The following is an unpublished excerpt from an interview by Observer deputy editor David Wallis with Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is printed here with permission. To read the interview in full, visit the Observer.
What foreign policy issue is receiving short shrift from both presidential candidates?
Whoever wins this election probably on their watch, probably by 2019, 2020, the head of the CIA is going to stroll in…
Or run in
Or run in and say, ‘Madame President or Mr. President, we now believe North Korea has learned how to miniaturize nuclear warheads and put them on missiles with sufficient range and accuracy that they can reach the continental United States.’ And that president is going to have make what I believe is a truly fateful decision about whether we're prepared to live with that. I can't tell you every crisis that's going to come into the President's inbox, but this one you know. This one is coming. And you better be ready for it.
If you had the president’s ear when the CIA Director delivered that fateful news what would you say?
Well before that day arrives, since I can see it coming, I would put tremendous emphasis on a set of negotiations first with South Korea and Japan, then with China about if there's any way to dramatically increase pressure on North Korea. China is the one country that is in a position to change North Korean behavior.
Abandon Taiwan?
That is a trade I would not be willing to make.
That's the type of thing China would ask for.
There might be other things, a nonnuclear peninsula we would commit ourselves to. That might be very attractive to the Chinese.
Given the recent DNC leak, are you concerned about Moscow tinkering with the US election?
I'm not an expert on this, but I’m told most of the systems are not networked or linked. Any kind of interference, even if it doesn't work, is highly objectionable. And if we sense that it's coming from Russia then we ought to look very carefully and be prepared to carry out certain cyber events there that would cause them pause. Right now, the world of cyberspace is too much of a Wild West—and there's no sheriff. So if we can't get countries and governments to act responsibility then we have to make them understand they will pay a price if they act irresponsibility.
