This exchange from the White House briefing is informative:
Q: Won’t the North Koreans get the message that condemnations and requests for them to change actions are not exactly strong statements to make to a country that’s repeatedly defied, as you said, its obligations?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I don’t — let me turn that question a little bit around, because I think there was some question about whether or not you could even get five members of a Security Council, or five of the permanent members of the Security Council to agree on a condemnation. Yesterday, 15 countries unanimously stood up and spoke out about the launch.
Q: But it took almost two weeks to get there.
MR. GIBBS: Well, you know, sometimes progress takes longer than a couple of days. I think that — I know that you all had an interest in what the Security Council was going to do; at least you did several days ago. I think it’s important to understand what the Security Council did. And remember, this is not — this is asking the North Koreans to live up to the agreement that the North Koreans entered into. This is not some pie-in-the-sky thing that a group of countries has asked another to do. This is the unanimous Security Council asking the North Koreans to live up to the obligations that it entered into in September of 2005, that we can seek a denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Q: Yes, but one might reasonably wonder where the leverage is if every agreement they make, they eventually decide to break.
MR. GIBBS: Well, I think part of the leverage is going back to, again, some doubt that many of you may have had in the moments or hours after the launch as to whether countries could act in concert, together, to condemn the launch.
I think there certainly was some doubt expressed for that, and I think the manner in which the Security Council came to this condemnation is extremely important.
You see we get leverage by passing resolutions — which by the way only require we get working on the sanctions which we’ve never really enforced. If the White House press pool can figure out we look ridiculous what must our enemies think?
