February 18, 2013 - 9:35 am
As Kim Jong-un test fires another nuke, the EU tightens the pretend screws:
EU finance ministers, condemning the Feb. 12 nuclear test by North Korea, have imposed trade and economic sanctions on the Asian nation.
A statement by the 27 European Union finance ministers, who met Monday in Brussels, said they condemn the test “in the strongest terms” and demand that North Korea abstain from further tests. The statement also urged North Korea to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty without delay.
I’m not about to argue in favor of free trade with a criminal state like North Korea. But what is the point of endless rounds of new sanctions, when the old ones haven’t forced the DPRK to change its evil ways?
I dunno. They upped it to the “strongest terms” which is just below “strongest possible terms” or “this time we really mean it” or even the dreaded “in five minutes buddy you keep this up and you are grounded”.
If one were truly Machiavellian, the free-trade idea just might work:
1. The DPRK survives by starving and isolating the general population of the country from the advancement taking place in the rest of the world so as to avoid the inevitable “why can’t we have that here…” Systemic hunger, fear and isolation.
2. The sanctions only feed into the forgoing by further isolating North Korea’s general populace and by giving the DPRK a scapegoat for the deleterious conditions in the country…i.e. “Its those Americans and their South Korean allies that are starving you, etc., etc.
3. My vote is to impose free access to trade for 4-6 years…just enough that the lifestyle improvements trickle down to the lower echelons of North Korean society.
4. At the end of the 6 years, take it all away…everything; including all aide shipments. Then watch the people who had previously had a small taste of a better life suddenly find their spines stiffen in opposition to the regime.
People have become too accustomed to the current paradigm of near starvation, death camps, nuclear threats to extract foreign aide, etc. It is reminiscent of the frog slowly boiling to death in the pot. Maybe it is time to shock the system and see if can’t get that frog to jump.