Wednesday, December 6, 2017

49 Countries Are Violating International Sanctions On North Korea



CNN: Report: 49 countries have been busting sanctions on North Korea

President Trump has been tightening the screw on North Korea, ramping up sanctions and urging other countries to sever trade links with Kim Jong Un's regime.

But dozens of countries have violated international sanctions on Pyongyang in recent years, according to a new report by a Washington-based think tank.

It highlights the scale of the challenge facing Trump as he tries to cut North Korea out of the global trading system as a way of pressuring it to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

A total of 49 countries violated United Nations sanctions on North Korea to varying degrees between March 2014 and September 2017, the Institute for Science and International Security said. That includes North Korea's top trading partner, China, as well as Germany, Brazil, India and France.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: Besides the usual countries (China and Russia), we have some very close U.S. allies who are doing business with North Korea.... France and Germany to name a few.

4 comments:

B.Poster said...

As I have pointed out here and elsewhere numerous times, sanctions do not work. They are easily skirted, they p!ss people off, and the undermine the role of the US dollar as world reserve currency which all but assures of the undesired "hard landing" for America when the inevitable end to the US dollar in this role does occur. The goal needs to be a "soft landing" and sanctions run counter to this goal.

When the US does impose sanctions, this encourages nations to try to go around them and do business with the sanctions. The instinct is sort of a "rally around the oppressed" or at least this is the rationale as the US is generally despised by pretty much everyone.

Don't do sanctions and their is actually less incentive to deal with such governments. Essentially US sanctions are like throwing a life line to those who are hostile to us. They don't work and they have negative utility.

Anonymous said...

I don't think the countries like France or Germany would do this at a governmental level. There may be companies residing in those countries that do business with north Korea but I wouldn't be surprised if they are actually owned by individuals from other countries. Then I'd also look at the trade volume. For sure chiba and Russia will be the highest by far. So the author is a bit reckless here to suggest countriesdo this. Only country I know for sure that does this on the governmental level is China

jac said...

Anon,
Well, France and Germany are not doing anything at a government level, but for having a "blind eye" they are the best (especially France).

Anonymous said...

Jac. I'm sure rare cases in France or even Germany exist. But to be tossed into the same crowd of China or Russia who notoriously sell weapons to anyone, is a bit harsh. That's my point about the author. His headline: 40+ nations do these things. That's not correct to say. He could say within 40 nations offenders have been found but 90% of weapon sales and military equipment sales to north Korea is done by China and to a smaller extent Russia

We have to be cautious about the blame game. There's no single biggest offender on this planet - when it comes to breaking those sanctions - than China. Second biggest is Russia. Then not even in the same ballpark is Iran and a few others. Then light years later France perhaps. So this north Korea mess is first and foremost china's fault. Let's never forget that and be side tracked by smear journalism like this