At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council called by the United States, Ambassador Nikki Haley lashed out at Russia for helping North Korea skirt sanctions aimed at scaling back Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“Why after voting for sanctions 11 different times is Russia backing away from them? We know the answer. It’s because Russia has been cheating. And now they’ve been caught,” said Haley at the Monday morning meeting.
Over the weekend, Haley accused Russia of trying to “edit” and “obstruct” U.N. reports on North Korea sanctions aiming to scale back Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
By Monday, she had demanded an emergency meeting of the Security Council — of which both the U.S. and Russia are permanent members — and flat-out accused Russia of “cheating” and violating the sanctions, demanding that it stop.
Given recent efforts by some Member States to undermine & obstruct North Korea sanctions implementation, the United States has called an urgent Security Council meeting. Amb. Nikki Haley chairs the meeting beginning at 10:00 a.m.: https://t.co/5MoCMHWvZl #USstrong #USUNpresidency pic.twitter.com/RjRjw3B4Tz
— US Mission to the UN (@USUN) September 17, 2018
She described Russian violations of the sanctions as “systematic” and “wide-ranging,” echoing what has been reported for months, with the Trump administration slapping sanctions on Russian entities for its cooperation with Pyongyang.
So it seems a bit odd to call an emergency meeting on something that has been happening for a while, and doesn’t seem to constitute what most might think of as an emergency (such as missiles being fired or threats being made).
Brian O’Toole, non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former senior adviser to the director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, told ThinkProgress that the timing might be tied to new evidence that needs to be presented to the rest of the Security Council.
“A lot of this evidence is going to come through clandestine means, so getting that declassified for use, because you’re presenting it to the Russians and Chinese and everyone else, means you need to protect sources and methods, so that stuff takes a while,” said O’Toole.
He added that another reason behind calling an emergency meeting — which gets everyone’s attention — is to “underscore just how badly the Russians are behaving — it’s a name and shame tactic, as much as anything else.”
What’s needed after this, he said, is a “concerted diplomatic effort.”
Yuval Weber, a fellow at Daniel Morgan Graduate School and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center said “there little the U.S. can do to Russia” but that Haley has her reasons for calling this meeting.
“I take it from this meeting that Nikki Haley wants to keep this issue alive for at least three reasons: 1) because it is good policy, 2) it is important to President Trump given his commitment of personal prestige to finding a solution to North Korea, and 3) ahead of the [U.N. Security Council] meeting that Trump will chair [on Sept. 26], this will give him talking points about nonproliferation in general rather than solely attacking Iran,” said Weber, who answered questions via e-mail.
Additionally, there’s a lot going on this week and next, which might also explain the timing of today’s emergency meeting: For one thing, North and South Korea are meeting this week to discuss military de-escalation at their borders.
Then, the leaders will fly out to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, which starts on Wednesday and continues through Oct. 5. There has been some speculation about whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-un might once again meet with President Donald Trump.
O’Toole figures it’s too premature to hold another summit without additional leverage, as there has been little progress since their meeting in June. If anything, Pyongyang has continued to develop its nuclear weapons program.
It’s unclear whether he discussed the issue when he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July.
The details of that meeting are not known, as Trump and Putin met behind closed doors and no read-out has been provided to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, despite several requests for one.
President Trump has also accused China of helping North Korea:
STATEMENT FROM THE WHITE HOUSE
President Donald J. Trump feels strongly that North Korea is under tremendous pressure from China because of our major trade disputes with the Chinese Government. At the same time, we also know that China is providing North Korea with…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
Russia, for its part, has always maintained that sanctions are not an effective tool in dealing with North Korea, with Putin calling them “useless and inefficient.”
O’Toole says this is not surprising, given that Russia is itself under sanctions. But the issue of violating the sanctions, he said, can be as much a matter of will, as well as capacity.
While countries such as Russia and China have a very strong security/surveillance apparatus in their countries, keeping track of every company’s behavior is still tough.
“They’re not very good at promoting compliance with rules,” said O’Toole, “The rule of law is weak in both those countries, and so people aren’t used to being held to account.”
If the point of sanctions is to change Russia’s behavior, it might be worth noting that they haven’t really worked to change North Korea’s trajectory, although they have certainly tempered its efforts.
“The North Korean leadership has long made the calculation that nuclear weapons are an existential-level protection against potential U.S. invasion or other regime change activities,” said Weber, adding that “Without sanctions, North Korea would be much more threatening to its neighbors, so it’s definitely not useless. As for inefficient, a more efficient way of dealing with Kim Jong-un would be a first strike, so perhaps Mr. Putin would prefer this level of inefficiency.”
But sanctions can take a long time to work, and require multilateral support.
“The only way to bring this to an end involves cutting off North Korea from its support in China and Russia, and so long as both of those countries are seeking to curtail U.S. power generally, then we’ve found the explanation for the endless nature of this conflict,” said Weber.