Bush Administration’s Financial Sanctions on N.Korea Will Work
The unilateral financial sanctions the Bush Administration has imposed on a tiny Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) on alleged charges of money laundering, drug trafficking, and counterfeiting of US dollars are far from a hallmark of the lone superpower’s moral integrity and lofty political principles. They are totally arbitrary and all too poorly advised steps.
Ill-advised as they are, will the financial sanctions work? The answer is YES and NO.
Keep North Korean Threat Alive
If the hidden real objective of the financial sanctions is to keep the North Korean threat alive and continue to justify the US arms buildup including missile defense, the answer is definite YES. The financial sanctions serve the twin purposes: firstly to infuriate the North Koreans, give them a pretext to refuse to resume the six-party talks, prompt them to increase their nuclear arsenal, with the six-party talks left in disarray, and secondly to allow the US to persist in the policy of hostility toward North Korea and continue to provide raison d'etre for the US arms buildup including missile defense. The financial sanctions may be called a splendid success.
Successful six-party talks will lead to a peace treaty between the DPRK and the US, full diplomatic relations between the two enemies and normalized relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo. It will make it difficult for the Bush Administration to remain hostile to the DPRK and sustain the justification for the continued US military presence in South Korea and Japan. The Americans will no longer find any legitimate reason to rationalize a strengthened US-Japan security alliance.
Peace with North Korea will expose China as the true target of the US missile defense and potential threat challenging American influence. Though the US missile defense network targets China, the Americans have cited the North Korean missiles as the alternative threat. Behind the smokescreen of the North Korean threat the US has strived to beef up its armed forces and encircle China.
The financial sanctions, which will produced the desired results, are fraught with major negative effects.
↘ North Korea is building up its nuclear force at a far higher pace than the Americans expect. The DPRK will pass by India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and France by 2007 to emerge the world’s fourth nuclear power after China. The North Koreans will and will overtake China not later than 2010 to clinch the spot of the world’s third nuclear weapons state just after the US and Russia.
What makes North Korea different from India, Pakistan, the UK and France but puts North Korea in the same category with Russia and China is the possession of a fleet of ICBMs capable of unleashing retaliatory nuclear strikes on the US mainland. What makes North Korea unique is that the North Koreans are the sole people to feel a superiority complex toward the Americans due to their victory over them in the last Korean War and four rounds of major showdowns and that find their country still a state of war with the US.
The DPRK has the whole of its land fortified and is well geared up for a nuclear exchange with the US, while the population of the US is any thing but prepared for the worst-case scenario of the Day After, despite its status as the world’s largest nuclear power. Neither is the Japanese population. Nor is South Korea. North Korea has little to lose in war. To be plain, there is little to lose. However, the US and Japan have too much to lose.
An instant nuclear retaliation in the form of ICBMs blasted off from North Korea will be the first full-scale attack on the US mainland. The Metropolitan USA will end up in seas of towering inferno. North Korea and its people are accustomed to war and destruction, which are their routine, not remote incidents of past history. Preemptive strikes by the Americans on the DPRK will be fundamentally different from those on Iraq in that the former will spell a nightmare scenario for the US mainland.
An increasing number of people of an economically successful South Korea, a junior ally of the US, have got a kick at the sight of Kim Jong Il diplomacy-- military-first policy -- not only squarely dealing with the Americans but driving them into the defensive. They are inspired with a deep sense of national pride, self-respect for the first time in Korean history. The North and South Koreans will be more closely united in opposing the US, a development propelling them toward an eventual reunification of the divided land.
♭ Failure to stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons is another reminder that there is no preventing nuclear proliferation. This signifies an abortive bid of the Bush Administration to restrict the membership of the elite Nuclear Club, which loses any value at all. A net result is a remarkable decline of American prestige and influence as the sole superpower and world’s policeman, becoming virtually one of the great powers. The US is a far cry from what it was. With all their high-tech weapons, ground superiority and air supremacy, the US is being badly mauled in Iraq and Afghanistan. The snowballing war spending in the two countries is draining the US, and the automobile industry that has driven the country is now a sunset one.
The US is no longer able to produce electric appliances and other industrial products its citizens need for their daily life, including clothing, and depends on China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asian countries for them. The US is merely a farming, military industrial, and financial capital state. What keeps the US above water is huge borrowings and other funding from Japan, China and other countries. Pax Americana is ending at long last.
♩ The DPRK and China are both nuclear powers and are in the process of strengthening their alliance, political, diplomatic and military, while promoting economic cooperation. The two countries nuclear-armed and on an equal footing, the Korean-Chinese Alliance, unlike the WARSAW Pact 쭯 the defunct Soviet Union was a sole nuclear power --, is applying great pressure on the waning US, hastening its decline.
This represents a total abortion of the American bid to drive a wedge between the DPRK and China over the nuclear issue. South Korea is further distancing itself from the US, leaving Japan the sole US ally in Northeast Asia. Japan, however, cannot afford to survive without deeper trade with China, causing internal contradictions, split between China and the US.
Isolating North Korea and Cutting Off Its Funding for Nuclear Arms
If the financial sanctions are intended to isolate the DPRK and cut off its income source to fund the nuclear weapons development program, the answer is NO. It is highly unlikely that the objective will be accomplished. The Bush Administration is least interested in pursuing it from the beginning. Making a scene is simply designed to keep the allies in line.
This is a hackneyed witch hunt method since ancient times. The feudal lord frames up a village woman as a witch, deflects local criticisms at him toward her, and subsequently controls the village.
↘ The North Korean nuclear program has been financed by local funds. What underlies the DPRK’s defense industry is the juche principle, which calls for domestic funding, brains, and materials in self-reliance. Juche is in horizontal conflict with counterfeiting of foreign currency and drug trafficking to buy foreign materials and equipment needed for the production of nuclear weapons.
The Bush Administration’s imposition of financial sanctions on the DPRK is untenable because it is tantamount to denying that juche is the leading idea of the Kim Jong Il Government. If the Bush Administration means what it says, it will end up by alleging the North Koreans with copying American nuclear weapons and ICBMs in violation of its patents.
♭ The nuclear weapon by North Korea was successfully developed as far back as the mid-1980s. The end of the decade saw successful development of the ICBM. It is sheer absurdity to call for cutting off funding sources for the North Korean
development of nuclear weapons and missiles, 15 years after their successful development.
American intelligence on North Korea is 10 years, 20 years behind. The US Administration has no understanding of North Korea. From the beginning the Americans are no match to the Kim Jong Il Administration in psychological warfare and intelligence warfare.
When Pyongyang declares the acquisition of nuclear weapons, it means that the North Koreans have already acquired a giant nuclear force capable of torching the US mainland.
♩ The Bush Administration should be well aware that the North Koreans are not engaged in money laundering, drug trafficking and counterfeiting of US dollars. The Bush Administration has no hard evidence to support the allegations against North Korea. This having been said, it is characteristic of the Bush Administration to apply financial sanctions on North Korea. The US is no great power at all. The US is little different from a terrorist organization or Mafia or any other underground criminal organization. In the first place, the Americans do not need any compelling evidence. If the Americans call white “black,” it should be “black.” Truth is the first casualty in the conduct of American policy.
The South Korean KBS reported that Macau-based Banco Delta Asia handed its documents over to US Treasury Department investigators, telling them that they found no proof to back up the US allegations. The South Korean National Intelligence Agency dismissed the American allegations as unfounded.
There is little doubt that whatever information the Bush Administration announces is disinformation and groundless. It is a matter of common knowledge that the allegation that Iraq was possessed of WMDs, cited by Washington to warrant an armed invasion of the Mideast country, was a deliberate complete frame-up.
What is foremost in the mind of the Bush Administration has nothing to do with the short-term and long-term national interests of the US. Its concern was to promote the interests of the defense industry, oil business and other private sectors. They have no consideration for how many US servicemen die in Iraq and Afghanistan. They sell out even CIA agents without feeling any pang of conscience.
Most of US government officials know that there is no truth in the charges by the Bush Administration that Iran is intent on developing nuclear bombs. The Americans told a big lie to its key ally Japan about the American beef issue.
Toppling North Korean Regime
Suppose one of the key aims of the financial sanctions is to help topple the North Korean Government of Kim Jong Il, needless to say, the answer is obvious NO. The heavier American pressure is applied on North Korea, the stronger its Government becomes. Nothing is more desirable for Pyongyang than pressure from Washington. The DPRK Government is no ordinary one. It is a national-liberation front government in every respect.
↘ The more noisily the Americans talk about the North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles, allegedly worst human rights records, money laundering, drug trafficking, and counterfeiting of US currency, the more dramatically the DPRK Administration of Kim Jong Il strikes the North and South Korean people as Korean David heroically standing up to the arrogant, self-centered American Goliath. It adds to the Korean nationalist credentials of the DPRK Government.
What the Kim Jong Il Government has which the successive South Korean Governments lacked is Korean nationalist legitimacy. It lies in standing up to the foreign forces, the Americans and the Japanese among others and safeguarding the pride, independence, sovereignty and dignity of the Korean people. Pressure from the US is a vital factor that sustains the DPRK Government.
♭ Unlike Chinese and Japanese counterparts that governed their respective countries, each for up to 270 years, the Korean dynasties ruled the country, each for up to 500 years. Each dynasty lasted nearly 1,000 years, with very few civil wars. Most outstanding about the Korean people is their readiness to unite in repelling a foreign invader for little compensation. Very few rebellions against national leaders happened in Korean history.
North Korean families are free from domestic violence. Children respect their parents, younger brothers and sisters their elders. Schools are without violence. No classroom collapse is reported. Teachers enjoy absolute authority and respect. Korean history, culture and traditions are still at play。
♩ Of all the Korean regimes that have ever existed in Korea’s 5,000 year-old history the Kim Jong Il Government is the most stubborn with the North Korean population closely knit around it. The North Korean people see a source of boundless pride and glory in holding Kim Jong Il in high esteem as their national hero and supreme leader. Their dedication is such that they are glad to lay down their lives in defense of his leadership at any time.
The Korean people have found an effective outlet for their long pent-up anger at the sight of Kim Jong Il outmaneuvering the successive US administrations and seizing the initiative in the present nuclear standoff with the Bush Administration. The North Korean people find their sacrifices quite satisfying and fulfilling, since the Kim Jong Il Government has built up capability to administer nuclear retaliatory strikes on the US mainland thanks to their sacrifices and has kept the Korean Peninsula from becoming another battleground as a result of its army-first policy and nuclear deterrence.
The Bush Administration’s talk about North Korean human rights issue serves only to profit the North Korean regime. Whatever the Americans do all benefits the Kim Jong Il Administration.
Take a look at the typical case. When five years have already passed since Bush took charge in the White House in 2001, who has become a lame duck, Bush or Kim Jong Il. Who is on the rise and on whose side is time? Bush is a clear lame duck, while Kim Jong Il is on the rise.
At final analysis, Kim Jong Il is certain to emerge triumphant and Bush to become an underdog. The North Korean leader wanted to follow the win-win policy(both leaders to be winners), but all the Bush Administration does indicates its determination to let Kim Jong Il alone become a winner. If that’s the case, there will be no other option than for the DPRK to score a unilateral victory.
[News Source : Center for Korean American for Peace 0000-00-00]
Myung-Chul Kim
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