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3 Sanctions under the shadow of
war By Martin Hart-Landsberg
and John Feffer
The risk of war on the
Korean Peninsula remains high, and the US
government is raising it higher by opening an
economic front. In September 2005, one day after
regional negotiations produced an agreement with
the potential to defuse North Korean-US tensions,
the US government charged North Korea with
counterfeiting US$100 bills. Calling this alleged
North Korean effort a direct attack on US
sovereignty and technically an act of war,
Washington imposed an ever-tightening and
ever-widening web of financial restrictions on the
country.
This economic campaign, which
broadened and intensified after Pyongyang's
missile launches last July and nuclear test in
October, is the latest
attempt to isolate and weaken the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The charges fit
a pattern of actions that have so far succeeded in
disrupting promising movements toward peace on the
Korean Peninsula.
In the latest round of
six-party talks, held last month, the restrictions
proved to be the biggest obstacle in the path of
reaching an agreement. Tensions generated by the
restrictions are already fueling a new arms race
in East Asia and raising the social costs for
Koreans, especially in the North. The economic
campaign, if unresolved, is likely to lead to a
higher level of tensions in the coming months.
Washington's economic gambit, launched in
2005 and strengthened by United Nations sanctions
in 2006, raises questions concerning timing,
threat escalation, morality and efficacy. The
hardline economic approach toward North Korea has
been a counterproductive detour from the more
pressing issue of denuclearization and diplomatic
normalization.
The restrictions and
sanctions have acted as too blunt a stick to push
North Korea back to the negotiating table and have
become instead the main stumbling block in the
negotiations. Deployed as an alternative to the
less palatable military approaches to regime
change, the economic campaign proved
counterproductive when the DPRK responded with its
missile and nuclear tests. Finally, this economic
approach undermines North Korean efforts at
reforms and opening, the very process that many
argue needs to be supported on moral, as well as
strategic, grounds.
Thwarted
rapprochement Motivated by the negative
economic consequences of the loss of its
Soviet-bloc trading partners and a series of
horrific storms and droughts, North Korea has been
actively seeking to normalize relations with the
United States for more than a decade. Such
rapprochement on the economic level would involve
the removal of the sanctions that Washington has
maintained against Pyongyang for more than 50
years (although some were partially lifted by the
Bill Clinton administration) as well as enlisting
US support for membership in multilateral
institutions (which Washington has hitherto
blocked).
North Korea has discovered that
only one thing will draw the United States into
negotiations - Washington's concerns over its
nuclear program. Thus the North Korean government
has aggressively played its nuclear card. The 1994
Agreed Framework, which resolved the first nuclear
crisis on the peninsula, represented a limited but
promising start for improved relations. The DPRK
promised to freeze and eventually dismantle its
graphite-based nuclear program. In exchange, the
US government agreed to provide new,
less-threatening light-water nuclear reactors, end
its economic embargo, and normalize relations.
Sadly, the US never completely fulfilled
its commitments. Confident that economic problems
would lead to the collapse of the North Korean
government, the Clinton administration made little
effort to overcome opposition from a hostile
Congress to pursue normalization or even ensure
the timely construction of the new reactors.
While Pyongyang seemed more committed to
the agreement, it, too, threw obstacles in the way
of completing the reactors and, possibly, explored
an alternative nuclear program. Still, thanks in
part to South Korean efforts - in particular the
historic meeting between South Korean president
Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
in Pyongyang in June 2000, which was followed four
months later by US secretary of state Madeleine
Albright's visit to Pyongyang - a real improvement
in US-DPRK relations seemed possible.
The
current US administration, however, actively
undermined these promising developments. Even
before taking office, George W Bush announced his
opposition to the Agreed Framework. In 2001, on
assuming the presidency, he publicly criticized
Kim Dae-jung for his efforts at reconciliation and
declared his determination to topple the DPRK
government. In his January 2002 State of the Union
address, Bush declared North Korea a member of an
"axis of evil".
In October 2002,
ratcheting up its regime-change strategy,
Washington accused North Korea of pursuing nuclear
weapons using a secret highly enriched uranium
(HEU) program in violation of the Agreed
Framework. Pyongyang has denied this accusation,
and the US has yet to produce evidence that
satisfies other governments in the region.
Even if such an HEU program does exist, it
is likely to have been at a rudimentary level,
nowhere near the actual production capabilities of
North Korea's plutonium facilities. Nevertheless,
the HEU charge served as the excuse for the Bush
administration formally to end its participation
in the Agreed Framework that it deemed was helping
sustain the Pyongyang regime. In response to this
US decision, North Korea withdrew from the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and unfroze its
nuclear program.
Fearing the consequences
of this steady escalation of tensions, the Chinese
government pushed vigorously to play a mediating
role by hosting six-party talks that began in
August 2003 and involved China, South Korea, North
Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia. Yet
the talks were stymied by US refusal to
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