North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I also rise to support the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016. It is good to see on the floor colleagues who have worked on this important legislation from Maryland, New Jersey, our committee chair, and the Senator from Colorado. I appreciate their efforts and believe this can be a great example of bipartisanship and near-unanimous agreement.

We have witnessed recently many provocations by the North Koreans. The ballistic missile test this past weekend violates numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions and it threatens both the United States and especially our allies in the region. This closely follows a nuclear test in January--another deplorable action by North Korea--and missile nuclear weapons program proliferation concerns that have been the subject of a lot of discussion in this body.

I appreciate the drafters and the Foreign Relations Committee for moving swiftly to deliver a response that includes penalties for the missile launch and the nuclear test.

I will also mention that North Korea's detention of American citizens can't be overlooked. This includes the recent detainment in North Korea of Otto Frederick Warmbier, who is a third-year college student at the University of Virginia. As we move forward with our strategy on North Korea, we have to prioritize and ensure the safe return of our citizens who are detained there.

A little bit about how destabilizing North Korea's actions are. This recent test was expected, and it is proof of the North Korean grim determination to develop nuclear weapons, even if it is hampering and hobbling their economy and causing their citizens to suffer. They have been given warnings that they shouldn't do it, but they have also been giving warnings to the global community that they would.

This is a country that is determined to defy a host of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban it from conducting nuclear and missile tests. The international community has been speaking with clarity about what the line is: Don't do this--but North Korea has chosen to proceed.

Kim Jong Un has once again displayed a willingness to defy the international community--and at such a cost to his people. The economy there is absolutely hobbled because of his desire to be a militaristic leader, but the result is the population of his country is suffering. His strategy to have nuclear, military, and economic development for his people is not going to work because he can't have both, and the legislation demonstrates that these things are impossible by imposing a significant economic cost. The legislation shows that the United States will hold countries and private entities accountable for compliance with rules and law.

Kim Jong Un's backward calculus has left his country impoverished and almost entirely dependent on China for economic trade. Roughly 90 percent of North Korea's foreign trade is with China, which is why China can have significant leverage over North Korea, but the track record of China using its leverage to curb North Korean activity is very disappointing. We need to continue to pressure China to increase sanctions on North Korea and elevate this issue in bilateral discussions with China. The number of North Korean nuclear weapons could soon approach China's within the next decade, and that is a direct threat to regional security and global security.

Yesterday, in the Armed Services Committee hearing we attended, DNI James Clapper stated that North Korea is expanding its uranium enrichment activities, it has restarted plutonium production, and it could start extracting plutonium from spent fuel within a matter of months.

China can no longer turn a blind eye to this. As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China needs to help foster international peace and play the role that an international power on the U.N. Security Council needs to play. They need to play the role in additionally advancing or pushing for more human rights in North Korea because they have the leverage to do so. We don't trade with North Korea. Our leverage system is somewhat limited, but China, with a 90- percent trade share, has that leverage.

The good thing about these sanctions is that they will sanction the activities of Chinese companies and entities that are trading with North Korea, and that secondary sanction effect, I think, has the ability to work and put pressure on them.

We have seen recently how sanctions can work in another context, in the Iran context. The architects of the sanctions policy with Iran are in this room, and they deserve praise because there is no way Iran, a rogue nation that was moving forward to develop nuclear weapons, would have ever entertained a diplomatic discussion to try to put limits on that program had it not been for sanctions that were designed to have a strategic and careful effect. So we need to do the same thing here, and these sanctions do that.

In conclusion, the United States has to undertake a more proactive approach to North Korea to address the nuclear and ballistic missile programs. This legislation is good because it not only puts Congress even more firmly on the record in opposition to North Korea's activity, but it also provides the executive branch a more robust set of policy tools to confront the threat that is posed by Pyongyang.

This is an example of legislation that came out of the committee-- bipartisan and unanimous. It represents the best of bipartisan foreign policy cooperation, and I am strongly in support of the bill.

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