Provoking a crisis in a nuclear armed state is a disastrous idea
The recent Global
Times editorial, discussed by
me in my article on UN Security Council Resolution 2753, has spoken of US attempts
to use sanctions to ‘collapse’ North Korea’s economy and to ‘suffocate’ the
North Korean regime as an idea that is both dangerous and counterproductive
Some Americans and South Koreans have attempted to collapse
Pyongyang’s economy and suffocate the current Pyongyang regime. This is
dangerous. North Korea’s nuclear crisis requires arduous efforts to find a
final solution, and any attempt to immediately end the crisis will only
escalate tensions and eventually jeopardize self-interests.
This is
exactly correct. Indeed one of the most concerning aspects of the swirl
of discussion that takes place in the West and the US especially about
sanctions on North Korea is that there is never any real explanation of what
sanctions on North Korea are supposed to achieve.
Every
so often Western leaders speak of sanctions as intended either to ‘force’ the
North Koreans to negotiate – though since the US refuses to give North Korea
security guarantees it is never made clear what the North Koreans are supposed
to agree to ‘negotiate’ about – or to abandon their ballistic missile and
nuclear weapons programme entirely.
If
these are the objectives behind the sanctions policy, then it has visibly
failed. Since North Korea carried out its first nuclear test on 9th
October 2006 there have been eight UN Security Council Resolutions imposing
sanctions on North Korea, whilst the US has imposed unilateral sanctions of its
own. Far from deterring the North Koreans from pursuing their ballistic
missile and nuclear weapons programme or causing them to abandon it, the North
Koreans have instead accelerated it.
That sanctions, however severe they become, will never persuade
the North Koreans to give up their ballistic missile and nuclear weapons
programme was recently pointed out by President Putin of Russia. Speaking in
his usual direct way, President Putin set out the position clearly on 5th
September 2017 at a press conference in China following the latest BRICS summit
Sanctions of any kind are useless and ineffective
in this case. As I said to one of my colleagues
yesterday, they will eat grass, but they will not abandon this programme unless
they feel safe.
Whilst few world leaders have the confidence to say this as
forcefully as President Putin did, the comments at the UN Security Council meeting on
Monday at which Resolution 2753 was passed of the ambassadors of China, Italy,
Sweden, Egypt, Uruguay, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Senegal, South Korea and Ethiopia,
show that privately it is widely shared. In comments which were clearly
addressed to the US, all of them in their different ways pressed for
negotiations to begin with the North Koreans without further delay, though none
of them spelt out exactly how these negotiations should take place.
If
sanctions will not force the North Koreans to give up their ballistic missile
and nuclear weapons programme, what else might they achieve?
One possibility is that they will achieve nothing. North
Korea’s Juche economic
policy is specifically intended to insulate North Korea from the effect of
sanctions. As I have recently pointed out, despite the various sanctions
which have been imposed on North Korea since 2006, its economy is apparently growing strongly. The
latest sanctions imposed on North Korea by Resolution 2753 will not change
that.
More
likely is that the sanctions will reduce North Korea’s economic growth and
inflict greater hardship on its people. Since that will not however stop
North Korea from pursuing its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programme,
it is difficult to see the sense of this.
Resolution
2753 speaks at length of the UN Security Council’s concern for the welfare of
North Korea’s people. How is that consistent with imposing sanctions,
which will reduce their welfare but which will not prevent or even slow down
the North Korean government’s pursuit of its ballistic missile and nuclear
weapons programme, which is the ostensible target of the sanctions?
A less
likely alternative, but one which as Global Times rightly says “some Americans
and South Koreans” are clearly aiming for, is that the sanctions will provoke
an economic and eventually a political crisis in North Korea, putting in
jeopardy the existence of the North Korean regime.
Not
only is that the least likely alternative, but it is also by far the most
dangerous. North Korea is now a nuclear armed state in possession of
ballistic missiles which have Tokyo and Seoul within range. Given the
nature of the North Korean regime and its possession of both ballistic missiles
and nuclear weapons, it is difficult to imagine any more dangerous scenario
than one in which it comes to fear for its survival because of an internal
crisis caused by sanctions imposed upon it by the US.
It is
commonly though rather glibly said that the US has no ‘good options’ with
respect to North Korea. Though that may be true, there are most
definitely some options which are far worse than others. If launching a
military attack on North Korea is the worst option of all, engineering an
internal crisis within North Korea seems hardly better.
It is
difficult to avoid the impression that the reason the US continues to press for
sanctions against North Korea is not because it has any coherent plan for what
these sanctions are supposed to achieve.
It is
because the US hates being backed into a corner and having to retreat, and
rather than do this and lose face it instead strikes out at North Korea in the
only way it can, with more and more sanctions. That doing this is either
pointless or dangerous apparently matters less than the loss of face
negotiating with Pyongyang might cause.
Negotiating
with Pyongyang is something that the US will however eventually have to do. The
comments of the ambassadors at the debate in the UN Security Council shows that
even some US allies like Italy and Sweden are now close to demanding it.
With
the Chinese and the Russians clearly signalling that the sanctions route is now
all but exhausted, and with the Chinese-Russian roadmap for the
denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula visibly gaining traction, the US risks
becoming isolated in the UN Security Council if it persists with its current
stance.
Should
that position ever be reached, the US could find that a security treaty
brokered by the Chinese and the Russians and backed by a majority of UN Member
States is agreed by the two Koreas in which the US has no part.
For the
‘exceptional’ ‘indispensable’ country – which is what the US claims itself to
be – that would of course be the greatest humiliation of all.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/09/no_author/us-sanctions-policy-against-north-korea-is-wrong-and-dangerous-heres-why/
