Will the US get more sanctions against North Korea from the UN?

The US is contemplating additional UN action against North Korea for recent short range missile launches. From an AP News report today:

The Biden administration said Monday it's looking at “additional actions” that the United Nations might take to respond to North Korea’s recent missile tests. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield wasn’t specific about what those actions might entail, but noted that the UN Security Council had met last week and renewed the mandate of experts who monitor sanctions against the North. The council is also expected to hold closed-door discussions on North Korea on Tuesday.*

*U.S. eyes additional UN action on N. Korea after missile tests, by Matthew Lee, Associated Press, March 29, 2021, 2:18 p.m; https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/mar/29/us-eyes-additional-un-action-on-n-korea-after-miss/


It's unlikely the US will get a binding UN resolution to go beyond UN res 2397 which authorized sanctions for long range ballistic missiles and nuclear tests by North Korea. The general proscription against North Korean ballistic missile launches in UN resolution 2397, was not entirely supported by an enforcement mechanism. In other words, there is wiggle room over shorter ranged missiles for North Korea. Evidently the Security Council compromised on the resolution's language in 2017. So a new resolution would be required. They probably won't get it from the Security Council because both Russia and China disagree with the US approach to the negotiating process. Resolution 2397 in paragraph 26 refers to the Joint Statement of Sep 9, 2005, in the fourth round of the Six Party Talks, which reads:

5) The six parties agreed to take coordinated steps to implement the aforementioned consensus in a phased manner in line with the principle of "commitment for commitment, action for action."

Since Singapore the US abandoned this "phased" approach emphasizing reciprocity and adopted the so called "one bundle" approach, aka "the Libyan Approach," and "the all or nothing approach." Only Japan of the six parties agrees with this US approach.

(Picture source Channel A Top Ten News 5.7.2019) North Korea tactical guided missile left. South Korean Hyunmoo tactical guided missile right. Both solid fueled.


Resolutions by the General Assembly are generally not binding. The US could try to get a General Assembly resolution, and then implement some sort of escalatory move unilaterally or in conjunction with it's closest allies. The AP News report cited above recites the boilerplate US language emphasizing how unified Japan and South Korea are with the US view of the North Korean situation, However, it isn't true that the current South Korean administration agrees with the US negotiating approach. They only agree with the goal, "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." At the same time, we have the continuing development of the South Korean Hyunmoo ballistic missile, which is ostensibly a short range tactical missile. Read the Ankit Panda report referenced below on South Korean missile development below to see the difficulties of adopting a new approach to North Korean short range missile testing.

The Hyunmoo-4 is an 800-kilometer-range system that entered testing for the first time earlier in 2020. Moon applauded it recently for exhibiting “close to the world’s heaviest warhead weight,” making full use of the 2017 update to the missile guidelines. While this missile is thought to feature a 2,000-kilogram payload, if it were to be launched with a payload half that weight, the Hyunmoo-4 would perform as a medium-range missile (using the U.S. government definition of missiles with ranges between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers).*

*Solid Ambitions: The US South Korea Missile Guidelines and Space Launchers, Ankit Panda, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Aug 25, 2020; https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/08/25/solid-ambitions-u.s.-south-korea-missile-guidelines-and-space-launchers-pub-82557

Here's an account of an official North Korean reaction by Military Commission Vice Chairman, Ri Pyong-chol, to President Biden's statement regarding the recent North Korean short range missile tests from Hankyoreh in South Korea:

Ri's statement functioned as a rebuttal to Biden's statement in his press conference on Thursday that North Korea's launch of ballistic missiles was a violation of a UN Security Council resolution and his warning that "if they choose to escalate, we will respond accordingly."

Ri said that Biden had attacked "the regular [test launch and] exercise of our state's right to self-defence as the violation of UN' resolutions,'" describing this as an "an undisguised encroachment on our state's right to self-defence and [a] provocation to it."*

* N. Korea, US dialogue won't resume anytime soon, Hankyoreh, Mar. 29, 2021; By Gil Yun-hyung; http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/988668.html

Is the Biden administration taking a more constricted view of these North Korean short range missile tests than the Trump administration? The prior president who regarded them as "no big deal," was actually expressing a view consistent with the actual intent of the UN resolution 2397. In light of South Korean missile developments is it possible to take a more stringent position? The US, itself, has expressed plans to deploy offensive missiles systems in East Asia now that it is no longer constrained by the INF Treaty with Russia.

Under the current circumstances of worsening US relations with China and Russia, it is quite unrealistic for the Biden administration to expect Chinese or Russian assistance to bring North Korea to the table while the US "takes a hostile approach." This approach can be described as the same hardline approach the former US administration had taken at the Hanoi summit and thereafter, insisting on an ever increasing list of demands on North Korea with no evidence of a phased reciprocal exchange of commitments as part of a trust building process. Why would the Chinese reward the US posture? When the US team of Blinken and Austin were in South Korea recently, the Defense Secretary complained that the conditions at the US Seongju THAAD installation were inadequate and unacceptable to US forces. This appears to be an expression of US intent to make the THAAD base a permanent installation in South Korea, something to which the Chinese had previously protested to South Korea as a matter of Chinese national security. Perhaps the South Koreans could be forgiven for wishing it was a temporary facility.

US Approach to China Inept and Dangerous

One should be wary of the word "partnership" as used on both sides of the US-China rift. The reality is that this expression is a substitute for the word alliance. The US has to say the Quad is a partnership, especially when it is trying to disguise or at least dilute the anti-China objectives it wishes to achieve through the Quad. This is part of a bait and switch strategy when the Quad is pitched prospectively to other so called "partners." Once you sign up, then you are moved to act by the US as if you are in the anti-China alliance.

By the same token, the "partnership" between Russia and China which may be more significant, complementary, and meaningful from a geo-strategic standpoint than the Quad, could also potentially be subject to fissures. But the US seems incapable of creating those fissures. One doesn't need to be an international relations expert to observe that the relatively recent US alienation of Russia and China simultaneously is an extraordinary strategic blunder. The former US president, with a marked anti-China policy bias, tried to take a different approach toward Russia but was essentially unable to do so.

It is a US policy choice, poorly considered, to ever increase the hostility toward both "peer rivals," which provoked this potentially disastrous international situation in east Asia. The US appears incapable of resisting the interminable and inexhaustible "national security" demands from both the eastern and western halves of the US world wide military empire. Despite the so called "Asian pivot," it cannot establish reasonable priorities in any theater, and must pursue the internal institutional impulses for more military resources on both fronts simultaneously. This is true not only militarily but diplomatically. The frontiers of the various disputes with Russia and China, respectively, are ever expanding. Across a broad range of issues and areas with each great power, the US assumes a consistently hostile approach, ideologically, economicaly, politically, and militarily. The US does not hesitate to interfere in the internal affairs of either state. Nor does it refrain from creating new military threats on their borders. In a sense, there is no strategy, just indiscriminate hostility. The US repertoire consists almost exclusively of accusations, sanctions, threats, recriminations, and military displays.

Only a few critics have observed that Japan's influence on US Asian policy appears to be playing a strong, if not dominant role, in the defective foreign policy formulation by the US in Asia.* For all practical purposes the so called Indo-Pacific policy is formulated primarily by the Indo-Pacific Command, after consultation with their Japanese intermediaries in Asia. Neither the US nor Japan understand how the world has changed nor their current role in it. The traditional western allies, the UK and France, lend token support to the "values based" Indo-Pacific strategy of the US when, in effect, their contributions are marginal. Britain itself recently displayed a hypocritical intent to violate the NPT and an UNCLOS tribunal judgement against it with respect to the Chagos Islands. So much for the democratic allies' "rules based order." The fact is the US is guilty of overreach when it comes to an almost exclusively confrontational approach to China. This sort of approach toward China lacks depth and sophistication, and can hardly be characterized as diplomatic. Japan, England and France, as old imperialist legacy states, support the anti-China approach.

*See the blog's three part South China Sea Dispute series:

Part I: Taiwan's Claim to a South China Sea EEZ, August 11 2020
Part II: Forbes: "Strangle China's Economy," August 24, 2020
Part III: US-Japanese plans to "strangle China, August 30, 2020

What is the end goal, Chinese submission? Hardly likely. The US is no more likely to affect change in Hong Kong, or Xinjiang than it was in Tibet. US expressed concerns for human rights in China are hypocritical, pretextual excuses for interference in Chinese internal affairs. In essence they represent thinly disguised regime change efforts and a "divide and conquer" strategy. The sources on reports on human rights abuses in China are almost invariably linked to sponsors in western alliance governments and defense industries. No one has a more oppressive treatment of minorities than the US. To assume that the US government treats its citizens better than China is a cultural affectation that is used to support the cassus belli. In a phrase, the drift is, "we're better than you." A military solution to the Taiwan problem is non-existent. Confrontation in the South China Sea could end in a war.

Over-commitment of US national resources to the military industrial complex and the national security apparatchiks creates the weakness in the US economy and other soft power indices that leave the US less competitive with China. Further it results in a compulsion to engage in threats, sanctions, and other confrontations to compensate for those very deficiencies. It won't work. It's a vicious cycle that leads to domestic instability, less international US credibility and legitimacy, and greater risk of military conflict.

Finally, it must be emphasized, that the inability to negotiate with China is a product of two deep seated deleterious trends in the US. The first is relentless militarism, arising from the aforementioned constituency of the military industrial state, traditional media, and other civil institutions in its service. The second is a deep seated intolerant ethnocentrism, often characterized as American exceptionalism, but now propagated as American "values," to bolster the public relations' appeal of US policies. The renamed exceptionalism is, in large part, a manifestation of a powerful historical tradition of imperialism, racism, and condescension toward Asian peoples in particular. These historical impulses effectively overwhelm the necessary consideration, restraint, flexibility and tolerance that is required in any foreign policy that is in the long term strategic interests of the US and its allies.

US Anti-Asian Racism Today

(Source- The Coming War on China, John Pilger, youtube)

The rhetoric coming out of the Biden administration's State and Defense Departments isn't much different from that of the former Trump administration's anti-China rhetoric. The Biden administration's drum beat of war talk against China and North Korea continues to generate or reinforce anti-Asian bias. Statements and articles posing as some sort of objective analysis of geopolitical “threats,” or trade issues, say China threatens our so called "rules based order." Media coverage of government statements imply that the US should dominate Asian affairs and make the rules whether inside China or throughout the world. (Where could this possibly go wrong?) In reality main stream media coverage present one sided propaganda in which “the other” is portrayed as a diabolical enemy. The racist bias in the US public reaction is even more evident in comments made in response to these media reports and the recent increasing numbers of hate crimes committed against Asians in the US.

(Source- The Coming War on China, John Pilger, youtube)

The giant Wurlitzer churns out anti-Asian stories 24-7. Allegedly they are about “Chinese aggression abroad, national security threats, stealing our patents, potential spies among Chinese students in the US, unfair practices in Chinese international infrastructure initiatives, etc.” Most of it is complete nonsense. It is generated toward supporting tens of billions of dollars more in unnecessary arms expenditures and expansion of US military operations in Asia and Africa. But the practical byproduct is to promote and aggravate racial bias against Asians in general. One could pretend that the government supported promulgation of anti-China reporting only inadvertently promotes racism against Asians, but that would ignore the role of propaganda in appealing to emotion rather than critical thinking to generate support for a potential military response. It's basically another propaganda war against the "Hun" designed by the US national security sector. It also lends itself toward promotion of neo-merchantilist US trade sanctions policy.

The powerful image by Hubert (Hugh) Van Es shows South Vietnamese boarding a CIA Air America helicopter during the evacuation of Saigon.

One zinger heard recently in a US media commentary was that South Korean "competitors" were unfairly gaining semiconductor business because of US sanctions against Chinese tech companies. While on that subject, the US attitude expressed in defense circles and their think tank proxies toward our South Korean allies, is disdainful and disrespectful, if not racist. Inevitably, mostly white US diplomatic “experts” and general officers know better than the freely elected democratic leaders of South Korea what is good for them. Americans have been digesting an upsurge in this government promoted anti-Asian media content for a few years now. It hasn’t changed with the Biden administration which only nominally expresses sympathy for the victims of anti-Asian hate crimes in the US while “getting ready for war” in Asia. It’s pure hypocrisy.

A New International Security Structure Needed for Korea

An international security structure to replace the outdated cold war/civil war arrangements in Korea is needed. Until that structure is built step by step over time by difficult negotiations among the affected parties, some manifestation of the seventy year old US/UNC commitment that brought the Korean conflict to the stalemate currently in place needs to be maintained. The phrase "you broke it, you bought it" comes to mind.

There is a conceptual model of truth and reconciliation, in the current South Korean approach to North Korea, according to historian Bruce Cummings. Understanding the pathways of the civil war, and consideration of the perspectives of each party relative to the capacity for good or evil of each player in it, could allow a process of reconciliation. The US and Japan seem incapable of this approach, and are unable to depart from their mythology about who did what to whom in Korea or their anti-communist ideological obsession. Without breaking the cold war ideological framework in the US/Japanese/western perspective there will be no resolution. This is especially difficult now with the added nuclear dimension of the North Korean "threat," which is essentially a deterrent to guarantee DPRK survival.

It is not unrealistic to expect, that ultimately both Koreas would be inclined to have a security relationship with the US that permitted them to offset not only Chinese dominance, but that of Japan as well. A balanced US approach, that left commerce and other peaceful pursuits as the priority rather than incessant planning for the next war is desirable.

Instead of moving in this direction, the US moves toward another cold war.

Bruce Cummings, author of The Korean War, A History, is regarded as a "revisionist" by critics. To the contrary, the book portrays the historical currents in their ugly reality, outside the good guy, bad guy myth of the Korean conflict that satisfy US propaganda requirements. The US is overly reliant on wartime economics and the purported international legitimacy to which they are allegedly directed. Cummings points out, especially in the latter chapters, how the Korean Conflict generated the wartime state economy that we in the US, subsequently, were never really able to escape.

Without the expectation of some miraculous breakthrough, it would nevertheless be best if the US would allow South Korea to pursue the initiatives that they feel provide promise for a new future relationship with the North. Instead, what we see from the new administration is reflected on their updated web site yesterday:

Innovation is consistent with a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific. We will continue to prioritize the role of international law in the maritime domain, particularly as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and facilitate collaboration, including in maritime security, to meet challenges to the rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas. We reaffirm our commitment to the complete denuclearization of North Korea in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolutions, and also confirm the necessity of immediate resolution of the issue of Japanese abductees.*

* Quad Leaders’ Joint Statement: “The Spirit of the Quad," MARCH 12, 2021: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/12/quad-leaders-joint-statement-the-spirit-of-the-quad/

The statement of the "Quad" represents a very one sided adoption of the Pompeo doctrine on China, and the Far East, by the Biden administration. The White House has tried to dress it up as some humanitarian endeavor, to try to make it more palatable to South Korea and others. The statement reflects the US/Japanese interpretation of UNCLOS and UN resolutions and explicitly adopts the Japanese approach to China and North Korea. Naturally, these documents and their application are interpreted differently in the Far East by the other parties.

There are recent quotes elsewhere from Ned Price at the State Department fixated on a "lockstep" approach from allies and that they all get on "the same page."* This in fact, is the formulaic attack on the South Korean view, previously directed by Pompeo. Mr. Price's allusions to the former administration's other expectation of "no daylight" among views of the "allies," means South Korea specifically. The dilemna, is more accurately described as more akin to an "I can't breathe" problem for Korean sovereignty.

* Blinken's trip to Asia will provide 'key ingredient' for U.S. policy toward N. Korea: Price, Yonhap Mar. 13. Byun Duk-kun: https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20210313000400325?input=tw

Yoon Seok-yeol finally resigns

Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol represents the conservative resistance of the old order in South Korea to legal reforms aimed at two goals. The first, elimination of the protection that a corrupt legal system provides to politicians and corporate interests who have committed crimes (deep seated evil of the special interests). Second, elimination of the systemic graft induced by the partisan complicity of prosecutors, judges, and the media, manipulating the legal system against those who seek to reform it.

Yoon still had almost five months left in his official term of office as an appointee. He left the office because of investigations into various scandals involving him, his family, and close allies inside the prosecutors offices. As the ranks of his followers inside the office have been eroded by personnel changes during his almost continuous disputes and controversies with three different Justice Ministers, the office of Prosecutor General no longer affords a sufficient power base for him to keep himself, family members and prosecutor associates from being investigated or indicted. In addition, a new law by the National Assembly requires government lawyers and judges who desire to be candidates for elected office to resign one year before the pertinent election. So despite Yoon's purported resignation on principle, he resigned for personal reasons.

(Source- 알리미 황희두 youtube 3.5) The video's synopsis: Yoon's wife will be subpoenaed surely...Sniping against prosecutors, (conservative) Hong Jun-pyo, "splitting investigatory powers is not against democracy"...Netizens are cool toward Hwang Kyo-ahn comeback. This editorial presentation gives Yoon's retirement statement an "F" grade for duplicity.

Yoon is a leading, if not the leading conservative hopeful for presidential office in April 2022. By moving out of the Prosecutor General's office, he has made a tactical decision, that his political prospects as a presidential candidate will provide a more favorable opportunity to characterize criminal investigations of his corruption as political persecution and evidence that the democratic Moon administration is totalitarian in nature and bent on destroying the constitution.

The corruption imputed to Yoon has been the subject of continuous coverage of independent investigative media on the internet. As he had grown more politically aligned with the conservative political opposition, and more confrontational, his public support has declined. Most progressives welcome his resignation and prefer a conservative candidate with a record tainted with credible allegations of corruption. One has to wonder if he won't be indicted or arrested before the campaign season begins. His public statements about resigning as a matter of principle in defense of the "rule of law," appear to be little more than self serving hypocrisy.