international land in the very heart of moscow. hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle targeting the so-called rogue states north korea and iran are very much in the spotlight are these countries really a threat to the international community we are told both north korea and iran are impossible to negotiate with both deemed to be irrational states they ask for comprehensive security guarantees but face the very real threat of utter annihilation.

to cross up north korea iran and much more i'm joined by richard white's in washington he's a senior fellow and director of the center for political military analysis at the hudson institute also in watched and we have zachary an assistant editor for the diplomat and in philadelphia we cross to dave lindorff he is an investigative reporter author of the book the case for impeachment and the founding editor of the online newspaper this can't be happening dot net all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want but richard if i can go to you what is a rogue state we hear the term all the time what is it it define. it's an out of fashion charm under the bush administration that used the term rogue state to describe states which whose behavior was so. so it redeemable that they were considered to be equivalent of a criminal state and that was

a ran that was iraq under sadam hussein and that was north korea where those of the three common ones other countries went in and out of that category the obama administration that was revise that category they now just find these kind of states as outlier states and has a different and different implication implies that they can be brought inside more easily as long as they change their behavior and i think that's what the mom and ministrations agenda and efforts have been aimed at zachary jump in what do you think about the term and how does that apply to if it's useful yeah really i would say i would divide ron in north korea i don't think there are two comparable except further and adverse are you need for towards united states but i don't think the terms very useful because we end up negotiate these people anyway so i would just i think outliers probably the better dave what do you think the bill of health care we don't have the state will actually take. well the rogue state term actually the concept goes back further than bush it goes back to the reagan administration and

it's a cold war relic and as as far as moving it forward to the obama administration i think what it basically is conceived of this outlier state notion is that these are states that are outside of the western nations supposed consensus which i think that's an even apply anymore because really it's fallen apart you've got you've got china you've got brazil you've got turkey you've got countries that do not travel in a u.s. axis but that have a lot of influence because their economies are strong militarily they're strong and so it's really a strange term that that is being used by the u.s. because the u.s. still sees itself as the sole superpower and countries that don't line up with the u.s. are then outlier states richard i would agree with zachary that lumping korea and iran together is

a real mistake because they they have very little in common richard what do you think about that. i agree that there are differences in the nature of the governments and in their behavior i mean north korea is close to being a failed state the one thing it does have there are nuclear weapons and other tools that it can either threaten other states with or offer to sell to try and earn money iran is a different category altogether it's got a very rich set of tools it can use it it's not clear that iran is going to seek nuclear weapons soon but they certainly have a powerful conventional forces but in a way there are economists much stronger despite the sanctions so in the category of rogue states not use that much outlier though i think it's helpful in the sense that it indicates those states that for one reason or another are not to fill in there are national implications and then you can lay out

a path by which they can we enter that in the international community so exactly to reform school and i just think that eventually you know the u.s. and iran i don't know if we'd call it reform but i think they have too many interests in the common to stay apart so i think iran certainly country can work with whether we call it reform or not i mean i mean we can but i figure i'm going to change it think that will end up working out our differences with north korea i think was with them i think the u.s. approaches we don't need any interest in dealing with them and i don't think we really should dave so unfair. well in terms of the reform thing i think you know first of all i would argue that when it comes to hearing to international norms that probably the biggest outlier state right now is the united states' self in the u.s. this as assume for itself the thirty to do whatever it wants regardless of international norms and i would look at the the invasion of iraq the threatened war against iran which which does not pose an imminent threat to to the u.s.

certainly and probably to anybody and the use of a place like the one that defies all international norms these are things the and the use of drone attacks in any country we want to attack these are all the actions of what would qualify it's a rogue state so you know let's let's be honest about what this is about this is really all power relationships and whether you add here to the dominant power is the thing that troubling for the united states is that there it isn't the dominant power anymore it can dominate power but it isn't that controlling power and so countries are defying it. that what i would say about iran and iran and korea that is really different is i think they ran it is a leading power in the region where it is there's nobody who can really tell it to go to lay off of its policies and it also is

a country which has seen its own people rise up and throw a government out in recent memory and also rise up against the current government fairly impressively although it didn't achieve their goals so the government in iran has to be responsible to its own people on some level in korea you have a more of a medieval. equivalent of a medieval absolute monarchy and so what's going on in korea is is palace politics and i agree with zachary i think the united states would be one. as to what sort of close to fields the plane. i mean richard what happens if you get to the point of a war what happens if north korea does fail though. you can imagine some good scenarios you can imagine some bad scenario and probably some even worse than a chinese. right well the chinese can do well on what they consider their nightmare

is that you know north korea collapses all the people flee north to get to china step below refugees all that loose nuclear material chemical stuff that's floating around maybe they get fans up in sion jang the american troops and the south koreans move north to try and save the situation there in their border in china's lost an ally but you consider john's the really good i said there is no good scenario isn't it you could be far worse than that you know i consider a good one which would be a unified korea. that has. does not have its own nuclear weapons has ties with the united states maybe not even the u.s. military but that somebody would be there with me would it well it depends i mean that that one thing china probably is fair concerned about is all the investment would flow as we saw in germany would flow into north korea to bring it up to the south korean levels and that would hurt the chinese economy but in terms

of other disasters i don't i mean we're not going to go to war with china so i don't think it really matters where u.s. troops are if they're not there and this regime is going to drag this has the potential to drag us all into a nuclear nightmare and so i think china if they think about would better off without them zachary do want to jump in there. yeah i would just say i think it would think it's over looked too much as it could reorder the whole asian security order depending on how unified korea goes so we on the an immediate nightmare of a secure the nuclear materials and avoid a clash routine china coming in from the north west in the us and south korea from the south that it becomes a battle over it's a unified korea more worried about japan or china exact that has huge implications for the future of the asian security order so i think that's going to a huge event want to happens but you know now we're trying to contain it from the words that are already talking about day but the u.s. wants regime change there. yeah you know i don't think you know the us to return to the regime change there in an orderly fashion when he's willing to leave that.

orderly fashion mean it i don't understand well what does it mean. a similar similar to what happened with east germany where west germany took over and basically oversaw the conversion of the system into an integrated state that korea certainly has the wealthy or. able it to do that if it is done you know without war without violence you know if the if the if the north basically. if the northern government is basically pushed out by an uprising of its people or whatever i think that because there's so many family relationships between north and south because you know it's basically ignorance on the part of people in the north of what's going on that keeps them down it could be a less than horrifically explosive changeover at some point but. the other thing i

would say and i spent a lot of time in china i lived there for two years covered it for business week for five years i think the chinese would be happy to see a unified north korea a unified korea also i don't think the chinese are particularly happy with what they've got on their border it's mostly problematic for them and they would see a unified korea as an investment opportunity a trading partner and not as a threat i mean it's too small to be a threat to them economically all right gentlemen we're going to go to was short break and after that break we'll continue our discussion on so-called rogue state state with our team.

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welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle chill mind you we're discussing north korea iran and other things rogue. which or do you think the united states really is interested in negotiations with iran and north korea really. i think under this administration yes i would agree that everything being equal. better or the you give us preference would be for a change in their regime but most of the other countries that are involved in these negotiations they want just a change in these policies and i think the a bomb ministration is not willing to use military force or take strenuous acts to secure regime change i think they would want to see it in cap'n internally of all the over time and i think i'd

suspect that these two regimes they are a bit out bit of outliers if you will from the global trend so i think over time both of them will change it's just a question of when ok exactly you agree with that because the regime in iran isn't going to surrender it's not going to surrender no no and i don't know if it's going anywhere i mean i think it over the long run maybe but i don't think that the islamic republic has to so much opposition that it's the going anywhere so it's also china and all its borders now it's china is in central asia obviously it's in southern iraq and it's right next to iran on the east coast of its border so i think that there's so that it's going to be probably become iran's are going to security threat of the could next decade or so and so i do think it's the long public right still be there in ten years and you can change many times but i think the us going to have a deal with the at some point and i don't think going to surrender i think each side is going to give in i don't know that i have an obama successor but i think

that it should have been sort of the later date in philadelphia go ahead jump in. well i would hope that's right i think there are forces that could lead to a conflict between the u.s. and iran and i would hate to see it. and i think that. you know my my hope is that there will be some kind of ritual response to the fact that arin is a nuclear capable power and hopefully won't get a bomb but will always have that capability and the u.s. is going to have to accept that it's going to require standing up to israeli concerns including in israel there's there's a lot of argument against going to war you know it's an attacking iran so i'm. cautiously optimistic that this is going to be worked out in a rational way but let's be clear that there's

a recession ellaby on both sides of me there are neither country is fully fully grant you know but neither one is irrational richard i like that you agree or disagree it's a bit hard to get a definition of rationality i wanted to actually reminds i want to make a point or earlier which was that one reason why these countries are categorized together is that they do interact on sort of the french's of the international system so we've seen a lot of changes and cooperation in north korea and iran and syria and others on missile developments the fear is now we're going to see this spill over into the nuclear around with north korea sharing its insights on how to make and nuclear warhead and functionally unishe nuclear device and so randel have that capability without even having the test so that's one beans and why people tend to consider these countries together despite their differences zachary but they feel threatened by the west yeah i think that they're i think iran actually fears becoming north

korea because it's you know a story a country and i think that the current regime wants to continue that so i had the. it's more of the fact that we've cut off all these avenues to. sort of nuclear cooperation even the civilian realm for iran that drives them towards north korea but i think i also think we should overstate the relationship because we don't really know exactly and i don't think we know exactly how much deep this cooperation goes and i think whatever however far it does go i think it's more driven by iran and we can't get any sort of cooperation from the last on these matters anyway so dave why should the iranians trust the americans go ahead dave jump in go ahead probably the best thing the u.s. could hope for would be that iran would start relying on north korea for missile and nuclear technology given the you know number of duds they've had it's not it's the korea and their korea has achieved you know some huge technological advances either in bomb technology or in missile technology most of what they have is. you

know spare parts and an extra materials from old soviet equipment so you know the u.s. tends to blow it out of proportion but there's not much there i think likely first of all it's more likely iranian scientists are quite intelligence of studied in the west and have the capability of doing this on their own they also have enough money to buy a bomb if they wanted one so on the black market so i think all of this has been hugely overblown in u.s. propaganda and israeli propaganda but the reality is it's not that big a threat if the rain ians want to buy it tomorrow. so but but in terms of that question about the u.s. and iran in getting together i think i think that rand has you know the question of rationality let's go back to that rationality and irrationality has to do with are you acting in an intelligent way to serve your own interests as a nation that's all you can ask of countries and i'm not sure that korea is fully

professional because it's such a palace politic thing that you know that into. become extremely parochial within that conflict but in your way and. you've got a country with an enormous history a desire to be a dominant power in the middle east and they're acting rationally in their own terms to achieve that so i don't think they're going to commit suicide richard they're acting rationally you agree or disagree with that. yes they're acting very cleverly they've managed to string along the nuclear negotiations until the capabilities they they might need if they want to get a nuclear weapon without going so far as to and really engage in some kind of shooting war with anybody and i think that it's you're correct in drawing the differences between north korea and iran they are the one reason why we haven't seen clear evidence of a nuclear cooperation i suppose missile cooperation is i think the iranians are

reluctant to get too close to north korea because they also are uncomfortable with their behavior so actually let's say they got watching seeing what lessons learned that we would see iran did get a nuclear weapon wouldn't you wouldn't use it they wouldn't i don't think they would use it necessarily or at the back but i think that probably would be the crisis negotiations in the first ten years or so i mean the soviets in the. they had a bunch of the girl in berlin on one nine hundred forty and and before the soviet union had nuclear weapons but there's a lot of crisis negotiation figure out where the people each side red lines are and that's a dangerous time period so they were best to avoid that i think that easy runs not not rational i mean the they you know they outmaneuvered the us in iraq time after time and we've got a lot safer the us of if they're irrational they seem to be very clever as richard put it and this diplomacy game so they've got it i hope they rationalize it makes

us look specifically especially bad dave in philadelphia what do you think. what about what would happen if they got yeah i don't know if they'd use it i think they're not crazy israel's got it israel has about two hundred nuclear bombs and you know very high quality delivery systems are in would be toast if the used it and they know that so what you'd actually have if you were in had the bomb would be a similar situation only probably more stable than the one you have in india and pakistan with two countries that are really hate each other have any nuclear weapons and the difference being that those two countries have borders that are flashpoints there's no borders that are flashpoints between iran and israel so i think if iran had the bomb it would make israeli diplomacy more difficult but it might me and actually he have a salutary effect on the two having to work out some kind of modus vivendi richard

what do you think about that when we're dealing with counterfactuals i mean you think that i mean the rand like north korea probably wouldn't use nuclear weapons but with each additive country that has a nuclear weapon it's been becomes more and sorry more than a possible ease of use content increase there's also i'm certainly over command and control arrangements in iran. about how the different factions will would use their nuclear weapon and capabilities and i think that the main concern though is that what iran can do is engage in the kind of provocative behavior you've seen the case in north korea and then hide behind the nuclear shield so you could see them intervening more aggressively in lebanon or syria or baron or yemen because they have them because they have a nuclear weapon locked in a challenge because they have a nuclear weapon right. correct because then nobody would people the

lesson people seem to be learning is as long as you have a nuclear weapon the united states will not attack you as opposed to libya or syria which doesn't or. are serbia so if they had that then they would be they could use that leverage to see stability and stability parent paradox yeah exactly you want to jump in there go ahead. yeah i think that is a real concern in washington i think a lot of people have that concern but i i mean i think if you will judge the majors are the polar sea and use of force up to now i think they've set the rules very early by attacking has and saying that we're not going to and iran is the same entity you know we kind of said they are for a while and i think that there's no reason to think that israel could carry out operations has well with it and that would provoke iran to move i mean i think the u.s. and the soviet proxies for you know a bunch of years and so i don't i don't think that that would are necessarily iran might try to do that i don't think it will work but it's far is why the danger of

iran having nuclear weapon iran borders pakistan to you from philadelphia we're talking about india and pakistan going to other really round borders pakistan to where there's a bunch of. blue cheese tribal or ethnic groups there and there's a lot of potential for for clash there too so i just think that israel in iran's might not be a. nuclear ivery is pakistan india but i don't think it's something that we should welcome it might work out that it would stabilize the situation but i don't think we should take that risk ok gentlemen fascinating discussion we've run out of time many thanks indeed and i guess in washington and in philadelphia and thanks to our viewers for watching us here archy's see you next time and remember. these.

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