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| Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at The Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at the foundation in Washington, D.C., Nov. 16. / Courtesy of Global Peace Foundation |
By Kim Hyo-jin
WASHINGTON, D.C. ― The U.S. government still has room to impose tougher unilateral sanctions against North Korea, says a U.S. North Korea specialist.
Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center, said in an interview with The Korea Times, Nov. 16, that the Donald Trump administration should increase sanctions against Pyongyang to a higher level, but it is not doing so.
"Up until last year, the U.S. sanctioned more on Zimbabwe and Sudan entities than we had on North Korea," he said, noting it was only last year that the level of sanctions against Pyongyang moved to fourth from ninth of all sanctioned foreign countries.
"If you talk to people in the government who both currently and in the past worked on sanctions, they'd tell you for years we've had a list in the drawers of Chinese and other nations' entities that we could sanction today but we have been prevented from doing so by senior policymakers."
He pointed out such inaction stemmed from concerns it could create a crisis or undermine what the administration perceived as Chinese assistance on North Korea and other issues.
"That pulling U.S. punches on enforcing its laws did not lead to greater North Korean commitment to its denuclearization commitments or Chinese enforcement of required sanctions shows the naivety of such an approach," he said.
He expected the U.S. administration's re-designation of the North as a terrorism sponsor will add to the international effort to increase the country's diplomatic and economic isolation.
Downplaying skeptics of the decision who say it won't resolve the nuclear issue or it could trigger a harsh regime response, he said, "It is only a matter of time before Pyongyang conducts more nuclear and missile tests to complete development of its programs and demonstrate its ability to threaten the U.S. and its allies with nuclear weapons."
"Much-deserved global attention on North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons must not cause us to lose sight of its terrorist activity and gross violations of human rights."
Klingner assessed that the Trump administration has a formulated North Korea policy now, dismissing lingering questions whether it is still left bewildered on the nuclear issue.
Noting he gets a sense of coherent policy now when talking to government officials, he listed five components: the need for pressure, reversing budget cuts to the defense department, strengthening missile defense, willingness for diplomats to meet the North's counterparts, and no negotiations as long as the North refuses to abide by denuclearization.
"I think those components are in place but I don't think the Trump administration has really done a good job of messaging or articulating that," he said.
He characterized Trump's speech at the South Korean National Assembly, saying, even though he did a good job in discussing North Korea's human rights violations, he did not articulate policy as clearly as many security specialists would have liked.
On the possibility of a U.S. pre-emptive attack against North Korea, he said there is a "low probability but it's not zero."
He admitted he had also been confused as to its feasibility as every time he got a different sense by talking to different government officials, but he said recent comments from the administration are less indicative of a preventive attack.
"It seemed the comment about the U.S.'s attack on North Korea was in the context of a response to a North Korean attack," he said. "So I'm less concerned about a preventive attack than I was a few months ago."
Asked about Washington's take on the Moon Jae-in government's security policy, Klingner said the Trump government and experts feel "comfortable" with Moon for his seeking parallel policies to the U.S.'s in terms of North Korea.
Klingner said there were a lot of concerns at first on Moon's ideological orientation considering he was chief of staff of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, but in the past couple of months of his presidency, such suspicion has much been eased.
"He reversed position on a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, acknowledged that the Gaeseong Industrial Complex would be a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and stressed it is not the time for dialogue but for pressure," he said. "I found it surprising that he moved to the center."
But he still viewed Moon's smooth coordination with Trump as conditional as North Korea has refused engagement with the South.
"North Korea's action prevented Moon from engaging with North Korea to the degree that perhaps he wants to," he said. "We do still have concerns as to will he move to the left if North Korea sort of does a charm offensive as they use to do under Kim Jong-il and haven't done under Kim Jong-un."
Klingner advised Seoul to remove doubt on its position on an additional THAAD battery, referring to the so-called "three-nos" that Moon reportedly presented to Beijing.
"THAAD deployment should be an alliance decision that shouldn't be something that South Korea announces particularly after meeting with China," he said.
"There should not be any sense in Beijing we may not do that, we may not protect South Korean and American lives because of some agreement with Beijing."
