Special Report Roundtable - October 9

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LALLY WEYMOUTH, "NEWSWEEK" SR. EDITOR: I think that Secretary Baker -- former Secretary of State, made a very good point yesterday when he said that you have to talk to your enemies, not just your friends. And I think the United States made a great mistake by not talking to North Korea and isolating them.

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HUME: That was Lally Weymouth of "Newsweek" magazine speaking on our air earlier today, just before the president was to come out and speak about North Korea's nuclear test. What she said was echoed before the day was over by a number of prominent Democrats. Some thoughts about what -- let me just go over a little bit of what they had to say, just a few of them, here.

John Kerry called it a "shocking failure."

Harry Reid said we "must directly speak" with the North Koreans.

And Nancy Pelosi called to the appointment immediately of a "high level coordinator" for North Korean policy.

And Senator Joe Biden, like Lally Weymouth, called for what he called direct engagement. And folks, that means talks.

Some thoughts on this now from Mort Kondracke, executive editor of "Roll Call"; Mara Liasson, national political analyst of National Public Radio; and the syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer -- FOX NEWS contributors all.

So, we have some differing views tonight about how we got here in terms of the situation with North Korea. On one side is the argument that says, look, if you'd have talked to them directly, we might have been able to head this off, we buried our heads in the sand, we've outsourced our foreign policy to others. The administration says, look, we're working in concert with allies. What about it -- Mort.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Well, the history on this is that in 1994, the Clinton administration did reach a so-called agreed framework with the North Koreans in direct negotiation. It's worth recalling that at the time, the South Koreans and the Japanese, and I think the Chinese as well, were angry with the Clinton administration for going around them, cutting them out, and making this direct deal, the deal involved the freezing of North Korea's plutonium production in return for a light water reactor that the North Koreans would get and a lot of fuel oil.

In -- so, this went on and when the Bush administration came into power, it discovered soon after arriving that the North Koreans had been cheating on the 1994 agreement all the way through, and so from 2001 to 2003, we did not talk to them. We cut them off. The South Koreans and the Japanese joined us in leaving the agreed framework in reaction to that. And then in 2003, we resumed these six-party talks, doing exactly what the Democrats wanted us to do in every other area of conflict, namely having multilateral negotiations. Now the Democrats want us to have direct negotiations.

And the last point I would make, is, you know, talks are fine, it's a question of what you say. And the Republican -- you know, what Ronald Reagan used to do is to threaten somebody else's assets in order to give them an incentive to negotiate. What the Democrats tend to do is to yield in the first instance.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Look, it's clear that the Bush policy hasn't worked, but then again the Clinton policy didn't either. I mean, I don't know if you can say that if we had talking with them directly that this wouldn't have happened, there's no evidence of. But talking to them directly might not also cause anything worst to happen than it already has.

Look, the fact is that the administration's rhetoric has been very tough on this. North Korea is a member of the "Axis of Evil" and these countries were not supposed to get nuclear weapons and they have. And now, I think, the U.S. left is working with their allies trying to get sanctions regime put on North Korean which is pretty immutable to sanctions since they don't have much to.

HUME: Pretty immune, you mean.

LIASSON: Pretty immune to sanctions because they don't have too much -- they don't have trade with the outside world and they're very isolated as it is.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: This idea that if only we had, what the Democrats are demanding, direct negotiations, we would have had a solution is one of the oldest American illusions. It's now a Liberal and Democratic illusion, it use to be a Republican illusion.

The most famous example of this is was Senator William Borah, Republican of Idaho, who when he was informed that Nazi Germany had invaded Poland said "If only I could have spoken with Hitler, none of this would have happened."

This is an old American idea that it's a union negotiation, if you can sit down we'll work it out. And as Mort pointed out, the idea that Democrats are promoting this after the calamity of their direct negotiations, the framework that to agreed 12 years ago which the North Koreans cheated on, had a separate uranium enrichment program secret, which we discovered -- the Bush administration discovered in 2002, that this is an example of how we ought to have perceived it is absurd.

It's also hypocritical because Democrats are advocating of working with allies. The reason all of this happens is because Democrats are always advocating working with allies, particularly on Iraq, et cetera.

The reason all of this has happened is because Pyongyang wants the bomb and we didn't have any threat that would deter them. That's the reason it happened. Not because there was an absence of negotiations.

HUME: What is it -- Pyongyang wants the bomb. Does it want the bomb simply because it wants to be in the nuclear club, because it thinks it will give it leverage? What is -- I mean, if you were trying to figure out something to give Pyongyang to make it stop or to satisfy, what would it be?

KRAUTHAMMER: There's nothing because the answer is they want to be in the club. Everybody imagines a bargaining chip so they can have X, Y and X. This is a regime whose people are starving, eating bark off of trees. You think it want economic help? You think it really will give up A, the status of being a nuclear power and the protection? Once the regime has the bomb, it's really undeterrable on what id does. It wants to remain in power, it wants to be a player, that's why it wants. We always imagine it's a substitute for something else and it's not.

LIASSON: Well look, I agree with you. I agree that the same is true with Iran. We've talked about that here, also. The question is now, if that is the case, what does the United States do now that it has two very dangerous, either nuclear armed or soon to be nuclear armed countries?

HUME: Well, we're going to talk about what the United States is apparently going to try to do, which is work through the U.N., in a moment, but first I want to get some thoughts on this. So this issue comes along, as issues will, in the last stages of an election campaign in America. This obviously wasn't staged for that purpose, but there it is, and it seems to have bumped some less attractive matters, from the view of Republicans, down to lower section of the nation's front pages, and maybe off some them. What effect, politically, does the arrival of this issue, at this time -- does this help Democrats does it help Republicans -- what?

LIASSON: I can imagine a case for either way. You could say, ah, it reminds people that national security is important and there are more threats in the world than pedophile congressmen and or predatory congressmen and therefore it might help the Republicans or it reminds people that the Bush administration has talked big about "Axis of Evil".

HUME: And here comes North Korea with a nuclear weapon

LIASSON: And here comes North Korea with a bomb.

KONDRACKE: I think it's a second. I think it's more of it is that the world is a mess and Bush was presiding over it, Republicans were presiding over it and didn't solve the problem.

HUME: Charles.

KRAUTHAMMER: Clearly this is Karl Rove at work again. First he gets oil prices dropped by a phone call to the oil companies and then gets North Korea to explode a bomb as a way to get the Foley affair off the front pages. The man is a genius.

HUME: When we come back with the panel, what could the U.N. response to North Korea's nuclear test tell us about, well, about the U.N. itself among other things? More with the all-stars coming up.

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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States condemns this provocative act. Once again, North Korea has defied the will of the international community and the international community will respond.

JOHN BOLTON, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: Entire discussion in which all 15 council members participated took only 30 minutes. And that's remarkable in the Security Council, as some of you may know, to have a unanimous condemnation of the North Korean test. No one defended it. No one came close to defending it.

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HUME: And so, what did the U.N. Security Council do? Well, they convened, this afternoon, a meeting of experts on the issue to further discuss it. So we have a case of some activity, at least, and everybody is unanimous and not yet, as you can probably imagine, any action at the U.N. But that is where the Bush administration seems determined to proceed with this North Korean question. And the question is will the U.N. be willing to impose tough sanctions? Are there tough sanctions really available that will affect North Korea and Kim Jong-il -- panel.

KONDRACKE: Well, yeah, there are, I mean...

HUME: What are they?

KONDRACKE: Well, it's the.

LIASSON: Well, it would have to put some in place. I mean, that's the tough part, I think. I think this -- today was great, everybody's on the same page and roundly condemning North Korea, but if you're going to put sanctions on a country that doesn't trade with many other countries, and the main one they do trade with is China, China's going to have to take the lead on this and China historically is against sanctions...

HUME: Well, aren't there other measures, for example, you could impose some sort of a blockade and inspections regime where the cargo coming and going by sea, at lease, from North Korea, is inspected. Somebody'd have to organize that, I suppose. Mort, given the current atmosphere do you think the U.N. Security Council would vote for such a thing?

KONDRACKE: I don't know. But that is clearly the top aim of U.S. policy. And what the president said, also, in his statement that the United States would regard it as a grave threat to our national security if they transferred nuclear materials to a state or to a nonstate actor, meaning a terrorist group, and that would be grave consequences as a result of it.

So that sounds like, you transfer those weapons and it's war with us. I mean, that's the implication of it. And certainly, at the U.N., what we're going to try to do is get some sort of inspection regime so that any ship anywhere in the world that is flying North Korean cargo can be inspected to make sure that they don't transfer. If the U.N. won't agree to that, then as far as I can see, they're useless.

KRAUTHAMMER: As always.

HUME: That takes care of your comment.

KRAUTHAMMER: I could elaborate on that.

HUME: Yeah, please do.

KRAUTHAMMER: But the word that we use for this inspection is "quarantine" which was the word that Kennedy used in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now, let's remember that quarantine, aborting a ship headed into a port, in and out of North Korea, is an act of war. Now, we almost had war in 1962 as a result of this and we never had actually to stop a ship, we were lucky, the Soviets turned back.

Who is going to join us in a resolution that's going to impose a quarantine, which might spark a war, which might spark a war in the Korean peninsula? I'd be surprised if China did and unless it does nothing is going to happen.

HUME: What about South Korea? Would they do along with such a thing, given the level of the threat?

KRAUTHAMMER: No.

HUME: No.

KRAUTHAMMER: Absolutely not.

HUME: Explain if you will what the -- why South Korea, despite the fact it's most affected by this, is so frightened?

KRAUTHAMMER: Because it's capitol sits right on the border, essentially, of North Korea. And in a war, it could be overrun in a few hours with hundreds of thousands dead. That's why it's had, for 20 years a policy of essentially, appeasement. Which is a way of saying look, and it's.

HUME: It's also vulnerable to artillery too? Conventional artillery.

KRAUTHAMMER: It's -- and North Korea has a million men underarms. By some, its entire GDP is devoted to weaponry and the military. It's -- South Korea has had a policy of trying to wait the regime in the North, appease it with aid and trade and all kinds -- I mean, it gives a lot of aid as a way of waiting for the day in which it collapses internally like the communists in Rumania and elsewhere and hoping it'll have a way out of this dilemma without a war and with a simple collapse. And that's why policy has been split from the United States in not helping us in putting on sanctions in the last 10 or 15 years.

LIASSON: Now you have the former South Korean foreign minister as head of the U.N., which is another interesting development.

HUME: But he's a conciliator.

KONDRACKE: He is a sunshine person. But, you know, this may -- South Korean policy may change as a result of this, the current government is weak and there's elections, I believe, next year in which, probably, more conservative government would come into effect -- furthermore in Japan, you've a hard-liner, Abe, who's been elected prime minister and what you could do it -- the Japanese have enough plutonium for 5,000 bombs. If they started talking about going nuclear, that might get the Chinese off the dime and have, you know, induce them...

HUME: Do you think the U.N. will vote on a resolution with some serious sanctions?

KONDRACKE: I, look.

HUME: Come on.

KONDRACKE: No, I don't.

HUME: OK. Mara?

LIASSON: There's no precedent for that?

KRAUTHAMMER: Serious, no, sanctions yes.

HUME: Really? So this is it hopeless?

KRAUTHAMMER: Basically, yes.

HUME: Well, what about Japan going nuclear? Would that have had an effect?

KRAUTHAMMER: A long range effect, it'll -- China would slowly turn around its policy like a carrier, but it would take a year or two or three. It's not going to stop anything now.

HUME: You think that'll happen?

KRAUTHAMMER: If Japan declares it's going to go nuclear, China will change.