home > by publication type > op-eds > Reaching Out to Touch North Korea: The Sanctions Debate and China
Email
| Author: | Scott A. Snyder, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Korea Studies |
|---|
May 28, 2009
GlobalSecurity.org
While the UN Security Council debates the scope and strength of a new resolution condemning North Korea's May 25, 2009 nuclear test, two main questions have come to the fore: what will China do and can sanctions work? The policy debate over the UN Security Council statement and North Korea's response to the UN Security Council action following last month's missile test provided a dress rehearsal for this round of discussions. Marcus Noland's January 2009 article in Asia Policy reviews the implementation of the 2006 UNSC Resolution 1718 condemning North Korea's first nuclear test. In that article, he concludes that North Korea "appears to have calculated correctly that the direct penalties to its foreign trade for establishing itself as a nuclear power would be modest."
I argue in my new book, China's Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security, that China has assumed that its political and security leverage would grow as a result of economic interdependence with both South and North Korea, but North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear and missile tests prove that China's reliance on incentives to influence North Korean behavior was a miscalculation.
Despite a dramatic increase in trade relations with North Korea and regular high-level political contacts with North Korea since 2003, China has been unable to enhance its political influence over North Korea on issues decisive to China's national security. China's trade with North Korea has increased by over 40 percent year-on-year to $2.793 billion in 2008, but China's economic influence was insufficient for North Korea to refrain from conducting a second nuclear test. Only after North Korea's 2006 nuclear test did China begin to consider economic sanctions to be a potentially effective tool for influencing North Korea.
This article appears in full on CFR.org by permission of its original publisher. It was originally available here
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1.212.434.9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
Copyright 2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.