Clinton’s North Korea epiphany: We have always been at (cold) war with China

So desperate are we to avoid a Cold War (or worse) in the Pacific that throughout the Obama years, we’ve pretended that China hasn’t been waging one unilaterally the whole time. Meanwhile, China has seized the South China Sea, bullied our allies with spurious territorial claims, whipped up anti-American rhetoric to persecute human rights activists, and effectively quit enforcing sanctions against North Korea despite signing on for a nominally tough new resolution in March.

Evidence, you ask? Start with this new Australian report showing that China isn’t enforcing the U.N.’s new cargo inspection requirements at all. China still hasn’t stopped buying minerals like gold and titanium, which is isn’t supposed to buy in any quantity. Coal and iron imports, which are supposed to be limited to “livelihood” purposes, fell sharply in the first quarter of this year, only to rise again in the second. Chinese online vendors have even been selling North Korean coal. China continues to sell kerosene (read: jet fuel) in violation of a U.N. ban. Sanctioned North Korean ships have been seen leaving port. One, the Victory 2, has made regular calls in Chinese ports. Others have been seen hovering just off the Chinese coast. A China-based company, Blue Ship Management, continues to operate two sanctioned North Korean ships. More than 800 agents of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, which was designated in UNSCR 2270, continue to operate on Chinese soil, mostly hunting for defectors and policing overseas workers. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth.

These are the wages of our weakness toward North Korea and China. The new realization that North Korea could be just two years away from having a second-strike capability to hit our West Coast with nuclear weapons has raised the danger of nuclear war to their highest level since 1962, as I predicted it would a year ago. Unfortunately, the President has been poorly served by his National Security Staff and State Department, which have counseled him to hold back on holding China accountable for enabling the steady rise of this threat. China’s friends in Washington, and others who should know better but don’t, are fond of saying there’s nothing we can do about this. But we know what scares and moves China ” secondary sanctions. Congress gave the President the authority (and a mandate) to impose them because China’s violations of sanctions against North Korea are nothing new. They have been so longstanding and so flagrant as to eliminate any other possibility but a deliberate, willful policy.

Even before the last nuclear test, there was a growing sense that President Obama had failed to hold North Korea’s Chinese enablers to account for those violations, despite having so recently signed a new legal mandate to do so. Even before that test, President Obama had said he would seek to toughen sanctions in response to North Korean missile test, and revealed his irritation with China after its rude treatment of him, and after getting an earful of its unreasonable objections to THAAD:

“China continues to object to the THAAD deployment in the Republic of Korea, one of our treaty allies. And what I’ve said to President Xi directly is that we cannot have a situation where we’re unable to defend either ourselves or our treaty allies against increasingly provocative behavior and escalating capabilities by the North Koreans,” Obama said at a news conference in Laos after the East Asia Summit.

“And I indicated to him that if the THAAD bothered him, particularly since it has no purpose other than defensive and does not change the strategic balance between the United States and China, that they need to work with us more effectively to change Pyongyang’s behavior,” he said, according to a White House transcript. [Yonhap]

And even before that test, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee had called on the President to enforce the North Korea sanctions law he has signed just seven months ago, including by imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese entities. Similar reactions came from Paul Ryan and Ed Royce, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC).

China has to understand that we will sanction those banks again, those Chinese banks that are transferring the hard currency”¦We need to use these powers that now the administration has under the bill that I authored ”“ that’s been signed into law by the President ”“ to tell China, ”˜No, there will be secondary sanctions on any economic activity you are engaged in with North Korea.’ Because our goal right now is to shut [North Korea’s] economy down so they cannot continue to expand this nuclear weapons program.” [CNN]

HFAC’s Asia Subcommittee has already scheduled a hearing for Wednesday afternoon. Even before the hearing was announced, I predicted that it would be contentious ” this is an election-year embarrassment the administration and Hillary Clinton don’t need. Now, freshly humiliated by North Korea’s latest nuclear test, the administration is suggesting that it’s finally ready to seek new U.N. sanctions, possibly to close existing loopholes (probably the “livelihood” exception to the coal and iron ore import ban) and ban fuel exports to North Korea. The Washington Post reports that the U.S. and South Korea may also push to ban North Korean labor exports, which will hurt North Korea’s ability to launder money by giving it less “legitimate” income for co-mingling and hiding illicit income. More importantly, the administration is saying that it’s finally ready to follow the law and enforce the sanctions that already exist.

“We will be working very closely in the Security Council and beyond to come up with the strongest possible measure against North Korea’s latest actions,” said U.S. envoy Sung Kim on Sunday.

“In addition to action in the Security Council, both the U.S. and Japan, together with the Republic of Korea, will be looking at unilateral measures, as well as bilateral measures, as well as possible trilateral cooperation,” he said, referring to South Korea by its official name. [Reuters]

So much for the idea that this time is different ” that China had finally lost patience with North Korea. In an epiphany that I thought would never come to Washington, Hillary Clinton (of all people) has articulated why ” China has been using North Korea as a “useful card” to divide U.S. forces in Asia and the Pacific (left unsaid: while China seizes the South China Sea and surrounds Taiwan).

“Up until relatively recently, I think (China was) under the impression that they could control their neighbor and they didn’t want to crack down because they saw it as a useful card to play,” Clinton said.

“If (North Korean leader Kim Jong-un) gets a little crazy, maybe the South Koreans will move toward (China) a little bit; he gets a little crazier, maybe they can make some deals with the Japanese about things they want. It was a strategic calculation,” she said. [Yonhap]

Separately, Clinton called the North Korean nuclear and missile programs “a direct threat to the United States” that we “cannot and will never accept,” which is welcome news at a time when some people are seriously suggesting that we can and must.

Clinton, a former secretary of state, also said that she supports President Barack Obama’s calls for strengthening the existing sanctions and impose additional measures.

“At the same time, we must strengthen defense cooperation with our allies in the region; South Korea and Japan are critical to our missile defense system, which will protect us against a North Korean missile,” she said.

“China plays a critical role, too, and must meaningfully increase pressure on North Korea — and we must make sure they do,” she said.  [Yonhap]

Clinton is right, of course, as is her rival in this election.

“North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, the fourth since Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, is yet one more example of Hillary Clinton’s catastrophic failures as secretary of state,” Trump communications aide Jason Miller said in a statement.

“Clinton promised to work to end North Korea’s nuclear program as secretary of state, yet the program has only grown in strength and sophistication,” he said. [Yonhap]

Park Geun-hye has called on China to enforce sanctions as it had agreed, a brave thing considering that China has increasingly tried to bully South Korea with its considerable economic leverage. No doubt, Park knows what’s at stake. There is already speculation about a sixth nuclear test. If the U.S. and South Korea uncover and freeze the money that keeps Kim Jong-un in power, victory and reunification could be within sight. A slow defeat of extortion and enslavement is in sight, too. If these are our choices, better a banking crisis in China than a war in Korea.