Where Is That Other Shoe?

[Update:  

A State Department official who asked not to be identified said the sanctions authority, bearing the name of Senator John Glenn, who sponsored it in the Congress, is open-ended in the range of sanctions available. That official predicted that all financial and economic transactions with North Korea would be ended, except for humanitarian aid. ]

We’ve all been waiting for othe other shoe to drop — for the U.S. to announce what sanctions it will impose — since North Korea’s July missile test. Yonhap reports on Secretary of State Rice’s remarks at Heritage, and reports:

The United States will impose the kind of sanctions against North Korea that were taken on India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests in 1998, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday….

“As for our part, the United States is now obligated to adopt additional sanctions on North Korea under national legislation, including the Glenn Amendment,” Rice said.

Which means?

Sanctions against India, which conducted the test in May 1998, included prohibition of activities funded under the foreign assistance act, U.S. government credit and other financial assistance by U.S. agencies.

Foreign military sales and financing were also prohibited, along with export licenses for certain munitions and dual-use goods.

The U.S. also opposed loans and other assistance to India by international institutions.

That’s pretty much the same deal as the North Korea Nonproliferation Act, which just passed both houses of Congress and which, as I noted here, means approximately squat. Still, if you read the full text of the address here (video here), and from the word “including,” Rice isn’t saying that this will be full extent of it. If so, we’d hardly be in a position to do what Rice did — prod the South Koreans into stronger action.
A few random points I noted:

* It’s always interesting to note who makes the various lists of nations to which Sec. Rice referred. Russia was notably absent from the list of regional democracies, so I guess we’ve stopped pretending;

* There are minor but interesting contrasts between how she discusses Japan and how she discusses South Korea;

* She makes implicit threats against the North if it proliferates, but they rang hollow;

* A patient explanation of why the Clinton policy was a failure, including the fact that the North had extracted enough plutonium to make a bomb before the Agreed Framework, and then, on to the uranium ….

Finally, Rice makes the most convincing argument I’ve yet heard for Bush’s multilateral negotiating policy. She notes that it set us up for two wins at the U.N., which it probably did. I also think those wins are much more meaningful than most U.N. resolutions, because (a) there’s a realistic way for someone other than the U.N. to enforce them, and (b) they attack a legitimate regime vulnerability, its palace economy.

There’s also a big problem with that strategy: its success depends on failure. You’re only set up to gain multilateral cooperation if Kim Jong Il does something as remarkably stupid as actually testing a bomb, despite your best efforts to the contrary. Iran would not have been so stupid.

Here’s a better argument that she couldn’t make it publicly: multilateral talks have cosmetic value. Again, however, you can’t call multilateral talks a recipe for success by this measure unless you have an alternative strategy that’s actually getting you somewhere. Now, for about a year, I think the administration has been able to make that argument. The financial pressure they’ve put on the regime shows clear potential to weaken it. The policy of isolating the regime does seem to be moving forward and gaining the cooperation of more countries. But that policy’s propulsion system is Kim Jong Il’s own behavior.

I guess it’s better than sending Maddie Albright to drink toasts in Pyongyang, but it’s too bad that our plans are so dependent on the mistakes of our enemies.