The resolution may ultimately have been less than what the United States had demanded, but the United Nations on Saturday voted unanimously to impose sanctions on North Korea in response to the country's nuclear weapons test conducted last Monday. Following what Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin called "tense negotiations," the Council passed Resolution 1718  calling for North Korea to eliminate all its nuclear weapons.

The resolution bans the import or export of material which could be used in the building of nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles. Countries are likewise obligated to freeze the assets of anyone actively supporting the North Korean nuclear program and, in a clause aimed and the country's tiny elite, the sale of luxury goods to the country is banned. The US had been demanding that the resolution leave open the possibility of military action, but bowing to Russian and Chinese concerns, the demand was dropped.

North Korea immediately rejected the resolution with UN Ambassador Pak Gil Yon walking out of the chamber. But he didn't leave before accusing the US of "gangster-like" behavior. "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is ready for talks, dialogue and confrontation," he said. "If the United States increases pressure upon the Democratic People's Republic of Korea persistently, the DPRK will continue to take physical countermeasures considering it as a declaration of war."

Commentators at the German financial daily Handelsblatt on Monday expressed tepid enthusiasm for the Security Council's latest resolution. The business daily calls the sanctions "rather gentle," a success for Chinese and Russian diplomacy. Above all, the paper writes, the compromise will be seen as a success in South Korea, where "nothing is feared quite as much as the sudden collapse of the communist North." For most South Korean experts, imagining the demise of Kim Jong Il's regime brings with it nightmare scenarios including "waves of refugees, an exodus of foreign investors and a financial crisis" in the entire region. That is also why "Seoul consistently lobbies for the kind of sanctions that target North Korea's elite rather than the people living there." It is the same reason "the White House is visibly anxious to avoid any impression that it is considering a military operation."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung takes this criticism one step further with the editorial headline, "Useless Sanctions." The daily from Munich reiterates the obvious fact that "China and South Korea, North Korea's closest neighbors, have different strategic interests than the USA" -- chief among them avoiding the implosion of the communist regime for fear of what would happen to its nuclear program once it falls into the hands of "utterly unpredictable generals." Saturday's UN Resolution "merely reinforces Washington's existing North Korea strategy," the paper writes, while China and South Korea will continue to prevent the total collapse of Kim Jong Il's regime. The paper takes some comfort in the fact that the Security Council came to an agreement at all, but concludes that this symbolic consensus "is of little solace, because these sanctions will not change anything."

The North Korean atomic bomb "marks a turning point in the development of the international approach to nuclear weapons," according to the Berliner Zeitung. The left-leaning paper says "it would be a mistake to look at the North Korean bomb as a local problem in the Far East," in light of its implications for international nuclear proliferation. The Non-Proliferation Treaty "has been riddled with holes for decades," the paper opines, "and is now worthless." This, in turn, has allowed North Korea to procure the bomb in the same manner "as every other nation besides the United States: by way of cheating and stealing, payments and support from friends." The Berlin paper sees no end to this trend, and resigns itself to a future of fragmented resource wars with ever more nuclear-armed states, and ultimately longs for the golden days of Soviet-American bipolarism. "As terrible as the confrontation of the Cold war may have been," it writes, "at the thought of what threatens us now, we are already tempted to long for a return to its simplicity."

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung succinctly summarizes the general sentiment that "Russia and China are the ones deciding whether there will be a serious regime of sanctions at their borders, or merely mock sanctions." The paper also talks about "the severe consequences for the non-proliferation system" caused by North Korea's breach, which "threatens to break the taboo of thinking about the bomb all over Asia, including in Japan." Other nuclear hopefuls such as Iran may have learned from the North Korean episode that nothing can stop a determined state from obtaining the bomb sooner or later, not even the atomic arsenals of the established nuclear powers. Meanwhile, the paper observes that "the Doctor Strangeloves of the 21st century" feel validated in their love for the Bomb.