Search Results for: cory gardner

Sen. Cory Gardner just gave as good a speech about North Korea policy as I’ve ever seen

Senator Cory Gardner* of Colorado is the new Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy. When I first heard that a freshman Senator had been picked to lead such an important subcommittee, it concerned me. Delving into Gardner’s background, however, it became clear that he’s highly intelligent — he graduated from college summa cum laude, and (at least according to his Wikipedia page) speaks fluent German. He has graduated from law school (never a bad thing for a lawmaker) and served...

Sens. Gardner & Markey call on Trump administration to enforce North Korea sanctions law

Here’s the kind of story you hear too seldom in Washington today: A conservative Republican (Cory Gardner of Colorado) has joined forces with a liberal Democrat (Ed Markey of Massachusetts) to write a letter to the new secretaries of State and Treasury, asking them to fully enforce the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act (NKSPEA), which passed Congress with the overwhelming support of both parties last year. (Even Bernie Sanders would have voted for it had he not been campaigning...

Sen. Gardner calls on Congress to pass North Korea sanctions bill

Amid all of the slaughter and chaos sweeping over us, Senator Cory Gardner doesn’t want us to forget which government built a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007, and that may soon be able to put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile. It is time to ratchet up the pressure. That is why I’ve introduced the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. This bill would require the president to impose sanctions on people who have contributed to North Korea’s nuclear program, enabled its...

Sens. Gardner, Rubio & Risch to introduce new North Korea sanctions bill (updated)

The new bill was revealed in this column by Josh Rogin, and includes a link to the full text. The bill, which still has no number, will be the Senate’s second version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, following the introduction by Senators Menendez and Graham of S. 1747 in July. Both bills follow the lead of Ed Royce and Elliot Engel, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who introduced H.R. 757 in January. H.R. 757,...

Hanoi Redux: the Senate, the Supremes & Pompeo (also, Trump!) on the Iran deal

SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT OBAMA’S DEAL WITH IRAN; what Trump signed with Kim Jong-un in Singapore makes it look like a model of clarity and specificity. For all its flaws, the Iran deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), undeniably gained us something. Its inspection terms and sunset clause were serious flaws and might have proven to be fatal ones. Even so, it got Iran to surrender a big stockpile of enriched uranium and make some useful concessions...

Save Congress a Seat at Hanoi: On North Korea, Sanctions, Treaties & Politics

WHO STILL BELIEVES THAT DONALD TRUMP IS THE GREAT NEGOTIATOR HE CLAIMS TO BE? Certainly not Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or Mitch McConnell. Certainly not Kim Jong-un. Certainly not the people doing the most futile job inside the Beltway right now–writing Donald Trump’s intelligence assessments about North Korea, or of just what he persuaded Kim Jong-un to do at Singapore. Drink a toast to them. Better yet, buy them one. Many people in government now, up to and including John...

The Trump-Kim Pact was a con by both men. We’re the marks.

WHEN I FIRST WROTE ABOUT THE TRUMP-KIM NON-AGGRESSION PACT, I expressed pessimism but reserved judgment until I knew more about its vague terms. I now wonder if history will record it as the most disastrous international agreement since Molotov-Ribbentrop, one that will put the U.S., South Korea, and Japan forever under the shadow of North Korean nuclear blackmail, forever break the global nonproliferation regime, mark the beginning of the end of South Korea’s experiment with liberal democracy, and put us...

Why Trump can’t lift North Korea sanctions unilaterally

THE HIGHEST EXPECTATIONS WE SHOULD HAVE FOR THE UPCOMING CIRCUS IN SINGAPORE are low expectations – that the summit breaks with, at most, a vague agreement that North Korea will denuclearize, without Trump making any concessions for such a nebulous promise. No one deserves a Nobel Prize for trading away our last chance to disarm Kim Jong-un peacefully for more lies, or for excusing Kim Jong-un from the few consequences he faces for proliferation, crimes against peace, organized crime, and...

North Korean Freedom Week is the next test for free speech in “free” Korea

A FEW OF US WILL ALWAYS STUBBORNLY INSIST THAT WE DISREGARD THE LIVES AND DIGNITY of North Korea’s oppressed people at our own peril. We argue that there can be no verified disarmament of a North Korea that remains a closed society, no security in its promises as long as it mendaciously denies the existence of its prison camps, no lasting peace as long as it holds human life in contempt, no reunification between a liberal democracy and a tyranny...

On North Korea sanctions, evidence of an inflection point

As I’ve mentioned previously, this has been a busy month for me, and a difficult one for keeping up with the many developments in North Korea sanctions enforcement. Over the last months, I’ve been keeping a tally of how those efforts are taking shape. The accumulating evidence now gives reason for guarded optimism that at last, the sanctions are starting to show significant effects. Financial. Treasury Undersecretary Sigal Mandelker sent the right message to the financial industry in her recent...

OFK Exclusive: House, Senate move new North Korea sanctions legislation

Last year, Ed Royce, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Cory Gardner, Chairman of the Senate Asia Subcommittee, led the charge to cut Pyongyang’s access to the hard currency that sustains it by drafting and passing the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. We’ve known all along that nothing short of presenting Kim Jong-Un with an existential choice — disarm and reform, or perish — would create the conditions for a negotiated disarmament of North Korea,...

Commence Primary Ignition: Treasury zaps the Bank of Dandong for laundering Kim Jong-Un’s money

And so, the “maximum pressure” we’ve been waiting for begins in earnest. Yesterday afternoon, the Treasury Department announced a series of legal actions against Chinese enablers of North Korea’s proliferation, smuggling, and money laundering. First, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control froze the assets of two businessmen and a shipping company. One of those businessmen, Sun Wei, was the sole shareholder of Mingzheng International Trading, the Chinese company targeted in this recent civil forfeiture action. The shipping company was sanctioned for...

Moon Chung-In’s visit was a fiasco. Moon Jae-In’s summit with Trump might be the next one.

Next week, South Korean President Moon Jae-In will arrive in Washington for his first meeting with President Trump. North Korea policy is certain to be at the top of their agenda. Months ago, I predicted that the combination of Moon Jae-In and Donald Trump would be a uniquely volatile one, and all the indications so far are bearing this prediction out. Volumes of august and cerebral analysis may soon be nullified by 140 characters. This is partially (but only partially)...

What the Trump administration’s first North Korea sanctions designations tell us

Last Friday’s designations of 11 individuals and one company by the Treasury Department are the first North Korea designations of the new Trump administration. So what do they tell us about the direction of the administration’s North Korea policy? On the positive side, the designation of a North Korean coal company affiliated with the military should, in theory, send a strong message to its Chinese clients, although they don’t seem to have taken the last hint. Also on the positive side,...

Congress is marking up North Korea bills faster than I can write about them

Congress’s sentiment about Pyongyang today equates roughly to Cato the Elder’s sentiment about Carthage. (I mean this figuratively, for now, although I increasingly fear that sanctions are our last plausible strategy to prevent war.) It’s now moving more North Korea legislation than it has in the entire decade leading up to the passage of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act just over one year ago. I can no longer keep up with all of the bills, amendments, markups, and resolutions...

Ted Cruz introduces Senate bill to re-list N. Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism

Ted Cruz, who has emerged as a leading advocate for a harder line against North Korea, has introduced a Senate companion bill to Rep. Ted Poe’s bill, calling for North Korea’s re-listing as a state sponsor of terrorism. According to a press release from Senator Cruz’s office,* Cruz’s bill has six original co-sponsors: Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Compared to the House bill, the Senate...

GOP heavyweights push for secondary boycott of North Korea

Six Republican senators — Ted Cruz (TX), Cory Gardner (CO), Thom Tillis (NC), Marco Rubio (FL), Pat Toomey (PA) and David Perdue (GA) — have signed a letter to newly confirmed Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin* calling for improved implementation and enforcement of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhnancement Act (NKSPEA). As Kim Jung-un has exposed his willingness to increase ballistic missile testing with the ultimate goal of achieving nuclear breakout, the potential for this regime to attain...

Trump struggles on North Korea, but it’s still the first quarter (updated)

By this time tomorrow, we’ll know whether initial reports that Kim Jong-nam was assassinated by two North Korean women with a poison needle at the Kuala Lumpur Airport were wrong or only half-wrong. For now, I’ll dwell on grading the Trump administration’s answers to its first North Korean test – the test of a missile system whose moderate range belies its potential dangerousness, given its potential to be launched from a mobile carrier or a submarine. So far, that grade...