US faces resistance for tough sanctions on N Korea
TOKYO: As North Korea awaits the United Nations’ response to its purported first Hbomb test, Washington is believed to be floating measures that could cause it some serious problems. They range from a ban on selling the North oil or buying its minerals to excluding banks doing business with it from accessing the dollar-based economy or even barring its flagship airline from entering other countries’ airspace. According to some, such measures, if strictly implemented, could together be harsh enough to destabilize North Korea’s ruling regime - and that’s exactly why it would be a big surprise if they are on the UN’s final list.
Every major power in the region has good reason to want to keep North Korea from becoming a credible nuclear threat. But China, which would have to be fully on board to make such sanctions work, has deep misgivings about the wisdom of really tough moves. Russia, no fan of U.S. foreign policy initiatives, has been moving closer to, not farther away from, the regime in Pyongyang. Even South Korea, which arguably has the most to lose if its northern neighbor’s nuclear program moves ahead unchecked, appears to be hesitant about taking drastic measures, such as shutting down its lucrative joint venture industrial zone with Pyongyang just north of the Demilitarized Zone.
The reason is straightforward. Apart from the more hard-line thinkers in Washington, virtually no one wants to have to deal with what might happen if concerted international action were to actually destabilize Kim Jong Un’s regime, however strongly they may feel about its human rights record, authoritarian government and militantly defiant attitude toward Washington, Tokyo, Seoul and anyone else it sees as a threat.
US Secretary of State John Kerry ran into that wall this week during talks in Beijing with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. After meeting for more than four hours Wednesday, Kerry expressed his frustration with what the United States sees as China’s failure to do more rein in Pyongyang, noting that “more significant and impactful sanctions were put in place against Iran, which did not have a nuclear weapon than against North Korea, which does.” “All nations, particularly those who seek a global leadership role, or have a global leadership role, have a responsibility to deal with this threat,” Kerry said.
Verbatim version In response, Wang said China, which is North Korea’s most important ally, chief trading partner and a key source of economic assistance, agreed on the need for a new UN resolution. But he suggested Beijing would not support new penalties even though it condemned the Jan 6 test. “Sanctions are not an end in themselves,” Wang said bluntly. “The new resolution should not provoke new tension in the situation, still less destabilize the Korean Peninsula.” The gap between Washington and Beijing was evident in a particularly angry editorial Tuesday by China’s official Xinhua news agency, which - using an almost verbatim version of Pyongyang’s own take on the issue - put the blame on “Uncle Sam’s uncompromising hostility, manifested in its unceasing defaming, sanctions, isolation and provocation of the DPRK.” It said the key to resolving tensions with North Korea, officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, lies with the US giving up its “antagonistic approach wrought from a Cold War mentality.”
So far, sanctions have included bans on weapon sales, dealing with blacklisted individuals or enterprises and other targeted measures. But they have clearly failed to achieve their main purpose to denuclearize the North. Though its economy has been battered, North Korea has nuclear weapons and has now enshrined in its constitution its right to maintain and develop them. The North says they are an indispensable part of its national defense strategy. No country with the possible exception of South Africa that has gone as far down the road as the North to becoming a nuclear power has ever turned back.
Luxury goods Even so, despite a plethora of sanctions and resolutions that have been thrown at North Korea since its first nuclear test in 2006, Kerry is correct in suggesting that far more action could be taken through sanctions and an enhanced effort to ensure they are strictly enforced by punishing North Korea’s “enablers” - who are mostly seen as Chinese businesses, state enterprises and entrepreneurs. Unilaterally, the US Congress is already moving in that direction. Legislation recently passed by the House of Representatives targets any country, business or individual that materially contributes to North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development, exports luxury goods to North Korea or engages with Pyongyang in money laundering, the manufacture of counterfeit goods or narcotics trafficking.—AP