JOHN HOCKENBERRY : Is it a game of chicken or a game of international, high-stakes, nuclear poker? North Korea has test-fired more missiles hours after the United Nations Security Council condemned its underground nuclear tests yesterday. The condemnation came yesterday, the tests came over the weekend. This all according to South Korean news reports. South Korea, of course, following the situation very, very closely in North Korea. Here’s Barack Obama talking about North Korea when he was in Prague back at the beginning of April.

Recording of President Obama: Now is the time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Yet, it’s been an uninterrupted path of threats and illegal weapons from North Korea. Here’s the president speaking yesterday.

Recording of President Obama: Russia and China, as well as our traditional allies of South Korea and Japan, have all come to the same conclusion: North Korea will not find security and respect through threats and illegal weapons.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Yet, Pyongyang certainly has our attention — at the White House and here at The Takeaway. Joining us now is Ambassador John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006. He’s currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He joins us today from Bethesda, Maryland. Ambassador Bolton, thanks for joining us.

JOHN BOLTON: Good morning.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: So what tools does the Obama administration have against North Korea that you did or didn’t have when you were in the post as UN ambassador?

JOHN BOLTON: If I may, first, I think it’s important to correct something that you mentioned earlier and that other news media have reported this morning, and that is that the Security Council condemned North Korea yesterday. They did not. The Security Council took no action yesterday. They had a brief meeting where each of the ambassadors said North Korea’s launch, or test, of the nuclear device violated an earlier resolution passed after the first nuclear test in October 2006. They then agreed to work on a resolution. So the idea that they had a meeting and then, like a fire brigade at work, decided to wait to do something until the next day, is exactly the kind of international diplomatic response that North Korea has been counting on. And the respect for which they showed again today by launching two more missiles. To start this understanding by clearly recognizing that the Security Council yesterday didn’t do anything.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: But you would describe this as a green light then to North Korea? The rhetoric from Russia and China?

JOHN BOLTON: I think if you look back at the rhetoric from Russia and China after the nuclear tests in October of 2006 and after earlier missile tests, it was not praise-worthy of North Korea. Then when you get into the real negotiations, not talking, but what the Security Council is going to do, that you find out whether or not China and Russia are prepared to carry through on this.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: But, John Bolton, doesn’t North Korea have the United States and the international community over a barrel under almost any circumstances? Sanctions are at a peak. Short of an actual invasion…

JOHN BOLTON: They’re not at a peak. You’re just fundamentally wrong on this.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: What are the tools?

JOHN BOLTON: My point to you is you clearly don’t understand what the state of play is. The sanctions that were imposed after the first nuclear test in October of ’06 were primarily military sanctions and they’re quite limited. The next step, really, ought to be the kind of sweeping economic sanctions that were imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. That would be a real sign. Now, whether that’s going to happen or not is an open question. As of right now, no draft resolution is even on the table.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: So you’re saying there are many more sanctions that can be applied, many more ways of making North Korea even more isolated, tools that weren’t even used under the Bush administration?

JOHN BOLTON: That’s exactly right. If China and Russia and others will go along with it. That’s why it’s important, indeed critical, to distinguish between what people are saying and what they’re actually doing. In New York, you’ll recall the words of former UN ambassador during the Johnson administration, Arthur Goldberg, who said, “Diplomats always approach crises with an open mouth.”

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Alright, understood. Would you support unilateral U.S. actions against North Korea in this particular regard?

JOHN BOLTON: Yes, absolutely. The administration should put North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. We never should have taken them off. We should resume our efforts to exclude North Korea from international financial markets, which the Bush administration started with the Banco Delta Asia matter, but then gave up on, really losing a big opportunity there. I think most importantly, the United States should apply its persuasive powers to China, which alone has the power, I think, to make fundamental changes in North Korea’s behavior. China supplies 80-90 percent of North Korea’s energy, supplies a substantial amount of North Korea’s food. It could change that regime if it wanted to.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Would you support changing our configuration, militarily, in the DMZ?

JOHN BOLTON: I don’t think we need to do that. I don’t think it’s a question of military action, although I do think that we and South Korea have to be prepared in the case of instability in North Korea, Kim Jong Il dying, or some evidence of unrest, to take steps to try to stabilize North Korea and try to prevent its nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

FARAI CHIDEYA: I just had one quick question on a broader level. You know there are two American journalists who are in North Korea under indictment right now. One of them is Laura Ling, who is the sister of the journalist Lisa Ling, and there was a big vigil here in the U.S. about it. But the question is: What kind of first hand reporting do we have? There are a lot of speculations about leadership in the region, etc. But when U.S. journalists can’t get in, how much information do we have about what North Korean politics are like, how people are faring, people who have in the past been dealing with famines? Are we going on a lack of information when we talk about North Korea?

JOHN BOLTON: I think there’s a substantial lack of information about the internal politics of North Korea, and that’s why I think the endless speculation about whether his son or his brother-in-law is going to succeed Kim Jong Il is a little beside the point. You want to know something about the regime we’re dealing with, starting with a common base in 1945, at the end of WWII, in fact much of the industry of the Korean peninsula was in North Korea. After the division of the peninsula in 1945 until today, the average height of the average North Korean citizen is 3 to 6 inches shorter than the average South Korean. That’s the kind of regime they run in North Korea, they’ve got people who for many years now have been on the verge of starvation. The one thing that regime cares about is keeping itself in power. That’s what these nuclear weapons are for. They’re not going to be negotiated out of those nuclear weapons. So when the President called yesterday to get North Korea back to the six-party talks, they must have been chuckling in Pyongyang.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Alright. But they’re also chuckling if they think there’s any pressure that’s going to come from China. It seems like China and South Korea are willing to kind of let the nuclear proliferation to the north, to let it live.

JOHN BOLTON: I think South Korea made a major decision today by announcing that it would join the American-led Proliferation Security Initiative. This is something started in the Bush administration in his first term. Under prior South Korean governments they had declined to join with us in the Proliferation Security Initiative, and I think their decision to join today is a very significant step forward. As for China, if they’re serious about stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, North Korea is the perfect test. And if in fact they don’t want to step up pressure on North Korea, then we’ll surely see it in the Security Council over the next several days.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Ambassador Bolton, can I ask you about Vice President Cheney?

JOHN BOLTON: Sure.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: What do you make of him creating this debate, sort of mano a mano with the President over national security and the detainees at Gitmo? Do you think it’s responsible?

JOHN BOLTON: I don’t think he created a debate. I’m with the American Enterprise Institute…

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Oh, come on.

JOHN BOLTON: We scheduled the speech that Vice President Cheney gave long before President Obama scheduled his speech. But what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with debate?

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Nothing’s wrong with debate…

JOHN BOLTON: It’s not mano a mano. This is about policy. As long as the news media tries to turn this into an ad hominem thing, I think it’s doing an injustice to your listeners who have a much higher intelligence.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Vice President Cheney didn’t speak to the nation even remotely as much as he’s done in the last two weeks…

JOHN BOLTON: He was Vice President, sir. He was Vice President. He had an obligation to hew to the President’s line. And he gave a lot of speeches when he was Vice President.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: So if there’s a terrorist attack, what will Vice President Cheney say then, “I told you so?”

JOHN BOLTON: I don’t know, why don’t you ask him?

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: The question is do you think this is a responsible debate?

JOHN BOLTON: I don’t speak for the Vice President. Ask the Vice President.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: But do you think that he’s correct?

JOHN BOLTON: Of course.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Of course?

JOHN BOLTON: [silence]…

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Of course?

JOHN BOLTON: That’s what I said.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: No more elaboration?

JOHN BOLTON: You asked me if he was correct. I’ll answer a different way: Yes, I think he’s correct and very articulate.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Alright. Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and as you said, you scheduled that address by Vice President Cheney. He’s currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Ambassador John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, thanks for joining us.

JOHN BOLTON: Thank you.