The Blob and US North Korea Policy

North Korea has been the subject of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions since their first nuclear test on October 9th, 2006, resulting in UNSC resolution 1718 being adopted by a 15-0 vote on October 14th, just six days later. Since then, they have continued to develop their nuclear program, testing nuclear weapons and their missile capabilities, despite suffering nine total UNSC resolutions sanctioning different parts of their economy and the lifestyle of the elites. So why are sanctions against North Korea ineffective at preventing the Kim regime from developing their nuclear weapons and missile capabilities, and why does the UN, United States, and their allies continue to adhere to a sanctions regime instead of trying a different strategy? In this blog post I will review why sanctions against North Korea fail, why the United States specifically continues to adhere to a strategy that doesn’t work, and suggest how the United States strategy should change moving forward.

The topic of effectiveness and scope of UN and United States sanctions against North Korea have been featured in North Korean Review a few times previously. In our Fall 2013 Issue, Sukhi Kim and Mario Martin-Hermosillo layout several arguments as to why sanctions struggle to hit the mark against North Korea in their article “The Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions Against a Nuclear North Korea.” They argue that, at the time, every member of the UN took the sanctions against North Korea at different levels of seriousness, intensity, and urgency. For example: “More than 100 countries have failed to file reports to the UN about their trade with North Korea.”1 The wording of the UN resolutions were also vague enough to make the definition of sanctioned items such as luxury goods different for each member state, thus “China…sold more than $136 million worth of luxury goods to North Korea in 2009 alone.”2 North Korea also makes use of a network of shell companies to avoid the harshest effects of sanctions.

Kim and Martin-Hermosillo go on to predict that the newest UN sanctions at the time, UNSCR 2094, passed on March 7th, 2013 in response to North Korea’s third nuclear test, would fail just as previous sanctions had to make a meaningful change in North Korea’s behavior. They suggest a few additional reasons as to why North Korea is so strong at avoiding the pain of sanctions: 1) Their relations with China and South Korea sustain their foreign trade, 2) the status of North Korea as a command economy dilutes the effectiveness of sanctions, and 3) the two guiding ideologies of North Korea, Confucianism and self-reliance (Juche), make the population not dependent on foreign trade.3

In a more recent article in our Spring 2018 issue, Robert S. Renfro II uses hierarchical clustering to examine North Korean trade patterns in their article “Why Expanded North Korean Sanctions Fail.” Their findings can be boiled down to a few key points: 1) North Korea is already isolated economically, both due to already existing sanctions as well as their own isolationist policies, 2) China is North Korea’s largest trading partner, but any economic coercion of China would affect its other trade partners, chiefly the United States, and 3) Congo is the route for trilateral trade with North Korea, circumventing sanctions.4 Renfro concludes that due to North Korea’s isolation, any further sanctions are very unlikely to push them to behave any differently than they already have since sanctions began in 2006.

These articles show that throughout the duration of the sanctions regime, in 2013 and 2018 respectively, sanctions have been poorly managed and are not particularly strong at changing anything about North Korea’s behavior or ability to continue to develop their nuclear weapons. Today, the UN and United States sanctions against North Korea remain in place, but tensions between the United States and China, and Russia and the West have made the sanctions regime as a whole weaker and much less unified than it has ever been. So why does the United States cling to a policy that hasn’t worked for the nearly twenty years of sanctions against North Korea? The answer likely lies in the beliefs and behaviors of the United States foreign policy establishment, known as ‘The Blob.’

The term ‘The Blob’ was popularized by former Deputy National Security Advisor Benjamin Rhodes during the Obama administration.5 In their 2022 article, “The Beliefs of the Blob,” Christopher J. Fettweis breaks down the core beliefs of the blob into six main beliefs that shape and guide the foreign policy of the United States. They are:

The United States is the indispensable nation. It must lead the world. -“Blob members think that the United States is an exceptional nation, and as a result they tend to be overconfident and underestimate risk. They are more likely to favor doing something rather than just stand there.”6
The world is dangerous. -“The blob believes that the law of diminishing marginal utility does not apply to defense…The classic force-planning question-how much is enough?-has no definite answer, because the country can never be safe enough.”7
Our rivals are realists. -“We have principles that guide our decisions, but they act almost exclusively in pursuit of their interests…Since our rivals are realists, it follows that their main goal is to increase their power at the expense of ours.”8
Robust United States engagement mitigates global turmoil. -“The blob believes in the so-called “hegemonic stability theory,” which holds that the anarchic international system will be unstable unless one power is able to create and enforce rules…Blob thinkers generally assume that others will cooperate with American overtures.”9
Credibility is a valuable asset worth fighting for. -“At the heart of the credibility imperative is the belief that foreign policy actions are interdependent: Rivals learn lessons about the fundamental nature of US leaders from their actions in one theater and apply them in others. Weakness in one area can encourage challenge in another.”10
Dictators should not be appeased. -“...Aggression, especially by dictators, cannot be appeased without encouraging future aggression.”11

The Blob and these core beliefs have shaped United States foreign policy decisions since the United States accession to super power during/after World War II. The Blob’s influence is spread through every institution in Washington and extends up to the President of the United States. “The Blob has a privileged position in presidential staffing and security expertise; it exerts dominance over the security discourse; and it is reinforced by the demands of allies.”12 In their 2018 article, “Why America’s Grand Strategy has not Changed,” Patrick Porter discusses how even Trump, who campaigned on a diminished role for the United States in international affairs, instead putting ‘America First,’ was reigned in by the Blob. “Within months, Trump 'abandoned stances that were at the bedrock of his establishment-bashing campaign.’ His first choices were surprisingly ‘mainstream,’ to the approval of traditionalists and displeasure of revisionists. The power of the Blob and tradition constrained Trump’s administration, making his stance toward U.S. global commitments more orthodox than was expected.”13 Dr. Van Jackson, an East Asian and Pacific security specialist who worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2009-2014, confirms this sentiment, as when asked how much power the Blob has in shaping US foreign policy he said, “A lot. Almost all of the power. Presidents can only really have power where there are sharp disagreements within the Blob, or where they specifically insist on some specific policy for some specific issue.”14

When examining the United States strategy with North Korea, we can see the influence of the Blob in the continued adherence to a failing strategy. The United States believes that North Korea is dangerous (blob belief #2), and that no amount of security against the Kim regime will ever be enough. This prevents them from considering a strategy that reduces military assets on the Korean peninsula. The United States believes that North Korea are realists (blob belief #3), and that they will always try to pursue a strategy that increases their power at the expense of the United States and its allies. This prevents them from considering a strategy that gives Kim any room to maneuver and thus an adherence to maximum pressure. Dr. Jackson confirms this when describing the Blob consensus on North Korea, saying “...they still see North Korea as basically a rogue state, they incorrectly believe that time is on America’s side, and they think that they can never stop punishing/coercing North Korea as long as North Korea remains outside the norms of the international community.”15 The Blob believes that their current strategy with North Korea will eventually work, removing any reason to even think about changing strategy and instead focusing their energy elsewhere.

The United States believes that they must be engaged in the East Asia region (blob belief #4) to check China and preserve their role as the power that governs the international system. Any strategy that reduces United States presence in the region is giving China an open door to walk through. This includes in Taiwan and on the Korean peninsula. The United States believes that if they make concessions to North Korea, other authoritarian leaders in the world will see it as open season to pursue their own nuclear weapons (blob beliefs #5 and #6).

This prevents a strategy where any concession is made to try to achieve denuclearization of North Korea, because even if that goal was achieved, that concession would spiral into other chaos around the world.

According to Dr. Jackson, the United States objectives in East Asia in general prevent them from taking a strategy that brings about peace with North Korea, saying, “East Asia is a place where America thinks of itself as leading a balancing coalition against China. Ironically, the North Korea issue has very little to do with the anti-China stuff, but East Asia is a place to express and realize American primacy, and that means the US places disproportionate value on being able to retain an alliance with South Korea that is pegged very directly on preserving North Korea as an enemy.”16 As the Blob is “committed to American primacy”17 any course of action that reduces that primacy, in their eyes, is viewed as a non-starter.

It has been almost twenty years since the United Nations first sanctioned North Korea due to their first nuclear test, and we are further from North Korean denuclearization than we have ever been in that time. The Trump/Kim summits fell apart in Hanoi because Trump was not willing to give up on sanctions, likely advised by his then National Security Advisor John Bolton to not go against Blob ideology. While this may have been a wise choice at the time, multiple scholars have shown that sanctions are not working and Kim has continued to rule North Korea and develop nuclear weapons technology and ICBM capabilities. The United States and its allies are no closer to achieving their goals on the Korean peninsula while North Korea has significantly advanced their own defense and deterrence.

The grand strategy has not worked, and now recent collaboration between Russia and North Korea, leading to the successful launch of North Korea’s spy satellite and North Korean weapons being used in Ukraine,18 makes it more likely that North Korea will feel even less pain from sanctions as their renewed alliance with Russia could give them access to technology and materials that they previously lacked. If the United States is serious about its commitments to South Korea and Japan, then the strategy must change. It is time to abandon sanctions that don’t work and to try to engage with North Korea in a constructive way. A new strategy must be developed that neutralizes the threat of North Korean aggression by creating an era of cooperation and peace in the region.

Systems must be put in places that are lasting and don’t disappear because of deadlock in the United States Congress or administration change in the United States President or the whims of Kim Jung-Un. To accomplish this, the United States must work together with allies and adversaries in the region to create new international norms and procedures in dealing with North Korea that all parties can agree to. Of course, the United States has been burned by North Korean promises before, but by entrenching those promises in international systems with multiple countries, including China, holding North Korea accountable, it is less likely to happen.

While members of the Blob might argue that this is a naive strategy that opens the door for North Korea to freely develop nuclear weapons and threaten our allies in the region, the reality is that North Korea is already doing that, and that the sanctions regime has failed to make a difference. When asked whether the Blob may change their views on how to deal with North Korea in the future, Dr. Jackson describes how despite the fact that the general public acknowledges that the strategy has failed and that denuclearization is no longer a viable option, Korea policy has not changed, which Dr. Jackson attributes directly to the Blob saying that Korea policy is, “...managed by a handful of specialists whose views are at odds with the most sane people and who are not accountable to the public in any way.”19 The United States government, and the Blob that informs its decisions, continues to be the biggest obstacle to change on the peninsula, with its clinging to denuclearization as policy, inactive rather than proactive attitude, and the swinging pendulum of congress and the presidency switching parties. It is time to abandon this failed strategy and try something new, that can hopefully lead to a complete and enduring peace on the Korean peninsula moving forward.

***The views expressed herein belong solely to the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of NKR or the Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies.

Works Cited

1. Kim, Suk Hi, and Mario Martin-Hermosillo. “The Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions Against a Nuclear North Korea.” North Korean Review 9, no. 2 (2013): 99–110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43908923. p.101-102

2. Ibid. p.101

3. Ibid. 99–110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43908923. p.105-106

4. Renfro, Robert S. “Why Expanded North Korean Sanctions Fail.” North Korean Review 14, no. 1 (2018): 102–14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26396136. p.106-107

5. Porter, Patrick. "Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed Power." Habit, and the US Foreign Policy (2018). p.11

6. Fettweis, Christopher J. "The Beliefs of the Blob." Orbis 67, no. 1 (2023): 27-44. p.32

7. Ibid. p.34

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid. p.36,38

10. Ibid. p.39

11. Ibid. p.42

12. Porter. (2018). p.43

13. Ibid. p.40

14. Strickler, Ethan. Interview with Dr. Van Jackson. Personal, June 2, 2024.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.