China & US Play North Korea 'Confidence' Game

China & US Play North Korea ‘Confidence’ Game

Posted: January 4th, 2018

By Gordon Chang

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World. Chang lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in Shanghai, as counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss and earlier in Hong Kong as partner in the international law firm Baker & McKenzie. He has given briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Pentagon, and appeared before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang.

Cipher Brief expert Gordon Chang says the U.S. has leverage over China that it isn’t using to defuse the challenge from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The Cipher Brief’s Brian Garrett-Glaser interviewed Chang as Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump trade threats of pressing a nuclear “button,” even amid potentially positive developments between North and South Korea. The interview, adapted for print below, also discussed China’s foreign policy writ large.

In a mostly bombastic New Year’s address, Kim threatened the U.S., saying he had a nuclear button on his desk and that the entire U.S. is “within the range of our nuclear strike.” But he also suggested he was open to negotiations with South Korea related to the 2018 Winter Olympics. Leaders in Seoul followed up by proposing talks commence soon.

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