No empty threats

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: North Korea is up to its old tricks, once again flexing its military muscles.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: North Korea’s launched several more missiles within the last week, including the country’s biggest intercontinental ballistic missile. Those are just the latest in a long series of missile launches in recent months.

That has South Korea and Western nations calling for a new round of sanctions against the North.

EICHER: Joining us now to talk about it is Anthony Ruggiero. He worked at the White House as a senior national security advisor to President Trump. He also served as the National Security Council’s Director for North Korea.

REICHARD: Anthony, good morning!

ANTHONY RUGGIERO, GUEST: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Well, you were national security adviser for much of the time in the Trump years, and plenty of ups and downs in U.S. relations with North Korea. Walk us through some of the twists and turns as you advised the White House during that time.

RUGGIERO: Well, North Korea has been the subject that we’ve been dealing with really back since 1994. And North Korea likes to do these kinds of provocations, really, for two reasons. The first is to make sure their equipment and new missiles and probably eventually a nuclear test works properly. But then also they're trying to really extract concessions from us. I think the Trump administration started out with a lot of pressure, which led to leader level face to face meetings. But unfortunately, the Trump administration reduced that pressure and, and Biden has continued, really with very minimal pressure on North Korea.

reichard: There were lots of face to face meetings between Kim Jong Un and President Trump along with a major shift in tone—much friendlier. Do you think Kim was sincere back then about striking a nuclear deal or was that merely a charm offensive?

RUGGIERO: Well, I think the leader level meetings are important, important to themselves, because those are the two individuals that can make the decisions, and especially in North Korea, where there's not a lot of input. I mean, there's certainly some input, but for the most part, Kim, the leader, makes these decisions. And we had not had a sitting U.S. president have that conversation directly with a North Korean leader. And I noticed the interesting point that President Biden, when he was in Asia, made the same point that he'd be willing to sit down but with an important caveat, if Kim was ready to have serious discussions. So while the meetings seemed friendly—and they were friendly, the real missing element is and was, and still is, whether North Korea has made what we call the strategic decision to denuclearize. And until that that major decision is made, it's not getting at the core issue with regard to North Korea's nuclear program.

REICHARD: Anthony, what do you think is behind the timing of the stepped up missile launches? Why now?

RUGGIERO: Yeah, I think the thing that might surprise people is that we've seen and we're only going into, about to enter the sixth month of this year, we've already had more missile launches in 2022 than we had in 2020 and 2021 combined. I think he's certainly focused on the military aspect of that, because these are a variety of missile launches. But he is sending a signal. Essentially, he is comfortable with the status quo. And unfortunately, we have done little to change his approach. And so, especially he believes we’re distracted by the war in Ukraine, and he's probably right by that. And I think he's just trying to take advantage and move his program forward in the interim.

REICHARD: What do you think is the right path forward for the United States and the rest of the world to rein in North Korea?

RUGGIERO: Financial sanctions are inadequate and infrequent. They have increased some of the military pressure. Again, when Biden was in South Korea with the new South Korean president, they talked about restoring and potentially enhancing the military exercises that the U.S. has with South Korea. Of course, we have more than 28,000 troops on the peninsula in South Korea. But really, we're talking about the financial pressure. This is the ability to reduce the amount of resources, both the items that are needed for these programs, but then the money themselves that go into North Korea and really force Kim to make a different decision. And when you look at it, the sanctions really were at the apex the last year of the Barack Obama administration in 2016, and the first two years of the Donald Trump administration in 2017 and 2018. And really, you see a dramatic drop off that, unfortunately, Biden has sustained. In those three years alone, you can see more than 65% of all sanctions since 2005 have been issued during those three years. So really, we need to return to that pressure campaign. It's pretty easy. We're showing with regard to Russia that we know how to implement a pressure campaign. It'd be great if we decided to do the same, just in a little different way with regard to North Korea.

REICHARD: Do you believe North Korea poses a real nuclear threat … or is it just chest thumping and blackmail to try and get concessions from the United States?

RUGGIERO: Well, it can be both. I think blackmail, both to the United States and to South Korea. I mean, Kim's ultimate goal, just as his father and grandfather before him, is to reunify the Korean peninsula on his terms. And as I mentioned, there are American troops there, so that would mean Americans in harm's way. But I think that folks should be very concerned in the sense that North Korea may look like sometimes a backwards country, but their technology is for real. The nuclear side, the missile side, and it's definitely something that we want to make sure that we are able to roll back.

REICHARD: We’ve been talking to Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Anthony, thanks so much!

RUGGIERO: Thank you for having me.

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