ng Un could probably see the potential for sanctions to undermine his economy, and in early 2018, he suddenly broke years of self-imposed isolation and held summits with the leaders of South Korea, China, and finally, the US. Of course, it was a ploy. But both the U.S. and South Korean presidents were too arrogant about their own powers of persuasion to recognize this, and so both of their policies have failed.
In May 2018, just before the Singapore summit, President Trump froze nearly all new sanctions enforcement by the US Treasury Department. Yet the new US sanctions laws still allowed prosecutors in New York and Washington to freeze and confiscate Pyongyang’s money as its front companies tried to launder it through our banks. So, with the Treasury Department sitting on its hands and the Justice Department being fairly aggressive, the result was something like “medium” (not maximum) pressure. In some ways, that’s the worst of everything—honest banks are scared enough of being penalized or prosecuted that they’re still avoiding North Korean business, while the dishonest ones that aren’t afraid to turn a blind eye to proliferation financing (mostly in China) continue to do so.
This is painful for Pyongyang, but not so painful that it can’t cope by passing most of that pain down to the poor—effectively, waging class warfare. The irony is that stronger sanctions might have forced Pyongyang to open its doors to aid, disarmament, and the necessary conditions for a lasting peace.
Sanctions will continue to fail to have the desired effect 100 percent of the time we don’t enforce them. And what is the desired effect? In my view, it’s either to force Kim Jong Un to recognize that Pyongyang’s financial vulnerability is a political vulnerability, and to negotiate toward disarmament and peace, or to bring those vulnerabilities to their logical conclusion, undermine the confidence of the elites, and cause the end of his rule from within. Trump could have done either. He blew it—all for a few cheap photo ops. […]
I don’t think there can be any doubt that President Trump personally owns this failure. He personally halted sanctions enforcement. He literally declared his love for Kim Jong Un. By some accounts, he believes he’s a Svengali or (according to Jared Kushner) a father figure to Kim. Of course, he’s fooling himself. And yes, China, Russia, and increasingly, South Korea are doing their best to undermine sanctions—as they have, more often than not—but those countries don’t issue the world’s reserve currency or hold stewardship over the global financial system. Trump failed, he made the decisions that caused him to fail, and so he owns that.
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