Punitive Power: Combating Proliferation with Sanctions

By Matthew Levitt

On April 5, despite repeated warnings from the US and others, North Korea launched a rocket the regime claimed was sending a satellite into space, but which Washington viewed as another test of the regime’s ballistic missile systems. On April 6, the UN Security Council issued a non-binding statement condemning the launch as a violation of Security Council Resolution 1718, a 2006 resolution which prohibits North Korea from engaging in any missile-related activity.

More recently, North Korea’s recent nuclear and missiles tests leave the international community in a difficult position, where military options are limited at best, and where tough diplomacy is unlikely to achieve the desired results. The likely response will once again center around sanctions and financial pressure, including blacklisting numerous North Korean entities, including banks and trading houses, and imposing a trade embargo on dual use goods and technologies, and empowering navies to stop and search North Korean vessels suspected of carrying illicit cargo.

As the cases of North Korea and Iran highlight, sanctions are a frequent yet controversial tool used by the international community in dealing with proliferant states and nuclear non-compliance. But how successful can we expect these tools to be? What are their limitations? These are questions my colleague Michael Jacobson and I explore in an article published by Jane's Intelligence Review.

In other related news, The Washington Institute's work on the issue of combating the finances of transnational threats has not only been published recently by the Emirati Center for Strategic Studies and Research, it is now being cited by Jihadists themselves. An Arabic summary of our report "The Money Trail" is is circulating on jihadi Internet forums such as As-Ansar. We are pleased to see our scholarship receiving attention in such a broad range of outlets.