Korea Crisis - Obama Administration
In 2013, North Korea announced its intention to restart all nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and in September 2015, it announced that those facilities — which include its uranium enrichment facilities-had resumed normal operation. In 2013, it probably also expanded the size of that uranium enrichment facility.
The Obama Administration issued a series of executive orders imposing punitive measureson North Korea. In August 2010, it issued Executive Order13551 to target North Korean arms trafficking and those engaged in illicit activities,including counterfeiting, narcotics smuggling, and money laundering. Executive Order 13570, issued in 2011, prohibits imports of North Korean goods into the United States unless licensed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The Obama administration’s policy of ‘strategic patience’ toward the Kim regime in practice amounted to doing little other than weakly prodding China to act. “’There’s a decent consensus out there that we have no strategy. It’s very hard to find anyone to defend strategic patience,’ said John Delury, an international relations professor at Yonsei University in Seoul.” (Washington Post, 2/9/16)
Though President Obama called North Korea ‘the most sanctioned’ nation on Earth, he was wrong. The U.S. lists Iran and Burma as countries of primary money-laundering concern, a designation it doesn’t apply to Pyongyang despite its counterfeit-currency racket. The U.S. has applied harsher human-rights sanctions against Congo and Zimbabwe, despite the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Pyongyang’s labor camps.
On 8 March 2013, the Korean Central News Agency carried a statement from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea that said North Korea was annulling non-aggression deals with South Korea and a previous joint statement on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, was closing the Panmunjom border crossing, and was cutting off the North-South hotline. The action was said to be in response to a fourth set of UN sanctions approved by the UN Security Council on 7 March 2013. North Korea had previously threatened such action if the sanctions were approved.
North Korea claimed 09 January 2016 to have detonated a hydrogen bomb. Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said " the constant threat of nuclear war from North Korea is only exacerbated by President Obama’s utterly weak foreign policy. If America doesn’t stand up to dictators and aggressors, North Korea’s actions are just a precursor to an even more dangerous world being ushered in by the President’s impotent foreign policy the last seven years."
“The national intelligence director, James R. Clapper, warned that North Korea had expanded its production of weapons-grade nuclear fuel… ‘Pyongyang continues to produce fissile material and develop a submarine-launched ballistic missile,’ Mr. Clapper said. ‘It is also committed to developing a long-range nuclear-armed missile that’s capable of posing a direct threat to the United States…’” (New York Times, 2/10/16)
The United States condemns North Korea's 09 September 2016 nuclear test in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability. North Korea stands out as the only country to have tested nuclear weapons this century. This test, North Korea's second this year, followed an unprecedented campaign of ballistic missile launches, which North Korea claimed were intended to serve as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons targeting the United States and allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan.
The White House said "To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state. Far from achieving its stated national security and economic development goals, North Korea's provocative and destabilizing actions have instead served to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities. Today's nuclear test, a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions, makes clear North Korea's disregard for international norms and standards for behavior and demonstrates it has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community."
Over eight years the Obama Administration tried on numerous occasions to negotiate with North Korea on denuclearization, while also promoting the strategic patience approach. Strategic patience is like a bumper sticker that gets stuck on a car and just doesn’t get taken off even when the views of the driver change.
In the latter years of the Administration, senior officials never described the policy as strategic patience. Secretary of State Kerry, when he was asked about it when he first came into office said no, that is not our policy. Our policy is strategic impatience with North Korea.
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