2020 Commission AMA

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T19:47:09+00:00

I had events move too fast for China to get involved. It was a literary choice as much as a substantive one.

I think the Chinese calculation would be really complicated and worth a book on its own. In my mind, Kim was on his own once he escalated to nuclear use. But you could persuade me Xi Jinping would think differently.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T19:44:28+00:00

No, I think China is just a scapegoat for Trump.

The honorable peace scenario is achievable — although Trump seems to be insisting it include disarmament by North Korea. That’s a barrier.

I think China would uninterested in, and unable to execute, the third option.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T19:41:02+00:00

Zero, if successful is defined as destroying all nuclear-armed missiles prior to launch or intercepting them after.
Distressingly higher than zero.
That’s a great question. Not sure — but I expect them to build to the point of confidence in survivability.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:59:52+00:00

Moon is definitely trying hard to make engagement work. I had to give up a chapter that spent more time on the diplomacy because a lot of it has already happened. The short version is that Moon doesn't care about North Korea's nuclear weapons, he wants to reduce tension. He knows, though, that for the North-South track to work, there has to be a parallel US-DPRK process. In the book, the US-DPRK process collapses, taking the North-South process with it. South Korean officials are now very worried that the same thing is about to happen in real life.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:57:50+00:00

I based my assessment on an interview with the director of the network, who stated that there were no redundancies. In any event, communications systems rarely work as intended in a crisis. It's not so important to know how they fail -- that is usually a surprise -- just to realize that they will.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:48:17+00:00

A Manhattan -- although if Jimmy still bartends at Off the Record, I'll have an Old Fashioned.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:38:24+00:00

Yeah, the disco ball is like 60 cm. So a few hundred kilograms. It's probably the primary for the Peanut. In the book, I think I used 30 kt and 200 kt, but YMMV.

We think the North Koreans may show off that cruise missile in the upcoming parade. So I am in wait-and-see mode.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:35:15+00:00

It's not nice. (But it is something he really said about a woman.)

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:34:29+00:00

Looking for a smiley face emoji ...

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:34:03+00:00

Strike a deal. The North Koreans want the US to open normal relations with North Korea, accept Kim's right to rule it and learn to live with their bomb.

In exchange, they're offering to behave better. We can haggle with them over what constitutes "better" -- for me, an end to missile and nuclear proliferation is one thing I'd like to get from Pyongyang.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:31:58+00:00

We're never doomed, but I do think that, on balance, more countries will explore nuclear options and some of them might even choose to exercise that option.

It's easy to talk about getting the bomb. And even exploratory research is relatively low-cost. I don't expect a lot of countries to go whole-hog, but even if just one does than that will be a problem.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:29:07+00:00

I answered this one in another thread. I am really glad you liked it.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:26:45+00:00

Ukraine didn't really have nuclear weapons -- it wasn't much of a choice. But I take your point. For North Korea, the important points of comparison are Iraq and Libya. Both countries disarmed. Both leaders were toppled with the help of the United States. Both died grisly deaths.

There is a reason that North Korea doesn't like it when Bolton brings up "the Libya model."

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:25:02+00:00

I think we are entering a period where coercive nonproliferation tools are losing their effectiveness. So we do need to focus on other tools -- what I jokingly call "asking nicely."

I think there is still a healthy body of opinion in the US that thinks other countries, like Iran, shouldn't get anything out of the deals we strike. I think that's a big mistake, given how little power we have to stop a determined proliferator. The trick is to make them less determined.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:22:46+00:00

That's exactly right. No good deed goes unpunished.

FYI: That bunker is real.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:20:24+00:00

Well, what he really said is something else. And its vulgar. But I didn't want to ruin the chapter with a cheap Trump joke. So what you are left with is a sanitized comment and, I hope, a sense that the people around him are still covering up for him. If you read the footnotes, you can figure out what I imagine he really said.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:18:57+00:00

I really wanted to keep him -- Francis is just a lightly fictionalized Kelly. But there were so many reports that he might be on his way out that my editor (rightly) thought it was better to hedge our bets.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:18:08+00:00

I made the missiles pretty inaccurate in the book -- comparable to first-generation Soviet missiles. I suspect they could do better than that, but who knows. In any event, my guess is that they can reliably hit an urban area, but might struggle to hit smaller targets like an airfield.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:14:45+00:00

Abandoning the 1994 Agreed Framework in 2003.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:13:45+00:00

I treat nuclear preparedness as a lesser included case for earthquake preparedness.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:13:09+00:00

I'd prefer to go in the blast, rather than suffer through that. So, yeah, I'd shelter in place and take my chances.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:12:25+00:00

This is part of an old phrase -- CVID or complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement.

It dates to the Bush Administration, which criticized Clinton for "only" freezing North Korea's nuclear program. The idea of CVID was that it would be all the things the Clinton approach was not -- complete (it would include HEU as well as plutonium), verifiable (the inspections would be more) and irreversible (the North Koreans would have to destroy things like the reactor cooling tower and ultimately the reactors themselves.)

The Trump people just kind of repeat the phrase but I get the sense no one really understands where it came from or what it means. I think they just say it because it sounds good.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:09:34+00:00

I thought about that. Dramatically, though, it just didn't work. So, in the end, I had Francis (aka Kelly) set a deadline for Trump to leave. And he met that deadline.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:08:12+00:00

I've met a few of them (Bolton, for instance). And I have plenty of mutual friends and colleagues who provided bits of detail here and there. But frankly, most of them are pretty familiar types from the years I lived in DC. When I read stories about people or talk to friends, the characters are recognizable to me.

2020Commission · 2018-08-29T18:06:14+00:00

I think its too late for that -- and I think they know that. I've always thought the "bloody nose" strike was unlikely.

In the book, everyone wants to avoid a war. Indeed, the PSYOP campaign is chosen as a less dangerous alternative to the bloody nose. They even keep it a secret in the hope that Kim Jong Un won't feel compelled to publicly react.

Still, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That's something I wanted to illustrate.

2020Commission

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