Plan B Watch: A Shot Across China’s Bow?

Hey, did the State Department threaten the Bank of China and the Bank of Shanghai? Or to put the question more bluntly, did someone just grow a pair?

A diplomatic source here said the U.S. will blacklist more North Korean entities and individuals in the coming weeks so that international financial institutions would cut off ties with them.

Any foreign banks refusing to sever business ties with the North Korean entities and individuals in question will have U.S. financial institutions suspend ties with them, the source said. “Think of Citibank or Bank of America suspending business ties with Bank of China or Bank of Shanghai. That will be a great burden to China.”

What I wouldn’t give to see the case of the vapors Peter Lee must be having at this moment. Of course, I care little and know less about Lee’s background, but I wonder if the manic oscillation between contemptuous arrogance and resentful victimhood is a function of life in a society where destiny is so often imposed on the resentful by the arrogant. If it’s futile or worse for a Chinese citizen to curse the policies of his own government, there’s no less futility in cursing the policies of the American government.

Crowley said last week that the U.S. will not only use existing measures like the Patriot Act, but will also establish “new executive authorities” to blacklist more “entities and individuals supporting proliferation, subjecting them to an asset freeze; new efforts with key governments to stop DPRK trading companies engaged in illicit activities from operating in those countries and prevent their banks from facilitating these companies’ illicit transactions.” [Yonhap]

They certainly do sound very serious about this. And thorough:

Robert Einhorn told the Voice of America that the U.S. has tracked down every trading company and individual in North Korea doing illegal business activities overseas and will freeze their assets. It was the first interview Einhorn has given since being made the U.S. government’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control.

Einhorn said the legal basis for past sanctions, which he called “existing authorities,” will be more actively applied and used to freeze assets of North Korean organizations, trading companies and individuals involved in terror or nuclear proliferation activities.

The new sanctions, on the other hand, will be focused on restraining other illegal activities such as trade in conventional weapons, luxury goods, tobacco, counterfeit bills and drugs, he said. He said the U.S. is drafting “authorities” to control those non-terror or nuclear proliferation areas. He said once the new authorities are arranged, the ability of the U.S. to freeze those illegal activities by the North will be strengthened. The details of the new sanctions will be announced by next week, he said. [Joongang Ilbo]

All of this has the potential for some very interesting money laundering prosecutions in the courts. The measure to watch for, however, is whether Treasury will simply declare the entire country of North Korea to be a primary money laundering concern and deny its entities access to the U.S. financial system, something that my spies tell me key people in Treasury have seriously considered. This so-called Fifth Special Measure is to Plan B what the Public Option is to Obamacare. And it wouldn’t be unprecedented. We’ve done this to Nauru and the Ukraine, among other places.

It’s encouraging that the old partisan reflexes really aren’t very probative of how people in Washington see the issue of financial pressure. Most hard-liners agree that all kinds of pressure have to be applied in tandem with at least an offer to negotiate, in the unlikely event that North Korea is prepared to accept the kind of fundamental transparency that even most soft-liners now know it never will.