by Jonathan Winer*

How do you get an evil dictator who starves his people to understand that you really mean business when you say he has to stop his nuclear proliferation program?

Treasury has decided you do it by taking away his iPods, sports cars, and booze.

This provocative announcement came today from Treasury as it sends out its seasoned Korea sanctions specialist Deputy Assistant Secretary Dan Glaser to Beijing’s six-party talks to advise the North Korean government that if they want to enjoy the world’s luxuries, they will also have to accept controls on their nukes.

The strategy is not so bizarre as it sounds. A similar approach which included freezing Serbian bank accounts played a central role in forcing out Slobodon Milosevic from Yugoslavia in 2000.

Here, in addition to threatening the stick of blocking sales of high-end luxury goods to North Korea, the U.S. is holding out a carrot. If the North Koreans can make concessions on the nuclear issue, the U.S. will allow a Macau bank to release some $7.5 million in frozen funds, which amounts to about one-quarter of the total North Korean funds the bank froze in response to the U.S. finding the money to be the results of drug trafficking, counterfeiting and other organized crime involving North Korean officials.

During the Clinton Administration, senior U.S. officials knew about North Korean officially-sanctioned organized crime, but had yet to undertake this kind of targeted financial sanctions. It’s an interesting play and demonstrates the kind of creativity that the U.S. can bring to the use of financial sanctions. It may even work.

*Counterterrorism Blog
January 26, 2007
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/01/
treasury_threatens_to_take_awa.php
Cross-posted with permission

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Related: United States, Dictator Watch, North Korea

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