Plan B Watch: Clinton Announces Tightening of N. Korea Sanctions

Well, it’s about damn time:

The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it would impose further economic sanctions against North Korea, throwing legal weight behind a choreographed show of pressure on the North that included an unusual joint visit to the demilitarized zone by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

The measures, announced here by Mrs. Clinton after talks with South Korean officials, focus on counterfeiting, money laundering and other dealings that she said the North Korean government used to generate hard currency to pay off cronies and cling to power. [N.Y. Times]

Clinton announced the sanctions as she visited the DMZ, while accompanied by SecDef Gates, and while displaying her supernatural frost-projection powers against a hapless North Korean border guard. I count at least three priceless expressions in this photo.

clinton-dmz.jpg

The Treasury Department announcement I linked here yesterday now looks to be just the first part of the Obama Administration’s dangerously overdue and initially weak response to the sinking of the Cheonan, using at least some of the legal and financial tools I’ve advocated using for the last several years.

“Today, I’m announcing a series of measures to increase our ability to prevent North Korea’s proliferation, to halt their illicit activities that helped fund their weapons programs and to discourage further provocative actions,” Clinton told a news conference in Seoul after high-level security talks with South Korean officials.

Clinton said Washington’s “new country-specific sanctions” will target the North’s “sale and procurement of arms and related material and the procurement of luxury goods and other illicit activities.”

“Let me stress that these measures are not directed at the people of North Korea who have suffered too long due to the misguided and malign priorities of their government,” she said. “They are directed at the destabilizing illicit and provocative policies pursued by that government.” [Yonhap]

With apologies to KCJ, this is encouraging — a strong opening message that will get the attention of the investors on whose cash North Korea depends. Unfortunately, Clinton offered few details about the sanctions, and via some inside sources, I’ve learned that the administration is still debating just what specific measures it’s going to announce. Until I see what those specific measures are, and how strong and comprehensive they are, I will reserve judgment. Or, as one observer put it:

Nicholas Szechenyi, a northeast Asia policy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the key to effective U.S. sanctions is how they are implemented.

“If the U.S. is doing this in isolation, doing this piecemeal, then I don’t think they’ll have much effect,” he said. “But if there’s a unified effort to not only announce these sanctions as an act of solidarity with our South Korean allies but also to apply some pressure on North Korea, then I think over time it might work.”

That sounds exactly right to me. Nick Eberstadt is more skeptical, and maybe he knows something I don’t:

The moves resemble piecemeal steps of the past, they add, and are unlikely to strike where it hurts: the regime’s access to under-the-table international funds.

“If I were in Pyongyang, I would not be trembling in my boots about this,” says Nick Eberstadt, a North Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. [Christian Science Monitor]

The real question here is what the sanctions will be designed to achieve:

“The real question, if the talks resume, is so what?” says Mr. Lieberthal. Neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have been successful over two decades at curtailing the North’s nuclear ambitions, he says, adding that the Obama administration “shows no signs of being in the mood to reward North Korea” to prompt its cooperation, a pattern he says the North has become accustomed to.

“So even if the talks resume at some point, would they produce any serious results?” he asks. “I remain very skeptical about that. [Christian Science Monitor]

If the administration is looking for sanctions that are undone as easily as they’re done, this won’t work. Our financial power over North Korea is our power to scare away investors and sever its financial lifelines, including those that originate in China. If we try to spare Chinese entities and only target isolated investors like Orascom and various shady bankers here and there, this won’t work. If the administration nips at North Korea’s illicit financing at its fringes, a U.S.-led sanctions program will fail just as U.N. sanctions always have, because North Korea is very nimble at setting up new banks and companies to evade sanctions, and because Chinese entities will adopt a see-no-evil approach to transactions with North Korea unless it’s made clear to them that their own comingled assets are also at risk.

For what it’s worth, Hillary Clinton and Robert Einhorn will both be traveling to China to seek its cooperation. Wish them luck.

But if the administration goes all-in to hit North Korea’s finances hard before its big succession-focused party conference in September, this could be extremely effective, and might even disrupt Kim Jong Il’s plans to purge his and promote the next generation of apparatchiks to preserve his dynasty for another generation.

10 Responses

  1. OP:

    while displaying her supernatural frost-projection powers against a hapless North Korean border guard

    Ha ha. That was cold.

  2. “Let me stress that these measures are not directed at the people of North Korea who have suffered too long due to the misguided and malign priorities of their government,”

    Why not? Maybe, just maybe, the people will finally revolt (military included) when there’s nothing left to lose. We’re keeping them (barely) complacent by dropping in bags of rice. Can someone provide a balanced opinion as to why we shouldn’t just pull ALL our aid to the DPRK?

    Unless we don’t WANT a revolt due to its destabilizing force in the region. In which case, the whole relationship between China-U.S.-DPRK is just a politically charged circle jerk.

  3. Maybe, just maybe, the people will finally revolt (military included) when there’s nothing left to lose.

    And when they finally overthrow the regime and the dust settles, who will play Kim Jong Il in the Hollywood movie?

  4. Theresa, i’m pretty sure that the ronery puppet from Team America would like another round at portraying him.

  5. At first I thought the Korean in the window was South Korean because of the helmet which is similar to what the SK’s wear at the DMZ. However the collar markings (I’m sure there’s a real name for those) and belt buckle are pure North Korean.
    I find this interesting because in the times I have been to the DMZ and in every photo I’ve seen, I’ve never seen a North Korean wearing a helmet. They usually wear the peaked caps or those round caps (and in the winter, the insulated flap hats).
    Maybe this is some subtle message NK is trying to send to the South. I also thought staring in the windows trying to intimidate the people inside was the sole domain of the South Korean border guards.

  6. James wrote:

    I also thought staring in the windows trying to intimidate the people inside was the sole domain of the South Korean border guards.

    I’ve been to the DMZ (usually on the USO tour) about half a dozen times stretching from when I was a teenager on up to the present day. The last time (2008) there were no North Korean guards around, but before that they would routinely be present and staring sternly in the window. Once, however (circa late 1990s), the guy was smiling at us.

  7. @kushibo,

    The theatre at the DMZ is one of the seven wonders of the world. Its probably going to be gone within a decade or two so I have reserve my ticket to see it before it’s too late.

  8. Madeline, like “Cats,” it may be around longer than you think and it has already run longer than it should have.