Largely based on almost 300 interviews with former US, South Korean and Chinese officials as well as his own experiences, Joel Wit’s new book, Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea, examines how six American presidents failed to stop Pyongyang from building nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. He points to Barack Obama and Donald Trump as the two presidents most responsible for that failure. As a result, the United States is now faced with the threat of North Korea’s missiles that could reach its cities, and northeast Asia is on the verge of a nuclear arms race.
This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Science and International Security, National Committee on North Korea, and Arms Control Association.
Co-Sponsors
Featured Speakers
Joel S. Wit, Distinguished Fellow, Stimson Center
Joel S. Wit is a Distinguished Fellow in Asian and Security Studies at the Stimson Center. Wit is an internationally recognized expert on Northeast Asia security issues and co-founder of the 38 North website. As a U.S. State Department official, he helped negotiate the 1994 US-DPRK Agreed Framework and was subsequently in charge of its implementation until he left government in 2002, holding countless talks with North Korean officials, including the military and nuclear establishments.
Nick Schifrin, Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent, PBS News Hour (Moderator)
Nick Schifrin is PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent. He leads NewsHour’s daily foreign coverage, including multiple trips to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has created weeklong series for the NewsHour from nearly a dozen countries.
The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2017 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In 2020 Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the NewsHour teams awarded a 2021 Peabody for coverage of COVID-19, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for coverage of Afghanistan and Ukraine.
Jenny Town, Senior Fellow and Director, Korea Program and 38 North, Stimson Center (Opening Remarks)
Jenny Town is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center and the Director of Stimson’s Korea Program and 38 North. Her areas of expertise include North Korea, US-DPRK relations, US-ROK alliance relations and extended deterrence, and Northeast Asia regional security. She was named one of Worth Magazine’s “Groundbreakers 2020: 50 Women Changing the World” and one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business in 2019 for her role in co-founding and managing 38 North, which provides policy and technical analysis on North Korea.