More sanctions won’t end the Korean nuclear crisis, but engaging Pyongyang in talks might

While the adoption by the UN Security Council of a resolution fine-tuning sanctions against Pyongyang with greater “bite” is a step in the right direction, demonstrating the ability of Washington and Beijing to agree on common language, it remains to be seen to what extent squeezing Pyongyang further will change the ­dynamics. The country is already heavily sanctioned and isolated internationally and – unlike with the current Iranian nuclear deal – there is no “door prize” for compliance.

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Nor will China agree to a scorched earth economic policy, cutting off necessities like fuel and other imports, given the potential to destabilise the regime.

In short, China fears instability on its borders more than it fears North Korean nuclear weapons. More broadly, the proposed ­deployment of the Thaad anti­ballistic-missile defence system in South Korea highlights the region’s geopolitical disarray. Understandably, Beijing views the deployment of a major US strategic asset on its doorstep as threatening, and it is ­engaging in a war of words with Seoul over the potential of lasting damage to their relationship.

Finally, and most importantly, additional sanctions will do nothing to halt, much less reverse, the progress made to date on the North’s nuclear deterrent.

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The North Korean response has been unsurprisingly swift, with Kim Jong-un asserting, at least rhetorically, that the North is ready to “go nuclear”, if need be, accompanied by firing a salvo of short-range missiles in the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, timed to coincide with the start of joint US-South Korea military exercises, thus bringing tension on the Korean peninsula to a new high this year.

In a sense, this is a reprise of last summer’s mine incident at the Demilitarised Zone which injured two South Korean soldiers. High-level negotiations at Panmunjom then resulted in a quasi apology from the North and a return to what passes for “normalcy” on the Korean peninsula. However, that was broken with the North’s nuclear and missile tests this year and the recent shuttering of the Kaesong free trade zone in response, an important source of hard currency earnings for Pyongyang and one of the last vestiges of Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy of engagement.

Nor have the prospects improved for US-North Korea negotiations to resume any time soon, given Washington’s refusal to acknowledge the North as a nuclear power state, matched by Pyongyang’s refusal to discuss its nuclear programme as a precondition. Not since the 1994 nuclear crisis, ­resolved by the timely intermediation of former US president Jimmy Carter, have the two sides been so far apart on fundamentals. In effect, Pyongyang lacks sufficient incentive to take its nascent nuclear ­deterrent offline, eventually mothballing it permanently, without parallel negotiations to reconfigure the peninsula’s security architecture, the completion of a long overdue peace treaty formally ending the Korean war, as well as the eventual establishment of diplomatic ­relations.

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Once again, only a high-level presidential envoy can break the stalemate, a daunting and arguably demeaning task in dissuading a headstrong thirty-something with blood on his hands from continuing on an ever more risky path. The ­immediate task is to convince the rambunctious North Korean leader that more can be gained through negotiations than through bluster, an outcome facilitated by the possibility – even likelihood – of a dramatic shift in the US policy of “strategic patience” following the ­November presidential election.