The new sanctions that China has reportedly
agreed to impose on North Korea are truly a “major upgrade” to existing
penalties, as American diplomats say. To make sure they are ultimately
effective, however, it’s important to appreciate their limitations.
Under the terms of a Security
Council resolution expected to be approved this week, countries will have to
inspect any cargo going into or coming out of North Korea. Sales of
conventional weapons and aviation fuel to the North will be prohibited,
along with its exports of gold, titanium and rare earth minerals. More
than 30 new people and entities will be added to a U.N. blacklist for
travel and trade.
It’s promising that China has agreed to the tough
resolution despite recent friction with the U.S. and its allies. As North
Korea’s main trading partner -accounting for nearly 80 percent of its imports
and exports - China will be critical to making the new measures bite. In recent
weeks, some encouraging but unconfirmed
reports have suggested that the Chinese may already be tightening
up on cross-border trade.
Chinese enforcement of
previous resolutions has been inconsistent. The new sanctions allow North Korea to continue selling
coal and iron ore - its two top exports – as long as the profits aren’t used
for illicit weapons programs. And both the North Koreans and Chinese traders
have become expert at conducting business outside of traditional financial
channels.
Even if the Chinese do put
extraordinary pressure on their ally this time, the sanctions cannot be
expected to force all the changes the world wants to see in Pyongyang. They
won’t bring down the regime and won’t
deter Kim Jong Un from pursuing his ultimate goal: a working,
nuclear-tipped ballistic missile that can reach the U.S. They’re also unlikely
to lure the North back into six-party talks to denuclearize the Korean
Peninsula.
What the sanctions can do is slow the North’s nuclear
and missile programs and reinforce international resolve to block Kim’s
ambitions. To the latter end, it’s worth pursuing South Korea’s proposed “five-party” talks, without North
Korea, to work through differences and show a united front to Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, it seems clear that China’s new
cooperativeness is driven in part by a desire to prevent the deployment of U.S. anti-missile
defenses in South Korea. Talks on this program should continue, not least to
encourage China to fully enforce the new sanctions. The U.S. should encourage
coordination with Japan so that
the allies’ respective missile defenses reinforce one another.
The U.S. has additional options. Recently
approved legislation mandates sanctions against
companies that aid the North’s weapons programs. The U.S. Treasury could do
more to trace and isolate banks
that the regime uses to pay its suppliers. And the U.S. could work to persuade some
of its Middle Eastern allies to send home North Korean workers, who remit hundreds of millions of dollars a
year.