Must Read: Bruce Klingner on North Korea sanctions

Writing at the blog of the (cough, cough) Korea Economic Institute, Klingner, a former CIA analyst and a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, hammers home the weakness of our North Korea sanctions and their enforcement.

While still at the State Department, Campbell realized that “Burma had much more in the way of sanctions” than North Korea and correctly, if belatedly, concluded that “Clearly we have not been successful at putting substantial pressure on North Korea [and] it would be possible for us to put more financial pressure on North Korea.”

He is absolutely right about this.  And he’s not alone among Obama Administration officials acknowledging that there is far more it could do.   In 2009, the State Department’s sanctions czar commented that the administration was considering additional measures against North Korea. U.S. Six Party Talks negotiator Glynn Davies said in 2013, “I think that there are always more sanctions we could put in place if needed.”  President Barack Obama promised in 2013 a “significant, serious enforcement of sanctions” and a year later that the U.S. would consider “further sanctions that have even more bite.” A U.S. official said recently that Washington was considering a “list of blood curdling sanctions.”

The obvious question is why the Administration has not followed through.

Washington has targeted a mere 62 North Korean entities, primarily for illicit activities and weapons of mass destruction. By comparison, the United States has imposed more comprehensive sanctions against the Balkans (231 entities), Burma (164), Cuba (397), Iran (several hundred), and Zimbabwe (161).

The U.S. has targeted Zimbabwe, Congo, and Burma for human rights violations yet has not taken action against North Korea seven months after the UN Commission of Inquiry accused Pyongyang of human rights violations so egregious as to qualify as crimes against humanity. Nor has Washington designated North Korea as a primary money-laundering concern as it did Iran and Burma.

Well … yes!

I understand that a counterpoint post will follow in due course. I hope that counterpoint will do more than ring the same old cowbell. It’s getting very hard to deny that the old ideas have failed. After 20 years of engaging the wrong people, Pyongyang isn’t engaging us back, reforming, or disarming. We’re at a point where we’re entitled to ask for more plausible alternatives. No amount of doing the same thing over and over will lead us to a different result.