Little by little is too little
On July 8 the United States Institute of Peace hosted a panel discussion titled “The North Korea Sanctions Regime a Year After Singapore.” The panel featured Dan Wertz, Program Manager at the National Committee on North Korea, Joshua Stanton, a DC-based lawyer who played a significant role in North Korea sanctions, Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, a member of the UN Panel of Experts (Resolution 1874) dealing with North Korea, and Elizabeth Rosenberg, Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Frank Aum, former Senior Advisor for North Korea at the Defense Department, moderated the discussion.
Stanton views the history of US leadership on North Korea issues as many “instant gratification policies” instead of better thought out and more effective long-term policies. North Korea is highly dependent on access to US financial systems because of the status of the dollar. Since many North Korean transactions have to go through US banks, financial sanctions blocking transactions and freezing North Korean accounts can be highly effective.
Stanton believes the conversation on sanctions relief is coming about two years too early. More pressure on the Kim regime is needed so that he has a diplomatic incentive to work with the US. Even small sanctions relief is enough for North Korea to catch a breather and continue the status quo. The argument that North Korea can’t survive without nuclear weapons and therefore won’t give them up is ahistorical, according to Stanton, because North Korea has survived for decades without nuclear weapons and can continue to do so. The threat to North Korea is mainly internal.
On possible sanctions relief, Stanton clarifies that Congress has set strict rules dependent not only on issues such as nuclear disarmament and denuclearization but also contingent on human rights, human trafficking, and other issues. The current direction in congress is towards stricter rules for sanctions relief, with the goal of complete, verifiable and undisputed denuclearization of North Korea. The US has to work together with its allies to set up financial sanctions that pressure Pyongyang while at the same time allowing transactions for non-military purposes that benefit the North Korean people. Humanitarian aid should be given to North Korea regardless of political or military actions since it benefits the poor and starving civilians, a point all the panelists agreed on.
Kleine-Ahlbrandt notes that the goal of the UN sanctions regime is to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear and missile programs and prevent the proliferation of WMDs. Sanctions shouldn’t be the objective, which is to catalyze what she calls “effective dialogue.” At the same time the negative impact of sanctions on the economy and civilian population of North Korea should be limited. The UN sanctions regime is broad, but member states have insufficiently implemented the sanctions and evasion tactics by North Korean entities and individuals have undermined compliance. North Korea currently has full access to the international financial system through complicit foreign nationals, a network of agents, and cyberattacks aimed at financial institutions.
Wertz views the sanctions as having a threefold purpose: signaling to North Korea that provocative actions such as missile tests come at a cost, constraining progress on WMDs and other military capabilities, and coercing North Korea through sanctions pressure to make concessions and abandon the nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Coercion is difficult because translating economic pressure to political actions is difficult. UN sanctions, which are focused on the missile and nuclear programs, can be modified if political consensus is reached within the UNSC on whether North Korea’s behavior warrants relief.
US sanctions are trickier since they are premised on a broad range of topics from WMDs to human rights, cyber-attacks, currency counterfeiting and more. The executive branch has some leeway on how it administers individual sanctions or waives them on a case by case basis, but to lift sanctions as a whole the White House has to certify to Congress that North Korea has made significant progress on several of the issues listed. This divergence of US and UN sanctions could potentially lead to a clash if North Korea abandons its nuclear program but doesn’t improve on human rights or other issues.
Wertz suggests that a program of phased sanctions relief in return for meaningful concessions on the nuclear program could be in the US interest down the road and lists five principles for sanctions relief:
- Any trade of sanctions relief for North Korean nuclear concessions should be premised on the ultimate goal of denuclearization but should also make sense on its own terms.
- The US should start with the sanctions that have the least direct connection to the nuclear program and can be most easily adjusted and snapped back.
- The US shouldn’t ease up on measures intended to deny hard currency to North Korea until it can guarantee the money won’t be funneled to military programs.
- Sanctions relief should be structured in a way that pushes North Korea towards an open economy and minimal respect for labor rights.
- If sanctions relief goes forward the United States and allies should continue to enforce sanctions that haven’t been lifted, but not expand the scope of sanctions.
Rosenberg suggests the lack of compliance with sanctions is in part because many individuals or companies don’t understand or know about the rules. Awareness and compliance protocols in industries other than finance are rare. Before sanctions are removed, Rosenberg says it is valuable to think about what unwinding sanctions could look like. Sanctions shouldn’t be lifted as an incentive; behavioral change has to happen before sanctions are lifted because they are in place for specific concerns. Instead more work should be put into establishing communication and cultural as well as diplomatic exchanges as incentives, none of which require sanctions relief.
Rosenberg also warns that a “little-by-little” approach to removing sanctions in exchange for limited progress doesn’t work. North Korea’s track record of cheating on sanctions means incremental change might create a façade behind which North Korea can do as it pleases. The only politically viable way ahead for the US is major sanctions relief after North Korea makes major and verified progress on denuclearization.
Here is the video of the event:
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Justice delayed
It is the 20th anniversary of the murder of three Kosovo American former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters who strayed into Serbian territory, after the war in Kosovo ended. Following a court conviction and two-week sentence, they were released, recaptured, and executed by Serbian Interior Ministry agents. Here are the details, provided by bytyiqbrothers.org:
Further details are available here. This is the video version:
Until Justice is Served: A Promise for the Bytyqi Brothers from Praveen Madhiraju on Vimeo.
It is past time that Serbia provide accountability for these murders. Those who can provide comparable details on crimes against Serbs committed after the war will find me just as exigent about those. It just isn’t going to be possible to resolve the remaining issues between Belgrade and Pristina without accountability.
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A bad barometer reading
On June 26 the Atlantic Council held a panel to discuss the release of opinion poll data collected by the Arab Barometer about the state of the economy, migration, governmental performance, corruption, and other topics in the Middle East. Survey data was collected in Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. Presentation of data was followed by a panel discussion that included Mark Tessler, professor of political science at University of Michigan, Kathrin Thomas, Research Associate at the Arab Barometer, Abbas Khadim, director of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council, and Faysal Itani, Senior Fellow at Atlantic Council. Vivian Salam, reporter at the Wall Street Journal, moderated.
There is little optimism about the economy improving in the Levant. In Jordan, 70% of respondents cite the economy as a primary concern. In all three countries, (Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon) more than 85% percent of respondents perceived the governments of their respective states to be corrupt.
Survey data also noted a slight upwards trend in desire to emigrate from the Levant region. An uptick in a desire to emigrate can be explained by the “brain drain” phenomenon in which highly educated youths seek to leave their home countries due to lack of high-level employment opportunity. Respondents indicated that “economic reasons”, “political reasons” and “security reasons” were the primary drivers for the choice to emigrate.
The survey catalogued a slight increase in support for women’s rights and prominence in politics and business. 60% of respondents would support a female head of state, with Lebanon the most supportive of the notion at a rate of 77%. Despite this, 66% of respondents in the Levant said that men inherently make better political leaders than women.
Since 2016 there has been a decline in the belief that the Middle East and North Africa would benefit from stronger relations with the United States. Survey data revealed that people in the Levant widely believe that Iraq is a proxy of Iran, despite the fact that the Shia in Iraq have not sided with Iran.
Itani notes that the economic anxiety present in the region, specifically in Lebanon, is a reminder to Western policy makers that issues of chief importance to the West (Hezbollah, etc), do not necessarily take precedence in the region. The expectation of poor economic performance will have implications for future investment and growth. Itani attributes Lebanese decrease in willingness to strengthen ties with Washington to US policy in region, specifically US dealings with Israel and the change in American leadership in 2016.
Khadim spoke more specifically to the Iraqi data. Surveys confirm sentiments Iraqis usually express only through social media or encrypted messengers. There is a divergence of opinions held regarding the United States government and US citizens. Iraqis view American citizens more favorably than the American government, which Khadim says can open avenues in the realm of public diplomacy and good faith action between the two countries. On the Iraq-Iran relationship, he says GCC media have ascribed an affinity between Iraq and Iran that does not necessarily exist. Iran does have influence over certain discrete groups in Iraq, but that influence is not as widespread as many believe.
Tessler and Thomas, the administrators of the data collection, focused on the ways in which the data can be used to determine if there are links between different variables. Specifically, they expect a link between corruption perceptions and education levels as well as support of Iran depending on religion. While they had not yet conducted the analysis on these variables, they expect to confirm Khadim’s assertion that support for Iran in Iraq is contained to certain demographics and is not a widespread sentiment. Tessler further notes that the trend of declining support for strengthening relations with a United States dates to 2006.
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The US needs a green-water navy
On June 26 the Hudson Institute hosted two author presentations followed by a panel discussion on maritime irregular warfare. The panel consisted of Benjamin Armstrong, author of Small Boats and Daring Men: Maritime Raiding, Irregular Warfare, and the Early American Navy, Joshua Tallis, author of The War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers and Maritime Insecurity, Peter Haynes, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and former Deputy Director, Strategy, Plans, and Policy (J5) of the U.S. Special Operations Command, Martin N. Murphy, Visiting Fellow of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies, and Linda Robinson, Senior International/Defense Researcher at the RAND Corporation. Patrick Cronin, the Hudson Institute’s Asia-Pacific Security Chair, moderated.
Armstrong gave an overview of the two prevalent schools of naval thought, guerre de course (commerce raiding) and guerre d’escadre (fleet to fleet battle). These, however, leave out large parts of US naval tradition, in particular guerre de razzia, or “war by raiding.” In this school of thought the focus lies on raiding coasts and colonies using a “green water” navy. Armstrong believes that strategies of guerre de razzia are important for naval operations today.
Tallis pointed to the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for Maritime Seapower serves as a guide for the US Navy, Marines and Coast Guard. With Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 NATO’s focus shifted back to great power competition. The 2015 review of the 2007 strategy and the 2018 National Defense Strategy echo this shift. Tallis warns that there can be more than one trend at a time, and a full shift towards great power competition would ignore important issues.
Population growth and urbanization all put stresses on the Global South and poor governments, which leads to other actors, such as the Houthis in Yemen, cropping up. The issues caused by these groups don’t stay local and matter to global powers too. Tallis argues that maritime insecurities are more like crime than war. Coast guards and navies recognize issues but are equipped for war and lack the proper tools to respond. He warns against militarization of a criminal problem. It often leads to an us vs. them or fortress mentality in which the people the coast guard is supposed to protect resist it.
Using the broken windows theory, Tallis says crime is context-dependent and multidimensional, which extends to maritime security. By addressing the eco-system of maritime criminality, links between illegal fishing and piracy or human trafficking can be found and progress can be made. Maritime security needs to be treated as a cohesive discipline instead of individual issues like piracy or illegal fishing. The US needs to become better at following the local lead and listening to local communities in areas where it provides maritime security.
Haynes views the return to maritime great power competition with China as the first since the Empire of Japan in WWII. The difference is China competes across many different fields (economically, socially, militarily), in part due to globalization. The US Navy has defined competition too narrowly. It sees itself as a blue-water navy and focuses almost exclusively on war and anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD). It lacks the small boats, such as the river boats used in Vietnam, needed for green- and brown-water operations.
Maritime control is important. 65% of goods and 90% of internet traffic go by sea. Complementing Armstrong’s argument, Haynes says the US does a poor job of using history to analyze and develop strategies to counter irregular maritime threats. Part of the issue stems from the Cold War hyper-rational thinking, which is harder to apply to irregular maritime warfare.
Murphy thinks the US is not prepared to deal with irregular maritime challenges because it lacks of maritime political intention and policy cohesion, while China sees economic opportunities in the sea and devotes funding to maritime projects such as a network of ports. The US is a naval power without maritime power, because it sees the sea as a medium to project US power onto land. US naval operations have shifted away from the sea to supporting ground and air forces.
Robinson agreed and and pointed towards opponents using irregular warfare as a centerpiece to their global strategy: China expanding its exclusive economic zone, and Russia through the Wagner mercenary group as well as Iran through its famous use of proxies in both the military and political realm. The US needs to establish a cohesive response. Armstrong added that irregular warfare and great power competition are intermixed. States use irregular warfare when they don’t want to go to full war. Treating them as separate would be fatal.
The US is stuck in a WWII view of war, Robinson argued. Once more modern circumstances are appreciated, a shift in spending will follow. Haynes supported her argument: under no circumstances would he trade a singe F-18 for several smaller boats, which would be useful for green-water navy strategies. The incapability for the US to see the gray zone between war and peace and adjust both strategy and spending could be very costly.
A full video of the event is available here.
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Two can play
President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran is generating a “smart pressure” campaign in return. Tehran can’t limit American ability to export oil and gas or pay for imports, but it can threaten Gulf shipping, move towards enriching uranium to levels required for nuclear weapons, and convince at least some trading partners to pay for Iranian exports in ways that circumvent US sanctions. Both Europe and Iraq are planning to use “special purpose vehicles” to do just that, the latter likely with the implicit approval of the US since it desperately needs Iranian electricity this summer.
Trump is feeling the impact. He has dropped the insistence on talking about missiles and Iran’s regional behavior, but Tehran is still not yielding to his begging to re-open nuclear talks. Nor is it inclined to give Trump the kind of photo-op flattery that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has learned gets the President to soften his stance. Maximum pressure has unified Iran’s fractious ruling elite behind a policy of defiance and disdain, tempered however with caution. While prepared to endure an American strike, and return the blow by more or less surreptitious means, Tehran knows it cannot sustain a real war against the US.
Trump can’t sustain a long war either. Another lengthy Middle Eastern war would end his chances for re-election, as Fox star Tucker Carlson has advised. Trump has done nothing to prepare popular opinion for it and would face substantial opposition in Congress, where quite a few Republicans as well as most Democrats are prepared to claim he lacks the legislative authority needed to go to war. The existing authorization to use military force (AUMF) covers only Al Qaeda and its affiliates. That has been stretched to cover the Islamic State, which did in fact emerge out of Al Qaeda’s erstwhile Iraqi affiliate. But no one serious reasonable thinks it can cover war with Iran. Trump will have to use an implicit “self-defense” authorization if he decides to strike Iran.
So the shadow-boxing continues, with the unavoidable risk of escalation. But there are serious possibilities for negotiation as well. It should be clear by now to all but the most hawkish in both Tehran and Washington that the alternative is a war from which neither capital can reasonably hope to emerge victorious. Trump may still hope for some spectacular photo-op: a visit to Tehran perhaps? But Supreme Leader Khamenei seems incapable of the kind of political acrobatics that Kim has successfully pursued to get the President of the United States to confirm his otherwise doubtful legitimacy.
A quieter, perhaps clandestine diplomacy is required: talks about talks, perhaps in Oman or Qatar. A few confidence-building measures like release of prisoners. A humanitarian gesture or two. A more or less explicit understanding about the limits of what each side is prepared to tolerate, both in political rhetoric and the use of military force. Iran will try to make it to November 2020 without going farther than that, knowing that if Trump loses a Democratic administration would want to reenter the nuclear agreement of its own free will.
That is what Trump should do as well. But he can’t without Iranian cooperation in hiding the concession under a photo-op or some sort of fig leaf revision of the agreement. So we’re stuck with a pressure campaign, which two can play.
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The Americans get desperate
I did this interview for Turkey’s TRT World yesterday, on Trump and Iran:
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