UN adopts new tougher sanctions on North Korea

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a new set of draconian US-drafted sanctions on North Korea that will further strangle its energy supplies and tighten restrictions on smuggling and the use of North Korean workers overseas.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, claimed that the new sanctions, levied in response to Pyongyang’s November 29 ballistic missile test, went even further than sanctions passed in September that, at the time, were called the toughest yet. “Today, we cut deeper,” Haley said. She said the UN had repeatedly offered Pyongyang a choice and repeatedly, in its continued missile tests, the regime had “chosen the path of isolation.”

Hailing the unity of the Security Council vote and referring to leader Kim Jong Un, Haley said that, “we will continue to match the Kim regime’s choice of aggressive action with actions of international sanctions.” North Korea, she said, is “this most tragic example of evil in the modern world.”

Resolution 2397 cuts exports of gasoline, diesel and other refined oil products by a total of 89%, Haley said. The resolution also bans exports of industrial equipment, machinery, transportation vehicles and industrial metals to North Korea. It requires countries using North Korean laborers to send them back home no later than 24 months from the adoption of the resolution. The resolution also requires countries to stop ships from illegally providing oil to North Korea through ship-to-ship transfers and prohibits them from smuggling North Korean coal and other prohibited commodities by sea.

[CNN]

Kim Jon Un’s endgame to avoid becoming vulnerable to American pressure

“When I was in Pyongyang, I was with some foreign ministry officials whose job it is, is to read Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, listen to his speeches, try to analyze the American government. And what they said was, ‘Frankly, we’re mystified,” said Evan Osnos, a New Yorker staff writer who traveled to North Korea on assignment for the magazine.

“We can’t figure out if he is, as they put it, irrational or whether he’s proceeding down a subtle strategy that’s leading them to an objective. So, when we send mixed messages, when we send confusing messages, they’re not quite sure what to make of it,” Osnos added.

Michael Morell, former acting and deputy director of the CIA, echoed the idea that mixed messages and threats without follow-through are damaging to any hopes of diplomacy. “You’ve lost a tremendous amount of credibility and I think that the language in that respect is dangerous,” Morell said.

North Korea and Kim Jon Un’s endgame, Osnos said, is to avoid becoming vulnerable to American pressure. “If you ask people in Pyongyang, really cut through what it is that they’re trying to achieve, the thing they return to over and over again, is they want to avoid being Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi,” Osnos said.

In addition to using nuclear capability as a way to secure themselves from attack, Morell added that there is a possibility they want to use them to become more dominant on the Korean Peninsula.  “Does he want these weapons to try to coerce the United States in South Korea? So in other words, once he has them, will he be more aggressive on the Korean Peninsula? The question is how do you deter that, and that’s more difficult,” Morell said.

[CBS]

Kim Jong Un is not crazy, just a cold calculator

North Korea’s latest threat of nuclear war is another salvo of incendiary rhetoric from the rogue nation, but it’s also part of a calculated power move by leader Kim Jong Un.

Experts say Kim’s fiery talk and defiance of the international community masks a core fact: His pursuit of a nuclear program is designed to establish the legitimacy of his regime inside North Korea and to gain international stature.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said last week that the consensus in the intelligence community is that Kim is “rational” — even though some comments from North Korea may not seem so.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager, a professor at Oberlin College and author of Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea concurs, “Kim certainly is acting rationally and predictably if his objective is to secure his hold on power.”

North Korea’s test last month established that the isolated nation had built a missile capable of reaching Washington, D.C., and other East Coast cities. Kim believes that the threat of a nuclear attack on the United States might force Washington to rethink its commitment to defend South Korea if attacked. North Korea’s ultimate goal is to reunify the peninsula.

Kim believes nuclear weapons serve as a deterrent and provide economic leverage for North Korea, Jager said. Kim fears he will go the way of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi — both gave up their nuclear weapons programs and were overthrown.

[USA Today]

North Korea is a nuclear state

Analysts say North Korea is now a nuclear weapons power.

Every time North Korea does something provocative –which is often– Washington insists that Pyongyang must give up its nuclear weapons program.

Why would Kim Jong Un’s cash-strapped regime spend so much time and money on building these weapons only to give them up? And even if they were prepared to bargain them away eventually, why would they do so now, when Trump and his top aides are threatening military action?

“It’s a fantasy that they’re going to willingly give up their nuclear programs so long as Kim is in power. He saw the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi–why would he give up his nuclear weapons?” asked Vipin Narang, a nuclear nonproliferation specialist at MIT, referring to the former leaders of Iraq and Libya, both of whom are now deposed and dead.

[Washington Post]