North Korea says it just tested an H-bomb. Here’s how we should respond.

North Korea has just announced that it tested a hydrogen bomb. The announcement came shortly after the U.S. Geological Survey measured an artificial earthquake in the vicinity of North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site (Google Earth images of the site, and the gulag next to it, here).

Events are moving faster than reporters can type right now, but the most comprehensive reports at this moment are at NK News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

This would be North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, and its third during the Obama Administration. On the Richter Scale, the test measured 5.1, compared to 4.9 in 2013, 4.7 in 2009, and 4.2 in 2006. The Richter Scale is logarithmic, which means that a 5.0 is ten times more powerful than a 4.0.

Last month, when North Korea first claimed to have built an H-bomb, most experts reacted skeptically, but North Korea has surprised us before. To confirm that this was an H-bomb, we’ll send a plane to fly through the plume from the blast, collect air samples, and analyze them. That will take days, if not weeks.

This is the first North Korean nuke test that didn’t follow the usual pattern of a missile test as the opening act, unless you count (and believe) reports that Pyongyang recently carried out a successful test of a submarine-launched missile. Once North Korea has a serviceable SLBM, it will no longer need a long-range ballistic missile to hit the United States. North Korea’s ICBM program has struggled, but its short- and medium-range missiles are relatively accurate and reliable.

I’m glad Professor Lee and I mentioned this possibility in our latest op-ed, just published yesterday in The Wall Street Journal. Frankly, that op-ed works well enough as a prescription for how to respond to a nuke test as the cyberattack we never really called Kim Jong-un to account for. I’m glad we timed this one so well, and I’m glad the right people are taking notice of that.

Eerily timely piece from @freekorea_us & Sung-Yoon Lee on the @WSJopinion page: https://t.co/EBt8jemYXc

– Alex Wong (@alexnwong) January 6, 2016

Now comes the part where I have to read “experts” who’ve never once read 31 C.F.R. Part 500 or an executive order tell us that North Korea is already so heavily sanctioned — all without screaming and waking the neighbors.

If the President doesn’t impose some actual, legitimately tough sanctions now, I really don’t know what to say for him. He’s just lost all political cover to do a deal with the North Koreans in the last year of his administration. What does he have to lose now?

And, of course, this is an election year, and an exceptionally volatile one. That won’t make it any easier for the President to continue with his avoidant North Korea policy.

As for Congress, it has strong North Korea sanctions bills pending in both houses now. If it doesn’t put a tough bill on the President’s desk now, it will forfeit the credibility of its criticisms of one of this administration’s — and the last administration’s — great foreign policy failures.

Internationally, the administration should put resources and capital behind a program of progressive diplomacy, to unite our allies in exerting coordinated pressure on Pyongyang, building capacity for smaller states to enforce existing U.N. Security Council sanctions, and building a larger coalition that would leave North Korea’s few remaining enablers increasingly isolated.

Speaking of enablers, the other party that might be rather exasperated right now is China. It was reportedly trying to arrange a visit to Pyongyang by a senior diplomat. I assume the purpose of this would have been to dissuade His Porcine Majesty from going through with the test. That, combined with the recent Moranbang fiasco, Kim Jong-un’s failure to visit China, and the fallout (sorry) from the Jang Song-thaek purge, give China reasons for exasperation. It still won’t cut off aid to North Korea, but I’m guessing it won’t put up much of a fight when Samantha Power asks the Security Council to approve another sanctions resolution.

Which China will then proceed to ignore, just like all the rest of those resolutions. Of course, we don’t have to just keep watching them do that. With China’s economy and stock market tanking again, the last thing it needs is for its banks to get fined, or even lose their access to the dollar system, for helping North Korea break U.N. sanctions.

The outcomes we should seek now are, first, China’s good-faith implementation of the sanctions it has been voting for and willfully violating since 2006, and second, China’s abstention on a resolution referring Kim Jong-un to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, even if the only consequence of that is to isolate Putin as the lone veto.

Finally, it’s time to acknowledge that none of the problems North Korea continues to create for its people and ours are going to be solved without a fundamental change in the character of its government. Those around Kim Jong-un must understand that their only choices are to reform or to perish. China, for its part, must understand that Kim Jong-un’s oppressive and dangerous ways will inevitably bring something resembling the chaos and violence of Syria to its frontier. There is much China can do to encourage internal change, followed by gradual, negotiated reform and disarmament, if it wants to.

Failing this, the way to force change at the top is to refocus our engagement efforts toward the bottom. That means denying the regime the hard currency that sustains it, but it also means giving North Korea’s hungry and dispossessed the capacity to communicate, organize, resist, and build institutions that can challenge the state.

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Update: A few additional thoughts on what we should ask the U.N. Security Council to do.

First, expect the Security Council to meet in emergency session to consider yet another sanctions resolution. The most important thing that resolution could require is for member state banks to report any deposits, accounts, or property suspected to be owned or controlled by North Korean officials to the U.N.’s 1718 Committee. That will help build an international database of North Korean funds, and help the Security Council trace North Korean funds, identify violations, and better deter North Korean provocations.

Above, I argued that the U.S. should now push to refer Kim Jong-un to the International Criminal Court. If China and Russia absolutely refuse to go along with a new resolution that directly holds Kim Jong-un accountable for crimes against humanity, there are also more indirect ways to do this. One would be to add new provisions prohibiting the use of forced labor from North Korea, which would cut off a major source of funds for Pyongyang. China and Russia would argue that this crosses a new rubicon, but that’s not so. After all, John Bolton persuaded them both to go along with prohibiting North Korea’s imports of luxury goods as early as 2006. The intent behind that sanction was that Pyongyang had no business importing Swiss watches and luxury sedans while the North Korean people went hungry. That provision had no direct bearing on proliferation. It was about human rights.

Whatever the Security Council does is likely to continue to focus on squeezing North Korea’s shipping networks. And while I can certainly think of some useful provisions for a new resolution in this regard, what may be more desperately needed to make sanctions work at last is new designations under the old resolutions. Targets should include shipping companies, air cargo carriers under military control, state insurance companies that facilitate arms shipments, businesses that are known to be fronts for money laundering, and third-country entities that reflag North Korean ships or otherwise help it break sanctions. For example, the Treasury Department has sanctioned China’s 88 Queensway Group for breaking sanctions against Zimbabwe. To show its seriousness, Treasury should also designate 88 Queensway and its head, Sam Pa, under Executive Order 13687, for all it has done to break sanctions against North Korea.

The Security Council should also approve the designations of higher-level North Korean officials, including Kim Jong Un-himself, and the members of his Organization and Guidance Department, which would effectively freeze their assets.

Finally, the Security Council must also revamp and streamline the moribund and bureaucratic 1718 Committee, which approves the designations, and require it to make regular reports to the Security Council.)