09/08/2017 Newsnight

North Korea versus the USA - the language on both sides

But is there any logic to actual military action by either side?

The world woke up to what felt like a serious prospect that we'll

However, we may take heart from the fact that there

One of the problems Trump faces is, as belligerent and as inflammatory

as his rhetoric gets, it's actually pretty

We'll ask if strong words have value, or raise the chance of some

It was like pulling teeth to get information, but European expenses

were published today. Do they tell us anything we need to know?

# Ar ben waun Tredegar mae ffrwythau o bob rhyw

Is it Government's job to promote it,

and is it a help or hindrance to the nation?

And we look at electro-fishing, a way of disturbing bottom-dwelling

Yes, it's like pins and needles in your fingers.

Hello, President Trump didn't just shock the world last night,

with his words of fire and fury aimed at North Korea,

he also shocked some of his advisors apparently,

as he was ad libbing rather than giving agreed lines.

That's according to the New York Times.

But even before the President had spoken, North Korea had

issued its own threat, saying the country is carefully

examining a plan to strike the American territory of Guam.

Just more words on their side, of course.

At one level, you might worry that the words will run out,

But you might ask why it's just words, and not weapons yet?

Could it be that both sides know their own limitations in any

Our diplomatic editor Mark Urban has been working through the logic.

American carriers exercising off Korea. But these pictures were taken

in May, and none of them are there now. The President seems out of sync

with his military and his top diplomats. Today, he emphasised the

defensive nature of US precautions. I think what the President was

reaffirming his that the United States has the capability to fully

defend itself from any attack and defend our allies. And we will do

so. The American people should sleep well at night. Tillerson is in tune

with generations of American statesman who stuck to Teddy

Roosevelt's Maxim, speak softly and carry a big stick. But one reason he

can be sanguine is because America's stick is not being brandished right

now. America is not in a position to strike. It is only carrier in the

area of Korea docked in Japan at the end of an operational tour. Bombers

in Guam may have got the North's attention, but while the US has a

feud is aircraft in range that could mount a limited strike, none of the

broader preparations you would expect are visible. I don't think

there is a credible military option for the US to try to suppress North

Korea's nuclear programme. It would invite an unthinkable retaliation.

To think that Seoul, South Korea's capital, is in artillery range, to

think that US bases are in the cross hairs, to think that allies, who are

very nervous at the moment, are also in the cross hairs. One of the

problems R-Truth faces is, as belligerent and inflammatory as the

rhetoric gets, it is pretty difficult to use the stick. And

America's stick, even when brandished, is not as big as it used

to be. It could still strike North Korea, and hard. But poor aircraft

availability, reduced stocks of bombs and missiles, mean readiness

for a major conflict is poor. Add to that the vast size of North Korea's

Armed Forces, presenting hundreds of thousands of possible targets, many

pointing to the south, America's ability to control any ensuing

escalation is limited. Its Defence Secretary has said as much. General

Mattis has been public in the statements he has made about just

how significant the military risks would be going forward with any kind

of pre-emptive strike. He has made those statements on the record and

he has talked about just how brutal any kind of military activity would

be, how close Seoul is, for example. So, bereft of a big stick, or one

that could be run dished credibly, anyway, you think the President

might moderate his tone. -- brandished credibly. North Korea's

threats to the United States, if they make more, they will be met

with fire and fury, like the world has never seen. Why carry on with

such language? Maybe he is playing hard cop to China's soft? But North

Korea's nukes have changed calculation is. The idea that North

Korea's bomb is a reality, that soon it will have the ability to deliver

that bomb across the world, the idea that North Korea identifies that

bomb with its own survival and will not give it up voluntarily, it is a

simple idea, but one of the most difficult to stomach, because it

offends the whole notion of America's uncontested global

leadership and its deep commitment to inhibit in the proliferation of

what it sees as rogue states. With North Korea now threatening a US

base in NICE, the war of words may have taken on a life of its own.

Some de-escalation, at least verbal, is now vital.

We'll assess the North Korean threat shortly, but it has

focused attention on Guam - for unwelcome reasons.

Guam itself is a petite, attractive, island in the Pacific,

around 6000 miles off the coast of California.

It's only about 25 miles long, and four miles wide

Almost a third of it is actually occupied by the US military.

The population of about 160,000 has US citizenship,

but Guam is not a US state - it was nabbed by the Americans

Apart from US military, tourism is one of its main

industries, for reasons that are quite understandable.

The territory does not get to vote in US elections,

but it does have a non-voting member of the House of Representatives.

She is Madeleine Bordallo, and I spoke to her earlier

about Donald Trump's handling of North Korea.

I'm one of these where I think we can solve

Coming on with harsh words like the President did,

it's very dangerous to go through something like that.

I understand that maybe the North Korean leader did not even

understand exactly what "fire and fury" means.

I feel that we've been through threats with North Korea before.

Our former President, Obama, had to deal diplomatically with this

leader and other countries in the region.

And, you know, people say, well, people are calm on Guam.

We have a great number of military bases.

We have two major military bases on Guam and we have a large

We have the THAAD missile defence operation there,

which I was able to get a couple of years ago when these

So, we've been told by the military, by Secretary Mattis and Admiral

Harris that they were going to take good care of Guam if anything

So, I'm putting my faith in that the military will take good

You say Jim Mattis and the others, the defence establishment,

say to you on Guam, look, we'll protect you,

Not quite a part of the United States, but a territory

Well, for one thing, you say we're not part

But I feel, even though we're not, we're an insular area,

They have said, well, they're ramping up their military activity.

And now, already, we are hearing that they're beginning to ramp up.

And when they spoke to me, they always tell me, you know,

of our close proximity to North Korea.

Our island would be a very strategic area to ramp up military

THAAD, that missile protection system, does that work?

Does it give you a sense of security?

It's giving me the sense of security.

They've been through a number of tests and briefings,

and I understand that every one of the briefings has

You say you don't like this kind of tough talking that's going on.

I wonder what you think the Americans should be doing?

Because it is a problem, and it is going to be difficult

Indeed, they did try to negotiate with the North Koreans and persuade

them not to have a nuclear programme all those years ago,

What is the approach that you would take?

I don't know that this current President has done any

I don't know what kind of meetings have been set up, and everything.

But, you know, to comment about fire and fury,

It's just not making anybody comfortable

I really think, I've worked many years in politics and I believe

I think that talking out things can bring about a peaceful solution.

So what should we make of the mixed signals we're hearing from America -

I'm joined from across the Atlantic by Jon Finer.

Until January, he was chief of staff for Secretary of State John Kerry

Also with us from Washington is Peter Feaver, who held positions

on America's National Security Council under both Presidents Bush

Good evening to you. Jonathan, what would John Kerry be doing if he was

Secretary of State? He would be the best person to answer this question,

but I have to believe, as a big believer, as a secretary Kerry is,

in the power of diplomacy, even diplomacy backed by force, but to

achieve dramatic objectives, that he would be doing a version of what

secretary Tillerson has been doing and saying in recent days, making

clear the real consequences that would come to the North Korean

regime if it continues down the path it is on, but also sending

reassuring signals to our allies and keeping open the possibility of

diplomatic process to try to de-escalate the confrontation. Not

rattling the Sega with provocative statements in public. You said you

would tell them what would happen to them if they carry on, what would

happen to them? I think the deterrent messages, this is what the

messaging is about. It is about deterring bad behaviour by the North

Korean regime. They are best carried directly and privately. Not carried

in a public form, where they can very easily be misinterpreted. We

spend a lot of time and energy, I'm sure Peter can speak to this as

well, trying to interpret the statements that come out of

Pyongyang, much of which involves rhetoric that we choose to discount

because it is so over the top. But much of which we don't really know

how to understand. We are in a situation that is very unusual for

the United States. We have our own administration, not just anyone, but

our own President, that are very difficult, not just for the rest of

the world or even Americans to interpret, but, much more of

concern, for the North Korean government to interpret. That can

lead to misunderstandings. The only thing worse than choosing to go to

war in this situation would be stumbling into a war that neither

side wants. Peter, could there be strategy or clever tactics in this

kind of rhetoric that we had from Donald Trump yesterday? The fact it

was rather different to the rhetoric from Rex Tillerson, good cop, bad

cop, I don't know what is going on. Is something clever going on? There

are some plausible rationales. The President could be saying we have

tried for 30 years, moderate rhetoric, and it hasn't worked,

let's try some source for the goose. The language that the President used

against Kim Jong-un is the kind of language you hear from North

Koreans. It could also be the case that he is trying to rattle the

Chinese, who very much fear this escalation spiral that John was

talking about, and who have a lot of Lovren Joe Byrne North Korea. He

could be trying to alarm the Chinese into taking action on economic

sanctions rant. -- they have a lot of leveraged over North Korea. The

President took his own national security team by surprise with his

rhetoric. So it is clear that the team had not drafted this rhetoric.

If there was this calculation, it was the President's own.

Does confusion or mixed messaging ever have a place to play in dealing

with a adversary? Well President Trump believes the United States has

been too predictable and during the campaign he criticised President

Obama for being too predictable, predictable that he would make

concessions he said. Trump was unpredictable and there is the mad

men theory that president Nixon was said to develop, where Kissinger

would meet with foreign leader, saying, you can trust me, but we

don't know what president Nixon will do. But it is a very dangerous game

to play and it is best done if all the team has gamed it out. Have

thought about it. Jonathan, the, you mentioned the risk of a

miscalculation that causes a mistake into conflict. Talk us through that

and how it could occur in the worst case? I think there are two

dangerous scenarios for the United States, the president is a proponent

of the theory strategic ambiguity, but that only works if there is a

strategy behind it and there is a plan to implement on and take

advantage of the ambiguous situation. The risk is that the

president makes these statements and the North Koreans say it is just

bluster and continue and call the president's bluff and then the

credibility of the president's threats is diminished or the North

Koreans take it too seriously and believe he is on the cusp of

launching an attack and decide it is in their best interest to move first

and you are in this conflict that neither sides wants. Because it is

in neither sides' interest to go to war, but it happens any way. At this

stage, what is the best way to de-escalate this and settle it down

and get back to where we were three years ago? Well there is two things

that are concerning about where we are now. First, the administration

has said that it is intolerable that North Korea possesses a nuclear

weapon. Well, they already possess one. So that kind of language,

declaring what is already a fact intolerable backs the president into

a corner. The second thing is the president threatened North Korea

with more if North Korea continued to make verbal threats. Well verbal

threats is the daily activity of the North Korean Government. I think he

would have been wiser to narrow it down to behaviour like missile

launches. The president may have backed himself into a corner. What

could happen... We have to leave it there. Thank you both very much

indeed. At a time when elites are viewed

rather suspiciously, those in power need to be careful

that their official expenses do not MPs here have never quite

recovered since their So, is the EU Commission

about to get a caning for its expenses, two months

of which were published today? The Commission has been coy

about releasing more data than that of January and February 2016,

and that was forced out of them after a complaint

to the European Ombudsman. Among the items we now know about,

a 27,000 euro bill for a two-day In fairness, there were nine

of them in the delegation. At a commission press conference

today, the spokeswoman was put These details were obtained by a

Spanish NGO, why doesn't the commission make the expenses public?

We do publish mission expenses when ever we are asked to provide

information. You have the whole budget of the EU that contains a

section with expenses, namely heading five, that is available to

you how much we spend. Helen Darbishire is the executive

director of Access Info Europe, the NGO which has been pushing

the European Commission for three John Redwood is the Conservative MP

for Woking and is with me. Give us the back ground and how hard

it was and what efforts you had to go to and what stalling there was

when you asked for the expenses? Good evening, Evan. We first filed a

request about three years ago. We realised that no one had asked for

this information and to correct what the spokesperson said in the

conference today, the information isn't actually available. We used

the equivalent of the EU's equivalent of the British Freedom of

Information Act and asked for this. We got some total numbers at first.

But there was a reluctance to give us the details of expenditure. So we

have had quite a battle trying to use arguments as to why we should be

given this and finally we have been given the ex-pensions for the first

two -- expenses for the first two months of 2016. We asked for, in

fact 120 requesters asked for the expenses of of 2016. John Redwood,

are you shocked by this, we have the private jet to Italy. There was a

bill for foreign affairs representative to get to a summit.

Does that shock you? No, I suspected that was going on all along. I

remember when I negotiated for Britain many years ago I went on the

normal public transport fare, but there was a lot of Executive jets,

including one for commissioners. So it doesn't surprise me. All the time

British taxpayers are helping to pay for the bill as we will until we

leave. Its a matter of concern and they should be as transparent as the

United Kingdom Government has to be in telling people where the money is

spent and why. Helen, were you shocked when you saw the figures,

only the two months and we don't know if it was a high or low month,

did you think they looked high? No, I didn't think they're that high

actually. I did a comparison with David Cameron's expenditure for the

same period and whereas for the commissioner the average is b about

one and half thousand, David Cameron was four and a half. Theresa May's

in yo 17 are over ?6,000 a mission. It is important to keep a

perspective, I don't know how many people have asked how much did

Theresa May's trip to visit Donald Trump cost? It cost about ?43,000

and includes taking an RAF plane for which the British taxpayer has to

pay. So these expenses are quite... Reasonable and in line with what we

would be expecting Government officials around Europe to be paying

for similar kinds of trips. Is that fair, because actually, yeah,

British ministers do fly on RAF planes, they go to North Holt and

jump on a Government plane. It not a comparison to compare a head of a

Government with a commissioner, a commissioner is a senior official,

the heads of state and governments are the senior people in the EU. And

we don't send our senior officials or ministers around on anything

other than public transport flights at normal fares. But it is not a

major item. I think the bigger item is the lack of transparency and that

these are very big budgets and we are having to pay a lot for them and

one of main reasons people voted to leave the EU, we want that money

back, because we need it for hospitals and social care and other

thins where we would like to spend more and the sooner we are out, the

sooner we get that money back and it is important we don't go on paying

for this. Helen, this is going to get into the Brexit debate, most

people will tend to feel, whatever the figures, they are high, they may

hear you say it is normal, but people say you never need to take a

private jet. Just go the next day. I think that the question of the

amount, it is a very small amount. It is about ?90,000 per country that

has been contributed to the costs of these expenses and there haven't

been that many private jets used. We see a lot of ordinary planes being

taken as well. I do agree the transparency issue is important and

it is unfortunately that the commission didn't make this

information public sooner. It is the lack of transparency that can lead

to a skewed debate about what is actually the European does, the

value and the way it is working within pretty reasonable budgets to

do everything it does. What we are doing now from access info Europe is

calling on the commission to step up and make public all of this

information and put it online so that any citizen can check and see

how much is being spent. As the British Government does. Thank you

both very much. We did ask for someone

from the European Commission to join us tonight, but nobody

was available. In a statement, they said private

air travel was only allowed for Commissioners when no commercial

alternative was available and that Commissioners had only made

28 private 'air taxi' The Welsh Government has set out

plans to change the way it promotes This is a sensitive area of public

policy and inevitably any Those keen on Welsh feel that

one innocuous-sounding proposal to abolish the job

of Welsh Language Commissioner and replace it with

a Welsh Language Commission is a threat to the identity

and culture of Welsh speakers. The Government has talked

of the bureaucracy of the current So should they be trying to make

life easier for non-Welsh companies, or should they be doing more

for the language? Before we discuss that,

let us infuse some In 1901, half the population

of Wales could speak the language. Now the figure

is not even a quarter - And only around half of those people

are fluent in Welsh. According to the official census

figures, all the Welsh speakers What is true though,

is that there's been growth in Welsh speaking since the introduction

of the Welsh Language Act in 1993. With me now is Ruth Dawson,

Wales Editor of The Conversation news website, and the novelist

Julian Ruck is in Carmarthen. Ruth, you're, you feel strongly

about Welsh, how many v how much of it do you speak. Not very much. Can

I do the basics. What is the importance of it as a small Welsh

speaker, a Welsh person? It is a huge part of the culture and I wish

I could speak more Welsh and I think the Government drive is fantastic

for showing how important the language is for the people of Wales.

I just like I say, I wish I could speak more myself! Is it possible

that actually most people in Wales are a bit like Ruth, they sort of

believe in the language, sfren they don't really -- esfren nay don't

really speak it. Let me firstly say I have nothing against a Welsh

speaker, but the statistics that you use, they don't, they cloud over

whether someone can read or write the language. Now, as far as I'm

concerned, the expense to the taxpayer that is the English

taxpayer ass well as the Welsh is far outraged by the number of people

who can speak it. You're talking about 150 odd million a year. Now,

would say to someone who is dependent on the health service that

you have got to wait because X, YZ, they won't with p be happy if they

know the money is going to Welsh language. You know, it is, nobody

has mentioned in the news reports about Mary Hughes the Welsh language

commissioner being an ex-chair woman of the Welsh Language Society. Now,

that is a conflict of interest and shouldn't be allowed. But that is

the extent of the situation. Is this a classic liberal position,

she says nobody should be discouraged from speaking Welsh,

everybody should be allowed to speak Welsh, and we will see how many

people choose to speak it, how many have it as a hobby, how many speak

it as their main language, how companies independently decide how

to speak it. Is there not something to be said for that? In an ideal

world, everybody would be left to their own devices and pick up Welsh

naturally and get on with it. They might choose not to? They might

think, it is not to me, why do I need to pick it up, if they don't

want to? Languages are not the easiest thing to learn. But I do

think that people need help. I mean, for as long as I've been alive, the

Welsh government and people of Wales have been encouraged to speak Welsh.

I had it at school, but I didn't pick up enough of it, my education

was not enough, and then is to be a bigger push to make sure more people

are using the language every day. There is the key. You can go to a

Welsh medium school and come out of it, and you cannot speak Welsh. What

is the point in all of the money? It's nonsense. S4C is down, radio

Cymru is down, all of it is down. The money they are pumping in is not

making more people speak Welsh, that is a fact. I think you will find

across the board in Wales, a lot of English-language Welsh media has

lost its audience as well. There are new forms of Welsh language media,

especially online, that are building up a new audience, especially in

that category. Is there an issue around economic development? Is it a

deterrent to English companies, or international companies, that have

no Welsh speakers at all, in investing in Wales, putting

something in Wales, if they are thinking, my goodness, we are going

to have all of these Welsh language issues? If we are deciding between a

Welsh region or an English region, it could tip the balance? I can't

speak from experience, but I don't think that is the case. The Welsh

government has done a lot of work to encourage international companies to

come to Wales. They don't see it as a barrier at all. Hold on, this is a

nationalist argument. Nationalism turns companies, whether they be

small, medium or large, it turns them away. You say to a company,

come and work in Wales, and then you give them a massive bill to convert

everything to Welsh. They are going to take a hike. And it is a hike

left. Thank you very much indeed. If you happened to be

a fish that likes to dwell at the bottom of the north sea -

like plaice or sole - which do you think you'd prefer,

as a way of being raised from the sea bed and scooped

into a net to be caught Would you opt to be dragged up

into the net by a huge metal cable, which is the current and legal

method of catching Or would you opt to be disturbed

by an electric shock, that stirs you from the depths,

into the human food chain? Well, this latter method is called

pulse fishing, or electro fishing, and although illegal in the EU,

a number of experimental licenses So many, in fact, that the vast

majority of the commercial Dutch beam-trawling fleet

now "electro-fish". It's not to the liking of British

fishermen and environmentalists. James Clayton went to

the Netherlands to find out more about this experimental

form of fishing. You don't really associate

disruptive innovation with fishing. However, what's going

on in the North Sea could well But there's a snag - the technique

is incredibly controversial and Welcome to pulse or

electro-fishing - the saviour of fishing, or the fracking

of the ocean, depending on your Den Helder on the northern tip

of the Netherlands and trawlers are making their weekly

trip back to port to deliver their For hundreds of years,

these boats used a method Large chains are dragged

behind the boat on the seabed to raise mainly flat fish

from under the sand. Greenpeace has described

this traditional beam-trawling method

as one of the most The friction of these chains means

that fishermen need a lot of diesel So much so in fact that

with high oil prices a decade ago, many trawlermen

went out of business. But the Dutch are an innovative

bunch and a group of locals came up with a plan -

rather than dredging up the bottom, they would simply pass an electric

field over the surface and stun

the fish up from the bottom. It's not like you put

your fingers in. Pim Visser represents

some of the fishermen. They just tow these electrodes

just over the bottom. This doesn't have the current

and this has the current. You might be thinking this kind

of fishing must be regulated in The catching of marine

organisms using methods incorporating the use

of explosives, poisoning or stupefying substances or electric

currents shall be prohibited. But pulse fishing

is allowed under an experimental licence, with research

continuing into its short and undertaking research

into pulse fishing. We have done a lot of experiments

on a suite of organisms ranging from ragworm

to shellfish, fish species, sharks and rays and in

general we don't very, we don't find an effect,

or very limited effect and there are some exceptions

and the one exception You have a larger cod,

it is not so much the smaller cod, when you have larger cod,

then in some instances Apparently, for that size

of cod, the electric stimulation is too much

and then their muscles,

their own muscles break the spine. They aren't actually electrocuted

and the Dutch are so confident the technology is safe they rigged

up a rather unscientific experiment. You can just put your hand in,

it is absolutely, this is the pulse. Everything about this

looks slightly... Fine, it is just

electrodes and water. Yes, it's sort of like

pins and needles. Open and close your hand and you can

feel the difference. The bigger you are,

the more you get. So the issue is if you were a big

cod, and you run past that, then your body starts going

into spasm and things like that? The whole week they

have about 20 cods. 40 kilograms of cod,

compared to tonnes of plaice and sole is not a lot

in the grand scheme of things and there are other good arguments

to say that pulse fishing is more environmentally friendly

than beam fishing. The carbon emissions are

significantly lower and the sea bed But many environmentalists

aren't happy. It's possible that it

is better than beam trawling and influenza is better

than bubonic plague! Beam trawling is so

fantastically damaging that it would be hard to conceive

of anything worse than that. And what we have been told

is this is an experiment. It is an experiment

in the same way that Japanese scientific whaling

is a scientific experiment - how many whales can we bring

on board and what do they taste like once

we have caught them? The problem with this experiment

is there is no control area. There is no way of

assessing the results The Dutch argue that

the research they have conducted over many years into pulse

fishing is scientifically rigorous. However - and this is important -

it is still in the research phase. So if you look at all the trawlers

here, one, two, three, four, five, are just coming into

the dock this morning. And it begs the question -

how many trawlers do you need to do At the moment there are about 79

vessels that fish with the pulse gear and strictly speaking

for research purposes, you don't But again, the reason why

the Dutch Government has decided to do it in this manner,

I think you have to ask them. We, as the international community,

share a responsibility for But despite the main

research institute Government told Newsnight:

experimental trawlers, the Dutch We think

the research is fine and the extra research will only underpin

what we have already found. For Dutch fishermen,

pulse fishing has been One told me a few years

ago he was earning about 30,000 euros and he now

takes home 70,000. 80% of the Dutch beam trawling fleet

have now converted to pulse fishing and the research

period will end in 2019. At which point, the EU

will decide whether to But inevitably there are questions

about whether the Dutch Government has allowed en masse

a questionable form of fishing to operate in the North Sea

for in part commercial reasons. But although the weather

is not uniformly bright, it is still summer -

so it's still Proms season. The last few weeks we've been

bringing the Proms to you, Tonight we have the acclaimed German

cellist Alban Gerhardt, playing the Sarabande

from Bach's Sixth Cello Suite. He'll be at the Royal

Albert Hall tomorrow. His cello is not far off being as

old as Bach himself, it has been around for about 300 years.