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Category: Diplomacy

March 6, 2016

WaPo editorial: “China’s switch” on N. Korea sanctions “had a lot to do with” H.R. 757.

After the President signed H.R. 757 into law, but before the U.N. Security Council approved resolution 2270, sanctions skeptics predicted that the new U.S. law would complicate diplomatic efforts to get China to enforce U.N. sanctions. Events thus far have refuted that view. After the President signed the new law, China, which had inflexibly opposed new U.N. sanctions for weeks, reversed course and voted for the strongest North Korea sanctions resolution so far. Even before China’s official retreat, China’s banks had already begun to freeze...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
March 2, 2016

The U.N.’s new N. Korea sanctions will change the game … if they’re enforced.

The U.N. Security Council has just approved a new resolution, UNSCR 2270, sanctioning North Korea under Chapter VII and Article 41 of the U.N. Charter. Now that the Security Council has approved the resolution, I’m publishing this post, which I’ve been holding. It’s a strong text — very strong. In reviewing it, it’s useful to begin with my own wish list: Requiring member states to report North Korean property, accounts, and transactions to the U.N. Panel of Experts; Shipping sanctions...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
February 29, 2016

How the new U.N. and U.S. sanctions on N. Korea can complement each other

It would be futile to post a detailed analysis of the U.N. Security Council’s draft North Korea sanctions resolution before the Security Council approves it. For now, it should suffice to say that the text falls short of some of my expectations, but exceeds far more of them. American liberals often default to the view that unilateral U.S. sanctions are useless or counterproductive, and that only the U.N. can give sanctions global reach and legitimacy. American conservatives often default to...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
February 23, 2016

Obama Administration’s “peace treaty” grasp explains its lax enforcement of N. Korea sanctions

For years, friends have asked me why the Obama Administration hasn’t made a serious effort to enforce sanctions against North Korea when we know they’ve worked before. I’ve resisted most temptations to psychoanalyze or speculate, but when pressed, I’ve supposed that the administration might have thought that a deal was still possible, however long the odds against it. With this revelation, however, everything suddenly makes sense.  Days before North Korea’s latest nuclear-bomb test, the Obama administration secretly agreed to talks to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
February 19, 2016

Will Seoul try to kick Pyongyang out of the U.N.?

South Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Oh Joon, raised the question during a meeting Monday of the U.N. Security Council, saying the North pledged to accept and to uphold the purposes and principles of the U.N. as laid out in its charter when it joined the U.N. in 1991, together with South Korea. “Twenty-five years ago, the DPRK solemnly pledged to comply with the obligations of the U.N. Charter as a new member, but during the past decade, the DPRK has persistently...

Categories "United" Nations
February 18, 2016

What the U.N.’s new North Korea sanctions resolution should (and should not) do.

Yonhap reports that the U.S. and China have made progress toward an agreement on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution. Although we’ve seen few hints about exactly what sanctions China is willing to sign up for — much less enforce — China is paying lip service to the notion that North Korea must pay a “necessary price” for its behavior. Has Xi Jinping relented in his unprecedented stubbornness, or was it always China’s plan to relent after stalling us, in the hope that...

Categories China & Korea/Class Warfare/Diplomacy/Sanctions
February 16, 2016

In The Weekly Standard: Kaesong, where life imitated Monty Python & the Holy Grail

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Knights of Camelot are on a quest for the Holy Grail, but find their way barred by a group of ornery French knights – never mind what they are doing in England – who have walled themselves inside an impregnable castle. After a pathetic attempt to breach the walls fails, Sir Bedivere the Wise devises a scheme to do through guile what could not be done through force. He persuades King Arthur...

Categories Appeasement/Engagement/Kaesong/Sunshine
February 15, 2016

The rebirth of an alliance: The U.S., South Korea & Japan are finally getting North Korea policy right

As you and I both know, I spend a lot of keystrokes here kvetching about the lax enforcement of sanctions against North Korea, but I’ve also written that diplomacy is essential to making sanctions work. Now, for the first time I can recall, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan are coordinating their policies as allies should. They’ve coordinated their defense responses to the North’s missile test, their calls for tougher U.N. sanctions, their strategies to strengthen sanctions enforcement, and their recruitment of new...

Categories Diplomacy/Kaesong/Sanctions/Sunshine
February 7, 2016

Ed Royce’s North Korea sanctions bill is already giving President Obama leverage over China

Kim Jong-un’s Groundhog Day message to the world was the announcement of a long-range missile test, and as you’ve no doubt heard, he has since made good on that threat. Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” this provocation cycle has been a variation on an endless loop. In 2006, 2009, and 2013, the missile test came before the nuke test, but if reports that His Corpulency is preparing yet another nuclear test are true, that will still technically be the case. Otherwise, events have...

Categories China/Diplomacy/Sanctions
December 11, 2015

At the U.N., China shields Kim Jong-Un from prosecution, but not isolation (updates)

In February, two years will have passed since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry released its historic report on human rights in North Korea, finding “human rights abuses on a scale ‘without parallel in the contemporary world,’ comparable to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.” The bad news is that we’re still just talking about this. The good news is that America, and most of the world, are uniting around the importance of holding Kim Jong-Un accountable for those crimes. [Samantha Power addresses the...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
December 8, 2015

Inter-Korean phone calls can keep the promises of the Sunshine Policy

Twenty years of state-to-state engagement between North and South Korea have not lived up to Kim Dae-Jung’s promises. Pyongyang has taken Seoul’s money, nuked up, and periodically attacked South Korea for good measure. Rather than reforming, it has invested heavily in sealing its borders. Pyongyang sustains itself on foreign hard currency, even as it cuts off the flow of people, goods, and information to its underprivileged classes. It knows that if it fails to do this, members of those classes...

Categories Appeasement/Border Control/Capitalism/Engagement/Refugees/Sunshine
November 23, 2015

Scott Snyder: increase sanctions, including secondary sanctions, on Pyongyang

In a new paper for the Council on Foreign Relations, Snyder has called for increasing pressure on Pyongyang through sanctions, to persuade it that it must disarm or perish: Since defecting from Six Party negotiations on denuclearization in 2008, North Korea has pursued nuclear development unchecked by international constraints. Barack Obama’s administration has demanded that Pyongyang make a strategic choice to denuclearize and tried to build a regional consensus opposing North Korea’s nuclear efforts, but it has been unable to halt the...

Categories Diplomacy/Sanctions/Washington Views
October 31, 2015

Video: N. Korea human rights conference at SAIS, with keynote by Hon. Michael Kirby

On Tuesday, I took a day off from the day job to attend an outstanding conference, organized by the International Bar Association, the Defense Forum Foundation, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, the North Korean Freedom Coalition, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Rather than describe it, I’ll just give you a little weekend viewing and post the whole thing. The first video starts with introductions by Jae Ku of SAIS,...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights
October 28, 2015

Must read: Andrea Berger calls for U.N. to sanction N. Korea’s 3d-country enablers

When I was a single man, there was a certain magazine that I only read for the interviews (I swear). Now that I’m an older, married man, I console myself with a certain website I mostly just read for the (satellite) pictures. Much of its commentary consists of echoes in the corridor of a hospice of ideas, of things Selig Harrison might have said in 1993, but here and there one finds something fresh, substantial, and useful, including sanctions expert Andrea Berger’s excellent posts....

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
October 21, 2015

Ban Ki-Moon on N. Korea: U.N. must “hold perpetrators of crimes accountable” (updated)

The U.S., the EU, South Korea, and other “like-minded” governments are renewing their push for a U.N. Security Council resolution to refer “the highest official responsible” for Pyongyang’s crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court. South Korea, the U.S., Britain and Japan have launched fresh efforts to adopt a similar resolution this year, the high-level source at the U.N. told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity, adding the countries have been drafting a resolution since last weekend. The new...

Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Sanctions
October 14, 2015

U.N.’s 1718 Committee does NADA about N. Korean missile agency; Update: Membership revoked!

NK News is reporting that North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration, whose name yields the unfortunate acronym “NADA,” has been accepted as a member of the International Astronautical Federation, a group that describes itself thusly: Founded in 1951, the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) is the world’s leading space advocacy body with 246 members from 62 countries on six continents including all leading agencies, space companies, societies, associations, universities and institutes worldwide. Hat tip to Chad O’Carroll for the link. As...

Categories "United" Nations/Missiles/Sanctions