in U.S. interest to have a stable Northeast Asia, Japan and Japan,

South Korea are not only critically important allies, but very important economic allies and economic partners. So if you have an unstable region, well, that undermines our own strategic interests. So how safe do South Korean political and military leaders and think tank folk who you're in touch with feel that the KORUS alliance is likely to be?

I sense a great deal of concern based on uncertainty of what another Trump administration might be.

Because we're not sure of sort of the underlying themes about alliances and the way in which the U.S. may reengage with North Korea, I think uncertainty always breeds concern or even some fear. So I hear a collective question of what will policies be? And if we're all being honest, we're saying we don't know. And that leaves a lot of us confused.

if not predicting, at least recommending what we each would individually recommend, but we don't know whether those recommendations will be included. Right.

Right. Now, I do hear some voices close to Mr. Trump say that Korea needs to look after North Korea more or less by itself while the U.S. focuses on China, the China threat, as you mentioned. Do you tend to agree with that idea? And do you see that as being a dominant idea in discussion right now? Well, I think we see disagreement amongst people that would likely be in a Trump administration. There is the prioritization of Taiwan sort of group and others separately.

still more traditional in the sense of you can't just abandon allies or give the sense that you're abandoning them in order to focus only really on one issue. And the latter camp would also point out that the Indo-Pacific really is a multi-

sub-theater of a theater in that Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Australia are really all part of one big theater and against a common Chinese threat. So it's sort of if you're on a football field, you know, you can't just, you know, worry about someone running up the center. You have to worry about a passing game or an end run game because it's all on the same field. Wow.

In fact, if I remember correctly, I think Eldridge Colby, who may or may not be a security advisor in the next Trump administration, seems to argue that the U.S. should, what, abrogate, walk away from the alliance commitment to South Korea. Now, if that were taken to its conclusion worldwide, that would certainly cause a lot more than just confusion.

Well, we have formal treaty obligations to our allies in Asia and Europe. And a common thread for many years has been the U.S. wanting our allies to do more, whether that's a specific percentage of their GDP to be spent on defense or providing troops for overseas operations outside of their sort of comfort zone. But if we don't fulfill our obligations, then no one will

feel safe. You know, if we abandon our NATO allies, why would our other allies believe that we would be there for them? So if Taiwan, which we don't have a formal treaty alliance with, if we say we are going to defend you through thick and thin, but then we say, but South Korea, you're on your own, we're not going to fulfill our treaty obligations.

how secure would Taiwan feel if we don't even have a formal agreement with them and they're not formally recognized in the UN if we were to say we're going to turn our back on South Korea or other allies. So

it is very much an issue of how do we prioritize, how do we identify what troops would go where. And so we have separate war plans for Taiwan contingency and then a separate plan for a Korean contingency. When I've talked to senior former military officers, they say they have been thinking of a two-front war or a two-theater war, but we don't know what the details of that would

Sure.

But the problem is we don't have enough forces. It's not that US forces Korea would be pulled out of Korea for a Taiwan contingency. It's more the follow-on forces. So the Marines in Okinawa have many, many missions.

And it's just, do they go to Taiwan, do they go to Korea, or do they go to the South China Sea? So it is very much a matter of debate right now. You brought up a moment ago the question of U.S. allies, their participation in areas outside their comfort zone. Have you been recently to the Korean War Memorial Museum here in Seoul, to the top floor specifically?

No, I haven't. The top floor, I'm told, I haven't been yet, I just heard this yesterday, focuses on Korea's military missions overseas, everything from combat operations in Vietnam to peacekeeping operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and shows that Korea looks like, to all intents and purposes, it's been pulling its weight for many decades in terms of going outside of its comfort zone.

Exactly. And then anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia. And that's, you know, those of us who advocate for maintaining our commitments to our allies, you know, point to all the contributions Korea has made. So, you know, 2.5 or 2.6 percent of its GDP devoted to defense puts it far ahead of most NATO allies.

and that it paid for over 90% of the cost of our base, Camp Humphreys.

when we relocated out of Yongsan, they didn't need to do that. They have been a critically important partner in, as you point out, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, other operations, UN peacekeeping operations. So South Korea really is the model for a good ally in that they contribute so much not only for their own defense but beyond their borders.

So that has lent questions to how much they could do against a North Korean threat by themselves, or whether we should look for them to be involved in a Taiwan contingency. The South Korean government may want to consider extending an invitation to Elbridge Colby to come and have a look at the

top floor of the Korean War Memorial Museum. Moving on to nuclear weapons in South Korea, do you want to see any nuclear weapons, whether they're American assets or South Korean, here in South Korea? I'm not in favor of either of those options. I know the indigenous nuclear weapons program continues to be a big issue.

what I found was when, since I wasn't able to get here during COVID, that during that two year period, uh,

when I wasn't able to be here and interact with people, that that discussion had moved really kind of from fringe elements to the mainstream. It's amazing how rapid that transition has been. Right. So when I came back twice in the summer of 2022, I was sort of amazed we were talking about it at conferences because we hadn't before. And then I was back in December 2022 and January 2023 and really had a sense that this was a crisis for the alliance and that

When President Yun had a number of deliberate or inadvertent misstatements in October 22 and January 23, it really lent a number or caused a number of us who had been here to go back and meet with U.S. government officials and say, folks, at a time when we think the alliance is in a really good shape, this is an issue that very well could become a strain or a

you know, a real problem for the alliance. And then I really was amazed by how much the Biden administration had done between January and April of 2023.

to really reverse the, the, at least the official South Korean mood. Some of the same ministry of defense officials I met with in January and April were really 180 degrees away from each other. Some who had been very grumpy, very critical of the lack of us transparency, uh, by April were being very, very complimentary. So, uh,

the beginning of January 2023 in Washington, Korea Watchers was like, that was the only issue we talked about. And then after the Washington Declaration, at least in Washington, the issue largely evaporated. And so that we see that there's progress going. We hear from South Korean officials that things are going very well. They feel...

you know, very pleased with the progress, not only in public meetings, but private meetings. And yet when I come to Korea, we still get that sense of it's an issue here. Now, one thing I find is everyone tends to quote the 70% of the Korean public are in favor of it. And that is a very misleading number. Why is that? Because those polls are just almost a binary. Do you think we should have nuclear weapons? Yes, no. Well, yes.

And only when the pollsters start pointing out some, but not even all of the risks or the costs, then the numbers go down. And some polls go down to 38% when some of the costs or the challenges are added. And they don't even get to the point of, you know, did you know that if South Korea announced it was going for a nuclear weapons program, the

the nuclear suppliers group which provides all of South Korea's fissile material for its civilian reactors would be required by their own rules to automatically cut off all fissile material supply as well as request

getting back everything that had been provided. That would also put an end to South Korea's overseas nuclear sales, which has been tens of billions of dollars. And that, you know, that Korea could drain their reactors for the fissile material for weapons.

But then you lose 30% of your electricity production, which has a huge impact on your GDP. And then if Korea were to do a test, which you would think they'd have to do for a viable deterrent, the U.S. is required under the Glenn Amendment to cut off all military and economic assistance with no provision for a presidential waiver. So-

You know, beyond, oh, would the U.S. impose sanctions or not, there are those things that are never raised in a poll, which I think would cause a further decrease in the level of support.

You may not know the answer to this off the top of your head, but all of those measures that you've just mentioned, how many of them were applied to India and Pakistan after they went nuclear in the late 1990s? I don't know for sure. And I know Korean proponents would say, well, other nations were penalized and then the U.S. essentially stood back and let them go.

But there is the, you know, the MPT, there's the 1-2-3 agreement for civilian nuclear programs between the U.S. and South Korea. So, for example, when some say, well, let's have a latency program where South Korea sort of inches up to an inch away from nuclear weapons, well, that would likely be a violation of the 1-2-3 agreement and would either require renegotiation or the U.S. would see that as a violation. So, you know,

Also, some of the meetings I've been here or the conferences I think are organized by the proponents, so perhaps it's a kind of a one-sided view in the room.

Can be, can be, yeah. Okay, let's talk about denuclearization of North Korea. Is the U.S. policy platform of Donald Trump and the Republican Party still firmly committed to denuclearization of North Korea? Well, North Korea doesn't appear in the Republican National Party platform. That's not to say they're...

abandoning North Korea. Again, there's really no details on what there would be. Also, there was some questions about the Democratic platform because the word denuclearization was not included in many Koreans'

I think misinterpreted that as a drastic change in future U.S. policy. And then very quickly afterwards, the Harris campaign official said, no, no, no, the denuclearization remains the policy. And it was similar to earlier this year when two U.S. officials, Jung Pak and Mira Rapp Hooper, said, you know, the U.S. is looking for incremental progress. And that was seen as an abandonment of policy. And both of them, uh,

Sort of quickly pointed out that's actually been the U.S. policy for decades going back to the agreed framework where just like arms control treaties with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, you can't achieve denuclearization overnight. It will be a series of incremental steps where each side...

takes their steps and the other side makes sure that they have taken those steps. So I think denuclearization remains the position of both a Republican and a Democratic party. Okay, so the idea of, back to the interim steps, the idea of a single big deal and a ship turns up at a North Korean port and all the missiles roll onto that and they're taken away in one step, that's kind of a

A fantasy? Yes. John Bolton was seen as having what he called the Libya model, where everything would be done in 18 months. And that was interpreted as the Trump administration policy. And that was not the case. Other statements, including by Mr. Bolton, as well as other Trump administration officials, were all saying, no, it would be incremental. It would take many years to do because...

just as arms control treaties with the Soviets. Neither side trusts each other. And therefore, once you finally had an agreement,

There would be a lot of almost baby steps where each side is looking over their shoulder to make sure the other one takes, you know, fulfills their responsibilities. So first we just have to get North Korea to talk to us, let alone negotiate. And then if we got into negotiations, then there are any number of recommendations as to how we do it.

I think in a lot of ways it boils down to do you want a single very large agreement which would be implemented incrementally or a series of smaller agreements which if each one is successful it would lead to

to optimism to fulfill another one. It's, you know, my view it's do you want a hundred yard agreement implemented in five yard increments or do you want a series of five yard agreements? I'm more in favor of the big agreement. That's sort of my background when I was chief of the CIA arms control staff where the agreements with the Soviets were very carefully crafted, very long. They identified, you know, what is an artillery piece? What is a tank? What is a missile?

How do you define a destroying them? It doesn't have to be blown up. What are the inspection requirements, both from national technical means and on-site inspection? So I think with that, you would have a very carefully crafted agreement, which has been

few to little loopholes and therefore is less likely to have accusations of cheating from what we've had in the past with North Korea where it's very vague, very short just to get an agreement and then there's differing interpretations of what is required. Do you agree that we're further from the goal of denuclearization of North Korea than we were when we last spoke five and a half years ago? I think we are. Overall there's been a growing pessimism amongst Korea watchers I think for a number of years.

In the old days, it was sort of this overly simplistic false paradigm binary choice of should we do pressure or should we do diplomacy? Obviously, we should do both along with deterrence, information operations, a lot of different things using all the instruments of national power and a comprehensive integrated strategy.

But the debate always devolved into one versus the other. Over time, it seemed the Korea Watcher community, we got to the point where it was like, well, nothing's going to work, but my way would have worked. No, my way would have worked. And more recently, I just feel there's a pessimism, almost a lethargy of this is not—it's—

They're so far down the road that it's going to be very hard to get them to stop, let alone walk them back. But that's not to say we don't keep trying, whether it's whatever the parameters of negotiation or an agreement, I think we have to keep trying diplomacy.

As long as they're not talking to us, that avenue is closed, and then we have to maintain our deterrence and our defense capabilities. Now, I know that you're very much in favor of denuclearization rather than arms control, but what's the best argument that you've heard or read that can be made for transitioning from denuclearization to arms control with North Korea? Well, arms control is...

A bit of a misleading term because it's seen as sort of capping the problem rather than removing or solving it. Yet, you know, there are some arms control treaties such as the INF Treaty which required a total elimination of a weapons class. So you could say arms control is to eliminate a weapon or a class of weapons.

But it's usually defined as denuclearization is getting to zero and arms control is capping the problem at some level. You know, the thing is we have tried arms control in the past. The first four failed agreements with the North was capping it at zero, and North Korea agreed to that. My concern with abandoning formally denuclearization is that's what the requirement is of 11 UN resolutions.

And that provides the legal basis for many of the sanctions or economic punitive measures that are imposed on North Korea to try to get them back to the table, as well as to fulfill their obligations that they agreed to or that the international community imposed on them. So if you say we're abandoning denuclearization formally, you've really undermined the

the 11 UN resolutions. It's also in US law. And you're abandoning or undermining the nonproliferation treaty and decades of US nonproliferation policy. So I think even if we don't feel denuclearization is a likely endgame, I don't think we can formally abandon it because that undermines a lot of the legal basis for enforcing measures against Pyongyang because

because that's what the international laws are calling for, and also to try to get them back to the table.

A reminder that starting from November 20th, our full-length episodes with special guests will be exclusively available to NK News subscribers. This shift will allow us to invest more in bringing you top-quality interviews, cutting-edge analysis, and a more comprehensive NK News experience across our website and podcast platforms. So don't miss out. Subscribe now to stay fully informed and support our mission to raise the bar in North Korea reporting.

Until the end of November, podcast listeners can sign up for just a dollar for their first month with the following 12 months at 50% off. Head to nknews.org slash join for more. You'll get full access to the NK News website, news, analysis, and opinion every day, our daily update and week ahead newsletters, plus get exclusive invites to online webinars and occasional in-person events where you might even meet me. Join our community today and help support the podcast grow.

Now, it seems that we've spent the last seven years wondering and waiting to see if and when North Korea will test a seventh nuclear weapon. I won't ask you to speculate whether they will, but just tell us what they might have to gain by testing a seventh weapon. Well, we've been waiting certainly since March of 2022 when Bo Sol in Washington said a seventh test was imminent. And

You know, many of us kept a pot of coffee on at night just sort of waiting for the imminent test so we could all write our brilliant analyses.

And over time, they kept saying it was imminent. And then after a few months, it was like, well, we expect it. And now the latest speculation is, will they do an October surprise before the election or would they do it after? And as is often the case with North Korea, we just have to wait and see. I think from a developmental point of view, they would need to do a test

to ensure the viability of this new generation of tactical warheads which are for battlefield use. So we think they've had tactical warheads for a decade or so, but this is a new generation which would be forward deployed, smaller yield, more likely to be used during a conflict.

They haven't tested that yet. So the last test, you know, many years ago was of a big hydrogen bomb, you know, 250 KT or so. The next one I think would be this smaller battlefield nuke. So it would be a very small explosion and then some might interpret that as, oh, it was a failure compared to the past. I think actually it would likely reflect a successful test of this new generation which has very dire consequences.

So I think technically they would need to do it at some point. And then often the timing either is linked to some U.S. or Korean event or we always interpret it as being all about us. So, you know, in an October surprise, some analysts have said that North Korea always does something during a South Korean and a U.S. presidential election.

Well, that's true, except when they don't. There are a number of elections when they didn't do anything. So if they were to do it, it wouldn't influence the US voters. They're going to make their decisions based on a lot of other issues, not what North Korea is doing.

So it wouldn't influence the election, although they might think it does. If they do it afterwards, perhaps if Mr. Trump is reelected, it may be a way of signaling that it was the Biden administration which was to blame for the lack of dialogue, the tensions, and that only Mr. Trump can solve the issue. So-

There's a lot of question as to whether Mr. Trump would be interested in reengaging with North Korea. And I think he can make a good case both for why he would be and wouldn't be. I think his focus would be on domestic issues, on economic issues, and on foreign policy would be more likely Russia-Ukraine, China-Taiwan, Middle East. So I think that the impetus for a resumption of dialogue between the US and North Korea would more likely come from North Korea.

And that Kim may not be interested because he's getting benefits from Russia, but he may see that he could perhaps get some objectives if he reengaged. Just briefly, would you expect a battlefield tactical test to be in above ground or also one in the tunnels like previous ones? I think it would be in the tunnels. Okay. Because they would, I think, be fearful of the radiation. Right.

Okay, now you work at the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation put out a political initiative a few years ago called Project 2025, also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. It's full of all sorts of policy recommendations and appears to have been written in the hopes that Mr. Donald Trump wins the presidency again. Did you have any input into the foreign policy part of that document? Actually, I didn't. It was a lot of more senior people than I, I think, were involved. But

And many of them had been in the Trump administration. And each chapter is mostly focused on a department of the U.S. government. Right. So Department of Education, Defense, State, et cetera. So it's more of a departmental focus as opposed to a regional focus. So if you...

Search on the 920-page document, I think the word Korea appears about 40 times. And it's just North Korea is a bad threat, South Korea is a good ally, and that's about the level of depth on the very specific Korean issues. So when Korean colleagues come and visit and ask, you know, what is the very large –

mean for troop levels in Korea or, you know, redeployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons? Well, it's not in there. So then that leaves the rest of us to sort of make our recommendations as to what we would think at a more specific, more tactical level. Okay, yeah, so as you say, it's the

department by department. So in Chapter 4, which is on the Department of State, it says, quote, U.S. allies must take far greater responsibility for their conventional defense. U.S. allies must play their part not only in dealing with China, but in dealing with threats from Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Now, during the previous presidency of Donald Trump,

As we talked about, he ratcheted up South Korea's burden sharing and made it take more responsibility for its conventional defense. Yet this document seems to suggest that that may not be enough. Do you anticipate that a future presidency by Donald Trump will push South Korea to spend significantly more or take an even greater responsibility for its defense?

Well, recently, Robert O'Brien, who had been national security advisor for Mr. Trump, was at, I believe, a conference in Washington and said that while the 2.5% that South Korea spends on its defense is very commendable, it should be 3% or 3.5%, similar to what the U.S. spends. We don't know. But also, he made very clear in that opinion.

event or interview that he's not speaking for Mr. Trump. But that very well could reflect an initiative in a Trump administration or by some Trump administration officials. So I think really for years, the US has been calling for allies to do more, whether it's spending for their own defense or whether it's increasing their contribution to offset some of the costs

of stationing U.S. forces overseas or, you know, specific weapon systems or responsibilities in Europe or beyond. So I think that's a longstanding trend. And then we can

Yeah, definitely.

Now, Chapter 4 also says that the U.S. must enable South Korea to take the lead in its conventional defense against North Korea. Now, I'm wondering what that might look like in practice. Are we talking about a very rapid wartime operational control transfer to South Korea, maybe even placing U.S. troops stationed in South Korea under ROK control? Well—

South Korea, under the existing OPP plan 5015, has the primary responsibility for ground forces. Even though the U.S. would be providing a lot of ground forces as well as air and naval and marines, South Korea would certainly initially, because their forces are here, but even the war plan itself envisions that South Korea would have the dominant ground force role. The U.S. would

certainly in the early stages would be providing mostly air forces. And then as the Marines flowed from Okinawa and other forces flowed across the Pacific. But in some ways, South Korea has assumed or is assuming a very large role, predominant role for its defense. Now, of course, we have the Combined Forces Command, we have the Mutual Defense Treaty, and that there has been an agreement for many years to move towards

transition of operational control of South Korean forces during wartime. In the past, it had been timeline-based, and then it kept getting delayed. And then some years ago, I think during the Obama administration, it was changed to a conditions-based. And there are

sort of three main conditions, and then I think 125 sub-conditions that are things that needed to be checked off for that to be done. So I agree with the conditions-based plan that we shouldn't do things prematurely, that South Korea needs to identify or fulfill the requirements not only for offensive and defensive weapons, but the ability to do integrated operations, their communication systems.

And they're just not there yet, though U.S. officials and military officers have been very laudatory about the progress Korea has made. But it's not there yet. So I think we should take measures to move that progress along rather than just sort of abandoning that.

mutually agreed upon plan and just say you're on your own. Even after Korea has OPCON transition, we are still integrally bound to the defense of Korea. We would then still be the deputy chief of Combined Forces Command and the U.S. commander would still be the commander for United Nations Command

and the point of contact for all of the sending nations, who are now called member states, for them to provide forces to UN command, which then would be chopped to South Korea. So the U.S. would still have a role under Combined Forces Command, UN command, as well as our treaty command.

Okay. Now, Chapter 6 of the Project 2025 report, also on the Department of State, says that the five countries on which the next administration should focus its attention and energy on are China, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and North Korea. But of those five, the shortest section was on North Korea. As you mentioned, there's not a lot in there on Korea. It really only said that North Korea must be deterred from military conflict

and that the U.S. cannot permit the DPRK to remain a de facto nuclear power with the capacity to threaten the U.S. or its allies. Now, without specifying how, this report finished by saying that these interests can only be served if the U.S.,

quote, disallows the DPRK's rogue behavior. Now, could you put a little bit of meat on those bones? Well, I don't know what the author was thinking, but that, I think, is consistent with decades of policy. Not that we've been successful in achieving denuclearization or deterring them from provocations, but we have deterred from an invasion, which is the role of Combined Forces Command. So...

The devil has always been in the details. But I think what the chapter is highlighting is not abandoning denuclearization as an end goal. It doesn't articulate the strategy or the steps to get there, but it does affirm the longstanding U.S. commitment to the 11 U.N. resolutions, to preventing North Korea from attacking South Korea, responding to any provocations or any...

attacks. And then on diplomacy, again, there's a lot of debate as to how you do that. But I think what the chapter is pointing out is not abandoning denuclearization in form in favor of an arms control policy. To what extent do you see the foreign policy parts of this document maybe being followed by Donald Trump or a future Trumpist style president?

Well, this document is really a continuation of a large document that the Heritage Administration has done every election. For a long time. Going back to the Reagan years. And one of the stories that's frequently told at Heritage is that –

And I believe the mandate for leadership, the first one was done after Reagan's election. And there's a story, famous story at Heritage where Reagan handed out copies of the book to each of his cabinet secretaries at the first cabinet meeting after his inauguration and said, do it. Right. And then we point to whatever the percentage is of...

those recommendations which were implemented by the Reagan administration. And then there's, I'm sure, a percentage which was identified for how many of our recommendations were fulfilled by the Trump administration. I just don't know the numbers. Okay. All right. But there's been...

Some talk in the media about how close the policy initiative is to the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign has said, hold on, this doesn't speak for us. And so we're not sure yet, right? It's a little bit up in the air. Right. So the Project 2025 is a consortium of, I believe, 110 conservative organizations. I think Heritage is the largest of it. But it is incorporating a lot of views from a lot of organizations. Right.

So it's produced this very thick book, as well as it's creating a jobs bank for people that would then perhaps go into an administration. And then there would also be more specific recommendations if Mr. Trump is elected. But to emphasize, the book, the recommendations are available to any candidate, and Heritage has made that very clear. But

It would be one of many recommendations that different organizations are providing. And as the Trump campaign and President Trump has said, is no one speaks for the campaign, but the campaign itself or Mr. Trump. So, you know, as sort of I think any think tank, we provide our recommendations. We hope they are acted upon, but it's up to the policymakers to do that.

Now let's talk a little bit about Northeast Asian regional security. The last year or two I've seen South Korea and Japan work more closely together than ever before. And of course we had the trilateral Camp David summit last year. I imagine this is something that you're happy to see? Very much so.

During the decades I've been following Northeast Asia, we've seen the relations between Tokyo and Seoul are very cyclical. There are times when things are going well, and then you just wait for something to happen, and then they go badly again. And we've all seen various crises brought about by actions either by Japan or South Korea.

So I think President Yun really should be given incredible credit for his very bold, very politically risky move in reaching out to Japan on the forced labor issue. Certainly got a lot of criticism, including from his own party after that initiative, but it enabled Japan to provide a response.

There are things that I think Japan could have done which would have been a more reciprocal response. I think they were a bit timid in their response, but it did enable the resumption of

meetings on security, economic, diplomatic, and not only meetings but resumption of initiatives and really gave a momentum. And so now the three nations have been implementing this to the greatest degree possible to regularize, to institutionalize the process so that any change of administration in any of the three countries

would not undo the progress that we think is in the strategic interest of all three countries. Do you believe we're there yet, that it is sustainable? Well, I think it probably is never going to be so sustainable

institutionalized that something couldn't undo it. You know, for example, if a progressive president is elected in South Korea, they may undo the forced labor initiative or agreement just as Moon Jae-in undid the Comfort Women Agreement. Or if, you know, I think if Ms. Takeuchi had been selected as prime minister

She has a more nationalistic viewpoint and policy. She has gone to the Yasukuni Shrine. She had vowed to continue doing that. So I think had she been selected...

many were predicting that South Korean-Japanese relations would, if not become strained, at least Xi would not share the enthusiasm that Mr. Kishida had for improving relations. Now, how can this current level of positive relation between Korea and Japan be turned into or dovetailed into something that is wider, more regional? Well, we've seen, I think,

Japan has been very forthcoming in doing more in the Indo-Pacific. The Yun administration has released their Indo-Pacific strategy, the country's first, which certainly identified and pledged a larger security role in the region. I'm uncertain as to how much has actually been implemented.

And that's either because it's a new process, it may take some time. And also, I think South Korea is doing it in a very quiet manner. What I had suggested to Korean officials was, why not issue a report card perhaps on the anniversary of the release of the document as a way of highlighting what is being done? You know, new military exercises in Southeast Asia that Korea is participating in.

efforts to help less qualified nations in Southeast Asia with maritime domain awareness or maritime interdiction capabilities.

And also on the economic side, where economic security and supply chain guarantees, I think really are buzz phrases for diversify away from an over-reliance on trade with China so that Beijing can't intimidate or coerce or threaten or punish nations if they do something that irks them.

I think things are being done, but it's being done quietly so as to not give Beijing a pretext for responding to South Korea. So it makes it harder for folks like me who want to highlight any changes to sort of keep track of new initiatives. Right.

I think more is being done, but it's, I think, probably a slow process. You know, we've seen Japan and Taiwanese Coast Guards just do some operations. We've seen Japan, the U.S., and a few other nations do some maritime drills in Southeast Asia. So I think the more of that we do, it serves a deterrent factor against Chinese actions.

Last question for you, Bruce. You've been writing about and talking about North Korea for decades. How have you had to change or refashion your ideas as the facts on the ground changed?

Well, as I think the most obvious would be, as the North Korean threat has grown, there's less optimism for achieving what we were hoping to achieve in 1994, when there was even then some debate as to, you know, in 1993, 94, when we wrote an intelligence document on

you know, how many fissile material weapons worth, you know, we thought they had. And there was some debate then as time went on, it's like, well, now we think they have that number of actual weapons. So,

If they were still at the don't actually have a weapon stage, perhaps it was easier to cap or solve that problem. The more that they have, it makes it less likely. So the threat to Korea, Japan, and the United States has certainly grown. Back in the 90s when I started, there was no threat to the American homeland, and now we see several ICBMs.

that can hit the entire American homeland. We saw that beginning in 2017. They're now developing so many missile ICBMs and then perhaps multi-warhead that it could overwhelm the limited number of interceptors we have in Alaska and California. So that has led some to say, well, you know, we don't want to risk American cities. Let's pull back from our support of Korea. But then also just the multifaceted threat to North Korea

Japan and South Korea with, you know, ever-growing number of weapons. And then also cyber capabilities. That is something that didn't exist in the 90s. And I remember in 2014, after the Sony hack, doing interviews, and a lot of the broadcasters were, you know, skeptical that North Korea could have done this. And they'd always put up the famous nighttime photo of the peninsula where it's dark in North Korea, but ablaze with lights in South Korea, Japan, China. They

They couldn't possibly do this. Well, they did, and they've gotten a lot better. Wow. Okay. That's where we're going to have to leave it today. Once again, Bruce Klingler, thank you very much for coming on the NK News Podcast. People can check you out on the Twitter. We'll put your link in the show notes. And who knows, maybe in five and a half years from now, we'll be back again to talk about, to give a report card on how things have been going. Right. Or I might be retired by then, but we'll see. But thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius, Gabby Magnuson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time.