At the UN on Saturday, the Chinese representative said that Beijing did not approve of inspecting cargo to and from the North Korea, had reservations about related provisions of Resolution 1718, and warned that any acts that might cause escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula and in North-East Asia must be avoided. The Resolution authorizes but doesn’t require countries to inspect cargo going into and out of North Korea. According to both the New York Times and the Washington Post, China said it wouldn’t participate in any searches. Considering that China has a 870 or 880 mile border with North Korea, this means there will be a gaping hole in the inspection regime.

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Condi Rice, preapring to leave for a trip to China, was interviewed by Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” and by Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation.”
Fox’s Wallace put it to her, saying that China “has already said that it is not going to inspect cargo coming into or out of [North Korea], which certainly leaves the possibility that the North Korean regime can still ship out nuclear material . . . Are young to get them to . . . to crack down?”

Rice avoided answering Wallace’s question:

. . . there are many details to be worked out, particularly about how this embargo and interdiction might work. I understand that people are concerned about how it might work so that it doesn’t enhance tensions in the region, and we’re perfectly willing to have those conversations, but China signed on to this resolution . . . It is a Chapter 7 mandatory resolution, and so I’m quite certain that China is going to live up to its responsibilities . . . I’m quite certain that China has no interest in seeing the proliferation of dangerous materials from North Korea . . . There will be details to work out.

China’s refusal to inspect isn’t exactly a detail.

Rice also refused to say whether the U.S. was prepared to go ouside the UN to form a coalition of the willing to act on its own to interdict all shipments in or out of North Korea. Instead, she simply averred that the U.S. was “very satisified” with the Resolution and that it should be fully implemented.

The problem, of course, is that, according to its terms, the Resolution can be fully implemented without all countries participating in interdictions.

On “Face the Nation,” Bob Schieffer asked her how the import and export ban would be enforced. Rice’s answer was that

It will be enforced because member states have an obligation to enforce it . . . there will be some matters to be worked out. There will be a committee to work out some of the sanctions. There will probably have to be some discussions about how interdiction might take place.

The reality is that the member states don’t have an obligation to enforce the import/export ban. They are merely authorized to do so.

Schieffer then asked: is the U.S. prepared to board North Korean ships, or other ships coming into North Korea, to make sure that they’re not bringing in some of these materials that this resolution prohibits?

Rice’s response was revealing:

. . . it is likely that countries that are receiving these ships in their waters, or in their ports, can request, or can in fact under this resolution demand the right to board. I think that we don’t want to get out ahead of ourselves. Obviously, this is a very important tool that the international community can, can use, but will want to use it in a way that does not enhance the possibility for, for open conflict. And we want to have a very serious discussion about how to use this interdiction position.

In side-stepping the question, she raised another: how can interdiction occur without increasing the linklihood of an open conflict?

All together, I find this to be an unsatisfactory performance by the Secretary of State. She provided no concrete reasons to believe that the China-North Korean border won’t be a sieve and no indication of what the U.S. will do about it.

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UN ambassador Bolton was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on “CNN Late Edition.”

On the interdiction issue, Bolton said that the Resolution “doesn’t really change the existing authroity to conduct inspections, whether it’s in territorial waters, airspace, or through land routes, or . . . interdiction in the high seas.” He added, however, that “our concept is that the overwhelming predominance of the inspections would take place in ports or at land crossings . . .”

Blitzer then asked about the Chinese position on interdiction. Bolton’s reply was

. . . the burden is on the Chinese to comply with the resolution. I’m sure that there are a lot of different ways to do that. How it accomplishes that, I’m sure we’ll have discussions about that . . .

Bolton didn’t specify “the different ways” that the Chinese could comply with the article of the resolution dealing with interdiction. And, like Rice, he didn’t address the current Chinese position on interdiction or what the U.S. would do if the Chinese refused to alter their stance.

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If the Chinese position on interdiction doesn’t change, Resolution 1718, like so many other Security Council resolutions, will fall far short of its intended consequences. Which leads to these questions: what will happen next, and when will it happen?