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I thought this was an interesting read: The New US Sanctions: Moving From Sanctions to Economic War
http://www.38north.org/2017/09/jdethomas092217/President Trump’s new Executive Order on North Korea sanctions is a unilateral declaration of economic warfare designed to bring the North to its knees through the aggressive use of secondary sanctions against any country that trades with or finances trade with North Korea. Rather than bring North Korea closer to the negotiating table for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, they are likely to hasten war and even the collapse of the regime if effectively enforced. It is unlikely, however, that this severe tightening of the sanctions screw will be successful.
It is not impossible for this approach to work. It is possible that the Trump administration has managed to work things out behind the scenes with China to prevent a US-China trade and financial war from emerging from America’s attempt to enforce this EO against key Chinese entities. It is also possible that North Korea might eventually be willing to pursue some diplomatic option, such as trying to negotiate some limit on long-range missile and nuclear testing in return for suspension of some sanctions in the EO. But this latter possibility seems highly unlikely given the recent statement by Kim Jong Un.
While this effort may severely reduce the North’s access to foreign exchange and goods through legal means, the North Korean government has funded a great deal of its operations through illegal means such as smuggling, illicit drug dealing, counterfeiting and large scale cyber-crime. It has also shown an annoying capability to adapt to and defeat past sanctions. Black money alone may be enough to keep the regime elites and the nuclear weapons program funded while letting the general population suffer all the shortages, unemployment, hunger and disease that will come from a successful cutoff of global commerce. We could inflict a great deal of suffering on voiceless every day North Koreans before Kim Jong Un and his cronies feel a pinch.
Crushing even a poor country like North Korea economically is not the work of a couple of weeks; it takes years. The US does not have years. It has months or maybe a year before North Korea reaches its goal of being able to target US cities in the lower 48 states with a thermonuclear weapon. This is very likely the point at which the inner councils of the Trump administration have already decided informally that war is inevitable. Their words increasingly reflect a view that preventive war is a preferable and feasible end state compared to the North Korean acquisition of a nuclear-armed ICBM capability of any size. And, of course, Kim Jong Un will respond somewhere and somehow—whether through cyber-attacks on the US or terrorism directed at Japan or the ROK or with some military action designed to create economic costs that cannot be predicted, but could spark conflict as well.
It is not impossible for this approach to work. It is possible that the Trump administration has managed to work things out behind the scenes with China to prevent a US-China trade and financial war from emerging from America’s attempt to enforce this EO against key Chinese entities. It is also possible that North Korea might eventually be willing to pursue some diplomatic option, such as trying to negotiate some limit on long-range missile and nuclear testing in return for suspension of some sanctions in the EO. But this latter possibility seems highly unlikely given the recent statement by Kim Jong Un.
While this effort may severely reduce the North’s access to foreign exchange and goods through legal means, the North Korean government has funded a great deal of its operations through illegal means such as smuggling, illicit drug dealing, counterfeiting and large scale cyber-crime. It has also shown an annoying capability to adapt to and defeat past sanctions. Black money alone may be enough to keep the regime elites and the nuclear weapons program funded while letting the general population suffer all the shortages, unemployment, hunger and disease that will come from a successful cutoff of global commerce. We could inflict a great deal of suffering on voiceless every day North Koreans before Kim Jong Un and his cronies feel a pinch.
Crushing even a poor country like North Korea economically is not the work of a couple of weeks; it takes years. The US does not have years. It has months or maybe a year before North Korea reaches its goal of being able to target US cities in the lower 48 states with a thermonuclear weapon. This is very likely the point at which the inner councils of the Trump administration have already decided informally that war is inevitable. Their words increasingly reflect a view that preventive war is a preferable and feasible end state compared to the North Korean acquisition of a nuclear-armed ICBM capability of any size. And, of course, Kim Jong Un will respond somewhere and somehow—whether through cyber-attacks on the US or terrorism directed at Japan or the ROK or with some military action designed to create economic costs that cannot be predicted, but could spark conflict as well.
