Turning the Screws on North Korea New sanctions and a turn by China may finally isolate the Kim regime.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/turning-the-screws-on-north-korea-1506118397
American officials have been wrong for years predicting breakthroughs in the North Korea nuclear crisis, but this week could prove to be different. The combination of Kim Jong Un’s growing belligerence, new U.S. financial sanctions, and a Chinese turn on North Korea trade might be a turning point that finally isolates the Kim regime.
The new U.S. sanctions that President Trump announced Thursday will finally cut off the regime from the U.S. dollar, the currency it has continued to rely on for trade. Any institution that does business with Pyongyang will lose access to the U.S. financial system. Meanwhile, Chinese regulators told China’s banks on Monday to stop handling North Korea trade, and many of them had already frozen North Korean accounts.
These mark a significant ramp up in pressure on the North. Americans might think that such sanctions were already in place since the regime first tested a nuclear weapon 11 years ago. Barack Obama once called North Korea “the most heavily sanctioned, the most cut-off nation on Earth.” And the U.S. foreign policy establishment, right and left, has claimed that sanctions were tried and failed to change Pyongyang’s behavior.
Yet until last year United Nations and U.S. sanctions on North Korea were far less stringent than those imposed on Iran before 2015. Only in March 2016 did the U.N. begin to restrict the country’s commercial trade, and only in November did the U.S. sever North Korean banks from its financial system. This June the U.S. finally blacklisted a Chinese bank along with companies and individuals that helped the North obtain forbidden materials for its nuclear and missile programs.
Those were important steps, but on Thursday the gloves really came off. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told a press briefing, “Foreign financial institutions are now on notice that, going forward, they can choose to do business with the United States or with North Korea, but not both.” The punishments to be meted out are similar to those reserved for financiers of terrorism under the Patriot Act. One Administration official claimed that Thursday’s executive order goes further than sanctions on any other country.
So far the U.S. has declined to sanction large Chinese banks, so will it do that now? It may not have to. Since the U.S. fired its warning shot by sanctioning the Bank of Dandong in June, Chinese banks have frozen or closed North Korean accounts. That has reduced trade flows across the Chinese border by 75%, according to a Kyodo report. Fuel prices began to rise in Pyongyang even before new United Nations sanctions this month capped trade in petroleum.
China isn’t saying if the People’s Bank of China acted on Monday in anticipation of the tougher Trump sanctions. Leaks to the press say the U.S. gave President Xi Jinping a heads-up on Wednesday. But it’s hard to dispute that Mr. Trump’s public statements and official actions on the North have got Beijing’s attention in a way that previous American Presidents have not. Mr. Trump’s words are often undiplomatic, as with this week’s exchanges with Kim Jong Un, but they are an attempt to convince the world that he intends to solve the problem one way or another.
Relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have also clearly soured over the last year, and some Chinese scholars and media are openly calling for an end to support for Kim Jong Un. This suggests that Kim’s behavior and U.S. sanctions may be driving a wedge between China and North Korea. The increased pressure may have helped Beijing recognize that it would endure heavy costs if it continues to prop up a destabilizing regime.
On Friday Kim Jong Un responded to all of this by threatening to detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. That would be the first nuclear explosion in the atmosphere in decades, with radiation effects throughout the northern hemisphere.
The threat is further proof that a nuclear North Korea would mean a new era of instability and danger. War on the Korean Peninsula must be a last resort, which is why the world should hope that China follows through on its order and that these latest sanctions convince enough people in North Korea that its current path means the end of the regime.
Comments are closed.
