The weekly stakes in the appeasement versus war sweepstakes between North Korea and the United States keep rising….
The weekly stakes in the appeasement versus war sweepstakes between North Korea and the United States keep rising.
The good news for markets is that this Saturday’s widely anticipated launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile from North Korea did not take place. But if and when it does happen, the US will be under another round of pressure: do nothing again, and it will look weak and indecisive on the international scene. Or retaliate and risk a catastrophic conventional or nuclear conflict.
US president Donald Trump is a seriously considering adopting diplomatically provocative sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang, according to a report by NBC News, citing Trump administration officials.
The US has already rolled out sanctions aimed at Chinese companies that conduct business and trade with North Korea. But it has not yet broadly targeted China’s banking system. China has told US officials it would protest such a move diplomatically and retaliate.
China accounted for 92 per cent of North Korea’s 2016 trade, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency’s data in July. It also provides hundreds of thousands of tonnes of oil and fuel to the impoverished regime.
But it has only entrenched its position, explaining repeatedly that it wants a peaceful de-escalation and that it would not ally with the US in the event of a military conflict.
This is supposed to be evolving into the worst nuclear confrontation since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, except for one major remaining leverage for the US: escalating a financial attack on the Chinese banking system in order to force China to completely embargo North Korea.
