Trump administration's aggression against UN causes China, Russia to draw lines

During Trump's speech at the UN General Assembly last week, the President pointed to the fact that the United Nations (UN) still provided seats to international parties that defied the UN. On Friday, September 15, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said during a White House press briefing that there was only so much the UN Security Council could do with passing sanctions enforcement against North Korea.

U.S, UN and additional sanctions by executive order

The press briefing was on the same day that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- the official name of the North Korean government -- fired another ballistic missile into the northern Pacific Ocean. The missile launch was seen as an act of defiance from North Korea after the UN and the U.S. have continued to increase sanctions against the rogue state.

In her statements at the press briefing, Haley said that the U.S. was more than willing to let U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis deal with Pyongyang if the sanctions they continued to put on the regime stopped working.

During President Trump's speech at the UN General Assembly last Tuesday, he threatened to "totally destroy North Korea" which he followed with signing executive orders for more sanctions, the following Thursday. This latest effort by the U.S. President threatens financial institutions who try to conduct business with North Korea.

The defiant members' states of the UN

The latest sanctions also ban ships and planes that come to the U.S. and had traveled to North Korea within 180 days. President Trump said on the same day that he signed his executive order that china had ordered Chinese banks to stop doing business with the DPRK, which, the Chinese foreign minister denied. China and Russia are both member states of the UN Security Council but have expressed reluctance in enforcing sanctions that would strangle their neighbor.

In a report by the Washington Post titled: "China tightens banking screws on North Korea, but rejects Trump's talk of total ban", a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, Lu Kang, said on Friday that China does implement UN sanctions but they do not support sanctions that are outside of the UN framework. This would suggest that the Chinese government feels that the President's sanctions by executive order and those place by Congress are illegitimate.

Punishing other countries through trade deals

Russia has also defied the U.S. and the UN's attempts to strangle their unstable neighbor through sanctions and has even established a trade route -- immediately after recent sanctions enforcement -- to send diesel and other fuels to the Hermit Kingdom.

It's been stated that such an effort followed China's unprecedented pressure to enforce economic sanctions against the DPRK, which as mentioned, was done with reluctance.

It's likely that with President Trump's frequent decision to withdraw from trade deals as a way to cut ties with other countries that don't do his bidding, that he would consider similar action against those countries who do not cooperate. It was suggested in recent months that the President would put sanctions on China as well, and had already signed a memorandum which claimed that China had violated intellectual property. President Trump has also made a similar gesture with South Korea where he has said that he wants to withdraw from the Free Trade Agreement shared between both countries.