https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6823-7811
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ABSTRACT
If the legal foundation and political consensus underpinning United Nations resolutions suggests that North Korea's denuclearization can be understood as a just cause, were the means used by the United Nations also just? This essay draws on jus in bello analogies to analyze UN sanctions via standard ethical criteria of effectiveness, necessity and proportionality. It shows that UN sanctions did not fulfill the effectiveness criterion as they were never likely to result in the denuclearization of North Korea. The necessity condition was strained as the alternative instrument of diplomacy was not utilized in a sustained manner. Expanded sanctions from 2016 did not distinguish between the military and civilian economies. Stringent energy sanctions introduced in 2017 contributed significantly to a precipitous fall in agricultural production in 2018 such that the country could no longer feed about a third of the 25 million population. Post-2016 UN sanctions did not meet the proportionality criterion as they jeopardized the food security of millions of innocents. The DPRK government has primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens but this assumption does not abrogate the responsibilities of others. Broad UN sanctions on the DPRK are neither effective nor proportionate and are, therefore, unethical.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Mihail Petkovski for constructing the graphs, for painstaking re-reading, and always essential critique.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Hazel Smith is a professorial research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, a professor emerita of international security at Cranfield University, UK, and a 2019–2020 visiting fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington DC.
ORCID
Hazel Smith http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6823-7811
Notes
1 United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Citation2017c. 2. For United Nations DPRK sanctions resolutions see Davenport Citation2018b; UNSC Citation2019a. For a discussion of these, see Chanlett-Avery et al. Citation2015, Citation2018; Nikitin, Chanlett-Avery, and Manyin Citation2017; United States Mission to the United Nations (USMUN) Citation2017a, Citation2017b.
2 For list of specific sanctions measures, see UNSC Citation2019c; USMUN Citation2017b; U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and United States Coast Guard Citation2019.
3 United Nations sanctions terminology is derived from United States Treasury definitions. Selective or targeted sanctions are aimed at institutions, individuals, and commodities directly linked to the policy in which the sender or sanctioning body hopes to induce change. Comprehensive sanctions are designed to block trade and economic interaction with the sanctioned entity. United States Treasury Citation2019. See also Brooks Citation2002.
4 Chanlett-Avery et al. Citation2018, 6; USMUN Citation2017b.
5 USMUN Citation2017a, Citation2017b.
6 UNSC Citation2016.
7 I am aware that for some the premises may be debatable, but it is not necessary to interrogate this assumption for the purposes of this research, which focuses on means, not ends. For the genesis of the nuclear program see Moltz and Mansourov (eds.) Citation2000.
8 Gordon Citation1999b.
9 The laws of war, also known as international humanitarian law, are a set of universal rules, the most important of which are codified in the Geneva Conventions and have been ratified by all UN member states, and UN observers, the Holy See and Palestine, which is why they have the status of international law. ICRC Citation2016.
10 Simons Citation1996; Gordon Citation1999a, Citation1999b, Citation2015; Drezner Citation2011; Lopez Citation2012; Fabre Citation2018; Pattison Citation2015; Early and Schulze Citation2019.
11 Gordon Citation1999b; Fabre Citation2018. For an authoritative account of just war theory, see Walzer Citation2015.
12 Gutmann et al. Citation2018.
13 Fabre Citation2018.
14 Fabre Citation2018, 70.
15 Fabre Citation2018, 42.
16 Pattison Citation2015, 204. I do not discuss here the impact of UN targeted sanctions prior to 2016, which should be the focus of further research. On the ethics of targeted sanctions, see Early and Schulze Citation2019.
17 FAO/WFP Citation2019. North Korea experienced famine in the 1990s and food insecurity for the majority of the population remains precarious. See Smith Citation2005b, Citation2015, and Citation2016b.
18 On DPRK government policies and outcomes, see Hassig and Oh Citation2009; Park and Snyder (eds.) Citation2013; Smith Citation2015.
19 Discussions of North Korea sanctions have focused on effectiveness and, to a certain extent, impact. See Féron et al. Citation2019; Frank Citation2006; Kim Citation2014; Kim Citation2015; Smith Citation2016; Park and Walsh Citation2016; Haggard and Noland Citation2017; Lee (ed.) Citation2017; Chen Citation2017; Lim Citation2017. The 2018 National Bureau of Asia Research edited volume includes only one chapter that comes close to ethically problematizing UNSC policy. Keough and Szalwinski (eds.) Citation2018; Frank Citation2018.
20 Borlini Citation2017, 1.
21 Bossuyt Citation2000.
22 Allen and Lektzian Citation2012; Doxey Citation2009; Security Council Report Citation2013; Anglican Observer Office et al. Citation2002; Drezner Citation2011; Garfield Citation2002; Gordon Citation2010; Mack and Khan Citation2000; Weschler Citation2009-Citation10.
23 I am not suggesting that U.S. and UN officials do not engage in serious debates as to how policy can be implemented. Nor am I suggesting there is not a diversity of views as to how to deal with the DPRK in and between U.S. administrations and within the UN. I refer here only to official policy goals and modalities. For an example of thoughtful analysis, see Biegun Citation2019. For research findings on the (in)effectiveness of sanctions, see Hufbauer et al. Citation2009; Pape Citation1997, Citation1998.
24 Frank Citation2006; Kim Citation2007.
25 Haley quoted in Albright et al. Citation2018, 4–5.
26 I have carried out extensive research in Seoul, Washington, and in the U.K. and have found no evidence, whether on or off the record, that any official or institution in the U.S. or the U.N. drew up a road-map of how sanctions were supposed to achieve the aim of denuclearization (e.g. with time-lines or log frame analysis) or conducted an impact assessment of the potential harm to civilians, including children, hospital patients, the elderly, or nursing and pregnant women. It has been implied to me informally that none exist.
27 Allen Citation2008; Féron Citation2019.
28 Galtung Citation1967. Galtung’s argument is today a truism in the literature. For recent affirmation see World Trade Organisation analyst Martin Smeets Citation2018, 4.
29 There is little evidence to suggest that sanctions engendered a surge of support for the DPRK government, although a common factor identified in the literature as explaining ineffectiveness is a “rallying round the flag phenomena.” See Hufbauer et al.; Mack and Khan. If anything, the state’s blanket control over all media and the distrust of government because of its manifest incapacity to respond to the needs of the population brought an immunity to the claims of state propaganda, whether based on facts or not. See Smith Citation2015.
30 Doxey Citation1987; Crawford and Klotz Citation1999; Brooks Citation2002.
31 Lee Citation2005; Mah Citation2018. Trade dependency or trade openness describes the ratio of the sum of exports and imports of goods and services, divided by gross domestic product, expressed as a percentage. North Korea’s trade dependency is difficult to calculate because the data is difficult to find and the most reliable figures, which come from South Korean financial institutions, sometimes exclude DPRK- ROK trade from international trade statistics (as DPRK-ROK trade is counted as domestic trade in some South Korean accounting). For an explanation of North Korea’s low trade dependency during the Cold War period, even compared to other communist countries, see White Citation1975; Halliday Citation1981; Bazhanova Citation2000; Andrianov Citation2000.
32 World Bank Citation2019.
33 My figures are calculated from DPRK GDP figures supplied by a North Korean professor of economics and South Korea’s Bank of Korea trade figures. See Kyodo News Citation2018; Bank of Korea Citation2019. Kim (Citation2017, Citation2018) estimates that trade dependency in 2014 was higher, at fifty-two percent. The lower figure seems to me to be more in line with the qualitative evidence, historical trajectory, and current policies of the DPRK and external actors. There is room for discrepancy over different years given that the volume of DPRK is so low that small changes in absolute terms can mean a large difference in percentage terms in a particular year. In addition, sometimes attempts are made to calculate reported plus unreported trade, which leads to a higher trade dependency figure.
34 South Korean Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) figures in Chen Citation2017, 525.
35 Reuters Citation2019; East-West Center Citation2019.
36 Reuters Citation2019; East-West Center Citation2019.
37 Su and Saalman Citation2017, 17–19.
38 Lim Citation2017.
39 UNSC Citation2019b; Albright et al. Citation2019.
40 Mr. Ndong Mba, UNSC representative from Equatorial Guinea, stated in April 2019 that:
I want to remind the Panel of Experts that regardless of the unofficial agreements that may have been reached [with the member states that appointed them] they should be guided above all by the oath they took to carry out with loyalty, discretion, and impartiality … Whatever pressure they may be under, any bad decision … could lead to erroneous interpretations and onerous and disastrous actions. UNSC Citation2019d.
41 Lee, J. Citation2017; Lee, Seogki Citation2017.
42 Barranikova Citation2019.
43 Von Hippel and Hayes Citation2014, 30.
44 CIA Citation2019.
45 A common response of sanctioned states. See Peksen Citation2019.
46 Lee, J. Citation2017.
47 Smith Citation2005b, Citation2015.
48 Joo Citation2010; Smith Citation2015; Lee (ed.) Citation2017.
49 Brooks Citation2002, 32.
50 Lim and Yoon Citation2011; Park and Walsh Citation2016; Choi Citation2017.
51 Joo Citation2010; Kim Citation2017.
52 Hufbauer et al. Citation2009; Brooks Citation2002; Weeks Citation2008.
53 Haggard and Noland Citation2017.
54 Smith Citation2015.
55 Peksen Citation2019.
56 Smith, Citation2005a, Citation2015.
57 See, for example, UNSC Citation2017b, Citation2019d.
58 Berridge Citation2015.
59 As noted earlier, my thesis allows for the issue of necessity to be indeterminate because my argument rests on lack of effectiveness and disproportionality after the broader sanctions regime was introduced in 2016.
60 See, for example, UNSC Citation2017a.
61 Albright et al. Citation2018, 5.
62 Chris Hill is retired from the United States Department of State after a distinguished career in which he served as Ambassador to Macedonia, Poland, South Korea, and Iraq, as well as special envoy to Kosovo during the Kosovo War. Ambassador Hill was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Bush administration, responsible for negotiating with North Korea. For the Six Party talks, see Funabashi Citation2007; Hill Citation2014; Davenport Citation2018a.
63 The default approach was that US officials were not allowed to engage in conversations swith DPRK officials, formally or informally. After the DPRK’s first nuclear test in 2006, Chris Hill was permitted to conduct more substantive negotiations, first via the Six Party talks, and later bilaterally, although he was monitored by others on his own team who thought he might give too much away to the North Koreans.
64 Chanlett-Avery et al. Citation2015.
65 Nikitin, Chanlett-Avery, and Manyin Citation2017.
66 UNSC Citation2019a.
67 Chanlett-Avery et al. Citation2018; Sigal Citation2018.
68 White House Citation2018.
69 Manyin et al. Citation2019. Former U.S. Ambassador Chris Hill’s assessment of President Trump’s negotiating team was that it was in “disarray” due to incoherent internal objectives and poor strategic policy-making. See Hill Citation2019.
70 World Bank Citation2020.
71 Bank of Korea Citation2019; FAO/WFP Citation2019.
72 All agricultural production above absolute subsistence level requires oil and natural gas inputs; on natural gas, see Bomford Citation2011.
73 I worked in the DPRK between 1998 and 2001 and the DPRK government consistently refused to allow any explanation for their economic difficulties to be placed in documentation written jointly with UN agencies, other than “natural disasters.” Their aim was to avoid admitting structural economic weaknesses to the outside world.
74 For the 1990s decline in DPRK fuel imports, see Von Hippel and Hayes Citation2014, 3–5. See also Smith Citation2005b, Citation2015.
75 My argument is not predicated on the humanitarian consequences of UN sanctions in North Korea per se, although there seems to be a prima facie case that post-2016 measures threaten the right to food and right to life, the most basic human rights. For one reason, there is not yet enough empirical data to demonstrate outcomes of recent oil sanctions in terms of the nutritional and health status of North Korean people. For another, a potential humanitarian disaster, similar to the famine of the 1990s, did not take place in North Korea in 2019 because of Russian and Chinese food aid. China likely donated one million tons of rice and corn (worth an estimated US$320 million at 2019 market prices), representing enough food to feed about a fifth of the population for one year. See Shim Citation2019; FAO Citation2019. Food aid, however, is only a stop-gap. Bulk food aid does nothing to reconstitute agricultural production through which the country will be able to feed its population every year. On foreseeability, see the 2009 article by medical doctors Shin, Choi, and Novotny Citation2009.
76 The CIA reports that the only countries and territories poorer than the DPRK in per capita terms are the Comoros, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Eritrea, South Sudan, Liberia, Yemen, Malawi, Niger, Mozambique, Tokelau, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Burundi. CIA Citation2019.
77 Bank of Korea Citation2019.
78 Bank of Korea Citation2019.
79 This data is from 2011, before the advent of comprehensive sanctions. See Nation Master Citation2019.
80 Public Data Citation2018.
81 Reuters Citation2019; East-West Center Citation2019.
82 Von Hippel and Hayes Citation2014.
83 Wassenaar Arrangement Citation2019; Ministry of Commerce People’s Republic of China Citation2002.
84 Von Hippel and Hayes Citation2014, no page numbers.
85 Eni Energy Citation2018, 23–28.
86 USMUN Citation2017b.
87 USMUN Citation2017a.
88 Richardson Citation2018.
89 USMUN Citation2017b.
90 Figures from FAO/WFP Citation2013, 8; FAO Citation2016; FAO Citation2017. Agricultural statistics are based on the agricultural marketing year, which in North Korea runs from November to October. Agricultural year accounting for production includes main crop harvest and the much smaller spring crop. In documentation for the general public calendar year figures are sometimes used but these usually are shorthand for the agricultural year. Reading agricultural data is not a naïve task and the data needs to be treated with caution for comparability purposes.
91 FAO/WFP Citation2013, 8; FAO Citation2017.
92 UNICEF Citation2020. United Nations data on the nutritional, agricultural, and health sectors in North Korea is munificent but insufficiently interrogated by scholars. UNICEF and WFP have conducted national nutrition and household surveys in the DPRK since 1997.
93 FAO/WFP Citation2019, 14, 20.
94 Conversion rate from BP Citation2019.
95 FAO/WFP Citation2019, 15.
96 FAO/WFP Citation2019, 15.
97 Figures from FAO/WFP Citation2019, 26. The same amount of rice measured in unmilled form weighs more than rice in its milled state.
98 Figures from FAO/WFP Citation2019, 26. Post-harvest losses are always higher in poor countries due to a lack of fuel for heating and storing crops to prevent rotting, as well as for transport reasons.
99 Food use is calculated according to population. The North Korean population increased from just over twenty-four million in 2008 to an estimated 25.1 to 25.5 million in 2018. See Bank of Korea Citation2019 for the lower figure for the 2018 population and FAO/WFP Citation2019 for the higher number.
100 FAO/ WFP Citation2019, 26, 20.
101 Quote from Fabre, 63.
102 Doyle Citation2011.
103 Fabre, 63.
104 Maresca Citation2019.
105 FAO/WFP Citation2019, 14.
106 National Intelligence Council Citation1991.
107 Fabre Citation2018, 63.
108 Save The Children left in 2017 and The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in 2018. See Shinn Citation2018.
109 Kirshner Citation2002.
110 Kaempfer and Lowenberg Citation2007.
111 Nephew Citation2018.