By Christopher J. Watterson, August 30, 2019
Sanctions against North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs are not working. Pyongyang continues to see qualitative improvements in its nuclear and missile capabilities, and UN reporting reveals that the sanctions regime itself is subject to “rampant violations.” Despite these failures, sanctions remain a valuable, and a central tool in facilitating North Korean denuclearization. Strengthening the coercive power of sanctions against North Korea requires three targeted improvements in implementation: preventing WMD sales, improving sanctions compliance, and stifling sanctions evasion.
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Sanctions are an act of war, and I am surprised that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists issues articles seemingly advocating them. Of course sanctions will not work, so why try more of them? One step to denuclearize the Korean peninsula would be to remove all sanctions, boycotts, and embargoes, which have had a share in impoverishing the DPRK and helping them to remain suspicious of the US, the chief enforcer of these measures. Free trade between nations has always been a prescription for peace. Another step would be to sign a peace treaty with the DPRK, which the US has refused to do - the Korean War has not actually ended until that happens. The formidable DPRK military (including recently atomic weapons) is really no match for the US, which has far more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world put together, and has actually used them, and justified them afterwards, in the same neighborhood as the DPRK. And the US intervention in the 1950s killed a tenth of the population and leveled almost all structures. So long as the DPRK is aware of the existential threat from the US, it will not relinquish its small nuclear arsenal. So long as any small nation is opposed militarily by the US, it will always consider defending itself by the most effective means it can muster. I thought anyone writing for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists would be a little more "scientific" in their analysis of where the threat lies , rather than be such an obvious partisan of Pentagon policy.