Issuing a United Nations reprimand to North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-un for his blatantly aggressive launching of a ballistic missile over Japan late last month is about as effective as asking Mexican Drug Kingpin “El Chapo” Guzmán to pretty please stop selling illicit narcotics and breaking out of maximum security prisons.
The objective of the request may be well intended, but the reality is that the petitionee simply isn’t going to cooperate.
Last week, the 15-member United Nation Security Council voted unanimously to condemn Kim’s unprecedented Aug. 29 launching of a mid-range missile over Japan, reiterating it demands that Pyongyang cease all missile launches and desist in its nuclear weapons program.
Kim’s response was to announce that more such missiles were soon to come and to proclaim the launching as “a meaningful prelude to containing Guam.”
By now, it should be abundantly apparent to any sane person monitoring the Korean Peninsula crisis that a slap on the wrist isn’t going to cut it with Kim, who doesn’t give a damn what the United Nations or any other foreign entity has to say about his nuclear ambitions.
Even a series of so-called “tough economic sanctions” implemented by the U.N. one month ago had no impact on the totalitarian megalomaniac (in part, because the main gist of those sanctions entailed a cutting off of international commercial relations with North Korea, whose only real trade partner is China, and Beijing has repeatedly agreed to stop trading with Pyongyang only to drum up some flimsy excuse to circumvent the embargo and go right back to supporting Kim and his despotic regime).
After the Japanese assault, the Security Council inexplicably decided not to add fresh measures to the punishment against the regime, stating that it preferred to seek a “peaceful diplomatic solution” rather than to punish Kim.
A 15-minute time-out may be fine when it comes to trying to temper an unruly 15-year-old who insists on texting in the classroom and interrupting the teacher, but it is not the solution to dealing with a psychopathic teenage who posts of Facebook that he wants to follow in the footsteps of Columbine’s Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and brings a AK-47 to class.
The latter student needs serious discipline and intervention, not a stern verbal reprimand.
And Kim, who delights in thumbing his nose at the international community, is akin to that psychotically dangerous student.
Only the imposition of real sanctions that will limit Kim’s exorbitant personal lifestyle and that are fully implemented (and that means China playing ball and sticking to its guns in castigating its unruly ward) will have any impact on the North Korean monocrat.
Kim doesn’t care about weak economic sanctions that hurt his people, because he doesn’t care about his people.
Any punishment implemented on North Korea needs to hit home directly on its leader; they need to be sanctions that he feels.
Kim and his ever-more-frequent launching of ballistic missiles and nuclear tests pose a very real threat, not only to the region, but to the peace and stability of all mankind.
Time and time again, he has insolently shrugged off the diplomatic niceties of sweet words and pretty pleases and gone about his heinous business of intimidating his neighbors and the rest of the world.
There is no reason to expect any other outcome from a U.N. verbal reprimand this time around.
In fact, the more Kim sees what he can get away with, the more emboldened he becomes.
Actions, not words, are all Kim seems to understand.
No one is advocating provoking a nuclear standoff between Kim and the civilized world.
A nuclear confrontation would represent a global doomsday scenario.
But it is time to make the North Korean leader feel the consequences of his provocative behavior.
Otherwise, the next ballistic missile he launches might just be carrying a nuclear payload.
Thérèse Margolis can be reached at therese.margolisqgmail.com.
