US-China friction gives Kim Jong-un the freedom to fire away

North Korea’s unprecedented barrage of missiles is underscoring the costs of Washington’s tensions with Beijing, since China has shown little appetite for additional sanctions over the country’s nuclear program.

China, along with Russia, played a critical role in approving United Nations sanctions on their neighbor after Kim Jong Un tested an atomic bomb and launched a missile designed to carry warheads to the US five years ago. There’s little prospect of finding such unity on the UN Security Council now, even though North Korea has fired about 100 ballistic missiles since the UN approved its last penalties in 2017.

The Biden administration has shown increasing frustration with China, which has long been North Korea’s most important benefactor. And the stakes are rising because the US and its allies believe Kim’s regime is preparing to detonate a nuclear bomb for the first time in five years.

“They are breaking multiple Security Council resolutions,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said in an interview on MSNBC on Thursday. “But most recently, China has not joined us in condemning these actions and our efforts to add more sanctions onto the ones that we already have on board.”

The US is expected to make another run at getting support for fresh measures against North Korea at a Security Council meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon in New York. Beijing and Moscow have resisted US-led efforts to expand sanctions in recent years, arguing that Kim deserves relief for gestures he made before his unprecedented — but ultimately unsuccessful — summits with former President Donald Trump.

More recently, US President Joe Biden has sanctioned Russia and sought to isolate its leader Vladimir Putin to halt its war in Ukraine. The administration has also warned Chinese leader Xi Jinping that he risks secondary sanctions if he helps Moscow, even as Washington and Beijing clash over everything from Taiwan to microchips.

Those disputes have given Kim a freer hand to expand his nuclear program and build a more credible deterrent to prevent any US strike against the regime. North Korea’s tests have demonstrated a wide array of new missiles and launching platforms that appear intended to evade detection and interception by the US.

North Korea knows the recent provocations won’t trigger any new UN resolutions,” said Maiko Takeuchi, a former member of a UN Security Panel of Experts set up to monitor sanctions on North Korea. If current sanctions were strictly implemented, that would also “seriously damage the regime’s activity and economy,” she said.

The sanctions regime, which, among other things, includes a cap on fuel imports and limits on foreign income, has shown cracks. North Korea was on track to exceed its 500,000-barrel cap of annual imports this year, a Panel of Experts report released in September said.

In addition, an oil pipeline between Dandong, China, and Sinuiju, North Korea, that was exempted from sanctions could be supplying more than 3.7 million barrels of oil each year, according to a report from specialists David von Hippel and Peter Hayes.

Kim has also found ways to evade sanctions through cybercrimes and cryptocurrency theft. Investigators from the US and UN have said his regime has already taken in hundreds of millions of dollars in assets through online schemes, and is poised to rake in even more.

The North Korean leader has repeatedly rebuffed US overtures to return to talks, reiterating in September that he would “never give up nuclear arms or denuclearize first.” Instead, he has rebuilt once-frayed ties with China and Russia — whom both wield vetoes on the Security Council.

—Bloomberg