On 38 North Joseph DeThomas renders a gloomy reading of President Trump’s iron-fisted Executive Order:
And Why It Is Unlikely To Work …
- First, the US will have to make its unilateral embargo stick globally. To do so, it will have to enforce its will and it is not certain it can do so only with secondary sanctions. (China is a master of finding small-scale banks and other entities with no stake in the US financial system to trade where it needs to trade in the face of US secondary sanctions.) There will be a temptation if things get frustrating either to expand the reach of secondary sanctions to whole countries or to enforce an embargo with military means such as a naval “quarantine” or blockade.
What comes next?
Moving Further Down the Slippery Slope Toward War
In sum, the new EO is probably the last word on sanctions as a mechanism to resolve the North Korean crisis. It is unlikely to be successful largely because the US does not have the time, the patience or the diplomatic possibilities to make it work. The author concluded after hearing the President’s UN speech that the probability that the North Korean crisis would end in a large war in East Asia is growing by the day. While intended to be an alternative to military conflict, this set of sanctions takes us another step down the road to that war.
I am unclear as to how much Trump listens to the war-prone neocons who dragged the Bush Administration into the last two wars. I’ve been surprised that they weren’t discredited, as neither has been the success we could have wished – and one was entered on mendacious evidence.
But neither had the military reach of North Korea, between its development of ICBMs, South Korea within stone’s throw, and even China not too far off. But how likely is North Korea to use nuclear arms if attacked? If Kim shouts for a fully armed missile launch, will his general obey if this anonymous general has an assurance from the “other side” of his and national survival if he doesn’t launch? Or is the Trump Administration too inexperienced to have contact with North Korea high command in order to prevent such a launch? Is the North Korea military command too ideologically driven to recognize that a launch by North Korean would probably result in the extinction of North Korean civilization?
Fascinating questions, but I don’t really want to know the answers to them.
