Ed Markey: There Is No Military Solution to North Korea

EXCERPT:

BRENNAN: Because of the kind of oversight role you have, you keep a close eye on the State Department and the secretary of state, who is with the president, and presumably in the room.

What kind of promises have been made by this administration in terms of what they will share with Congress?

MARKEY: We have not been included in any of the preparation for this negotiation. The Democrats have been kept in the dark in terms of what his approach is going to be. I think it would have been far better for him to have included us since it is a Democrat and Republican objective to have a negotiation, a direct negotiation between Kim and Trump. But, thus far, the president has not included Democrats.

BRENNAN: What would it take to win your vote to lift sanctions, so do speak? I mean if they get any kind of agreement and it goes to the Congress, what would change your mind?

MARKEY: Well, the — the president, first of all, is going to have to extract from Kim a definition of what denuclearization means. Right now, there’s a vast gulf between what the United States and North Korea believe that word means. And in our — on our side, we believe it means a removal of all nuclear weapons and delivery capacity on the Korean peninsula. Kim does not actually agree with that.

We would also want an inventory of all of their nuclear weapons sites, all of their ballistic missile sites, all of their development, manufacturing, research facilities to be made public and for there to be a verifiable way of ensuring that there is a dismantlement of those facilities, which is taking place again on a verifiable basis.

BRENNAN: Would you want any agreement to come up for a vote in the Congress as a treaty, something President Obama was criticized for not doing with the Iran nuclear deal?

MARKEY: I would want to see that come forward as a treaty, because part of this negotiation will also be an ending of the Korean War, which is something that goes all the way back to 1953. So I think it would be wise for the president to come to Congress to ensure that there is a ratification of any agreement which does take place between the North Koreans and the United States, while not excluding — and I just want to make this clear — the South Koreans and Japan. We cannot sell out our allies as part of this negotiation.

BRENNAN: Would you have an expectation that the president should seek consent, an authorization for military force, if these talks fail and he has — and he looks at those other military options? We’ve heard from Senator Lindsey Graham today, a Republican, that he has an AMF drafted.

MARKEY: There is no military solution to the problem that exists on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has nuclear weapons. The United States has nuclear weapons. This isn’t like the United States and Iran. Iran did not have nuclear weapons. Neither did Iraq.

This would become very catastrophic very quickly. It — we have 28,000 troops right on the demilitarized line. We have 250,000 other Americans within a 10-mile radius of that border. The casualties would mount up so quickly that it would exceed the first Korean War in terms of deaths to Americans within the first few days and then it would just escalate from there. So this is —

BRENNAN: You would vote no if the president asked for your consent?

MARKEY: This — what the president should do, rather than looking for an authorization for the use of nuclear force — of military force, the president should come back to Congress and ask for even greater authority to put more economic sanctions on the North Koreans, to really squeeze their economy.

The president is saying that he has already used maximum pressure on the North Koreans. That is not so. There has been no cutoff of all of the crude oil that flows from China into North Korea. If we wanted to, we could put together an international coalition that demanded China to cut off that oil into North Korea to further intensify the pressure to come to the table to negotiate. A war is not, in fact, something that can be brought, which is why I’ve introduced a bill that prohibits the president from a first use of nuclear weapons against North Korea if we have not been attacked by nuclear weapons from North Korea. That would be absolutely catastrophic. We need that debate in our country, a debate as to what the authority is of it —

BRENNAN: Yes.

MARKEY: This president or any president to use nuclear weapons first.