Podcast: Don't Turn Down a Drink in Pyongyang

Transcript

Listen: K-Pop, fancy pianos, and plenty of soju.

Despite increased Western sanctions, quality of life for much of North Korea's elite is improving. But during one particularly boozy dinner in Pyongyang last month, New Yorker writer Evan Osnos heard something particularly chilling from one of his handful of minders: Nuclear war with the U.S. would be survivable. It might, the 35 year-old father of two seemed to indicate, be unavoidable.

TRANSCRIPT: Don't Turn Down a Drink in Pyongyang

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer and welcome to the GZERO World podcast. I'm the host of the Weekly Show, GZERO World on Facebook watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. This week, I sit down with New Yorker's staff writer, and one of the most intriguing voices on politics and foreign affairs, Evan Osnos. You'd be hard-pressed to find another journalist who has so extensively covered political developments here in Washington, throughout China, and most recently in North Korea. Whether it's from the scrum of a Trump rally in Iowa, or the darkened government halls of Pyongyang, Evan has an eerie tendency to be in the heart of things. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Evan Osnos, staff writer at The New Yorker, runs the foreign policy beat. Just got back from North Korea, the People's Republic. And great to be with you, man.

Evan Osnos:

Thanks for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

So, let's start with the obvious. They let you in. It wasn't the first time you had done the Axis of Evil tour back over 10 years ago, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. I mean, it must have felt pretty different after 13 years.

Ian Bremmer:

I guess, the first question is a little personal which is, you freak out a little bit when you're going in there?

Evan Osnos:

A little bit. Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Right. If you don't know what's going to happen?

Evan Osnos:

I have to say, if you're not really agitated when you're going to North Korea, you're not paying attention. And that's a kind of malpractice, as a journalist. I feel like I've worked in a lot of some rough places over the years, and I've never been in a place where I was as tense as I was in North Korea. And I came out at the end of it and had this kind of huge sense of relief. And everybody I know who's done this kind of work has that feeling in North Korea. And I think, for a very simple reason, which is that, it is utterly outside of your control about how things will go. And that's not always the truth in war zones. Sometimes, you do have the more control. You decide who your driver is, you decide who your interpreter is, all this kind of stuff.

Ian Bremmer:

You decide where you're going to go and what you're going to do-

Evan Osnos:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Absolutely.

Evan Osnos:

And if something goes wrong, there may be a foreign embassy that can help you. In North Korea, you don't have a way of contacting people very easily.

Ian Bremmer:

And you had gone over right after the Otto Warmbier coma and death.

Evan Osnos:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

The young American that was over there. Did that make you feel more comfortable and confident because they wouldn't want that to happen again? Or did it make you feel like, really, anything could happen?

Evan Osnos:

No, I was very aware of the fact that I didn't want to become part of the problem in the sense that, everybody who I talked to before I went, national security experts, people in government and now outside, people in the intelligence community had said, "We think you can go. Just don't make a mistake. Because if you make a mistake, you may find yourself in the center of the negotiation and you don't want to be part of that story."

Evan Osnos:

And so, I was really worried that if something went wrong, I was going to be tying the hands of the United States government in terms of how they negotiate with North Korea over their nuclear and weapons program. So, I was acutely aware of the fact that the way that they had mistreated Otto Warmbier, the way that he was charged with this crime, was a precedent. I was going in the front door, I was a journalist, they knew who I was, so the chances of them going out of their way to make an international instant enemy was less likely, from my perspective. But you just never know.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, you were prepped by the State Department, but it's now the Trump administration. Anything unusual or different about the way they handled you on this trip than the way previous administrations handled it?

Evan Osnos:

Well, what do you mean prepped? Actually, I didn't have any dealings with the State Department before I went.

Ian Bremmer:

So, who were you talking to-

Evan Osnos:

I was talking to the White House, the National Security Council. I was talking to some people in the intelligence community.

Ian Bremmer:

That's interesting in and of itself. So, how did that go? Anything unusual?

Evan Osnos:

No, that was very much sort of standard operating procedure. I mean, over the years, we've gotten used to this kind of, you check in with people who know the region before you go and you say, "Is the temperature check okay?"

Evan Osnos:

The State Department is in a specific predicament, at the moment. I mean, I'll tell you. I contacted the State Department for an interview before I went, and they said, "We thought about it, we thought about it, we're just going to not do it. And the reason we're not going to do it..." And I say this, "I have good relationships over there." I sort of understood their perspective which was, we're only going to perhaps screw it up if we do that. If we talk to you or if something we say ends up in print, this might injure this kind of fragile channel that they had going, at the moment, which...

Ian Bremmer:

Which now, may be more fragile.

Evan Osnos:

It may be more fragile.

Ian Bremmer:

On the back of the Trump tweets?

Evan Osnos:

Yeah. Yeah. I went and saw the New York Channel, as it's known. These are the North Korean diplomats in New York. I saw them again last week. So, after I came back from North Korea, and after the tweets about Little Rocket Man. And what they said to me was, "What do you expect we're going to do here? We are in an impossible position, because when your president personally attacks our leader, we have to respond as if that is a message from your head of your government." People are telling us to ignore the tweets. People are telling us they don't matter, but they have to matter. How can we treat them as if they don't?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, I mean, Kim Jong-un, historically, was not the one making any of the statements towards the United States. That was always coming from the propaganda arms of the government. Only recently did we see that first statement that came from Kim Jong-un himself. Was that while you were there?

Evan Osnos:

It was after I was there. And it was a big deal. I mean, that's unprecedented for him to put his name, his face to it. He's appearing on, as I saw, on televisions all over the country. I mean, if you're sitting in a restaurant, then TV is always on, and there is more chances than not that it's going to have something about politics. But to turn it on and see Kim Jong-un speaking directly to you, North Korean citizen, and also to the rest of the world, that's a very rare event.

Evan Osnos:

And so, what that means is that, he's staking his personal credibility to it within this very complicated and dangerous political dynamic that he has at home. So, I think-

Ian Bremmer:

So, he can't back down, at this point-

Evan Osnos:

No.

Ian Bremmer:

... in your perspective?

Evan Osnos:

My view is, he's locked in.

Ian Bremmer:

In a way that Trump really isn't?

Evan Osnos:

Trump has mobility. For Trump, this is his choice to make. It didn't have to get to the point though where he constrained Kim Jong-un's options. I think that's one of the decisions along the way where Trump has frankly sort of departed from his own national security staff. They had made very clear advice to him over the course of the last eight, nine months. You can say whatever you want on North Korea, but we recommend that you do not personalize this because that's going to limit North Korea's options.

Ian Bremmer:

So, a nickname, for example, would-

Evan Osnos:

A nickname would-

Ian Bremmer:

... not be their recommendation?

Evan Osnos:

A little rock man. He jumped the guardrails, at a certain point, and Trump just went rogue, diplomatically speaking, and decided to do this. And now they're trying to pick up the pieces.

Ian Bremmer:

So, let's get to North Korea itself. So, you are there, and I get one of the things that strikes me as most interesting about North Korea is this idea that you have a completely totalitarian state where every little kid even is on message, all the time. But at the same time, you also have more and more contact with the outside world, cell phones that sort of are picking up South Korean soap operas and the rest. They clearly have to be more aware of the fact that their regime is not giving them the whole story. Did you have enough exposure to understand what was going on there?

Evan Osnos:

Yeah. This is a remarkable place to visit in 2017 in the sense that, this is as close as you will ever get to a true totalitarian state. Yes, there are cell phones, but the cell phones operate only within the country, and the internet that they have is actually an internet. It doesn't have access to stuff outside.

Ian Bremmer:

That's what the Iranians want to set up, actually-

Evan Osnos:

Right. And what the Chinese would love to have.

Ian Bremmer:

Yup.

Evan Osnos:

And none of these other countries have ever been able to pull it off. North Korea is operating in the sort of platonic ideal of a totalitarian regime.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, they're in the cave.

Evan Osnos:

They are.

Ian Bremmer:

But are they still just as in the cave?

Evan Osnos:

No, that's the key point. You're absolutely right to raise it. I mean, what's happened over the course of the last 20 years, something big changed in North Korea which is that, after the famine ended in about 1998, they were never able to close off the borders again the way they had before. And so, there was all this permeability. And one of the things that began to come in was South Korean movies and television to the point that, now, if you're an elite in Pyongyang, you will sometimes hear fellow elites using a South Korean accent when they speak, which is, it's a status symbol. It's an indication of cosmopolitanism that you are sort of plugged into the outside world-

Ian Bremmer:

Which is okay?

Evan Osnos:

No.

Ian Bremmer:

That's a good thing?

Evan Osnos:

It's not okay.

Ian Bremmer:

So, how is that allowed in the world of a totalitarian state?

Evan Osnos:

Because they are privileged, they are at the top. And they're running a risk. I mean, part of the status symbol is showing that you have the personal confidence and the connections to sort of try that out.

Evan Osnos:

But let's be clear. If you are a person out on the countryside, or if you're somebody of low status, or you're somebody without connections in the capitol and you are found with a South Korean movie or television, you can be thrown into the gulag. That's very much the case.

Evan Osnos:

So, what they're dealing with is a moment now where Kim Jong-un knows that his elites are aware of the outside world. They're aware that this is not the socialist paradise that they were always trained to believe it is. And so, he has to try to allow them some measure of lifestyle improvement, some measure of normalcy. Let them move money to Switzerland, let them send their kids to China for college, because otherwise, then, he really is at risk.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, even when they have that exposure, like we remember, Gorbachev, and what happened with the East Germans. I mean, suddenly, you give them a little bit of right to travel and... They're out of there, they're not eroded it very quickly.

Evan Osnos:

This is such an interesting question. I totally agree with you. But there's two models. There's the East German model, which ends badly. And then, there's the Chinese model, which means that you can maintain your-

Ian Bremmer:

Because there's massive enrichment?

Evan Osnos:

Yeah, because they're co-op, they're bought in.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. Yeah. And you think, North Korea's witch?

Evan Osnos:

At the moment, it's more like China.

Ian Bremmer:

It is, because?

Evan Osnos:

It is. Partly because the level of outside influence is still minimal, even though you're able to get-

Ian Bremmer:

So, it's really in the early stage, China.

Evan Osnos:

It's early stage. But the other thing is, the North Koreans are not Germans, and they're not stitched into the center of Europe, and they are isolated to a degree that is really profound. And this actually reminds me much more of my experience in Iraq. I mean, I went into Iraq in 2003. I was embedded with US Marines. We came in on the day that the statue fell. And what we discovered was that, the country that the United States was now uncorking was a very different country than we thought it was, and was in many ways, much more warped and damaged than we ever understood it to be.

Evan Osnos:

And I think, in North Korea, there's something similar, that even if the Kim regime goes, and that may happen someday, we are going to find ourselves confronting a country that is been truly traumatized by 70 years of this kind of treatment. And East Germany was in a slightly different situation, and I think that we have to be thinking more in the Iraq model.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, and East Germany hasn't really worked very well, as you see with the elections we just had in Germany. I mean, half of East Germans are saying they don't feel like Germany ever really got unified for them. So, imagine what that percentage would be of North Koreans-

Evan Osnos:

Exactly.

Ian Bremmer:

... in a unified Korean peninsula.

Evan Osnos:

Well, if you think about it, South Korea's economy today is roughly 60 times the size of North Korea's economy. The idea of putting these things together is going to be... It would be an epic task, and it would be one that would require a lot of the United States, require a lot of China.

Ian Bremmer:

And the South Koreans have no reality about this whatsoever, as a government?

Evan Osnos:

They live in a very strange place. On the one hand, they have to go about their daily lives, so they can't think about the fact that they've got Kim Jong-un 30 miles over the border. On the other hand, I think there's something of a myth that they are living a delusion. They know the risks, and as much as this has damaged the North Korean populace living under Kim Jong-un, the division of the peninsula has had a profound effect on South Korean politics, too. It's one of the reasons why we see you're so much sort of turbulence, and drama, and simple weirdness in Korean politics.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. So, let's talk a little bit about your impressions when you were there. What surprised you, given the way it's being covered around the world when you actually got and experienced them? One is, obviously, the economy's doing better than most people understand.

Evan Osnos:

Right.

Ian Bremmer:

How did that become obvious and evident to you, but also just general sort of unusual impressions?

Evan Osnos:

Well, one of the things is surprising that, North Korea, for all of the sanctions against it, for all the deprivation and isolation, it is actually a country that is in the capitol, growing. You see new buildings going up, there are new cars on the road-

Ian Bremmer:

The metro system is being built.

Evan Osnos:

The metro system is working. There are black limousines honking at you and threatening to run you over as there are in other authoritarian countries, which is faintly sort of reassuring because the absence of cars would be another thing. And I think this is important to mention that, if you follow North Korea closely, and you read a lot about it these days, you read a lot about this kind of economic growth. And I think some of that has gone too far in the analysis. The reality is, it is a more isolated and impoverished place than we sometimes remember.

Evan Osnos:

I mean, this is still a country that has a GDP per capita that is on the level of Haiti. It is poorer than Yemen. So, when we talk about it having economic growth and that giving Kim Jong-un options and so on, I think we have to make sure we keep that in perspective. And that actually surprised me. I'd spent so much time among smart analysts in North Korea, thinking about the way in which economic reform was happening, that I'd gone too far in imagining this was like China in about 1976. And it's not. It's China, at most, in about 1968 in the depths of the Cultural Revolution, when the dominant experience that anybody has on a given day is political and ideological, and the fear of being righted out by your neighbor.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. A little bit of economic improvement goes a lot way though in that environment, right? I mean, we don't have the stories of them eating tree bark anymore in 2017.

Evan Osnos:

No. I mean, there is still 70% of the population receive some sort of food assistance, but there is this tremendous gap between the rich and the poor, which is really taken off. And some of the most interesting conversations I had were with North Koreans outside of North Korea. In South Korea, I spent a lot of time with defectors, and one of the things they told me was that, these days, the status symbol you want, if you're super rich in Pyongyang, is a piano. And they said, "It doesn't matter if you can play it, if you have a new Yamaha piano, $22,000 to get a new one, $8,000 to get a used one, that's a signal to your other fellow elites that you are playing at a certain kind of level."

Evan Osnos:

A lot of this development that you see in North Korea today, sometimes, some of the big buildings in the capitol, for instance, are being built with private money. It's a strange setup where basically, if you're an elite that's made some money from corruption or through the black market or through the official economy, you're expected to then donate that money, quite literally donate it back into the government so that they can then build these big marquee projects.

Evan Osnos:

So, they are really stitched into this government, and I think it's one of the reasons why we should not be expecting North Korean elites to rise up tomorrow and overthrow this leader, despite the mismanagement of...

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. And things go badly in Russia, economically. They squeeze the oligarchs and make them put that cash into the system. In North Korea, you expect that's going to be a hell of a lot more severe-

Evan Osnos:

Exactly.

Ian Bremmer:

... given the challenges they have. So, when you talk to the North Koreans, you did both the politicos and not. How much anger towards an American? How concerning the idea of them getting blown up because it's all escalating? I mean, did you get any sense of, these guys understand the level of peril that their leaders potentially playing with? Or are they just not?

Evan Osnos:

Yeah. I think, in many ways, the most telling moment of my visit to North Korea was a very quiet moment. It was over lunch where I was sitting with my minder, who's an analyst at the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Smart guy.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. Just that one or there were other folks there?

Evan Osnos:

There were always other folks in the background.

Ian Bremmer:

So, they haven't changed that, yet?

Evan Osnos:

No.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay.

Evan Osnos:

But in this case, we're having an honest conversation. I mean, one of the things I was told before going to North Korea by friends who spent a lot of time working on it, analyzing it, they said, "If they offer you a drink, say yes." And I said, "Why?" And they said, "Because it makes them more comfortable. They're more likely to talk."

Evan Osnos:

So, strangely enough, when you're writing about North Korea, you end up drinking a fair amount. So, here we are at lunch having a North Korean beer, and we're watching on television as Kim Jong-un comes on the screen and says that he might reign terror down upon the United States. I'm paraphrasing here. But it was a version of the same idea that we've heard over and over. And I turned to my counterpart, this guy named Park Song-Il, who's 35 years old, has a five-year-old son, speaks perfect English. I mean, it sort of a plugged in guy. And I said, "Give me a break. Do you honestly imagine, honestly, that you could have a nuclear exchange with the United States that would not be a cataclysm for you and for the rest of the world?" And he said, "Yes, we have suffered terribly in our history. We've survived the Korean War, we survived the famine, and we would survive this, too." "Not everyone..." He said, "But some."

Evan Osnos:

And that is a chilling message to get from somebody who is not a lunatic. This is not a jihadist in a cave who is muttering about martyrdom. This is a man who works for the government, who is as plugged in as anybody in North Korea, has access to the internet, and is telling me as lucidly as possible that he really believes that the North Korean self-narrative is such that, if necessary, they would survive an encounter with the United States.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, certainly, the willingness of the North Koreans to take pain is a hell of a lot greater than the average person in the developed world.

Evan Osnos:

And it's really part of their self-image, which is sometimes we overlook from afar. But they take pride in the fact that they were eating bark in the nineties and lived through it. They take pride in the fact that they've been an enemy of the United States for 70 years and have not succumbed.

Ian Bremmer:

So, the sanctions that are being hit by them right now, including by China, are something that also makes them feel stronger, we can overcome?

Evan Osnos:

I think the sanctions, yeah, they're part of the sense of encirclement, and that does feed the domestic narrative, so it's useful for them, politically. But I also think the sanctions are having more bite now than we really anticipated.

Evan Osnos:

There was an argument, if we'd had this conversation two years ago, everybody in the business would've said, "Sanctions are not having an effect." Now, they're not saying that. What they're saying is, that some of the sanctions, particularly secondary sanctions on Chinese companies and banks are beginning to have an impact. So, what that means is that, we should give them some time, as much as we can.

Ian Bremmer:

Trump seems to be willing to do, from his latest statements.

Evan Osnos:

Except when he tweets out something like, "There is only one way here", implying that it's military or-

Ian Bremmer:

And yet, at the same time. Just in the last 24 hours, we see Trump talking about the fact that, actually, what the Chinese have been doing is, more than they have historically, it's been successful. Let's not talk about hitting the Chinese harder. They're doing more... That's been a win for Trump. So, undermining Tillerson in terms of direct diplomacy, but using the Chinese in terms of the squeeze, he's never said that you have to only go military for the squeeze. He's liked the sanctions option.

Evan Osnos:

I think there is, in a sense, he has, at moments, taken the right approach, at certain moments. The problem is that, when there is so much manufactured chaos at the top of the American government, that is undermining the Secretary of State's ability to operate. The message that's received in Pyongyang is not, "Wow. This is carefully calibrated ambiguity of the kind that has defined nuclear brinkmanship since 1945." It's that, they are confused and that they are sending mixed messages. That's the part where I feel like it's missing an opportunity. The US doesn't need to send a confusing message. It can send whatever message it wants. But right now, we're sending essentially a sort of muddled signal to-

Ian Bremmer:

But the sanctions, so far, again, largely on the back of Chinese implementation and escalation, you think, are biting?

Evan Osnos:

I think they are biting.

Ian Bremmer:

But you don't think they're having any constructive impact on North Korean behavior, so far?

Evan Osnos:

I don't think we know yet, to be perfectly honest. I mean, I think they're very good at hiding the stitches. We don't know, in fact, how much is this affecting industrial activity. We don't know whether in fact, there is a gas shortage for cars. The US has gotten ahead of itself a couple of times and said that there is, and that's not been confirmed.

Evan Osnos:

What we know is that, we know where this is headed, in a sense. And I shouldn't overstate that. Nobody really knows where this is headed. It could end in miscalculation and it could end in conflict. But I don't fundamentally believe the North Koreans are pursuing an active military confrontation with the United States, and I don't believe the United States is either. But I do think that we are dealing with leaders on both sides who are so inexperienced and are so overconfident, that it's the recipe for a disaster.

Ian Bremmer:

And when you put China in there now... Those that don't know, I mean, you were the China correspondent for New York for a number of years, is where you and I started to get to know each other pretty well. How do you think the Chinese perceive their role in US versus North Korea? We know that it's their backyard. They don't want it to blow up, they're trying to be the adult in the room. But they've also been escalating recently, in degrees that they would not have, historically, a lot further than I think people in the Obama administration thought that they would.

Evan Osnos:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

How urgent do the Chinese see this? How is this really top priority for them? Or do they take on the logic you just gave, which is, fundamentally, we know, as long as we manage it okay, neither side really wants military confrontation, and we'll get through this?

Evan Osnos:

China fundamentally is trying to balance two threats as far as they perceive it. One threat is North Korea and one threat is President Trump. We can't forget, and they certainly never forget that the backdrop against which the North Korea drama is playing out is that, China feels a fundamental strategic anxiety about its relationship to the United States. And that is their main event.

Evan Osnos:

So, whatever they do is going to be contained within the parameters of how they think their future relationship with the United States is going to be apportioned. Who's going to have power over what parts of the Asia Pacific? Who is going to have control? Who is going to do this? China is doing what it thinks it needs to do right now to keep President Trump on side and to prevent the crisis with North Korea from boiling over.

Evan Osnos:

In many ways, Chinese leaders don't trust Kim Jong-un, but I think they trust Donald Trump even less because they recognize that the Trump administration does have this fundamental tension with China about trade, about strategy in the world. And so, for that reason, they are always holding back slightly. Because look, the key thing that the United States wants China to do is to cut off oil exports to North Korea until... And unless that moment happens, China is not actually doing everything the United States wants.

Ian Bremmer:

They're not doing everything they could, certainly.

Evan Osnos:

Right.

Ian Bremmer:

You can make that argument. But I mean, from the Chinese perspective, that has to be seen as, potentially, enormously dangerous for their own interests in their own backyard. I have to assume people around President Trump also know that?

Evan Osnos:

They know that. They're pushing for it. I mean, they are pushing China to do it. That's what they believe is, that's the decisive move. If they can do that, then North Korea might in fact be brought to heal. I'm not so sure. I'm not sure that China's ever prepared to do that. They've tested it. They've done it briefly a few years ago, just to see what would happen.

Evan Osnos:

At one point in my reporting on North Korea, I came upon an interesting fact about the US-China relationship which is that, Xi Jinping has said in private to both President Trump and President Obama before that, that his most important priority as it regards North Korea is no war, no chaos, no nukes. And as a US official said to me, "When we hear that, we always come away saying, great, no nukes. We all agree." But actually, the answer, of course, is that, his dominant priority is maintaining the status quo in East Asia because that status quo has been so beneficial to China.

Ian Bremmer:

And that status quo includes nukes.

Evan Osnos:

That status quo may in fact include nukes, and that's much more important to North Korea. Sorry, it's much more important to China than it is to satisfy America's demand.

Ian Bremmer:

No, of course. That status quo, as of right now, that says quo includes nukes.

Evan Osnos:

Oh, yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

And the Chinese have been living with that for quite some time, and the Americans, apparently, only now that it can hit the US, and we're starting to be a little bit more concerned.

Evan Osnos:

Well, the question is, would China throw its weight? Would it invest in this hard problem of trying to get North Korea to give up nuclear weapons? And the answer is probably not. They don't believe that that's necessary, and they're not willing to expend the capital, too.

Ian Bremmer:

Didn't you find it interesting when the Chinese government said, "Okay, if any escalation, any hostilities are started by the North Korea, were on the American side. But if they're started by the US, were actually not." Right? That struck me as a very different perspective of what we've heard from the Chinese recently.

Evan Osnos:

Yeah. There has been a shift in the Chinese establishment over the last, I'd say, five or 10 years. I mean, I remember a few years ago when a very good Chinese, very well-connected foreign policy analyst named Deng Yuwen, published a piece that introduced the idea that China should part ways with North Korea. And he lost his job for it. It was so taboo, at that point.

Evan Osnos:

Today, you can say that. You can say it, you can publish it, you can give it in a speech. So, that represents a significant shift. I mean, it's easy to forget, but under Chairman Mao, the relationship between North Korea and China was so intimate. It was so intertwined. Chairman Mao used to call it as close as lips and teeth. It is not that way anymore. Kim Jong-un has never met Xi Jinping. He's never even received the Chinese ambassador in Pyongyang.

Ian Bremmer:

And he's not been to China.

Evan Osnos:

He's never been to China, as far as we know. There was rumors of one trip. It's not been confirmed.

Evan Osnos:

The reality is, there's a tremendous amount of hostility. If you ask North Koreans how China treats you today, they will use a very vivid expression, which is they say that, "China treats us like the dirt between their toes," which is a long way between lips and teeth.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, I mean, it's as close as lips and teeth. I mean, from that perspective.

Evan Osnos:

I suppose, we view it another way. That's a generous framing.

Ian Bremmer:

There you go.

Ian Bremmer:

So, before we close, let's talk a little bit about our favorite president, because you wrote this big piece, and it was a couple of months before the election when pretty much, everyone in the media elite was saying, "He's not going to win." You said, "Let's really look at what a Trump administration would mean, assuming that he actually gets the presidency."

Ian Bremmer:

So, a year after you've written that piece, looking back on it, how good do you feel about where it's played out? What's different? What's different? Start with what's different, since we know you're brilliant.

Evan Osnos:

That piece was called Trump's first term, and we said a few things would likely happen. He would, for instance, try to undermine the Paris Peace Accord.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay. That's not different.

Evan Osnos:

He would try to kill the Obama era clean power plant.

Ian Bremmer:

Also not different.

Evan Osnos:

So, I guess-

Ian Bremmer:

You're just not playing, right? Okay. I'm going to try again.

Evan Osnos:

I'm trying to think it through. I'm trying to think it through.

Ian Bremmer:

What surprised you? Again, that what's most in... Because you spent so much time thinking about this. Now, he's in, a year in. What has surprised you about Trump?

Evan Osnos:

I hate to say it again because it sounds like totally smug. But in that piece, people said to me, "Here's the things we worry about. He's going to use Twitter as a tool of state craft. He's going to react in national security crises in ways that are going to be unhelpful. He's going to antagonize and create chaos within his senior leadership, which is going to bog down the government." In many ways, a lot of those things have turned out to be true. He hasn't launched a nuclear weapon yet, and we did say that that might happen.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Evan Osnos:

So, in that sense...

Ian Bremmer:

Fine, fine, fine. But okay. Let me-

Evan Osnos:

Yeah. Actually, I have to-

Ian Bremmer:

Twitter saying that he's using Twitter as state craft, right? I mean, he's certainly using it to rile up his base. So, I just saw Ross Douthat, New York Times, who on the back of Trump's launching another [inaudible 00:27:38] against sort of NBC and saying, "Maybe they should have their license taken away." And he's going, "Oh my God."

Evan Osnos:

Right.

Ian Bremmer:

In 2019, he's going to be saying that we should suspend the Constitution and have no more elections, he should be dictator, and no one's going to pay attention. I'm like, "Dude, dude, no. You guys are going to be writing about it and going, oh my God, all day long. And meanwhile, it's not going to be policy."

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, I could easily argue that Trump is not using Twitter, in any way, as an instrument of statecraft, but rather he's using it as an instrument of domestic politics which, by the way, he's reasonably effective at. How do you push back against that?

Evan Osnos:

I would say, if you look around at places like Mexico with whom we had a deep and abiding bond until November 8th, 2016, the way that he has treated that country over the course of the last nine months in office has fundamentally altered the chemistry of Mexican politics in a way that is not helpful to American national security.

Evan Osnos:

There's just no question that when he does the things he does, it undermines Rex Tillerson. When he says, "Rex, you're wasting your time." When he makes it known via his Twitter account, that this man might be out of a job, if you're the foreign minister of a country, the kinds of people you meet with all the time, how do you make a choice to invest in a guy like Rex Tillerson? Because you don't have any real belief that he's going to be there.

Evan Osnos:

So, in that sense, it is as counterproductive as I expected it to be. I think the thing that has surprised me is the degree of ideological incoherence in this administration. There was an expectation among his economic advisors that he would be able to achieve tax reform, that he was going to use it in reconciliation, which is a sort of efficient way of getting something through the Congress. And they weren't able to do that. They weren't able to get to repeal and replace.

Evan Osnos:

So, that has been a surprise. I would've assumed that he would've grafted his mission, his movement onto the preexisting Republican establishment that would've allowed him to accomplish things in government. He's proved to be actually incapable of reigning in his own impulses enough to be able to achieve the things he needs to survive.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, is that ideological incoherence that surprises you, or just the lack of political capacity to work with Congress? Because I mean, it's hard to imagine when Trump came in that you thought he was really ideologically coherent, right?

Evan Osnos:

No, but I thought that... Those two are related in the sense that, I think the fact that he doesn't know what he stands for, means he doesn't know who he trusts and he doesn't know who to work with. And as a result, he just kind of careens around from one hostile encounter to the next, and that makes it very hard to get anything done.

Evan Osnos:

If you look at his own relationship with Republicans in Congress right now, has there been a greater act of political self-sabotage in the 21st century? I can't think of one. I mean, he has just truly gone out of his way to antagonize the people who he needs on side. And as a result, he's sort of paralyzed, politically.

Ian Bremmer:

What's impressed you the most with the first year, so far, of the Trump administration? What do you think that they've done the best that you wouldn't have expected?

Evan Osnos:

Pregnant pause.

Ian Bremmer:

No, you got to be able to do this for me.

Evan Osnos:

Let me think. And this is not theatrical. I truly-

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, I understand.

Evan Osnos:

You are talking to somebody who is having a hard time taking an issue that, I think, that they have done well.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, I'd argue this is part of the problem, right?

Evan Osnos:

That members of the-

Ian Bremmer:

Go ahead. I don't know. I can see you-

Evan Osnos:

Let me turn the question around-

Ian Bremmer:

... as one of the brightest guys.

Evan Osnos:

Let me turn the question around-

Ian Bremmer:

I'll be around on this.

Evan Osnos:

Let me turn the question around. I mean, I think, in fairness, genuinely.

Ian Bremmer:

What?

Evan Osnos:

Name something that you think they've done really well in the first year?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, look, I certainly think the access that the business community has had to the Trump administration is vastly greater. You talk to an average CEO, they feel so much better. With Jarrett and Chris Liddell, and that entire constellation, that they did with Valerie Jarrett and with Obama leaving aside maybe just the core Silicon Valley companies, that would be one obvious one.

Evan Osnos:

But what about the Steve Schwarzman Council that had to be disappeared?

Ian Bremmer:

But that was a council. I mean, yeah, he made statements about Charlottesville, so the council had to go away. But their actual... Again, if you get rid of the theatrics in the New York Times and on CNN every day and talk about the way people are actually discussing-

Evan Osnos:

But it's not theatrics when you have a president who is, in effect, enabling and emboldening the work of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. That's not theatrical, that's core to America's ability to function as a-

Ian Bremmer:

There's no question that Trump's willingness to use identity politics and race to advance his supporters and distract from other issues has had effects which are negative and corrosive of American institutions and values. I accept that. But wasn't the question. The question that I asked you, and then you refused to answer because you couldn't think of something and said to me was, what's he done well? Here's something he's done well, and you talk to those CEOs. And they will actually tell you. I mean, I would say that the US-India relationship is probably warmer today than it was under Obama. The US-Japan relationship is warmer today than it was under Obama. Certainly, the US-Saudi relationship-

Evan Osnos:

Sorry, I'll give you that. I'll give you that. Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

So, that's why I'm asking... And I know that you have these things, but I'm pushing you because, again, I think that if you don't have that answer ready, even though-

Evan Osnos:

No, but I'll tell you why. One, I think access for the business community to the White House is something that exists under every White House. And to a degree, it's better under this one, which should not come as anybody's shock. That should not be a big surprise. I don't necessarily regard that as a fundamental contribution to America's future security and economic growth.

Ian Bremmer:

No-

Evan Osnos:

That was going to happen, anyway.

Ian Bremmer:

It's simply something he's done well, right?

Evan Osnos:

But if you put that on the ledger, opposite the things that have gone off the rails in terms of America standing around the world-

Ian Bremmer:

Sure.

Evan Osnos:

The inability to get anything through Congress. I mean, the fact that we haven't had any major legislation over the course of the last year is a profound fact. But I'll take your point. I mean, one example that I think, sometimes, does get overlooked is that, I think he has shaken up the relationship with China. He has forced China to recognize that the United States was not going to go along quietly in essentially permitting China to gradually grow its sphere of influence around Asia, to essentially, quietly reestablish or establish control over the South China Sea and the East China Sea.

Evan Osnos:

China is off balance, at the moment. The problem is, is that, they've also come to believe that he's a paper tiger and that he can be rolled. That his simple lack of information and the incoherence of the leadership around him makes it easy for them to achieve their aims.

Evan Osnos:

So, on the one hand, yes, they have done a good job in putting China on notice, but they haven't been able to follow through.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, backhanded compliment is better than none. Evan Osnos, a pleasure to be with you. We'll be talking soon.

Evan Osnos:

I enjoyed it. Thanks, Ian.

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