China did what it should have done by welcoming North Korea leader Kim Jong Un for his first trip out of his country since taking power, as it does not want to risk having a failed state across its border, former Secretary of State James Baker said Wednesday, while mentioning the idea of changing North Korea's regime.
"They don't want a whole lot of refugees flowing across the border into China, and they don't want U.S. troops on their border," Baker, also a former chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan, told MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports" host Andrea Mitchell. "It would be the case, of course, if the United States and South Korea ended up with a very friendly government there in North Korea."
Baker said he's struck by the fact that China and the United States have both had issues with the behavior of North Korea and its leader, and he floated the idea of the two countries cooperating in a plan to change its regime.
Baker said if he were in Washington, he would send a high-level envoy to meet with Xi to work out an agreement to stop North Korea's actions, including supporting any government China installs in North Korea, so long as they rule out the acquisition of or maintenance of nuclear weapons.
And when Mitchell asked him if he meant regime change, Baker replied "Yeah. Well, that's what it would be."
"The Chinese are not happy," he continued. "We're not happy. Now this guy here is going to change his behavior and actually agree to denuclearization, or neither the United States or China are going to be happy. "
"The only thing we would be asking China to do is take care of that change, and they're in a position to do it.," said Baker. "They're saying, 'oh, no, we can't do that, we don't have that kind of influence. I don't believe that. China controls everything that happens in North Korea if they want to. They can cut off exports from the north Koreans."
China, Baker also said, is "not happy with the idea that they're going to have a heavily nuclear-armed Korean peninsula right there on their border. They don't want to see that. We don't want to see that. So I think it's too bad that there wasn't some way that we could work with the Chinese to achieve this, this result of denuclearization of the peninsula."
China is the only country that has a significant influence on North Korea, continued Baker, but that's not the route the United States is taking.
"We're going the route of negotiating with North Korea," Baker said. "That's fine. I'm a great believer in diplomacy. I'm also a realist and I know what's happened since 1994. We've seen the North Koreans talk a lot but not do anything constructive by way of reducing their missiles and development of nuclear weapons."
The argument could also have been made that President Donald Trump could have waited and thought through Kim's invitation to visit, said Baker. At the same time, though, there is some chance that an agreement could be reached to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, he said.
"We ought to make sure we stick with that as our goal," said Baker. "That of course would require extensive verification procedures on the ground, anywhere, be any time, any place type stuff."
If Trump fails during his meetings, he must be prepared about what will happen and what his next step will be, said Baker.
"Everybody knows the cataclysmic consequences of a war on the Korean Peninsula in terms of loss of life, primarily Korean loss of life," said Baker.
He added that he does not know the extent to which the United States could take out North Korea's nuclear capability.
"I'm told we could get the vast majority of it in a surgical strike type activity," Baker said, "but that's not a very good option, in my mind. Let's hope that somehow we find a breakthrough diplomatically."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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