Category: Sanctions

In the Fletcher Security Review, I attack the myth that our North Korea sanctions are strong, summarize the authorities, describe what has and hasn’t worked, and explain how to make sanctions work as part of a more coherent and effective North Korea policy. ~   ~   ~ Update: See also this Wall Street Journal column, citing yours truly, which I swear I didn’t see coming. If only the author had cited the paper linked above, after I knew the answer to the question...

William Newcomb, formerly of the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.N. Panel of experts (UNPOE), was at The Korea Society last Friday to talk with Stephen Noerper about North Korea sanctions, what they are, and how to make them a useful policy tool again. Newcomb didn’t have time to explain all of the authorities and their provisions in detail, but he did make some important points. First, Newcomb blames “politics” for the fact that the UNPOE hasn’t designated a number...

I don’t doubt that Stanford scholar Yong Suk Lee’s minor premise—that Pyongyang shifts economic pain to the proles and peasants—is correct. To extend this into a convincing policy argument, however, that Pyongyang would only shift the pain of sanctions to the North Korean people, requires a more convincing case for his major premise–that the deprivation of the North Korean people is a function of sanctions, rather than state policies that willfully impose that deprivation. It’s a case that Lee fails to make, in part because...