Sanctioning Stupidity

Only John Bolton and Bushco would consider sanctioning North Korea as it pursues nuclear parity with the United States a diplomatic triumph, whereas instead it represents yet another failure for this ruinous administration (and of course, North Korea can easily site Dubya’s great example of thumbing his nose at the ABM and NPT treaties as a precedent).

That being said, I should point out that I have no sympathy whatsoever for Kim Jong Il. He and Our Own Great White Father Shrub are two foul peas living in the same dictatorial pod as far as I’m concerned.

The problem (and we must continually point this out) is that Bushco abrogated the “agreed framework” formed under the Clinton administration with significant input from Jimmy Carter (I mean, the fact that these two Democrats came up with this means it just has to be bad, right?). This had led us down this potentially ruinous path on which we now find ourselves (and the decision to punish North Korea for counterfeiting as an issue apart from nuclear proliferation looks pretty damn stupid right now also).

So my question is this: what have sanctions ever accomplished?

We pursued them against Iraq in the ‘90s of course, and as Denis Halliday, the former coordinator of the UN oil-for-food deal in Iraq observed…

''It doesn't impact on governance effectively and instead it damages the innocent people of the country,'' (Halliday) told the Reuters news agency.

"It probably strengthens the leadership and further weakens the people of the country.''

Mr Halliday said it was correct to draw attention to the "4,000 to 5,000 children dying unnecessarily every month due to the impact of sanctions because of the breakdown of water and sanitation, inadequate diet and the bad internal health situation".

Also concerning Iraq (and keep in mind that this was written in 1998)…

…he said sanctions were biting into the fabric of Iraqi society in other, less visible ways.

He cited the disruption of family life caused by the departure overseas of two to three million Iraqi professionals.

He said sanctions had increased divorces and reduced the number of marriages because young couples could not afford to wed.

"It has also produced a new level of crime, street children, possibly even an increase in prostitution," he said.

And most troubling of all (though this should hardly be a surprise)…

Mr Halliday noted mosque attendance had soared during the sanctions era as people sought solace in religion - a change from Iraq's hitherto largely secular colouring.

"What should be of concern is the possibility at least of more fundamentalist Islamic thinking developing," he said.

"It is not well understood as a possible spin-off of the sanctions regime. We are pushing people to take extreme positions."

And let's face the obvious fact that it's easy for the industrialized nations to impose sanctions elsewhere because they will never face them, another reason why the true cost is so invisible to them.

And as malnutrition continues to spread in North Korea, what “extreme positions” will the people of that country continue to take under greater and greater hardship (and I will never believe the nonsense that somehow sanctions can be imposed that don’t hurt those most vulnerable in the sanctioned country, with sanctions not even serving as an effective means to address the issue.)

And this doesn’t even consider the possible effect of sanctions against Iran, by the way.

To consider the problem of North Korea and sanctions further, I would suggest that you read the text from this link brought to us by The Century Foundation, specifically the section beginning on Page 13, which states in part…

The fundamental problem is that nothing Washington is willing to offer is sufficient, while none of its threats are credible. Even hawks have quietly taken the military option off the table, and sanctions are meaningless without China’s participation. As for regime change, none of the likely outcomes are desirable. Those who have called for the collapse of Kim Jong Il’s regime should be careful what they wish for: repugnant as the current government may be, the likely alternative is chaos, a failed state awash in arms both nuclear and conventional.

Keep in mind that all of this has arisen because our glorious red state president has decided that it shows weakness somehow to sit down and talk with the leaders of the sanctioned countries (yes, I know there are bad actors all around in this scenario, but I recall a president from my distant youth, a native of Massachusetts who once stirringly said “We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate,” which Patrick Murphy echoed in his radio address on Saturday, by the way).

Yes I know – so “pre-9/11” of me, right?…

Update: I would agree that this would be a good start.