tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/kim-jung-un-38553/articlesKim Jung-Un – The Conversation2023-09-15T14:44:42Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2135832023-09-15T14:44:42Z2023-09-15T14:44:42ZRussian and North Korea artillery deal paves the way for dangerous cyberwar alliance<p>Russia is currently firing some <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/04/05/when-will-ammunition-shortage-silence-russias-artillery/">14 million</a> shells a year in Ukraine. They are only manufacturing <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ramps-up-artillery-production-still-falling-short-western-official-says-2023-09-09/">2 million</a>. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, are firing around <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/6/6/23744349/ukraine-artillery-counteroffensive-united-states-europe">2.5 million</a> shells a year, but are also struggling to source them.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/vladimir-putin-kim-jong-un-meeting-weapons-rifle-glove-space-suit-gifts">deal between North Korea and Russia</a> for artillery rounds, which the respective leaders have said they are “actively <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/12/asia/kim-jong-un-putin-meeting-russia-intl-hnk/index.html">advancing</a>”, is a simple solution to Russia’s problem. But it is a deal that is fraught with dangers for global stability. </p>
<p>The sanctions on Russia since their invasion of Ukraine have limited where they can buy military equipment, including artillery rounds: it has made requests to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-ukraine-war-china-artillery-ammunition-us-intelligence-rcna72353">China</a>, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/arms-contract-shows-iran-has-sold-russia-ammunition-for-ukraine-war-says-security-source-12896127">Iran</a> and now North Korea. China has been warm but publicly resisted directly supplying equipment into the battlefield. </p>
<p>Iran has sold Russia drones and a small quantity of shells. North Korea is the first nation to make the move to directly supply a large quantity of ammunition for Russian artillery. Placed within its wider context this deal will likely be written up in history as part of the journey to a wider war. </p>
<p>Both Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un are reluctant to travel internationally. The meeting with Putin on September 13 is the first time Kim has travelled internationally since the outbreak of COVID in 2020. </p>
<p>He travelled in a heavily armoured <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/inside-north-korean-leader-kim-jong-uns-armoured-train-2023-09-12/">train</a>. A face-to-face meeting is a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/nkoreas-kim-meets-putin-missiles-launched-pyongyang-2023-09-13/">symbolically</a> important event for both men: because of its rarity and because its proximity signals trust. </p>
<h2>What Russia needs</h2>
<p>Russian ground offensives and their well dug-in <a href="https://gfsis.org.ge/maps/russian-military-forces">defensive</a> lines have been reliant on the extensive use of artillery. </p>
<p>The Russian army has been <a href="https://static.rusi.org/403-SR-Russian-Tactics-web-final.pdf">ineffective</a> at maintaining their supplies of shells, which has increased the pressure on them to buy from the international market. By contrast, the stocks of shells on the Korean peninsula - a legacy of the Korean War (1950-1953), which still remains technically at ceasefire, rather than over - are well maintained by North and South Korea.</p>
<p>Consequently, the US is buying <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/south-korean-ammunition-headed-ukraine-via-us-wsj-2023-05-25/">South Korean</a> shells to transfer to Ukraine, and Russia will shortly be receiving North Korean shells. The rates of fire from both sides can, therefore, be maintained while their domestic industries continue to transform to meet the needs of this war. </p>
<p>Russia is not a natural ally of North Korea. In the 1990s, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/05/ukraine-war-turns-the-tables-as-russia-seeks-help-from-north-korea">Russia</a> was part of international efforts to restrain North Korea’s development of nuclear technologies. </p>
<p>By instinct, Russia, like China, has a strong preference for stability in its near neighbours, and a nuclear North Korea with the ability to reach the US or Europe would be destabilising. However, the invasion of Ukraine and the need for a large amount of artillery ammunition has created the basis for this pragmatic alliance.</p>
<h2>What does Kim want?</h2>
<p>North Korea wants to trade its ammunition for cash, for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/13/kim-jong-un-putin-weapons-talk-russian-space-base-amur">food aid</a> and for advanced military technologies. How much Russia transfers in these categories will be the best guide to how much Russia needs North Korean ammunition. </p>
<p>Regardless of its need, Russia is unlikely to transfer anything beyond improved missiles for North Korea’s nuclear programme: but not hypersonic missiles or miniaturised warheads. Stability in the region remains a strategic concern for Russia, which is in part why US <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/06/russia-buying-millions-rockets-shells-north-korea-us-intelligence-ukraine">intelligence</a> sought to publicise early rounds of talks to dissuade Russia from carrying on.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-capture-of-key-black-sea-outposts-and-strike-on-crimea-show-kyivs-increasing-confidence-213380">Ukraine war: capture of key Black Sea outposts and strike on Crimea show Kyiv's increasing confidence</a>
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<p>Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has strengthened international alignments. Nato has been joined by formerly neutral nation <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_213448.htm">Finland</a> and has an application from <a href="https://euobserver.com/nordics/157426">Sweden</a>. South Korea and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-summit-potential-milestone-japan-south-korea-relations/story?id=102333930">Japan</a> have become much closer, while Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have also moved closer into <a href="https://time.com/6310786/china-russia-north-korea-indo-pacific-alliance/">alignment</a>. </p>
<p>Collaboration on spy satellites, mapping and live intelligence, including communications hacking would also be challenging for the Ukrainians. The connection between a small and nasty war in Eastern Europe with the historical and current tensions in Asia is profoundly dangerous and provides a realistic stepping stone to a wider war. </p>
<h2>Cyberwar implications</h2>
<p>Both <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/topics/cyber-threats-and-advisories/advanced-persistent-threats/north-korea">North Korea</a> and Russia are highly capable cyberwar and cyber intelligence nations: they can disrupt or break key infrastructure and steal sensitive government information. North Korea’s <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-identifies-lazarus-group-cyber-actors-as-responsible-for-theft-of-41-million-from-stakecom">Lazarus</a> group of hackers has been identified –– through careful process tracing –– to be responsible for thefts of crypto currency totalling tens of <a href="https://hub.elliptic.co/analysis/north-korea-s-lazarus-group-likely-responsible-for-35-million-atomic-crypto-theft/">millions of dollars</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/19/russian-hackers-want-to-disrupt-or-destroy-uk-infrastructure-minister-warns">Russia’s</a> efforts in online fraud, disinformation and disruption to core infrastructure has become a significant threat to western societies. </p>
<p>Some of the Lazarus Group’s stolen cryptocurrency is stuck because the individual wallets where it is held have been identified. Russia is a potentially valuable collaborator in finding alternative routes to move the “coins” and realise much of the profit. </p>
<p>Mix this with Chinese, Russian and Iranian expertise in influencing operations, hacking and psychological warfare and their collective ability to shape the politics and values of the Euroatlantic area is considerable. The digital flank of this conflict and the ongoing tensions on the Korean peninsula are greatly enhanced by closer collaboration between Russian and North Korea. </p>
<p>An agreement to supply artillery shells is only one aspect of this deal. The wider dangers come from how it will serve to fuel the Ukrainian conflict, and how it brings together Russia, North Korea, China and Iran into a form of alliance. Ultimately, this deal paves the way for more dangerous technology transfers and it connects the Eastern European conflict more directly with tensions in Asia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213583/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert M. Dover does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Both North Korea and Russia are highly equipped cyber nations, this deal has the potential for them to share technology.Robert M. Dover, Professor of Intelligence and National Security, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1840262022-06-01T14:07:31Z2022-06-01T14:07:31ZNorth Korea: how the COVID outbreak is putting pressure on the regime<p>For most of the COVID pandemic, North Korea has taken a different approach to the rest of the world. While other countries locked down and restricted international travel, the North Korean government took its own measures to <a href="https://www.38north.org/2020/04/kparkjjongyjung042320/">protect itself</a>, including denying the existence of the virus, refusing donations of vaccines and restricting information to its citizens. </p>
<p>In early 2020, North Korea had an advantage compared to other countries: much of the population never <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2021/06/north-koreas-isolation-is-deepening/">interacted with foreigners</a>, as for most people international travel is tightly controlled and only rarely permitted. Even internal travel is heavily restricted, making it more difficult for a disease to spread. </p>
<p>Nonetheless the country was not completely isolated, because in the northern region many would illegally cross the border for occasional work in China and then return to <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/explaining-north-korean-migration-to-china">North Korea</a>. There was also a great deal of official traffic across the border. But in January 2020, the North Korean leadership completely closed the border and terminated almost all <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/11/across-the-north-korean-border-in-china-an-economic-winter-that-never-ends/">cross-border trade</a>.</p>
<p>Fast forward to the beginning of 2022 and an outbreak of omicron in North Korea resulted in such a rapid spread of the virus that the strategy of COVID denial was no longer sustainable. Some sources <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/20/asia/north-korea-covid-outbreak-drive-kim-jong-un-nukes-intl-hnk/index.html">have speculated</a> that a massive military parade held to mark the 90th anniversary of the North Korean army was a super spreader event, resulting in a lockdown in the capital Pyongyang. </p>
<p>On May 20 the authorities stated that 2.5 million <a href="https://www.nknews.org/2022/05/why-north-koreas-covid-19-outbreak-wont-be-a-death-sentence-for-kim-regime/?t=1661938951760#">North Koreans</a> had contracted COVID (referred to as the “fever”). Allegedly 1.8 million people have recovered and 66 people died. But it is highly likely that there has been much more illness and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9b0ab399-b545-4433-81a7-bfd710598760">death</a>.</p>
<p>North Koreans are particularly vulnerable for a variety of reasons. First of all, although the population is not obese (<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-linked-to-greater-risk-of-life-threatening-infection-in-people-with-obesity-137342">one factor</a> in the mortality from COVID), many are suffering from severe chronic malnutrition. According to a UN report, 42.4% of North Koreans were malnourished during <a href="https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/nutritionlibrary/publications/state-food-security-nutrition-2021-en.pdf?sfvrsn=84e0ae0c_12&download=true">2018-21</a>. Moreover, the healthcare system is so underdeveloped that it cannot provide the life-saving treatments that many western COVID patients <a href="https://www.nknews.org/pro/why-north-koreas-pharmacies-are-unequipped-to-confront-covid-19/?t=1661938105131#">have received</a>.</p>
<p>Andrei Lankov, the director of analysis and news company the Korean Risk Group, has reported that the North Korean authorities are advising the general population not to seek medical help but to treat the illness with paracetamol or <a href="https://www.nknews.org/2022/05/why-north-koreas-covid-19-outbreak-wont-be-a-death-sentence-for-kim-regime/?t=1661938951760#">ibuprofen</a>. Lankov suggests that if they went to hospitals, the treatment they would receive would not be any different.</p>
<h2>Previously in the pandemic</h2>
<p>There was a risk early on that the virus would come to North Korea from China. Nevertheless, by April 2020 expert analysts believed that North Korea had largely succeeded in <a href="https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/north-koreas-silent-struggle-against-covid-19/">containing the outbreak</a>. </p>
<p>Yet there were persistent reports of some COVID deaths. For example, it was reported early in the pandemic that 180 soldiers had died of COVID and 3,700 <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3074377/coronavirus-nearly-200-north-korea-soldiers-die-outbreak">had been quarantined</a>. However, establishing details of what is happening in North Korea is always extremely difficult because of secrecy and poor record keeping. </p>
<p>Extreme measures appear to have been taken both to prevent news getting out and to keep the virus under control. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210221063602/https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korea-hiding-real-number-suspected-covid-19-cases/">Sources say</a> that doctors were not permitted to discuss COVID with anyone in order to protect the reputation of the country. The town of Kaesong, which is close to the South Korean border, was closed for a three-week lockdown because of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-northkorea-idUSKCN25A044">just one case</a> of COVID. </p>
<p>Until the end of 2021 the North Korean regime’s approach to the outside world was one of denial. It claimed to be COVID free, relying on its total information control, as well as general <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/everyday-nationalism-and-authoritarian-rule-a-case-study-of-north-korea/861FBD98F17C36F50770291CFBD15348">authoritarian restrictions</a> over the population. Although the outside world did not believe that North Korea was entirely free of cases, the leadership managed to maintain internal control. </p>
<p>However, this strategy of containment had severe consequences for the economy of North Korea as trade with China reduced to a trickle and the country, already under very severe sanctions from the United States, faced a severe and growing <a href="https://www.nknews.org/2020/09/why-north-korea-may-be-on-the-brink-of-another-deadly-arduous-march-famine/?t=1661938192009#">shortage of food</a>. </p>
<p>The Kim Jong-un regime rejected foreign aid to help deal with the pandemic. In July 2021 North Korea was offered and rejected 2 million doses of the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/05/north-korea-government-must-ensure-access-to-covid-19-vaccines-during-omicron-outbreak/">AstraZeneca vaccine</a>. It also refused the 3 million doses of the Chinese vaccine Sinovac that were allocated to North Korea by the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-turns-down-sinovac-covid-19-vaccine-doses-wsj-2021-09-01/">global vaccine team</a>. Instead, Kim continued to deal with the pandemic in his <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/11/22/north-korea-is-addressing-the-pandemic-in-its-style-that-means-leaving-a-lot-of-people-hungry/">own way</a>. </p>
<p>For now, the greatest danger to Kim’s authoritarian rule does not come from the general population, but from the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26396108">country’s elite</a>. However, from the very beginning of the pandemic, the North Korean leadership has done its utmost to protect the elite, providing masks, requiring social distancing and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200507050936/https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/north-koreas-silent-struggle-against-covid-19/">privileged access to healthcare</a>. </p>
<p>Elderly people in the remote countryside are most at risk. But the combination of increasing food scarcity, the economic consequences of domestic restrictions, the downturn in trade and the virtual collapse of informal markets due to the trade restrictions means that there are genuine risks to the stability of <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/north-koreas-covid-19-lockdown-current-status-and-road-ahead">North Korea</a>. Kim may be forced to accept more international help and reduce the burden of sanctions to control the situation. </p>
<p>This may explain the recent frequency of missile launches and preparations for a further <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2022/04/north-koreas-latest-launch-signals-impending-spiral/">nuclear test</a>. As in the past, North Korea may seek to put pressure on the international community as a means to increase its bargaining power with the US. </p>
<p>It’s not clear yet how the US will respond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christoph Bluth received funding from the Korea Foundation. </span></em></p>North Korea’s dictator Kim Jung-Un has given his elite supporters masks and privileged access to healthcare.Christoph Bluth, Professor of International Relations and Security, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1679422021-09-15T12:32:52Z2021-09-15T12:32:52ZNorth Korea’s latest missile provocation was entirely predictable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421187/original/file-20210914-27-gqlfd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C2986%2C1980&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">North Korea's testing of two long-range cruise missiles was a provocative act – but a predictable one, too.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/KoreasTensions/38b5b31bdfc2430db551ccae40d050dc/photo?Query=North%20AND%20Korea&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=24239&currentItemNo=6">Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The firing off of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/world/asia/north-korea-cruise-missile-arms-race.html">two long-range missiles</a> by North Korea shows that rather than being unpredictable, the isolationist state is quite the opposite.</p>
<p>Announced on Sept. 13, 2021, the testing of the cruise missiles – which <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/12/1036494952/north-korea-nuclear-test-long-range-missiles-kim-jong-un">reportedly can hit targets roughly 930 miles away</a> (1,500 kilometers) – follows a well-worn playbook for North Korea: act belligerently, fire off missiles and then pivot to post-provocation peace mode and watch the concessions flow in. It was followed up by <a href="https://apnews.com/article/seoul-south-korea-north-korea-pyongyang-1bf74218556e36697983cf6669ec9166">tit-for-tat missile testing</a> on Sept. 15 by North and South Korea, further escalating tensions on the peninsula.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/northeast-asia/2010-08-26/pyongyang-playbook">keen follower of North Korea’s strategic provocations – what I call the “Pyongyang Playbook,”</a> – I have seen this dynamic play out repeatedly over the past three decades. A show of strength by North Korea is especially likely, history has shown, when the U.S. is perceived to be weak internationally, as it is seen to be now following a messy Afghanistan withdrawal.</p>
<p>The concern for the international community now is that with some key North Korean anniversaries coming up – including <a href="https://www.nknews.org/2018/10/a-brief-history-of-north-koreas-party-foundation-day/">Party Foundation Day on Oct. 10</a> – leader Kim Jong Un could mark the occasion by ratcheting up tensions further.</p>
<p>So why fire off the cruise missiles now? The short answer is, it was time. The last missile tests <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/03/25/981080005/ballistic-missile-launch-near-japan-pushes-tensions-with-north-korea">were on March 25, 2021</a>. And North Korea, like all other states armed with missiles, periodically needs to test and upgrade its arsenal.</p>
<p>It also came after a rather <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/9/9/in-pictures-north-korea-founding-day-parade">subdued military parade</a> to celebrate the republic’s founding day on Sept. 9, 2021. Previous years have seen North Korea <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-north-koreas-nuclear-tests/story?id=36112252">celebrate its birthday with nuclear tests on or close to the date</a>. But this time, Pyongyang dialed back on the display of military might – there were no ballistic missiles on show, no boasts of nuclear capability. Some <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/9/9/in-pictures-north-korea-founding-day-parade">Korea watchers noted</a> that the aim of the event could have been to offer a glimmer of diplomatic progress to the international community.</p>
<p>But again, such an apparent overture fits into a cycle. I noted in a tweet on Sept. 9 that the low-key parade might be a deliberate move, to be followed by a provocative act: </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1435656442548207619"}"></div></p>
<p>And indeed the very next day, missile tests resumed.</p>
<p>The response by Washington has been muted. Meeting on Sept. 14, senior diplomats from Japan, the United States and South Korea <a href="https://apnews.com/article/japan-asia-united-states-tokyo-south-korea-42eae5df25b9fc693abe4033068869dd">called on North Korea to return to the negotiation table</a> over its nuclear and missile program. U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Sung Kim asked North Korea to “respond positively to our multiple offers to meet without preconditions.”</p>
<p>North Korea replied by firing two short-range ballistic missiles on Sept. 15, marking the 71st anniversary of the <a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/korean-war/korea-operations/inchon.html">Inchon Landing</a>, a pivotal event in the Korean War that changed the tide for both Koreas. The South replied by conducting an underwater missile launch.</p>
<p>For North Korea, the timing is ripe for a gradual escalation. The Biden administration is still <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/us/politics/biden-defends-afghanistan-withdrawal.html">reeling from the Afghanistan withdrawal</a>, and history has shown that Pyongyang tends to raise tensions when it perceives military weakness.</p>
<p>When the U.S. was bogged down in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, North Korea <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/10130248">launched several lethal attacks</a> on both American and South Korean targets. Likewise, when George W. Bush was mired in Iraq in 2006, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s father and North Korea’s leader at the time, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/asia/09korea.html">ordered his nation’s first nuclear test</a>.</p>
<p>And Pyongyang has been steadily putting pressure on the Biden administration to see how far it can push things. The International Atomic Energy Agency <a href="https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/north-korea-appears-to-have-restarted-nuclear-reactor-at-yongbyon-says-iaea">noted in August 2021</a> that North Korea had restarted the Yongbyon plutonium reactor, one North Korea agreed to shut down in 1994, 2008 and 2018.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>The concern of the international community is that Kim could use any one of a number of big anniversaries coming up to further increase tensions. October 10 is Party Foundation Day. It was on the eve of the public holiday in 2006 that North Korea conducted its first nuclear test. Meanwhile, Nov. 29 marks the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-fires-1st-missile-months-south-korean/story?id=51437178">fourth anniversary of the country’s biggest intercontinental ballistic missile test</a> to date.</p>
<p>As such, a major weapons test this fall should not be unexpected. It would fall into the pattern of alternatively playing nice, then acting belligerently, that has marked North Korea’s diplomatic routine for decades. And it is entirely predictable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167942/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sung-Yoon Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>North Korea has tended to ratchet up tensions when the U.S. is seen to be weak and when it feels it can yield greater concessions, a scholar explains.Sung-Yoon Lee, Professor in Korean Studies, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/974382018-06-10T16:18:31Z2018-06-10T16:18:31ZTrump’s relentless lies demand we make truth-telling great again<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222216/original/file-20180607-137309-y2g4hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As Donald Trump heads to the summit in Singapore with the North Korean leader, a reminder: He's on record as lying on average nine times a day.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. President Donald Trump is a serial liar who appears to exult, if not take pride, in every petty deceit, particularly if it casts him into the glare of publicity. </p>
<p>With Trump preparing to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/07/politics/donald-trump-north-korea-attitude/index.html">meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in Singapore</a> in a highly anticipated summit this week, it’s worth a reminder: Not unlike Kim, Trump lies to hide the brutality of his cruel policies. He lies to discredit reliable sources of information and to discredit those public institutions that educate a public to create informed citizens who are able to distinguish between the truth and falsehoods. </p>
<p>He will lie about the summit. He can’t help himself.</p>
<p><em>The Washington Post</em> reports that in his first 466 days in office, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/01/president-trump-has-made-3001-false-or-misleading-claims-so-far/?utm_term=.841f9e7ff4a1">Trump has made more than “3,001 false or misleading statements,”</a> averaging “about nine claims a day.” </p>
<p>Trump has lied, along with a tsunami of other fabrications, about former president <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/29/16713664/trump-obama-birth-certificate">Barack Obama’s birthplace</a>, he’s made false claims about why he did not win the popular vote, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/03/politics/trump-stormy-daniels-payment/index.html">he’s stated he knew nothing about payments</a> prior to his election to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and he’s wrongly declared that the U.S. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/sorry-president-trump-the-us-is-not-the-highest-taxed-nation-in-the-world.html">is the highest taxed nation in the world.</a> </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222288/original/file-20180607-137285-17pwvho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222288/original/file-20180607-137285-17pwvho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222288/original/file-20180607-137285-17pwvho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222288/original/file-20180607-137285-17pwvho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222288/original/file-20180607-137285-17pwvho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222288/original/file-20180607-137285-17pwvho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222288/original/file-20180607-137285-17pwvho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stormy Daniels speaks to the media after a federal court hearing in April 2018 with her attorney, Michael Avenatti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Craig Ruttle</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most recently, <em>the New York Times</em> reported that Trump’s lawyers <a href="https://nypost.com/2018/06/03/lawyers-say-trump-dictated-statement-on-donald-jr-s-russia-meeting/">have admitted that the president drafted a misleading statement</a> about a meeting his son had with a lawyer associated with the Kremlin in Trump Tower, though for months he denied it. </p>
<p>He has falsely claimed 72 times that he passed <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jan/30/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrong-again-recent-tax-bill-biggest-e/">the biggest tax cut in history</a>; incorrectly states that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/business/trump-obamacare-irs.html">he has eliminated Obamacare;</a> and fallaciously argues that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-says-daca-is-dead-because-democrats-dont-care-1522677860">the Democrats were responsible for eliminating DACA</a> (the Deferred Action for Child arrivals that he terminated). </p>
<h2>‘The truth is dangerous’</h2>
<p>In Trump’s Orwellian world, the truth is dangerous, thinking is a liability, and the sanctity of free speech is treated with disdain, if not the threat of censorship.</p>
<p>Trump uses an endless stream of tweets in which the truth is distorted for ideological, political or commercial reasons. Under the Trump administration, lying and the spectacle of fakery have become an industry and tool of power. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1004742470700322816"}"></div></p>
<p>All administrations and governments lie at times, but under Trump, lying has become normalized, a calling card for corruption and lawlessness that provides the foundation for authoritarianism. </p>
<p>As in any dictatorship, the Trump regime dismisses words, concepts and news sources that address crucial social problems such as climate change, police violence and corporate malfeasance. </p>
<p>In Trump’s dystopian world, words such as a “nation of immigrants,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “diversity,” “entitlement,” “climate change,” “democratic,” “peaceful,” “just” and “vulnerable” disappear into a “memory hole.” Under the Trump regime, language has become a political tool and operates in the service of violence, unchecked power and lawlessness. </p>
<p>For Trump, lying has become a toxic policy for legitimizing ignorance and civic illiteracy. Not only does he relish lying repeatedly, he has also attacked the critical media, claimed journalists are enemies of the American people and argued that the media is the opposition party. His rallying cry, “fake news,” is used to dismiss any critic or criticism of his policies, however misleading, wrong or dangerous they are. </p>
<h2>Facts are erased</h2>
<p>There is more at stake here than the threat of censorship, there is also an attack on traditional sources of information and the public spheres that produce them. Trump’s government has become a powerful disimagination and distraction machine in which the distinction between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy are erased. </p>
<p>Under Trump, language operates in the service of civic violence because it infantilizes and depoliticizes the wider public, creating what Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist <a href="https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/viktor-frankl/">Viktor Frankl</a> has called, in a different context, “the mask of nihilism.” </p>
<p>Trump’s attacks on any criticism of his policies and the truth go far beyond the public deploying of personal insults. In the case of his attack on the FBI and Department of Justice, his penchant for relentless lying constitutes both a possible obstruction of justice and an egregious attempt to discredit criticism and corrode democracy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-sessions-and-trump-conspire-to-obstruct-justice-79388">Did Sessions and Trump conspire to obstruct justice?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>What happens when a government excludes language that addresses social problems, provides resources for the vulnerable and dismisses all information related to climate change? </p>
<h2>Reminiscent of book-burning</h2>
<p>Trump’s politics of erasure is more than a page out of the dystopian novels of George Orwell or Ray Bradbury, it also echoes an earlier historical period when censorship and book burning was the currency of fascist regimes. As American historian Karen J. Greenberg warns, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176424/">the suppression of language opens the doorway to fascism.</a> </p>
<p>The president’s fabricating Twitter machine is about more than lying, it is also about using all of the tools and resources to create a dystopia in which authoritarianism emerges through the raw power of ignorance, control and police-state repression. </p>
<p>Of course, Trump does not lie in isolation. He is encouraged by a right-wing disimagination machine that American sociologist Todd Gitlin rightly calls <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/17/management-unleashed-insanity">“an interlocking ecology of falsification that has driven the country around the bend”</a> and into the abyss of authoritarianism. </p>
<p>Trump’s endless fabrications echo the propaganda machines made famous in the fascist regimes of the 1930s. He values loyalty over integrity, and he lies in part to test the loyalty of those who both follow him and align themselves with his power.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-loyalty-fixation-recalls-one-of-the-uss-most-disastrous-presidencies-79777">Trump's loyalty fixation recalls one of the US's most disastrous presidencies</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Trump’s lying must be understood within a broader attack on the fundamentals of education and democracy itself. This is especially important at a time when the U.S. is no longer a functioning democracy and is in the presence of what sociologists Leonidas Donskis and the late Zygmunt Bauman referred to as a form “of modern barbarity.”</p>
<h2>‘Civic illiteracy’</h2>
<p>Trump’s lying undermines the public’s grip on language, evidence, facts and informed judgement, and in doing so promotes a form of civic illiteracy in which words and meaning no longer matter. Depriving the public of the capacity for critical analysis and discerning the truth from lies does more than empty politics of any meaning, it also undermines democracy. </p>
<p>As ethics wither, people become prisoners of their own experiences, indifferent to an ignorance and brutishness in which they become complicit. </p>
<p>As the theatre of lies, insults, and childish petulance triumphs over measured arguments, a world emerges in which the only real choices are among competing fictions — a world in which nothing is true and everything begins to look like a lie.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222289/original/file-20180607-137312-1wjs7rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222289/original/file-20180607-137312-1wjs7rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222289/original/file-20180607-137312-1wjs7rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222289/original/file-20180607-137312-1wjs7rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222289/original/file-20180607-137312-1wjs7rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222289/original/file-20180607-137312-1wjs7rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222289/original/file-20180607-137312-1wjs7rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump smiles in the White House on June 7, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Susan Walsh</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the spirit and promise of a sustainable democracy is to survive, it’s crucial to make truth-telling virtuous again. If we are going to fight for and with the powerless, we have to understand their needs, speak to and with them in a language that is mutually understandable as well as honest.</p>
<p>There is also a need to reinvent politics through alternative narratives in which the American public can both identify themselves and the conditions through which power and oppression bear down on their lives. </p>
<p>This is not an easy task, but nothing less than justice, democracy and the planet itself are at risk.</p>
<p>Authoritarianism creates a predatory class of unethical zombies who produce dead zones of the imagination that even Orwell could not have envisioned, while using an unchecked language of lying to wage a fierce fight against the possibilities of a democratic future. </p>
<p>The time has come for progressives and others to develop a political language in which civic values, social responsibility and the institutions that support them become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic imagination. </p>
<p>There must be a renewed sense of social agency, and an impassioned international social movement with a vision, organization and set of strategies to challenge the dystopian nightmare engulfing the United States, and a growing number of illiberal democracies all over the globe. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/pablo-neruda">Pablo Neruda</a>, the great Chilean poet, wrote after Franco destroyed the Spanish Republic: “I swear to defend until my death what has been murdered in Spain: The right to happiness.” </p>
<p>This tribute to justice, the public imagination, dignity and the right to be free from the curse of those who use their power to lie and malign the crucial institutions of democracy must once again be defended in the spirit of urgency and the “right to happiness” — not to mention the right to truth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Giroux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>U.S. President Donald Trump has lied continuously and he will lie again. We should expect more untruths to come out of his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.Henry Giroux, Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/918992018-03-09T11:40:20Z2018-03-09T11:40:20ZArbitration as a way out of the North Korean crisis<p>According to latest polls, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/poll-americans-fear-north-korea-rise-n811986">a majority of Americans see North Korea</a> as the greatest immediate threat to the U.S. with as many as 73 percent concerned about Kim Jung Un’s use of nuclear weapons. The world lives in fear that one more provocation in the form of a North Korean missile or nuclear test could lead to major war on the Korean Peninsula.</p>
<p>It is true that tensions have lessened recently with North and South Korea <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/world/asia/north-korea-south-nuclear-weapons.html">holding talks</a> and, on March 8, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korean-leader-kim-jong-un-has-invited-president-trump-to-a-meeting/2018/03/08/021cb070-2322-11e8-badd-7c9f29a55815_story.html">President Trump accepting an invitation</a> to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jung-Un “by May.” </p>
<p>But past efforts to engage the North have often left participants unsatisfied and disappointed. If these talks fail or lead to frustration, the temptation to resort to military force could ratchet up quickly. And if such direct engagement efforts fall short of expectations, international arbitration might provide – as it has in the past – an alternative to conflict. </p>
<p>As scholars who study international law and Asian politics, our question is: Could arbitration help resolve the present crisis with North Korea? </p>
<h2>We have been here before</h2>
<p>In 1904, war between Russia and the United Kingdom appeared imminent after the <a href="https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/ttu-ir/bitstream/handle/2346/9051/31295015508269.pdf?sequence=1">Russian Baltic fleet fired on and severely damaged</a> six English fishing boats, killing two fisherman and wounding six others, on Dogger Bank, just a few miles off the coast of England. </p>
<p>The British press demanded that the “wretched Baltic fleet” be destroyed, and the Royal Navy eagerly maneuvered to do just that. </p>
<p>War was avoided at the last minute when the foreign ministers of both countries agreed to arbitration presided over by commissioners from Britain, Russia, the United States, France and Austria. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209619/original/file-20180308-30954-10x5u9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209619/original/file-20180308-30954-10x5u9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209619/original/file-20180308-30954-10x5u9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209619/original/file-20180308-30954-10x5u9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209619/original/file-20180308-30954-10x5u9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209619/original/file-20180308-30954-10x5u9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209619/original/file-20180308-30954-10x5u9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An international commission helped avoid war between Russia and Britain in 1905.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dogger_Bank_Proceedings.png">L'Illustration</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The result was a four-month interval that allowed time for tempers to cool as well as a complete inquiry and an analysis of the incident. </p>
<p>Ultimately Russia paid damages for the incident on Dogger Bank, and the U.K. and Russian governments were both able to step away from war while saving face with their public.</p>
<h2>A positive track record</h2>
<p>The United States, too, has been party to disputes settled by arbitration. </p>
<p>The most prominent of these are the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/alabama">“Alabama claims”</a> in which the U.S. – after the Civil War – demanded reparations from the U.K. for having supplied and armed Confederate ships such as the CSS Alabama, despite being ostensibly neutral. These “Confederate raiders” had caused millions in damages to American shipping. Such was the tension between the two countries that some American politicians suggested that the U.S. annex Canada, which was then under British rule. </p>
<p>Instead, diplomacy prevailed and <a href="http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579341.003.0007">the U.S. and the U.K. finally agreed in 1871 to an arbitration panel</a> – composed of Switzerland, Italy, Brazil, U.S. and the U.K. – that <a href="https://events.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/1005.html">awarded US$15 million</a> to Washington and, critically, also set the stage for a lasting peace between the two countries. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209617/original/file-20180308-30954-lkyfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209617/original/file-20180308-30954-lkyfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209617/original/file-20180308-30954-lkyfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209617/original/file-20180308-30954-lkyfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209617/original/file-20180308-30954-lkyfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209617/original/file-20180308-30954-lkyfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209617/original/file-20180308-30954-lkyfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The CSS Alabama, a Confederate raider.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rear Admiral J. W. Schmidt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After this arbitration, politicians, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bLkqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=epoch+when+a+court+recognized+by+all+nations+will+settle+international+differences&source=bl&ots=SviDQjaoWb&sig=5Xjo0dj_CaaHi7DovlJ6gZ0pEiA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYhKDhoNnZAhUCTKwKHUpMB9oQ6AEILTAC#v=onepage&q=epoch%20when%20a%20court%20recognized%20by%20all%20nations%20will%20settle%20international%20differences&f=false">including Ulysses S. Grant</a>, thought the world could be entering an “epoch when a court recognized by all nations will settle international differences” so as to avoid major military conflict. </p>
<p>Indeed, such a court was created in 1899 at the <a href="https://www.asil.org/eisil/hague-convention-pacific-settlement-international-disputes-1907">Convention on Pacific Settlement of International Disputes</a> and still exists with the <a href="https://pca-cpa.org/en/home/">Permanent Court of Arbitration</a> in The Hague, which has been actively involved <a href="https://pca-cpa.org/en/cases/">in settling current disputes</a> in India, Malta, Italy, Timor, Australia and South Africa. </p>
<p>Given this positive historical track record, could arbitration help avoid war on the Korean Peninsula today? </p>
<h2>Why it could work</h2>
<p>This is not far-fetched.</p>
<p>It is impossible to underestimate the enmity between Russia and the U.K. in 1904 or England and the U.S. in the mid-19th century, but arbitration still took place. All three of these countries were also extremely nationalistic in an age of great power expansion. Their concept of individual sovereignty was not unlike that which kept the U.S. in the 20th century from signing on to international conventions such as the <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/lawofsea.html">U.N. Law of the Sea</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-11809908">International Criminal Court</a>. </p>
<p>What it took to get to arbitration, in the case of Dogger Bank, was a third party like France concerned about being dragged into a larger conflict – think China today – and individual government officials who were willing to honestly seek peace.</p>
<p>So, assuming that there would be willingness on the American and Korean sides to this, how might it work? </p>
<h2>How it could work</h2>
<p>One advantage of such a commission is that it could make relatively objective, logical and practical decisions that politicians could never agree to if they wanted to keep their popular base and their defense establishments happy. </p>
<p>For example, it is likely that President Donald Trump could not, at present, agree to let North Korea keep nuclear weapons. At the same time, despite what Kim Jong Un <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/world/asia/north-korea-south-nuclear-weapons.html">has told the South Koreans</a>, his generals would probably not be happy with a unilateral promise to cease testing in the Pacific. </p>
<p>Supporting an international arbitration mechanism would certainly offer China a tempting opportunity to restore its international legal image following its rejection of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/world/asia/south-china-sea-hague-ruling-philippines.html">the 2016 U.N. ruling against it</a> and its claims in the South China Sea. </p>
<p>So who would sit on this arbitration panel? We believe it would make sense to decide this on the basis of the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members and the leading countries in the region: China, Russia, France, the U.K. and Japan. </p>
<p>The next question is, what would such an arbitration court decide? </p>
<h2>A possible outcome</h2>
<p>There are many possible scenarios, but we believe the following would be realistic, fair and effective. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Many countries – from France, the U.K and the U.S. to India, Israel and Pakistan – have nuclear weapons. Their primary motive is not aggression but self-preservation. It seems reasonable that this is North Korea’s main motivation too. All nations today are also acutely aware of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/what-kim-jong-il-learned-from-qaddafis-fall-never-disarm/247192/">what happened</a> in Libya to Gaddafi and in Iraq when Saddam did not have weapons to defend against invasion. North Korea, therefore, could make a case to keep its present stock of nuclear weapons. Although South Koreans have reported a willingness on Pyongyang’s part to give them up, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-very-hushed-about-tuesdays-reported-nuclear-breakthrough-2018-3">this remains one of the most contentious elements of any resolution</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>North Korea would freeze its intercontinental ballistic missile program (those missiles with minimum range of 3,400 miles or 5,500 km) and promise not to further test nuclear weapons or to fire their missiles toward or over any other nations. </p></li>
<li><p>China would promise to come to the aid of North Korea if invaded – after all, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/China_s_Road_to_the_Korean_War.html?id=LSWrQgAACAAJ">it has come to its aid before, in 1950, during the Korean War.</a>. But, critically, the Chinese would also promise that if North Korea acted unilaterally or distributed its nuclear weapons to third parties, then China would back the elimination of the present regime. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>This last promise would be heralded as a serious shift in China’s strategy and would send an unambiguous message to the North Koreans while simultaneously signaling China’s constructive engagement in favor of stability on the Korean Peninsula. </p>
<p>The point is that North Korea does not want China as an enemy. China, for its part, is loathe to see a nuclear-armed North Korea. For a number of years, China has felt that it has lost a good deal of influence and control over its North Korean ally. This sort of declaration from China would help restore China’s influence while simultaneously reining in the Kim regime. </p>
<h2>Protecting the US</h2>
<p>President Trump’s desire to put America first seeks to avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary foreign entanglements such as a significant war on the Korean Peninsula.</p>
<p>At the same time, the president has an obligation to protect and defend the United States from a potential nuclear threat. </p>
<p>Although the arbitration route could be vulnerable to domestic political critiques of “outsourcing sovereignty” it might, nonetheless, offer a way out of the current menu of unpalatable options. It is certainly far better than a disastrous war.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump and Kim are due to meet this spring. But if these talks fail could international arbitration provide - as it has in the past - an alternative way out of the North Korean crisis?Ronald Sievert, Senior Lecturer in Government, Texas A&M UniversityWilliam Norris, Professor of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824232017-10-30T01:50:53Z2017-10-30T01:50:53ZDon’t rely on China: North Korea won’t kowtow to Beijing<p>Those who want to end North Korea’s nuclear threats often point to China as the sole actor who could save the day by making Kim Jong-Un and his regime stand down. </p>
<p>Beijing provides about 90 percent of imports that North Koreans rely on, mainly food and oil. So, the argument goes: China could significantly diminish those threats by shutting off its economic lifeline to North Korea.</p>
<p>Donald Trump has tweeted about his disappointment that China does “NOTHING for us with North Korea” when “China could easily solve this problem!” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"891442016294494209"}"></div></p>
<p>It’s not just a view held by politicians. Many academics and policy analysts in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYFI-ngE7WU">the United States</a>, <a href="http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a592023.pdf">South Korea</a> and Japan agree that China holds the magic key to making North Korea cease its nuclear activities. It is a view based on the assumption of a “patron-client” relationship between China and North Korea.</p>
<p>I have studied such lopsided alliances – including between <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520289819">the United States and South Korea</a> – and I’ve learned that no matter how in sync the national security goals of the two countries may be or how much the stronger power may have helped the weaker, the weaker never simply rolls over and obeys. </p>
<p>So, how much power can China really exercise over North Korea?</p>
<h2>Relations with China and Russia</h2>
<p>North Korea’s relations with its two major neighbors – China and Russia – over many decades suggest that Pyongyang is not easily restrained. </p>
<p>Let’s look at the history.</p>
<p>Kim Il-sung, the first leader of North Korea and the grandfather of Kim Jong-Un, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/883328823">played Beijing and Moscow off each other</a> in order to launch his attack on the South in 1950. </p>
<p>After the Korean War started, Soviet military and economic support as well as massive Chinese assistance in the form of troops saved North Korea from destruction by United Nations forces. After the war, Sino-Soviet economic and military assistance continued, but the Kim regimes have rarely mentioned them as necessary contributions to the North’s economic and military development. Instead, the Kim patriarchs and their chosen “revolutionary martyrs for the fatherland” take the credit in the state’s official narrative for “vanquishing” the capitalist enemies in the Korean War and for the continued survival of the country.</p>
<p>Moreover, during the Cold War, Pyongyang had few qualms about consistently pursuing a “North Korea first” policy even if it meant offending the two big Communist neighbors. </p>
<p>In the late 1950s to the late 1960s, <a href="http://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780199964291.html">the Kim regime kicked out</a> Soviet and Eastern European students in North Korea. They banned the Pravda and the Chinese People’s Daily newspapers and publicly condemned Khrushchev’s “revisionism” and Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Yet, all the while, North Korea milked both Moscow and Beijing for economic aid and technological assistance. </p>
<p>Over three generations, the Kim dynasty has made the manipulation of its large and powerful neighbors into an art form. North Korean regimes have never been in the habit of kowtowing to states that literally preserved its existence, helped feed its people and train its military.</p>
<h2>Recent times</h2>
<p>In recent years, China and Russia have been indispensable in providing North Korean elites sophisticated technical training. In one program, the regime culls the brightest of its approximately 5,000 to 6,000 “cyberwarriors” to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/201162081543573839.htmlher">further their studies in “cyberhacking” in China and Russia</a>. But experts have noted that Pyongyang never demonstrates gratitude or indebtedness.</p>
<p>Rather, in the last two years, as China signed onto tougher United Nations Security Council sanctions, North Korea has been poking Beijing in the eye. </p>
<p>In September 2016, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/asia/north-korea-seismic-activity/index.html">Pyongyang tested missiles</a> at the start of the G-20 meeting of the world’s top economies, hosted by China. On <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/9/3/16248844/north-korea-nuclear-test-september-3-2017">Sept. 3, 2017, North Korea detonated its sixth</a> and most powerful nuclear device, a day before another major international gathering hosted by China. Many commentators have noted that Pyongyang’s timing was deliberate and aimed to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/03/xi-jinping-dark-shadow-north-korea-nuclear-test-chinese-brics">embarrass</a> its benefactor for seeming to side with Washington.</p>
<p>Young Kim Jong-Un – just 33 – has been bolder and brasher in this regard than his dynastic predecessors. About a year after assuming the top leadership after the death of his father in 2011, Kim essentially kicked out its joint venture partner, <a href="http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2012/08/17/jvic-brokers-chinese-investment-in-dprk-mines/">Xiyang Group</a>. Xiyang Group is one of China’s largest mining and steel production companies and it had spent about US$40 million to develop iron ore extraction at Musan Mine. The desire to feed China’s steel mills aside, this big project was part of China’s effort to help develop its poor neighbor’s economy and infrastructure and guide it toward reform. </p>
<p>But tensions with Pyongyang began to emerge just as the contract was approved by North Korea. By 2012, these tensions had morphed into open conflict and physical violence. The North Koreans unilaterally annulled the contract, and used <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9483015/North-Korea-turns-to-China-for-economic-support.html">“violent methods”</a> against Xiyang staff like depriving them of power and water. North Korean security officials even had the audacity to wake up Xiyang’s Chinese workers and forcibly deport them in the dead of night back.</p>
<p>North Koreans are well-practiced in pushing around more powerful states, even benefactors who bear life-sustaining gifts. So, it’s reasonable to ask – why would they back down if the benefits are withdrawn? </p>
<p>China has geopolitical reasons for wanting to keep North Korea a buffer state and prevent a mass migration crisis on its border with North Korea. But Beijing also knows that Pyongyang does not bend to the will of others and could lash out at China, especially if there’s nothing more to gain from its only generous ally. Such an erosion of Sino-North Korean relations would also be a loss for the United States. At the least, Washington would lose Beijing as a scapegoat. Worse, it could lose an important partner in managing the crisis with Pyongyang.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82423/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine H.S. Moon has received fellowship and grant awards from the U.S. Fulbright Commission, the American Association of University Women, Luce Foundation, Japan Foundation-Center for Global Partnership. Currently, she is part of a group of authors for a project funded by the Academy of Korean Studies; the principal investigators are Michael Green and Victor Cha of Georgetown University.
Moon is a nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution; a visiting associate at Harvard University Korea Institute, and a member of the U.S. National Committee on North Korea.</span></em></p>Politicians and pundits are overplaying China’s influence over Kim Jong-Un.Katharine H.S. Moon, Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies; Professor of Political Science, Wellesley CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/835622017-09-25T10:20:36Z2017-09-25T10:20:36ZWill North Korea sell its nuclear technology?<p>Earlier this month CIA Director <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-selling-nuke-secrets-cia-director-mike-pompeo-2017-9#5105D9VDVYFXqHq8.99">Mike Pompeo suggested</a> “the North Koreans have a long history of being proliferators and sharing their knowledge, their technology, their capacities around the world.” </p>
<p><a href="http://thediplomat.com/2017/07/how-north-korea-evades-sanctions-in-southeast-asia-the-malaysia-case/">My research has shown</a> that North Korea is more than willing to breach sanctions to earn cash. </p>
<h2>A checkered history</h2>
<p>Over the years North Korea has earned millions of dollars from the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mgkqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=andrea+berger+target+markets&source=bl&ots=HbOMp3SyeU&sig=ObF974P8pZVpB3XFW32Nhl8fdl0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi464nQ9YvWAhXJ4IMKHZfuBLwQ6AEIYDAN#v=onepage&q=andrea%20berger%20target%20">export of arms and missiles</a>, and its involvement in other <a href="https://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/SCG-FINAL-FINAL.pdf">illicit activities</a> such as smuggling drugs, endangered wildlife products and counterfeit goods. </p>
<p>Still, there are only a handful of cases that suggest these illicit networks have been turned to export nuclear technology or materials to other states. </p>
<p>North Korean technicians allegedly assisted the Pakistanis in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/27/AR2009122701205.html">production of Krytrons</a>, likely sometime in the 1990s. Krytrons are devices used to trigger the detonation of a nuclear device. </p>
<p>Later in the 1990s, North Korea allegedly transferred cylinders of low-enriched <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/world/evidence-is-cited-linking-koreans-to-libya-uranium.html?mcubz=0">uranium hexafluoride (UF6) to Pakistan</a>, where notorious proliferator <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/11/the-wrath-of-khan/304333/">A.Q. Khan</a> shipped them onward to Libya. UF6 is a gaseous uranium compound that’s needed to create the “highly enriched uranium” used in weapons.</p>
<p>The most significant case was revealed in 2007 when Israeli Air Force jets bombed a facility in Syria. The U.S. government <a href="https://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/2013/211884.htm#part3npt4">alleges</a> this was an “undeclared nuclear reactor,” capable of producing plutonium, that had been under construction with North Korean assistance since the late 1990s. <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EijWMYG2GP8J:i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NKSyriapdf.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us">A U.S. intelligence briefing</a> shortly after the strike highlighted the close resemblance between the Syrian reactor and the North Korean <a href="http://www.nti.org/learn/facilities/766/">Yongbyon reactor</a>. It also noted evidence of unspecified “cargo” being transported from North Korea to the site in 2006. </p>
<p>More recently, <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150">a 2017 U.N. report</a> alleged that North Korea had been seeking to sell Lithium-6 (Li-6), an isotope used in the production of thermonuclear weapons. The online ad that caught the attention of researchers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/us/politics/north-korea-nuclear-trump-china.html">suggested</a> North Korea could supply 22 pounds of the substance each month from Dandong, a Chinese city on the North Korean border. </p>
<p>There are striking similarities between this latest case and other recent efforts by North Korea to market arms using companies “<a href="http://thediplomat.com/2017/07/how-north-korea-evades-sanctions-in-southeast-asia-the-malaysia-case/">hidden in plain sight</a>.” </p>
<p>The Li-6 advertisement was allegedly linked to an alias of a North Korean state arms exporter known as <a href="https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/1718/materials/summaries/entity/green-pine-associated-corporation">“Green Pine Associated Corporation.”</a> Green Pine and associated individuals <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-korea-north-un/u-n-committee-sanctions-three-north-korea-companies-idUSBRE84116Z20120502">were hit</a> with a U.N. asset freeze and travel ban in 2012. The individual named on the ad was a North Korean based in Beijing formerly listed as having diplomatic status. As was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/us/politics/north-korea-nuclear-trump-china.html">noted when the Li-6 story broke</a>, the contact details provided with the ad were made up: The street address did not exist and the phone number didn’t work. However, prospective buyers could contact the seller through the online platform. </p>
<p>This case – our most recent data point – raises significant questions. Was this North Korea testing the water for future sales? Does it suggest that North Korea may be willing to sell materials and goods it can produce in surplus? Was the case an anomaly rather than representative of a trend? </p>
<h2>A supplier in search of markets?</h2>
<p>In the few public statements North Korea has made on the issue, it has <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/greitens/files/Chestnut%20-%20Illicit%20Activity%20and%20Proliferation%20-%20North%20Korean%20Smuggling%20Networks.pdf">generally denied</a> that it will seek to export nuclear technology. </p>
<p>In 2006, for example, a Foreign Ministry official <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/03/nkorea.nuclear/index.html">suggested that</a> the country would “strictly prohibit any threat of … nuclear transfer.” The U.N. sanctions regime would also <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1718%20%282006%29">prohibit the export</a> of nuclear technologies – although North Korea has been happy to defy the U.N. regime since its inception that same year. </p>
<p>Additionally, there have been significant developments in states which were customers, or have been rumored to have an interest, in North Korean nuclear technology in the past. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Syria has spent the past six years in a chaotic civil war. Since the 2007 bombing of the reactor, the country has shown no public signs of interest in nuclear weapons. </p></li>
<li><p>After giving up its nuclear ambitions <a href="https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/adelphi/by%20year/2006-4d94/libya-and-nuclear-proliferation--stepping-back-from-the-brink-8955">in a 2003 deal</a> Libya has seen significant political changes and unrest following the collapse of the Qaddafi regime in 2011. </p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/jcpoa_what_you_need_to_know.pdf">2015 nuclear deal</a> with Iran saw the country agree to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, and procure nuclear technology through a <a href="http://www.un.org/en/sc/2231/pdf/160921E%20Information%20on%20procurement%20channel.pdf">dedicated channel</a>. If it continues to adhere to the deal, it has no need for illicit nuclear purchases. While some analysts <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-iran-draw-suspicion-over-possible-nuclear-cooperation-1505887905">have speculated</a> about nuclear transfers from North Korea to Iran, no public evidence supports this. It’s unclear to what extent the Iran deal will survive the whims of the Trump administration, and what the longer-term implications are for Iran’s program and other states who may seek to acquire nuclear technology as a “<a href="http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137273086">hedge</a>” against Iran in the region. </p></li>
<li><p>Myanmar, another country with unfounded allegations of past <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121006281.html">North Korean nuclear collaboration</a>, has undergone significant political change and has made efforts to wean itself off imports of North Korean arms. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>In other words, it’s unclear who – if anyone – would buy North Korean nuclear technology. However, the nightmare scenario of North Korea selling it to the highest bidder merits consideration. </p>
<p>It would not be the first time that an illicit procurement network turned to sales. Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/world/asia/16chron-khan.html?mcubz=0">shifted his attention from</a> procurement for Pakistan’s program in the 1970s and 1980s to sales to Iran, Libya and North Korea in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The efforts of his network saw centrifuge enrichment technology, and even a weapons design, transferred in some of the most damaging transactions ever for the nonproliferation regime. </p>
<p>Following the discovery of the Khan network, the U.N. and others developed better export controls, and capabilities to detect, inspect and interdict shipments. The international community is better prepared; however, many challenges remain in preventing illicit nuclear-related trade.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Salisbury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kim Jong Un’s regime has already earned millions from the export of arms, missiles, drugs and endangered wildlife products.Daniel Salisbury, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/843282017-09-20T03:11:01Z2017-09-20T03:11:01ZTrump speaks at the UN: 5 takeaways<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186661/original/file-20170919-22604-11tayfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump talks tough at the U.N. General Assembly.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Lucas Jackson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is a short distance from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue to the United Nations headquarters on First Avenue, but these are different worlds. Donald Trump’s native world is one of unilateralism and competition, with more than a hint of bravado and aggression. The U.N.’s world is one of multilateralism and cooperation, with a heavy dose of diplomacy and collaboration.</p>
<p>Those two worlds met when Trump gave his first speech to the U.N. as America’s president. And the nationalism and pragmatism of the relatively recently inaugurated leader of the U.S., <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-trump-victory-make-angela-merkel-leader-of-the-free-world-69017">if no longer the free world</a>, collided with the cosmopolitan, enduringly optimistic, if often weary, leadership of the U.N. Not surprisingly, it starkly contrasted with <a href="http://time.com/4501910/president-obama-united-nations-speech-transcript/">Barack Obama’s final speech to the U.N.</a> a year ago.</p>
<h2>‘It’s complicated’</h2>
<p>Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has conceded on several occasions that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/06/opinions/trump-foreign-policy-ghitis-opinion/index.html">foreign policy is “complicated.</a>” And his speech at the U.N. reinforced that fact. He attempted to bridge an uncomfortable divide between the isolationism and muscular foreign policy embraced by much of his political base and the inescapable need to cooperate with other countries in order to tackle a series of foreign policy problems that even the most powerful of states cannot address alone. My initial impression as a student of international relations is that he largely failed to reconcile that tension.</p>
<p>Trump’s inaugural presidential address was more memorable for his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/20/donald-trumps-full-inauguration-speech-transcript-annotated/">reference to carnage</a> than an appeal to inspirational values. And, likewise, his first U.N. speech will probably be remembered more for his threats against North Korea and his reference to the decimation of the U.S. middle class than a few desultory utterances in which he commended the United Nations for its humanitarian efforts. </p>
<h2>Straddling two constituencies</h2>
<p>Unsurprisingly, Trump’s commentary was broad-ranging and inchoate. In again invoking the concept of “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-to-deliver-un-speech-focused-on-principled-realism/">principled realism</a>,” he tried to straddle, and to please, both his base and the audience in the room. But just like his wavering recent comments about events in Charlottesville or the fate of the “Dreamers” of DACA, his ambivalence on the future relationship between the United States and the United Nations will likely leave neither his supporters or his global audience satisfied.</p>
<p>So, against this background, what were the lessons gleaned from Trump’s speech? </p>
<p>Here are five key points:</p>
<h2>#1. We are the world?</h2>
<p>For the last three decades, every student who takes a university course in international relations has been taught two things. The first is that the countries of the world are becoming more interdependent. The second is that the United Nations is one of the mechanisms that can be used to address issues that require a collective response, like climate change or growing inequality. Trump rejected that formulation. In his speech, he argued that the United Nations should be built on the basis of sovereign, strong and independent states fed by patriotism and nationalism – not cosmopolitanism. States should be left alone unless they threaten external security or, Trump suggested eccentrically, they abrogate human rights – singularly referring to Venezuela.</p>
<h2>#2. Throwback to W</h2>
<p>Rogue states, or “regimes,” are back in fashion. The term, like the “Axis of Evil,” was introduced by George W. Bush’s administration. Then, it principally referred to Iran, North Korea and Iraq, and was used to justify an interventionist U.S. foreign policy. That language disappeared during the Obama administration, in favor of a focus on strategic patience and diplomacy. Trump’s rejection of Obama’s foreign policy could have taken him off in several directions. But in this instance, he has returned to Bush’s. </p>
<h2>#3. A line to remember</h2>
<p>But Bush’s foray didn’t end well. He used the term – and the threat those countries reputedly posed to international stability – to justify a long, bloody and costly war in Iraq that ultimately destabilized the Middle East. The consequences of Trump’s return to that language could prove catastrophic on the Korean Peninsula. Never before can I recall an American president threatening to “totally destroy” another country like North Korea, as Trump did while standing at a lectern of an organization whose core mission is dedicated to peace. That, I suspect, will be the line from his speech that will be longest remembered, regardless of whether war actually breaks out.</p>
<h2>#4. Looking out for number one</h2>
<p>Paradoxically, according to Trump, in pursuing its own narrow, short-term self-interest on security and trade, the United States will remain a “model” for the rest of the world. Again, this claim upends conventional American wisdom. </p>
<p>Attempts to enhance America’s global reputation for the last seven decades have been built on its efforts to cultivate at least an image of <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10271.html">enlightened self-interest.</a> This has entailed promoting global stability, trade and democracy. Taking this long-term view has been at a cost to American taxpayers, workers and even American lives in a series of wars. American presidents have routinely justified this sacrifice by calling the U.S. “a model” from which the world has ultimately benefited. Until now, none has justified selfishness as a virtue to the rest of the world. “As President of the United States, I will always put America first just like you, the leaders of your countries, will always, and should always, put your countries first,” <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/19/trump-un-speech-2017-full-text-transcript-242879">proclaimed Trump.</a> It was a line reminiscent of Gordon Gecko’s famous speech in the movie Wall Street, that “greed is good.” </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R8y6DJAeolo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Greed is good.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>#5. Ignoring the needs of others</h2>
<p>Economic and national security may be in, but enhancing economic and social development, addressing global inequality and combating climate change are certainly out. </p>
<p>The irony is inescapable: Two more hurricanes were threatening America’s shores as Trump spoke. Seemingly oblivious to that fact, he completely ignored two of the greatest interrelated challenges facing humanity in a building whose central mission is to protect the species: how to feed the world’s population while ensuring all of our children actually remain alive so that they can enjoy that meal. America First, he clearly implied, entails the right of the American middle class to drive to the mall and have enough money to spend on U.S. manufactured products when it gets there. But, on this occasion, the possibility that they may have to drive through a hurricane, flood, forest fire or smog to get there was not recognized by Trump as a major problem. And on questions of economic, political or social development? The nearest he got was a reference to refugees: Wars should cease so that they can return to their homes. It’s cheaper that way. The president is probably unacquainted with the fact that a large proportion of the world’s potential <a href="https://caribbeantradelaw.com/2017/01/30/hr4939-us-caribbean-strategic-engagement-act-of-2016-key-points-to-note/">environmental refugees</a> live in the Caribbean, and when the sea rises I suspect they will be heading in boats towards Florida, if not Mar-a-Lago, with no home to return to. </p>
<h2>So what’s the bottom line?</h2>
<p>First, principled realism is a nice term if you are trying to appear coherent. But its principle components – of isolationism and engagement – are <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100158520">inherently contradictory</a>. Cobbling them together should lead us to expect contradiction and equivocation rather than be surprised by it.</p>
<p>Second, we learned once again that Trump looks longingly backwards rather than forwards. His speech, when dispassionately analyzed, would have seemed more befitting if delivered in 1917 rather than 2017. </p>
<p>And finally, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/politics/trump-un-speech-world-leaders-react/index.html">the lukewarm applause Trump received</a> – both when criticizing Iran and at the conclusion of his speech – suggests that, with few exceptions, the world’s leaders share the sentiment held by a large portion of the American electorate: that the next three years and four months are going <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/6/12/15781752/donald-trump-eternity-time-perception">to feel like an eternity</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186662/original/file-20170919-18176-s8e8jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186662/original/file-20170919-18176-s8e8jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186662/original/file-20170919-18176-s8e8jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186662/original/file-20170919-18176-s8e8jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186662/original/file-20170919-18176-s8e8jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186662/original/file-20170919-18176-s8e8jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186662/original/file-20170919-18176-s8e8jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">White House Chief of Staff John Kelly reacts to Trump’s U.N. speech.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Mary Altaffer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Reich receives funding from The Gerda Henkel Foundation in support of his research. </span></em></p>The president threatened North Korea and decried the decimation of the American middle class – but didn’t have much praise for the work of the United Nations.Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/835542017-09-07T21:42:15Z2017-09-07T21:42:15ZWhy UN sanctions against North Korea’s missile program failed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184794/original/file-20170905-13709-1hg9ryu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trucks cross the friendship bridge connecting China and North Korea on Sept. 4, 2017. Trump has threatened to cut off trade with countries that deal with North Korea. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Helene Franchineau</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The past few months have seen the coming of age of North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability. </p>
<p>For most of the last 20 years, the international community has been struggling to stop this from happening.</p>
<p>A sixth nuclear test on September 3 – of what was <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2017/09/us-intelligence-north-koreas-sixth-test-was-a-140-kiloton-advanced-nuclear-device/?utm_content=buffer70357&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">possibly a hydrogen bomb</a> – followed July’s <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2017/08/north-koreas-second-icbm-test-introduced-new-features-to-the-missiles-second-stage/">two successful tests</a> of an intercontinental ballistic missile with the capability to hit the U.S. The same month, the U.S. intelligence community <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.3b4bf27f0c33">assessed that</a> North Korea’s arsenal consists of “up to 60” weapons, and that the country had successfully manufactured a compact warhead capable of being mounted on a missile. </p>
<p>My research on how nation states <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0096340213485948">illegally obtain missile technologies</a> and my experience conducting <a href="https://projectalpha.eu/outreach-workshop-in-dalian-china/">outreach related to U.N. sanctions</a> give me some insight into the methods North Korea used to make illicit procurements and the limitations in using technology-based sanctions to prevent them.</p>
<h2>Technology-based sanctions</h2>
<p>In 2006 – following North Korea’s first nuclear test – the U.N. Security Council <a href="https://undocs.org/S/RES/1718(2006)">prohibited</a> the “supply, sale or transfer” of “items, materials, equipment, goods and technology” that could contribute to the country’s missile program. </p>
<p>Efforts to prevent North Korea’s acquisition of missile technology by certain nations – notably the United States – had been <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron">underway since the 1990s</a>. However, the U.N. sanctions went further by placing standardized legal requirements on all states to prevent the development of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction programs.</p>
<p>These sanctions are “universal.” That means they are obligatory for all states around the world. Each nation is responsible for implementation within its borders. Missile, nuclear and military technologies are regulated through national export control systems. Governments must grant an export license for the exports of certain goods and technologies. This allows governments to do a risk assessment on transactions and minimize the diversions to undesirable uses, such as weapons of mass destruction programs or human rights abuses.</p>
<p>In theory, all countries should have the capacity to implement these technology-based sanctions. Having an export control system has been mandatory for states since the passage of <a href="http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1540(2004)">U.N. Security Council resolution 1540</a> in 2004. However, more than a decade after this resolution was passed, many nations – particularly developing ones – are still struggling with <a href="http://www.nti.org/analysis/reports/1540-reporting-overview/">implemention</a>.</p>
<p>This has led to uneven execution of missile-related sanctions on North Korea. A recent report has described the U.N. sanctions regime as a “<a href="https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201706_whr_a_house_without_foundations_web.pdf">house without foundations</a>,” noting that not a single element of the sanctions regime “enjoys robust international implementation.” </p>
<h2>Sources of missile technology</h2>
<p>As <a href="http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north-korea/delivery-systems/">North Korea’s missile program</a> has advanced, its sources of missile technology have evolved. </p>
<p>North Korea began by importing full missile systems and seeking to reverse-engineer or replicate them. For example, after procuring short-range <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/63dc9c5369804d008171cae0d9922f58">Scud missiles</a> from Egypt in the late 1970s, North Korea “reverse-engineered” them by the mid-1980s. The 1990s saw North Korea develop the <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/74e8a504b63340e284da666629bac84e">Nodong</a>, a scaled-up Scud design. It also experimented with longer-range missiles in the late 1990s and mid-2000s. These Taepodong missiles drew together elements of the shorter-range systems such as their engines. The <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/1d2f4783998146a0a574ae05c509c607">Taepodong-2</a> allegedly had an intercontinental range, although it was never successfully tested.</p>
<hr>
<p><iframe id="r10BA" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/r10BA/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<hr>
<p>Since taking power in 2011, Kim Jong Un has accelerated North Korea’s missile program. In the past year alone, <a href="http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/cns-north-korea-missile-test-database/">the country has tested</a> four seemingly new missiles for the first time – including a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-idUSKCN10Y2B0">submarine-launched ballistic missile</a> and an <a href="http://www.usfk.mil/Media/Press-Releases/Article/1182085/us-pacific-command-detects-tracks-north-korean-missile-launch/">intermediate range ballistic missile</a>, as well as the ICBMs tested in July. Kim has also made significant progress in developing the nuclear warheads the missiles are designed to carry. The sixth nuclear test undertaken in early September – by far the largest of those conducted by the the country – was the fourth carried out under his leadership. </p>
<p>The country has also sought to learn how to produce required parts and components at home. North Korea’s program is opaque, but some episodes provide insights into where the country has been obtaining its technology.</p>
<p>Rocket debris salvaged from the sea following a satellite launch in December 2012 suggested an ongoing reliance on the international market place for parts. A 2013 <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2014/147">U.N. report</a> suggested the rocket had used modern components sourced from China, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S., as well as “cannibalized” Scud components and other 1980s vintage Soviet parts.</p>
<p>Since then, North Korea has continued to pursue more advanced manufacturing technologies. Footage from the leadership’s <a href="http://www.38north.org/2013/09/jlewis090413/">frequent factory visits</a> has shown that North Korea has acquired advanced machine tools of use in missile and nuclear programs. Photographs from a parade in April 2017 <a href="https://storify.com/ArmsControlWonk/ribbed-for-your-pleasure">suggest</a> that North Korea’s new submarine-launched ballistic missile was constructed with wound filament. This material is lighter and stronger than aluminum, and a significant step forward in capability.</p>
<p>Recent discussion over the <a href="https://www.iiss.org/en/iiss%20voices/blogsections/iiss-voices-2017-adeb/august-2b48/north-korea-icbm-success-3abb">possible Ukrainian or Russian origin</a> of North Korea’s rocket engines has been heated, with the argument <a href="https://www.nknews.org/2017/08/how-north-korea-makes-its-missiles/">refuted by some experts</a>. This reflects a broader debate regarding the genesis of the country’s recent successes: Was it the result of imported technology or testimony to North Korea’s ability to master advanced WMD technologies themselves?</p>
<h2>Evading sanctions</h2>
<p>To make these advances in their missile program, North Korea has had to evade sanctions and the broader scrutiny of the international community. Their illicit procurement techniques include using front companies, obscuring the end user, falsifying documentation and mislabeling cargo. A 2017 <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150">U.N. report</a> notes that North Korea’s evasion techniques are “increasing in scale, scope and sophistication.”</p>
<p>North Korea’s military and weapons of mass destruction procurement networks are global in nature. <a href="http://projectalpha.eu/alpha-in-depth-north-koreas-proliferation-and-illicit-procurement-apparatus/">According to one study</a>, they have touched more than 60 countries. </p>
<p>Due to geographical proximity, historic relationship and broader trading links, China has played an unparalleled role in these networks. Many middlemen and procurement agents have operated in <a href="http://thebulletin.org/engaging-china-proliferation-prevention">China</a>, and increasingly – as the country’s private sector develops – its manufacturers have been a source of technology. A series of revelations in early 2017 demonstrated that Chinese manufacturers and Chinese-North Korean joint ventures are benefiting North Korea’s missile program – including with <a href="http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Shenyang_Machine_Tools_13Apr2017_Final.pdf">machine tools</a>, <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150">components</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-north-korean-venture-shows-how-much-sanctions-can-miss-1494191212?mod=djem10point">materials</a>.</p>
<h2>The effects of sanctions?</h2>
<p>Observers might rightfully ask: Have sanctions failed? </p>
<p>This question is complicated. It might be more useful to consider what the effects of sanctions have been.</p>
<p>The primary objectives of technology-based sanctions have been to slow and prevent North Korea’s nuclear and missile development. The recent ICBM tests clearly prove these measures have not prevented North Korea’s missile development. Whether they slowed progress is debatable. As U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley recently observed, they are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/05/south-korea-minister-redeploying-us-nuclear-weapons-tensions-with-north">unlikely to change North Korean behavior</a>.</p>
<p>What is undeniable is that sanctions have had unforeseen consequences. <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-curb-north-koreas-nuclear-program-follow-the-money-65462">Research suggests</a> that sanctions could have made North Korea’s procurement efforts more sophisticated as Chinese middlemen monetize the risk.</p>
<p>Americans tend to view North Korea as an inward-looking, economically isolated state cut off from the international community. However, the country’s illicit networks – including those supplying its missile program – are global, adaptive and resilient. That makes them difficult to shut down.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-sanctions-against-north-koreas-missile-program-fail-80666">an article</a> originally published on July 7, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83554/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Salisbury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The international community has been trying to stop North Korea from developing long-range missiles for decades. So what went wrong?Daniel Salisbury, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/823652017-08-14T02:32:45Z2017-08-14T02:32:45ZWhy didn’t sanctions stop North Korea’s missile program?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181827/original/file-20170811-12740-bacwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Images of Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are shown on a news program in Seoul, South Korea on Thursday, Aug. 10, 2017. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>North Korea’s long-range missile program has made significant technological advances in the past few months. </p>
<p>For most of the past 20 years, the international community has struggled to stop this kind of progress.</p>
<p>Kim Jong Un’s plan to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/world/asia/north-korea-guam-missiles-kim-trump.html">target four test missiles</a> approximately 20 miles off the coast of the U.S. territory of Guam shows just how destabilizing this rapidly advancing ballistic missile program can be. North Korea’s plan – which Kim claims will be finalized later this month – follows last month’s <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2017/08/north-koreas-second-icbm-test-introduced-new-features-to-the-missiles-second-stage/">two successful tests</a> of an intercontinental ballistic missile with the capability to hit the U.S.</p>
<p>My research on how states <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0096340213485948">illegally obtain missile technologies</a> and my experience conducting <a href="https://projectalpha.eu/outreach-workshop-in-dalian-china/">outreach related to U.N. sanctions</a> give me some insight into the methods North Korea used to make illicit procurements and the limitations in using technology-based sanctions to prevent them.</p>
<h2>Technology-based sanctions</h2>
<p>In 2006 – following North Korea’s first nuclear test – the U.N. Security Council <a href="https://undocs.org/S/RES/1718(2006)">prohibited</a> the “supply, sale or transfer” of “items, materials, equipment, goods and technology” that could contribute to the country’s missile program. </p>
<p>Efforts to prevent North Korea’s acquisition of missile technology by certain nations – notably the United States – had been <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron">underway since the 1990s</a>. However, the U.N. sanctions went further by placing standardized legal requirements on all states to prevent the development of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction programs.</p>
<p>These sanctions are “universal” – obligatory for all states around the world. Each nation is responsible for implementation within its borders. Missile, nuclear and military technologies are regulated through national export control systems. Exports of certain goods and technologies need to be granted an export license by the government. This allows governments to do a risk assessment on transactions and minimize the diversions to undesirable uses, such as Weapons of Mass Destruction programs or human rights abuses.</p>
<p>In theory, all countries should have the capacity to implement technology-based sanctions. Having an export control system has been mandatory for states since the passage of <a href="http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1540(2004)">U.N. Security Council resolution 1540</a> in 2004. However, more than a decade after this resolution was passed, many nations – particularly developing ones – are still struggling with <a href="http://www.nti.org/analysis/reports/1540-reporting-overview/">implemention</a>.</p>
<p>This has led to uneven execution of missile-related sanctions on North Korea. A recent report has described the U.N. sanctions regime as a “<a href="https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201706_whr_a_house_without_foundations_web.pdf">house without foundations</a>,” noting that not a single element of the sanctions regime “enjoys robust international implementation.” </p>
<h2>Sources of missile technology</h2>
<p>As <a href="http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north-korea/delivery-systems/">North Korea’s missile program</a> has advanced, its sources of missile technology have evolved. </p>
<p>North Korea began by importing full missile systems and seeking to reverse-engineer or replicate them. For example, after procuring short-range <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/63dc9c5369804d008171cae0d9922f58">Scud missiles</a> from Egypt in the late 1970s, North Korea “reverse-engineered” them by the mid-1980s. The 1990s saw North Korea develop the <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/74e8a504b63340e284da666629bac84e">Nodong</a>, a scaled-up Scud design. It also experimented with longer-range missiles in the late 1990s and mid-2000s. These Taepodong missiles drew together elements of the shorter-range systems such as their engines. The <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/1d2f4783998146a0a574ae05c509c607">Taepodong-2</a> allegedly had an intercontinental range, although it was never successfully tested.</p>
<p><iframe id="r10BA" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/r10BA/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Since taking power in 2011, Kim Jong Un has accelerated North Korea’s missile program. In the past year alone, <a href="http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/cns-north-korea-missile-test-database/">the country has tested</a> four seemingly new missiles for the first time – including a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-idUSKCN10Y2B0">submarine-launched ballistic missile</a> and an <a href="http://www.usfk.mil/Media/Press-Releases/Article/1182085/us-pacific-command-detects-tracks-north-korean-missile-launch/">intermediate range ballistic missile</a>, as well as the ICBMs tested last month. </p>
<p>The country has also sought to learn how to produce required parts and components at home. North Korea’s program is opaque, and the balance between reliance on external sources and homemade parts is unclear, but some episodes provide insights.</p>
<p>Rocket debris salvaged from the sea following a satellite launch in December 2012 suggested an ongoing reliance on the international market place for parts. A 2013 <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2014/147">U.N. report</a> suggested the rocket had used modern components sourced from China, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S., as well as “cannibalized” Scud components and other 1980s vintage Soviet parts.</p>
<p>Since then, North Korea has continued to pursue more advanced manufacturing technologies. Footage from the leadership’s <a href="http://www.38north.org/2013/09/jlewis090413/">frequent factory visits</a> has shown that North Korea has acquired advanced computer numerically controlled machine tools which are of use in missile and nuclear programs. Photographs from a parade in April 2017 <a href="https://storify.com/ArmsControlWonk/ribbed-for-your-pleasure">suggest</a> that North Korea’s new submarine-launched ballistic missile was constructed with wound filament. This material is lighter and stronger than aluminum, and a significant step forward in capability.</p>
<h2>Evading sanctions</h2>
<p>To make these advances in their missile program, North Korea has had to evade sanctions and the broader scrutiny of the international community. Their illicit procurement techniques include using front companies, obscuring the end user, falsifying documentation and mislabeling cargo. A 2017 <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150">U.N. report</a> notes that North Korea’s evasion techniques are “increasing in scale, scope and sophistication.”</p>
<p>North Korea’s military and WMD procurement networks are global in nature. <a href="http://projectalpha.eu/alpha-in-depth-north-koreas-proliferation-and-illicit-procurement-apparatus/">According to one study</a>, they have touched more than 60 countries. </p>
<p>Due to geographical proximity, historic relationship and broader trading links, China has played an unparalleled role in these networks. Many middlemen and procurement agents have operated in <a href="http://thebulletin.org/engaging-china-proliferation-prevention">China</a>, and increasingly – as the country’s private sector develops – its manufacturers have been a source of technology. A series of revelations in early 2017 demonstrated that Chinese manufacturers and Chinese-North Korean joint ventures are benefiting North Korea’s missile program – including with <a href="http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Shenyang_Machine_Tools_13Apr2017_Final.pdf">machine tools</a>, <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150">components</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-north-korean-venture-shows-how-much-sanctions-can-miss-1494191212?mod=djem10point">materials</a>.</p>
<h2>The effects of sanctions?</h2>
<p>Observers might rightfully ask: Have sanctions failed? </p>
<p>This question is complicated. It might be more useful to consider what the effects of sanctions have been.</p>
<p>The primary objectives of technology-based sanctions have been to slow and prevent North Korea’s nuclear and missile development. The recent ICBM tests clearly prove these measures have not prevented North Korea’s missile development. Whether they slowed progress is debatable. </p>
<p>What is undeniable is that sanctions have had unforeseen consequences. <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-curb-north-koreas-nuclear-program-follow-the-money-65462">Research suggests</a> that sanctions could have made North Korea’s procurement efforts more sophisticated as Chinese middlemen monetize the risk.</p>
<p>Americans tend to view North Korea as an inward-looking, economically isolated state cut off from the international community. However, the country’s illicit networks – including those supplying its missile program – are global and responsive. Ultimately, they will be difficult to counter.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-sanctions-against-north-koreas-missile-program-fail-80666">an article</a> originally published on July 7, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Salisbury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The international community has been trying to stop North Korea from developing long-range missiles for decades. So how did North Korea get them?Daniel Salisbury, Postdoctoral Fellow, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/806662017-07-08T01:37:16Z2017-07-08T01:37:16ZWhy did sanctions against North Korea’s missile program fail?<p>North Korea’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40502361">successful test</a> of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), allegedly with the capability to hit Alaska, is the latest in a series of significant advances for the country’s missile program.</p>
<p>North Korea has been seeking to develop long-range missile technology for over 20 years. For much of this period, the international community has been trying to stop that from happening. </p>
<p>My research on how states <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0096340213485948">illegally obtain missile technologies</a> and my experience conducting <a href="https://projectalpha.eu/outreach-workshop-in-dalian-china/">outreach related to U.N. sanctions</a> give me some insight into the methods North Korea used to make illicit procurements and the limitations in using technology-based sanctions to prevent them.</p>
<h2>Technology-based sanctions</h2>
<p>In 2006 – following North Korea’s first nuclear test – the U.N. Security Council <a href="https://undocs.org/S/RES/1718(2006)">prohibited</a> the “supply, sale or transfer” of “items, materials, equipment, goods and technology” that could contribute to the country’s missile program. </p>
<p>Efforts to prevent North Korea’s acquisition of missile technology by certain nations – notably the United States – were <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron">underway by the 1990s</a>. However, the U.N. sanctions went further by placing standardized legal requirements on all states to prevent the development of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction programs.</p>
<p>These sanctions are “universal” – obligatory for all states around the world. However, each nation is responsible for implementation within its borders. Missile, nuclear and military technologies are regulated through national export control systems. Exports of certain goods and technologies need to be granted an export license by the government. This allows governments to do a risk assessment on transactions and minimize the diversions to undesirable uses, such as WMD programs or human rights abuses.</p>
<p>Since the passage of <a href="http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1540(2004)">U.N. Security Council resolution 1540</a> in 2004, having an export control system has been mandatory for states. In theory, this should give all countries the capacity to implement technology-based sanctions. However, more than a decade after UNSCR 1540 was passed, many states – particularly developing countries – are still struggling to put in place effective systems <a href="http://www.nti.org/analysis/reports/1540-reporting-overview/">to implement</a> the legislation.</p>
<p>This has led to uneven implementation of missile-related sanctions on North Korea. A recent report has described the U.N. sanctions regime as a “<a href="https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201706_whr_a_house_without_foundations_web.pdf">house without foundations</a>,” noting that not a single element of the sanctions regime “enjoys robust international implementation.” </p>
<h2>Sources of missile technology</h2>
<p>As <a href="http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north-korea/delivery-systems/">North Korea’s missile program</a> has advanced, its sources of missile technology have evolved. </p>
<p>North Korea began by importing full missile systems and seeking to reverse-engineer or replicate them. For example, after procuring short-range <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/63dc9c5369804d008171cae0d9922f58">Scud missiles</a> from Egypt in the late 1970s, North Korea had replicated, or “reverse-engineered,” them by the mid-1980s. The 1990s saw North Korea develop the <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/74e8a504b63340e284da666629bac84e">Nodong</a>, a scaled-up Scud design. It also experimented with longer-range missiles in the late 1990s and mid-2000s. These Taepodong missiles drew together elements of the shorter-range systems such as their engines. The <a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/1d2f4783998146a0a574ae05c509c607">Taepodong-2</a> allegedly had an intercontinental range, although it was never successfully tested.</p>
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<p>Since taking power in 2011, Kim Jong-Un has accelerated North Korea’s missile program. In the past year alone, <a href="http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/cns-north-korea-missile-test-database/">the country has tested</a> four seemingly new missiles for the first time – including a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-idUSKCN10Y2B0">submarine launched ballistic missile</a> (SLBM) and an <a href="http://www.usfk.mil/Media/Press-Releases/Article/1182085/us-pacific-command-detects-tracks-north-korean-missile-launch/">intermediate range ballistic missile</a>, as well as the ICBM tested this week. </p>
<p>The country has also sought to learn how to produce required parts and components at home. North Korea’s program is opaque, and the balance between reliance on external sources and indigenization is unclear, but some episodes provide insights.</p>
<p>Rocket debris salvaged from the sea following a satellite launch in December 2012 suggested an ongoing reliance on the international market place for parts. A 2013 <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2014/147">U.N. report</a> suggested the rocket had used modern components sourced from China, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S., as well as “cannibalized” Scud components and other 1980s vintage Soviet parts.</p>
<p>Since then, North Korea has continued to pursue more advanced manufacturing technologies. Footage from the leadership’s <a href="http://www.38north.org/2013/09/jlewis090413/">frequent factory visits</a> has shown that North Korea has acquired advanced computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools which are of use in missile and nuclear programs. Photographs from the recent parade in April 2017 <a href="https://storify.com/ArmsControlWonk/ribbed-for-your-pleasure">suggest</a> that North Korea’s new SLBM was constructed with wound filament. This material is lighter and stronger than aluminum, and a significant step forward in capability.</p>
<h2>Evading sanctions</h2>
<p>To make these advances in their missile program, North Korea has had to evade sanctions and the broader scrutiny of the international community. Their illicit procurement techniques include using front companies, obscuring the end user, falsifying documentation and mislabeling cargo. A 2017 <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150">U.N. report</a> notes that North Korea’s evasion techniques are “increasing in scale, scope and sophistication.”</p>
<p>North Korea’s military and WMD procurement networks are global in nature. <a href="http://projectalpha.eu/alpha-in-depth-north-koreas-proliferation-and-illicit-procurement-apparatus/">According to one study</a>, they have touched more than 60 countries. </p>
<p>Due to geographical proximity, historic relationship and broader trading links, China has played an unparalleled role in these networks. Many middlemen and procurement agents have operated in <a href="http://thebulletin.org/engaging-china-proliferation-prevention">China</a>, and increasingly – as the country’s private sector develops – its manufacturers have been a source of technology. A series of revelations in early 2017 demonstrated that Chinese manufacturers and Chinese-North Korean joint ventures are benefiting North Korea’s missile program – including with <a href="http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Shenyang_Machine_Tools_13Apr2017_Final.pdf">machine tools</a>, <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150">components</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-north-korean-venture-shows-how-much-sanctions-can-miss-1494191212?mod=djem10point">materials</a>.</p>
<h2>The effects of sanctions?</h2>
<p>With North Korea’s successful ICBM test – and a range of other nuclear, missile and military advances – observers might rightfully ask: Have sanctions failed? This question is complicated. It might be more useful to consider what the effects of sanctions have been.</p>
<p>The primary objectives of technology-based sanctions have been to slow and prevent North Korea’s nuclear and missile development. The recent ICBM test clearly proves these measures have not prevented North Korea’s missile development. Whether they slowed progress is debatable. </p>
<p>What is undeniable is that sanctions have had unforeseen consequences. <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-curb-north-koreas-nuclear-program-follow-the-money-65462">Research suggests</a> that sanctions could have made North Korea’s procurement efforts more sophisticated as Chinese middlemen monetize the risk.</p>
<p>Americans tend to view North Korea as an inward-looking, economically isolated state cut off from the international community. However, the country’s illicit networks – including those supplying its missile program – are global and responsive. Ultimately, they will be difficult to counter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Salisbury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The international community has been trying to stop North Korea from developing long-range missiles for decades. So how did North Korea get one?Daniel Salisbury, Postdoctoral Fellow, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/805832017-07-05T20:11:08Z2017-07-05T20:11:08Z4 things to know about North and South Korea<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176959/original/file-20170705-21675-xudwrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People watch news of missile test on a public TV screen in North Korea.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: Professor Ji-Young Lee of American University answers four questions to help put issues related to North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities into context.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Why is there a North and a South Korea?</strong></p>
<p>Before there was a South and North Korea, the peninsula was ruled as a dynasty known as Chosŏn, which existed for more than five centuries, until 1910. This period, during which an independent Korea had diplomatic <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/chinas-hegemony/9780231179744">relations with China and Japan</a>, ended with imperial Japan’s annexation of the peninsula. Japan’s colonial rule lasted 35 years.</p>
<p>When Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, the Korean peninsula was split into two zones of occupation – the U.S.-controlled South Korea and the Soviet-controlled North Korea. Amid the growing Cold War tensions between Moscow and Washington, in 1948, two separate governments were established in Pyongyang and Seoul. Kim Il-Sung, leader of North Korea, was a former guerrilla <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-real-north-korea-9780199390038?cc=us&lang=en&">who fought under Chinese and Russian command</a>. <a href="http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-8995-9780824831684.aspx">Syngman Rhee</a>, a Princeton University-educated staunch anti-communist, became the first leader of South Korea.</p>
<p>In an attempt to unify the Korean peninsula under his communist regime, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5740.html">Kim Il-Sung invaded the South</a> in June 1950 with Soviet aid. This brought South Korea and the United States, backed by United Nations, to fight against the newly founded People’s Republic of China and North Korea. An armistice agreement ended hostilities in the Korean War in 1953. Technically speaking, however, the two Koreas are still at war.</p>
<p><strong>Beyond the political divide, are Koreans in the North and South all that culturally different? If so, how?</strong></p>
<p>Koreans in the South and North have led separate lives for almost 70 years. Korean history and a collective memory of having been a unified, independent state for over a millennium, however, are a powerful reminder to Koreans that they have shared identity, culture and language. </p>
<p>For example, in both Koreas the history of having resisted Japanese colonialism is an important source of nationalism. Both North and South Korean students learn about the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-real-north-korea-9780199390038?cc=us&lang=en&">1919 March 1 Independence Movement</a> in school.</p>
<p>Consider, too, the Korean language. About 54 percent of North Korean defectors in South Korea say that they have <a href="http://www.nkrf.re.kr/nkrf/archive/archive_01/kolas/kolasView.do?key=70048046&kind=DAS&q2=">no major difficulty understanding</a> Korean used in South Korea. Only 1 percent responded that they cannot understand it at all. </p>
<p>However, the divergent politics of North and South Korea have shaped differences in Koreans’ outlook on life and the world since the split. South Korea’s vibrant democracy is a result of the mass movement of students, intellectuals and middle-class citizens. In <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0109.xml">North Korea</a>, the state propaganda and ideology of Juche, or “self-reliance,” were used to consolidate the Kim family’s one-man rule, while reproducing a certain mode of thinking designed to help the regime survive.</p>
<p><strong>What have we learned from North Korean defectors who settled in South Korea?</strong></p>
<p>As of September 2016, an estimated 29,830 North Korean defectors are <a href="http://eng.unikorea.go.kr/content.do?cmsid=3892">living in South Korea.</a> From them, we’ve learned the details of people’s everyday life in one of the world’s most closed societies. For example, despite crackdowns, more North Koreans are now watching South Korean TV dramas. </p>
<p>In North Korea, repression, surveillance and punishment are pervasive features of social life. The state relies heavily on coercion and terror as a means of sustaining the regime.</p>
<p>Still, not all North Koreans are interested in defecting. According to <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/marching-through-suffering/9780231171342">anthropologist Sandra Fahy</a>, interviewees said they left the North reluctantly driven primarily by famine and economic reasons, rather than political reasons. A majority of them missed home in the North. </p>
<p>However, Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to the South in 2016, believes that Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could face a popular uprising or elite defection as North Koreans have increasingly become <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTvNBfdjuJI">disillusioned with the regime.</a></p>
<p><strong>What is the history of U.S. relations with South Korea, and where do they stand now?</strong></p>
<p>The purpose of the U.S.-South Korea alliance has changed little since its formation in 1953. This has much to do with continuing threats from North Korea. </p>
<p>However, despite differences in their approach to North Korea, President George W. Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun took a major step toward transforming the Cold War alliance into a “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/07/joint-declaration-commemoration-60th-anniversary-alliance-between-republ">comprehensive strategic alliance</a>.” Under President Barack Obama and South Korean Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, many believed the U.S.-South Korea alliance was at its best. Under their leadership, Washington and Seoul agreed to expand the alliance’s scope to cover nontraditional threats, like terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other global challenges like piracy and epidemic disease, while coordinating and standing firm against North Korea’s provocations. </p>
<p>Now, with Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump as new presidents of South Korea and the United States, there is a greater degree of uncertainty. Among other things, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-we-may-terminate-us-south-korea-trade-agreement/2017/04/27/75ad1218-2bad-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.7220866a5910">Trump criticized</a> the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, while insisting Seoul pay for THAAD, a U.S. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/world/asia/trump-south-korea-thaad-missile-defense-north-korea.html?_r=0">missile defense system deployed in South Korea</a>. Moon, whose parents fled the North during the Korean War, is likely to put inter-Korean reconciliation as one of his top priorities. This may collide with the current U.S. approach of imposing sanctions against North Korea. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-things-to-know-about-north-and-south-korea-77441">May 14, 2017</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80583/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ji-Young Lee received funding from the Academy of Korean Studies (Competitive Research Grant, 2013), for a book project on historical international order in Asia.</span></em></p>North and South Korea explained in four questions and answers.Ji-Young Lee, Assistant Professor, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/774222017-05-09T18:24:58Z2017-05-09T18:24:58ZFour challenges for Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s new president<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168616/original/file-20170509-11012-1lfbkmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Korea's Moon Jae-in victorious on May 9, 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Democrat Moon Jae-in is <a href="http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/focus/2017/05/09/56/1700000000AEN20170509001200315F.html">the new president of South Korea</a>. </p>
<p>Moon, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/09/moon-jae-in-the-south-korean-pragmatist-who-would-be-presidentc">former special forces soldier turned human rights lawyer</a>, won a snap election, following months of mass protests that ousted President Park Geun-hye last December.</p>
<p>The grace period for Moon will be short. Increasing regional tensions and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/mass-protests-south-korean-president-park-161029123150734.html">demonstrations</a> against corruption characterized the presidential race in <a href="http://statisticstimes.com/economy/asian-countries-by-gdp.php">Asia’s fourth-largest economy</a>. During the campaign, Moon <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/09/south-korea-looks-past-park-as-presidential-election-gets-under-way">promised to address the systemic problems</a> that led to Park’s impeachment, creating expectations that will define his administration.</p>
<p>Here’s what our years of studying Korean <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2013.789070">migration</a> and <a href="http://www.academia.edu/28322587/Korean_Peninsula_2015_One_step_forward_and_two_steps_back">security</a> led us to see as the biggest challenges facing Moon.</p>
<h2>1. Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear threat</h2>
<p>Moon, the son of refugees from North Korea, favors <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/moon-jae-south-korea-election-596620">engagement and cooperation with North Korea</a>. On the campaign trail, Moon repeatedly stated he is open to negotiations with North Korea and <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/05/05/527027240/leading-south-korean-presidential-candidate-moon-aims-to-negotiate-with-north">willing to meet Kim Jong-un</a>. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-we-really-be-so-afraid-of-a-nuclear-north-korea-71855">nuclear issue</a> is now central to inter-Korean relations. If Moon plans a <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/05/05/527027240/leading-south-korean-presidential-candidate-moon-aims-to-negotiate-with-north">“Sunshine Policy 2.0”</a> – a revival of dialogue and economic aid to North Korea – he’ll need to convince critics that resuming economic cooperation will not fund Kim Jong-un’s nuclear program.</p>
<h2>2. Two important allies</h2>
<p>Caught between the U.S. and China, Moon will try to pursue an independent foreign policy. </p>
<p>Moon needs to manage the Trump administration’s <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2017/04/earth-to-trump-needed-an-east-asia-policy/">conflicted</a> approach to the region. Trump has voiced the possibility of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4d9f65d6-17bd-11e7-9c35-0dd2cb31823a">unilateral action</a> against North Korea, but also suggested that he would be <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39773337">honored to meet Kim Jong-un</a>. Trump stressed the importance of the alliance with South Korea, but also said that South Korea should <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/04/28/trump-thaad-south-korea-trade/">pay for the anti-missile THAAD</a> system the U.S. has <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2017/03/us-south-korea-try-to-reassure-china-on-thaad/">deployed on South Korean soil</a>. And, Trump has suggested that the <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/what-is-korea-us-trade-deal-korus-2017-4">U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement</a> will be renegotiated.</p>
<p>Moon also has fences to mend with China, South Korea’s biggest trading partner. China has criticized the deployment of THAAD as an <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/17/thaad-anti-missile-system-makes-china-lash-out-at-south-korea.html">act of aggression</a> aimed at China and retaliated economically by <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-china-thaad-idUSKBN16R03D">slowing Chinese tourism to South Korea</a>. China accounts for <a href="http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/kor/#Imports">US$131 billion in South Korean export trade</a>, while the number of Chinese tourists quadrupled to <a href="http://www.voanews.com/a/south-korean-stocks-chinese-anger-thaad/3748022.html">8 million</a> over the last five years, bringing in some $8 billion in duty-free sales alone. </p>
<p>Trying to please both sides will be a diplomatic high wire act. </p>
<h2>3. The struggling economy</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/02/asia/south-korea-president-scandal-explained/">scandal</a> that saw the former president <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/30/south-korea-park-geun-hye-arrest-warrant">arrested on corruption charges</a> highlighted South Korea’s dependence on huge family-owned businesses, or “chaebol,” such as Samsung. <a href="https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news/if-elected,-south-korea's-moon-may-put-economy-ahead-of-jobs-and-tax-hikes-480968">Moon has promised to revive the flagging economy</a> while <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/moon-jae-in-south-korea-election-soften-tone-on-north-korea-2017-4">curbing the chaebols’ power</a>. Even if Moon achieves this mammoth task, he will still have to tackle <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/12/14/business/economy-business/south-koreas-youth-unemployment-rate-rises-record-high/">South Korea’s rising youth unemployment</a> and its overreliance on an export economy that made it vulnerable to <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/10/news/economy/south-korea-economy-president-park-out/">economic retaliation</a>. </p>
<h2>4. Trust-building and constitutional reform</h2>
<p>Moon painted himself as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-koreas-next-president-faces-a-belligerent-north-and-a-confused-us-77126">antidote to Park’s corrupt</a>, authoritarian administration. But that scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. The movement that brought millions into the streets of Seoul <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-07/s-koreans-want-new-leader-to-create-jobs-minus-corruption">wants political and institutional reform</a> with greater transparency and more popular participation. </p>
<p>Moon must work to rebuilding trust between the people and the political elite. Constitutional reform is needed to end the country’s imperial presidency and return power to the National Assembly. This is a key step to bring people back into the political process and give them an effective voice. </p>
<p>The frustration many South Koreans feel with collusion and graft pushed Moon to victory. The question is: Can he distinguish himself from a decade of conservative, pro-big business presidents without being labeled a North Korean sympathizer? Or will he end up yet another in a growing list of disgraced South Korean leaders?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An aggressive neighbor to the north, a sputtering economy at home – and two more thorny issues facing South Korea’s new president.Markus Bell, Anthropologist and Lecturer in Korean and Japanese studies, University of SheffieldMarco Milani, Postdoctoral Scholar, Korean Studies Institute, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.