DPRK oil sanctions are no longer justifiable

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Editor's note: Tom Fowdy is a UK-based political analyst. The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

This week a U.S. military report assessed that the DPRK was continuing to avoid United Nations (UN) sanctions on crude oil and petroleum products by transferring them at sea, despite surveillance efforts from Washington and a number of allies to identify and prevent such activities.

According to the assessment, Pyongyang has been able to adapt its tactics prudently in response to external pressure. As various countries have utilized naval and air patrols in the East China sea to spot and prevent the given activities, the DPRK has been able to adapt logistically accordingly.

U.S. officials seemed adamant that the operations would continue, and spoke about increasing the pace of them.

Sanctions directly targeting petroleum supplies and energy security are harsh.

The DPRK explodes guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone, November. 21, 2018. /VCG Photo

Despite the growing détente between the DPRK and the United States, the steady emergence of a peace regime with Seoul and over a year since the last missile test, Washington and its allies appear adamant to not give the country any real concessions which could help sustain this progress.

In this specific sector, such measures are ethically questionable because they pose tremendous risks to the livelihood of ordinary people in the country. It is long past the point where placing extreme pressure on the DPRK can be seen as a justifiable or necessary option.

The United States should give way on fuel sanctions, it will help drive the process of a peace and denuclearization deal forwards.

Where did fuel sanctions on the DPRK come from?

A year ago, as Pyongyang continued to repeatedly test intercontinental ballistic missiles, Washington insisted on increasing pressure on the country and utilized the threat of war as leverage to force through its demands, as set out by Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN.

ROK President Moon Jae-in (R) and DPRK leader Kim Jong Un shake hands at the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone, April 27, 2018. /VCG Photo

As saw in a leaked draft resolution in September, the U.S. demanded an absolute fuel embargo on the country. Of course, this was not realistic.

Instead, China and Russia eventually agreed to several compromise resolutions which capped the country's crude oil imports at 500,000 barrels a year and capped the import of petroleum products at 10 percent of its usual total.

In theory, such measures were intended to inhibit the DPRK's nuclear program by reducing the supply of petroleum products available to it, compromises for civilian purposes ought to have been flexible.

In practice, Washington sought to push such sanctions as nothing less than an intent to economically strangle the country with the view of pushing it to a total collapse.

In 2017, fuel prices within the DPRK skyrocketed accordingly, although they would fall again the following year.

Demolition ceremony underway at DPRK's Punggye-ri nuclear test site; the picture is released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 25, 2018. /VCG Photo.

Nevertheless, it was a certainty that if the crisis continued, Washington would have demanded more and more stipulations on fuel, as the previous demands shown. Although the claim would be that this only targets the military and elites, the effects on the public would have been devastating. It would have decimated the country's supply lines, agriculture, and industry.

Ultimately, it would have caused widespread famine and helplessness. DPRK leader Kim Jong Un would have been forced to concede to American terms for support.

Given this, it is not surprising that despite the alleviation of tensions in 2018 and high-level negotiations between the two countries, fuel sanctions remain a leverage Washington is unwilling to give up easily, upholding the line that all sanctions must remain until denuclearization is achieved.

Thus, instead of offering relief on the harshest of measures such as fuel, the intent has been instead to try and enforce them more rigorously to squeeze the DPRK's hand.

Thus, the United States, combined with the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, and France, began in April maritime surveillance activities in the attempt to better disrupt the country's fuel transactions.

DPRK leader Kim Jong Un (C) meets U.S. President Donald Trump (R) during their historic US-DPRK summit, Sentosa Island, Singapore, June 11, 2018. /‍VCG Photo‍

In attempting to do this, such countries are offering little empathy for the ordinary people of the DPRK, who largely still living in poor conditions and rely on already scant access to energy resources to survive.

By attempting to punish these people by depriving them of that altogether, there is zero chance that such will create political change, only suffering.

Such sanctions are simply not fair or moral in any way. With the crisis being over, they can longer be justified as a contingency measure either.

All in all, as discussed on numerous occasions. If progress is to be made in denuclearization, sanctions relief should be considered in a gradualist and reciprocal process with DPRK concessions, rather than being an untrustworthy product of full unilateral capitulation.

On the note of fuel sanctions, because the DPRK has long ceased testing missiles and closed down some of its testing facilities, with the offer of shutting down its nuclear plant if the conditions are right, it has done more than enough to have earned the repealing of these brutal measures.

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