Marco Rubio in ABC This Week interviews during 2018

On War & Peace: North Korea's nukes are about prestige, not about diplomacy

RUBIO: The first thing we all have to do is stop pretending that we're dealing with the old Soviet Union, or that we're negotiating with Italy or France. This is a very erratic regime that's very distrustful and paranoid about the rest of the world. They've never dealt with outsiders, they don't have an established diplomatic core. They have no history of it. And Kim Jong-un has a personal psychological attachment to these nuclear weapons. They make him feel prestigious; they make him feel powerful. And they have, quite frankly, been what his regime has been known for since he took over seven years ago. This is a man who has to figure out how to survive in power for 50-something years as a dictator and is probably afraid that if he gets rid of these weapons at some point, someone's going to take him out.