The US wants to board North Korean ships in international waters to enforce sanctions — here's why it might not make a difference

pulse

March 8, 2018 9:42 PM

Sanctions against North Korea have failed to prevent the DPRK from obtaining and creating nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

North Korea has managed to build nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles while surviving some of the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a country.
This has led the US to think about increasing the scope of maritime interdictions of suspicious ships around the Korean Peninsula.
The success of such operations will be limited, given the likelihood that important countries like China and Russia would not participate in or allow interdictions in international waters.

But the effectiveness of such operations is likely to be limited, Richard Weitz, the Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis and the Hudson Institute, told Business Insider.

"The problem is the legal complexity," Weitz said. "Just stopping every ship that leaves North Korea is too far for countries like Russia and China."

If any maritime operation were to succeed, Russia and China would likely need to be physically involved, conducting joint patrols and interdictions on the Korean Peninsula with US and other regional navies.

China's cooperation would be particularly important, as Donald Rauch, a US Navy Surface Warfare Officer and former Commanding Officer of USS Independence, recently argued in Foreign Policy.

However, the likelihood that China would be part of this kind of operation is low, given that China sees North Korea as a buffer between it and the West.

Still, more aggressive maritime interdictions, conducted in cooperation with partners in the region, could help with sanctions enforcement and could possibly slow down North Korea's nuclear and ICBM ambitions.

"I'd imagine that you could supplement it with good satellite intelligence, good espionage in the countries that are receiving the materials, and intercepted communications," Weitz said.

"It will be useful and it will certainly adapt and its an area that needs to grow, but unless China and Russia were really going all the way in, it's going to be imperfect."

Weitz also pointed out that North Korea will likely find another way to continue to get the materials and money it needs.

"Insofar as the maritime interdiction becomes more effective, the more North Korea will then turn to other means of smuggling material in and out," he said. "Whether it be by air, through China, or other methods."

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