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Security Council Unanimously Approves Sanctions on N. Korea

    The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to impose punishing sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test, declaring that its action posed “a clear threat to interntional peace and security.”

    The vote came after the United States, Britain and France overcame last-minute differences with Russia and China.

    The resolution demands North Korea eliminate all its nuclear weapons but expressly rules out military action against the country — a demand by the Russians and Chinese. The Americans also eliminated a complete ban on the sale of conventional weapons; instead, the resolution limits the embargo to major hardware such as tanks, warships, combat aircraft and missiles.

Simply put, I don’t think this will have the desired effect of deterring anything.

    The bottom line now is that the United Nations will probably prove to be useless in preventing crisis again. China and Russia will use their vetoes to water down any punishment, and the US will acquiesce rather than play hardball and get them to stop protecting North Korea. South Korea will duck. Japan will do what it has to do to survive, with our without help from anyone else including us. We’ll work with our allies and use the Proliferation Security Initiative as well as we can, but as long as China props North Korea up Kim will go on menacing the world. This won’t solve the North Korea problem, and will only kick it down the road until North Korea’s missiles and nuclear weapons actually work. The window for dealing with a mostly toothless North Korea will have passed. And when North Korea’s weapons work, so will Iran’s.
    Unilateralism has its disadvantages, but in the current environment multilateralism may have even more. You can’t depend on despots to do anything other than protect their own narrow self-interests. Expecting them to do anything else is naive and foolish, and failing to leverage the political environment against them will probably lead to very serious problems and confrontations in a year or two. And the UN these days is dominated, or at least stymied, by despots in Beijing and Moscow. It’s unlikely to be very useful for the foreseeable future.