By: Kevin Roberts
The United Nations voted 15-0 to punish the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, but the resolution is already being undermined and threatens to allow a nuclear arms race in Asia. China and Russia
The United Nations voted 15-0 to punish the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, but the resolution is already being undermined and threatens to allow a nuclear arms race in Asia.
China and Russia are giving the United States a glimpse of the opposition it will face when it deals with the Iranian nuclear problem. China may not be willing to enforce searches at ports and stops along its “porous” border with North Korea, which means that weapons parts could be illicitly snuck into the country. Not only is China a problem with regard to enforcement, it is also a problem economically. China has said that it will keep its economic and business ties with the Hermit Kingdom.
China has frequently affronted the United States, even on issues where the U.S. has had a legitimate point, but the shocker from Monday’s article in The New York Times by Norimitsu Onishi was that South Korea announced that it would be keeping its economic and business ties with the North. Those ties include an industrial zone and a tourist resort in North Korea. According to Onishi’s article, those two items are “an important source of hard currency for the North.”
In order for sanctions to have any effect on North Korea, all sides need to cooperate and show the North that they mean business. This is not a way to get that accomplished.
South Korea had originally said that if the DPRK conducted a nuclear test, they would move away from engagement and move toward punishment. It appears that they are not going down that line. Jonathan D. Pollack, a North Korea expert at the National War College in Newport, R.I., put it succinctly when he said “We’re in a situation where everyone is saying what they won’t do, but no one has yet said what exactly they will do.”
The U.S., which pushed for the sanctions, had to water them down to get approval from the Chinese and the Russians. While other countries haven’t said what they will do, neither has the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has aid that other countries who agreed to the resolution must abide by it, but the U.S. must put partisan domestic politics behind it and make sure the U.S. at least does it part. The U.S. can’t really control what the rest of the world will do, but the U.S. can make sure that it does its part. It doesn’t matter who is to blame, whether it is former President Bill Clinton, current President George W. Bush, Congress under Clinton or Congress under Bush. What matters now is that the world rallies around these resolutions and isolates Kim Jong-il’s regime. While he will upgrade his rhetoric, an isolated DPRK will feel the heat.
The only way that the DPRK will feel that heat, however, is if the sanctions are harsh enough to cause economic pain to the country.
While it could be said that Congress—won in the fall 1994 elections by Republicans—hampered the efforts of the Clinton administration, partisan electoral politics must not keep the United States from preventing a nuclear arms race that could involve terrorists. If the sanctions are enforced—and they should be enforced—the world should prepare for the possible collapse of Kim Jong-il’s decrepit regime and the massive refuge flow that will follow, as has been the concern of South Korea and especially China. All weapons must be secured and all refuges must be helped, lest North Korea be allowed to become the ultimate nightmare…an anarchic country with no government, an endless refuge flow and no control over weapons of mass destruction.
The governments that signed on to this resolution must enforce it. If, however, these governments do not enforce it, and if the six-party talks continue to fall apart, the Bush administration may have to confront a truth that it has yet to tackle…direct talks with a country that it despises. The only other alternative to that is one that Asia, and the U.S., currently cannot afford.
SOURCE
Onishi, Norimitsu. “Questions Grow Over U.N. Curbs on North Korea: Trade Paths to Stay Open: South Korea and China Say They Will Preserve Economic Ties.” The New York Times, Monday, Oct. 16, 2006.
Kevin D. Roberts
2006 Graduate - University of Connecticut - B.A. Journalism/Political Science
Torrington, CT 06790
