On North Korea policy, the opinion pages suddenly read like posts from this blog

Since January’s nuclear test, I have noted with satisfaction the signs that Washington’s consensus on North Korea policy has taken a decisive turn toward views I’ve advocated at this site for years. This week, OFK readers have been sending me a great deal of better-placed commentary about North Korea, asking me, “Did you write this?” I swear I didn’t write, for example, this Washington Post editorial, published yesterday:

What is needed is a return to the only non-military strategy that brought results: sanctions that strike at the regime’s inner circle. Mr. Kim and his cronies are still managing to import luxury goods from China, in spite of a U.N. ban; they still use Chinese banks to do business with the rest of the world. Those links could be curtailed if North Korea, like Iran before it, were designated as a money launderer and U.S. sanctions were slapped on Chinese banks and other businesses that supply weapons and luxury goods.

Pending U.S. sanctions legislation, already passed by the House and scheduled for a Senate floor vote this week, would mandate these steps, while providing the administration with some flexibility. It should pass, and Mr. Obama should sign it. [….]

Both China and North Korea must see that they will pay a mounting price for what, to the United States, should be Mr. Kim’s intolerable steps toward a nuclear arsenal. “Strategic patience” is no longer a viable option. [Washington Post Editorial]

Or this, from a Wall Street Journal columnist:

Groundhog Day was last week, but North Korea’s ballistic-missile test on Sunday may have you feeling you’ve seen this one before. First the weeks of rumors, then the launch, next the emergency session at the United Nations—and then nothing. The pattern will continue until the U.S. stops running its North Korea policy through Beijing. [….]

Though President Obama calls North Korea “the most sanctioned” nation on Earth, he’s wrong. The U.S. lists Iran and Burma as countries of primary money-laundering concern, a designation it doesn’t apply to Pyongyang despite its counterfeit-currency racket. The U.S. has applied harsher human-rights sanctions against Congo and Zimbabwe, never mind the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Pyongyang’s labor camps.

Treasury Department officials have argued for stronger measures, on the model of the highly effective sanctions the U.S. imposed on Macau’s Banco Delta Asia in 2005 that forced banks to suspend business with Pyongyang. But National Security Adviser Susan Rice has opposed the move for fear of upsetting U.S. relations with Beijing.

The House last month overwhelmingly passed the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, mandating action against entities and individuals tied to illicit weapons programs, luxury-goods imports, counterfeiting and drug trafficking. The White House has hinted that it doesn’t oppose the bill, and the President might sign it if it passes the Senate. But the bill’s effectiveness depends on the Administration’s willingness to squeeze North Korean financing by punishing the Chinese banks through which the Kim regime moves its money. [….]

China isn’t likely to squeeze its client unless it sees the U.S. and its allies doing more to isolate the North on their own. Such a policy would seek to end the regime through sweeping financial sanctions that prevent the Kim family from financing the tools of their tyranny, from weapons to whiskeys, and that impose stiff penalties on their enablers abroad. The strategy of begging China has been a failure. [WSJ, Review & Outlook]

Or this, from the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

This week the U.S. Senate will join the U.S. House of Representatives in passing legislation that sends a strong bipartisan message: North Korea is a serious threat to U.S. national security and our current approach is a failure.

The North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, which we expect to become law in the coming weeks, will provide the executive branch with a more robust set of policy tools to confront the threat posed by the rogue regime in Pyongyang. And while there is no “silver bullet” solution to the North Korea policy challenge, the United States must undertake a more proactive approach toward North Korea to address its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and human rights abuses against its own people.

The Senate bill represents the best of our bipartisan foreign policy tradition and builds upon legislation passed in the House of Representatives to expand and tighten enforcement of sanctions for North Korea’s destructive activities.

he bill requires the Obama administration to investigate sanctionable conduct. This means working to expose those involved in supporting North Korea’s human rights abuses, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and activities undermining cybersecurity — marking the first statutory framework for sanctions in response to the growing North Korean cyberthreat.

Importantly, it also targets for investigation those who back these activities through other means, such as providing the regime with industrial inputs such as coal, or luxury goods that serve as a valuable source of hard currency to fund North Korea’s nefarious activities. The President then is mandated to sanction any person found to have materially contributed to, engaged in or helped to facilitate these actions. [….]

Some North Korea watchers assert that Beijing doesn’t have the leverage that many U.S. officials contend it has over Pyongyang’s behavior. But that’s simply not true. [Sen. Bob Corker, CNN.com]

I welcome all of this unreservedly, and if this means I’ve directly or indirectly influenced these views, then that’s all I’ve ever wanted from this jihad of mine. It is an unfamiliar feeling to an insurgent to be overtaken by the mainstream. Still, it would be an error for any American to take credit for it. This tipping point is really the work of the most effective lobbyist in this town, a morbidly obese high school dropout and NBA fan who has never been to Washington and barely speaks English.