ENDING THE NORTH KOREA STANDOFF

Two options: Preventive war or deterrence and diplomacy

March

5th

,

12:00PM

to

1:00PM

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Speakers

Brig. Gen. Rob Givens, USAF, Ret.

FELLOW & NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT, DEFENSE PRIORITIES

David C. Kang, Ph.D.

Director of the Korean Studies Institute and the Center for International Studies, University of Southern California

Harry Kazianis

Director of Defense Studies, the Center for the National Interest

About

For more than a century after the revolution, the United States prudently avoided entanglement in distant geopolitics. U.S. policy focused on internal improvements to our great experiment in freedom and self-government. Leading statesmen dismissed the idea that Americans would be sent abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

The global Progressive Era changed all that. Woodrow Wilson sought to leverage U.S. entry into the First World War to create global institutions based on progressive values. It backfired spectacularly, sowing the seeds for the Second World War, turbocharged Soviet communism, the creation of North Korea and the Korean War, tipping the balance in China to the communists, and more. Most of the rest of the 20th Century was spent containing and deterring the outcomes from Wilson's ambitions.

Since the end of the Cold War, however, U.S. foreign policy has pursued a grand strategy of liberal hegemony, spreading our democratic values by military force. Far from leading, reactionary interventions have incurred human and financial tolls for abstract and uncertain benefits. Attempts to transform other societies have fallen on barren soil, and the threat environment has changed yet again. Federal budget pressures impose constraints, but our foreign policy muddles on.

What should define U.S. grand strategy? What role should America aspire to play in the world? Should we lead by example or by coercion? What are our national interests, and what tools of statecraft most effectively advance them? What are the common values of this diverse nation, and how successfully can they be spread? Are interests and values complementary, in competition, or both?

Please join Defense Priorities to discuss these topics and more.

Congressional staff only. (No interns please.)

About

As the cooling off period during the Winter Olympics fades, reality about the standoff with North Korea resumes.

The U.S. insists it will settle for nothing short of total denuclearization by North Korea. North Korea insists—and indeed has shown through its spending and behavior—that it is totally committed to developing and maintaining a nuclear deterrent capability.

As these mutually exclusive interests and objectives collide, there are only two options to end this stalemate: preventive war or deterrence and diplomacy.

What is the basis for the Trump administration's campaign of "maximum pressure"?

What is the rationale for National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster's warning that, "[North Korea's] intentions are to use that weapon for nuclear blackmail, and then, to, quote, you know, 'reunify' the peninsula under the red banner"? Is such a scenario possible or likely?

What can and should the United States prioritize: denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula or ensuring North Korea never uses its nuclear weapons capability, which it first demonstrated in 2006?

If Washington insists on denuclearization, what price are we willing to pay to achieve such an outcome—the most costly of which would be preventive war? Should we consider direct engagement to discourage mishandling of nuclear material, miscalculation, and proliferation?

Brigadier General Robert P. Givens, USAF, Ret. will explain why some support preventative war—as McMaster seems to—and what it would look like. Dr. David Kang will discuss the merits of deterrence—based on our overwhelming nuclear and conventional superiority—and diplomacy.

Please join Defense Priorities to discuss these topics and more.

Congressional staff only. (No interns please.)

the venue

This educational briefing is designed to comply with all applicable congressional ethics rules.

Defense Priorities seeks to inform citizens, thought leaders, and policy makers of the importance of a strong, dynamic military—used more judiciously to protect America's narrowly defined national interests—and promote a realistic grand strategy prioritizing restraint, diplomacy, and free trade to ensure American security.

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