US Sanctions Enforcement Ineffective, John Bolton Says

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said U.S. sanctions are not being enforced effectively and criticized what he said is a lack of U.S. involvement in the Japan-South Korea trade dispute.

Bolton, speaking during a Sept. 30 event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies less than a month after he left the Trump administration, said U.S. sanctions on North Korea and Iran are not working. He placed the failures on what he said is the administration's misguided sanctions approach and the increasing ability of foreign governments to evade sanctions.

“They're not being enforced effectively,” Bolton said. “If you’re going to have sanctions, make them effective. And if you’re not, then get a different policy.”

Bolton said the U.S.’s approach of gradually increasing sanctions allows foreign countries to develop immunities. “When you impose sanctions incrementally over a long period of time, the country being sanctioned finds ways to mitigate against the sanctions,” he said. “I think sanctions, to be effective, have to be imposed massively and then be enforced. And that’s something we should learn going forward.”

Speaking primarily about North Korea, Bolton also pointed to a rise in ship-to-ship transfers -- ships illegally swapping goods at sea to avoid detection from authorities -- as a rising example of sanctions evasion. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued guidance on North Korea’s illegal shipping practices in March (see 1903210052).

“They take place sometimes without our knowing about it because our intelligence capabilities are sometimes not 100 percent perfect,” Bolton said. “It’s a way to avoid sanctions that is very troubling.”

Bolton said North Korea continues to violate both U.S. sanctions and United Nations Security Council resolutions. The U.S. knows about the violations, Bolton said, and should be doing more to hold the country accountable.

“When the United States, having led the fight to get those resolutions, says, ‘We really don’t care,’ other countries can draw the conclusion that they don't really care about the sanctions contained in those and other resolutions,” Bolton said. “When you ask for consistent behavior from others, you have to demonstrate it yourself. And when we fail to do that, we open ourselves and our policy to failure.”

Bolton also called the Japan-South Korea trade dispute (see 1909200044) “extraordinarily troubling,” saying the U.S. has not given the issue the attention it deserves.

“It’s well below the radar screen here in the United States, which is a big mistake for our country,” he said. “I am almost without words to describe how distressed I am that these tensions between South Korea and Japan have grown to the point where they currently are.” He also said Japan’s July trade measures, in which it restricted certain exports to South Korea, took South Korea “by surprise. It unnerved [them].”

The dispute “requires urgent attention” from the U.S. If it does nothing, Bolton said, the U.S. could “face a very serious deterioration of alliance capabilities at precisely the wrong time.” Bolton said he hopes relations between the two countries have “hit a plateau” and will not continue to deteriorate, but sounded pessimistic about finding a solution. He said he doesn’t think bilateral negotiations will achieve much.

“I think there's an awful lot of work to do to try to get this back on track,” Bolton said. “I’m not even sure I would know at this point where to begin.”