FOREIGN POLICY/NORTH KOREA/TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/UN: “The Trump administration has backed away from some of the most stringent penalties it had sought to impose on North Korea, in an apparent effort to draw Russian and Chinese backing for a new raft of sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons advances.
Whether the administration will garner the support of Moscow and Beijing when the new sanctions come up for a vote Monday [9-11-17] evening at the United Nations Security Council remains to be seen.
More important, it is wholly unclear whether additional sanctions will persuade Pyongyang to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
The North Korean regime has pushed ahead with its nuclear weapons program, despite increasingly tougher sanctions in recent years. Just a week ago the North tested its most powerful nuclear device.
The American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, reacted to that test by calling for a broad range of sanctions, including a cutoff of all oil supplies, in a new Security Council resolution.
Those demands were toned down in negotiations that followed with her Russian and Chinese counterparts. Late Sunday night, after a series of closed-door meetings, a revised draft emerged, setting a cap on oil exports to North Korea, but not blocking them altogether.”
-Somini Sengupta, “U.S. Weakens Resolution on North Korea to Gain Chinese and Russian Support,” The New York Times online, Sept. 11, 2017