A missile is fired during a joint training between the U.S. and South Korea at an undisclosed location in South Korea, May 25, 2022. /CFP
Editor's note: Hannan Hussain is a foreign affairs commentator and author. He is a Fulbright recipient at the University of Maryland, the U.S., and a former assistant researcher at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
Soon after a U.S.-led effort to impose more United Nations' sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) failed, Washington imposed its own set of unilateral sanctions targeting DPRK's weapons of mass destruction program.
"The United States will continue to implement and enforce existing sanctions while urging the DPRK to return to a diplomatic path and abandon its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles," said the U.S. Treasury's Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson on May 27.
U.S. concerns about nuclear "deterrence" in the Peninsula are driven by the mistaken view that additional sanctions could create an opening for resolving the nuclear issue in the Peninsula and resume stalled peace talks.
This approach continues to produce a heightened sense of mistrust in Pyongyang towards U.S. escalations, and has squeezed Seoul into a tight spot: breathe momentum into a joint denuclearization goal, and at the same time, welcome controversial U.S. strategic assets into the region.
The UN Security Council vote preventing additional DPRK sanctions should be a wake-up call for the U.S., because strengthening the world's most stringent and intricate sanctions regime keeps the prospect of denuclearization talks with Pyongyang on ice.
Washington should also read the telling UNSC split on punitive measures against DPRK as a sign that international cooperation on nuclear risk reduction in the region cannot be conflated with targeting the regime itself.
The former assumes some potential for a political solution to address risks of nuclear escalation in the Peninsula, and a package of sanctions with significant humanitarian and economic implications for Pyongyang is a departure from resolving the issue at hand.
It must be noted that the recent uptick in nuclearization concerns in the region stood motivated by consistent U.S. threats to Pyongyang, creating a cycle of retaliation that the UN Security Council will find difficult to break unless one of two scenarios is true.
First, allowing each UN Security Council member to propose specific measures that can further U.S.-DPRK convergence on stalled consultations. At present, the U.S. – despite claiming support for denuclearization diplomacy over the Peninsula – is prioritizing its own dictates on what "danger" emanates from the Peninsula, who gets to impose penalties, and which countries are less constructive in facilitating peace.
South Korean Air Force F-15K fighter planes demonstrating an "Elephant Walk" during an exercise at an undisclosed air base in South Korea, May 25, 2022. /CFP
Second, marking a resumption in stalled negotiations means learning from history: pursue a revival of critical communication lines with Pyongyang, and limit pro-nuclear rhetoric towards DPRK to ensure risk perceptions on both sides are on an equal footing. "The situation on the Peninsula has developed to what it is today thanks primarily to the flip flop U.S. policies and failure to uphold the results of previous dialogues," said China's permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Zhang Jun.
Zhang's observation is reinforced by other factors compounding peace. That includes U.S.-backed efforts to accelerate security cooperation with ROK precisely at a time when the peninsula itself is at a tense juncture.
There has also been split messaging by the Biden administration on what constitutes effective international cooperation on nuclear security in the region. On the one hand, there have been loud calls by Washington in support of the full implementation of all United Nations Security Council resolutions vis-à-vis DPRK.
However, the administration has shown significant desire to expand on those elements of resolutions that appear big on advancing sanctions, raising questions about Washington's commitment to honor all resolutions in their entirety.
The second split is that specific security groupings – such as the so-called ROK-U.S.-Japan trilateral cooperation – are increasingly billed as key stakeholders in responding to what Washington describes as DPRK's challenges on the nuclear front.
The U.S. has drawn implausible connections between the current state of denuclearization efforts in the Peninsula, and how adverse implications could affect the U.S. view of the "rules-based" international order.
If sanctions, ideology and small security groupings were at the heart of reviving stalled consultations with DPRK, presumably the results would be clear to see.
From DPRK's neighboring powers, to rising uncertainty about the state of denuclearization on the Peninsula, Washington's current trajectory of advancing stability is seen nowhere near as credible at present as the Biden administration insists it is.
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