Friday, December 29, 2017

China's not going to be of any help walking the North Korea crisis back from the precipice - today's edition

Kim and Xi may have extremely strained relations, but somebody is China with a vested interest in profiting from oil exports is getting a pass on flagrant violation of UN Security Council sections:

Satellite images have caught Chinese ships selling oil to North Korean vessels more than 30 times since the end of October, according to a report Wednesday from South Korean media.
Chinese and North Korean ships illegally swapped oil in a part of the West Sea that lies near China. The location of the trade was chosen presumably to avoid detection from South Korea.
“We need to focus on the fact that the illicit trade started after a UN Security Council resolution in September drastically capped North Korea’s imports of refined petroleum products,” a South Korean official told reporters.
U.N. Resolution 2375 forbids ship-to-ship trade with North Korea, yet violations do occur because it is nearly impossible to detect violators absent a Chinese crackdown on smugglers. Sanctions were slapped on the isolated communist country in September.

So much for some kind of unified international community ready to defuse the North Korean threat.

That's not the world we live in.

7 comments:

  1. So you're basically saying let's roll with our fire & fury. It's so much more terrifying than back in '52. Besides, some fundies here are panting for Armageddon unless that's fake news.

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  2. Don’t see how you make that leap. My point is no more than what I’ve stated: China is not a reliable partner in trying to defuse this

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  3. Never was, though that's always been the obstacle to hope for change short of horrific conflagration, though Trump's speechwriter likes for him to paint his presidential portrait with the only real cajones since Andrew Jackson. Of course we can avoid inflicting fire and fury on the world if China would play ball, that's been ever so. It's still pretty clear that China is the elephant in the room here and there will be no war vs NK without them, though the hope has always been otherwise. So what else is new?

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  4. You pretty much make the point of this post. But an endorsement of "let's roll with our fire and fury" was not there.

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  5. You pretty much make the point of this post. But an endorsement of "let's roll with our fire and fury" was not there.

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  6. Well, if there still the China problem I guess Ike's decision to forego WWIII sorta makes sense is what I'm saying. And all former presidents dealing with this situation did the best they could and bully Trump is la clanging gong on this issue.

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  7. I don't make the point. It's been the point for 65 years.

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