Northeast Asia

[The potential blowback of a strike on North Korea presents] a situation you’re kind of stuck with because there doesn’t seem to be an easy way, with any degree of confidence, that you could presume to take out all the nuclear weapons, wherever they are located, take out all of their capacity to inflict damage on South Korea. You realize just how risky this strategy is.

Whoever is doing the planning right now in the United States is applying very carefully the lessons drawn from the innumerable studies and assessments that have gone on literally for decades. I can only hope that [Trump’s] military advisors are giving him the prudent and sensible advice that any president needs. There are no good options. They do not exist.

There’s just no good way to [carry out a direct military assault], period. Every one of these exercises ends up concluding that the U.S. and South Korea would ‘win the war,’ but that the price of winning would be so extreme for South Korea. [Worse, it could] trigger exactly what no one would wish to see ... preemptive moves by the North Koreans against the South.

The consistent response of North Korea under those circumstances is to threaten the most dire of actions if the U.S. does anything: ‘If the aggressors bear to infringe on one inch of our sacred territory!' It makes very bold copy, but it’s seasonal.

[Beijing] doesn't understand the social and political dynamics of advanced economies like Hong Kong and Taiwan. [It] particularly doesn't understand the priorities of young people. Most of all, it does not understand how its own policies are creating the problems it finds troubling.

There's a potential here for a crisis of unimaginable consequences. The Chinese know it, we know it. The question is: is there enough shared concern ... that you can think about much more of an activation of this cooperation between the U.S. and China?

We're asking [China] to be forward leaning [on the North Korea crisis], to take risks, and they're very wary of that. That's going to tick them off.

If you’re going to rely on sanctions and enhancing deterrents [to undercut North Korea’s military provocations], it has to be pretty multilateral and comprehensive, and you can’t have China undermining efforts. Negotiating with China and a group of allies is not inconsistent because if you don’t have some basic understanding with China about a basic approach, working with allies and partners is only going to get you part-way.