Page 3 of
3 Sanctions under the shadow of
war By Martin Hart-Landsberg
and John Feffer
of military force
troubles many international legal scholars who
view it as a violation of the freedom of movement
in the high seas as institutionalized by the UN
Convention on the Law of the Sea.
If
applied to North Korean ships, furthermore, the
PSI runs the risk of triggering a military
confrontation. Pyongyang has asserted that it will
consider such an implementation of sanctions an
act of war, which is consistent with the consensus
view of international law. Acknowledging the
dangers, Seoul and Beijing have so far refused
to
join the PSI.
Sanctions and
morality Those who call for sanctions
claim the high moral ground, arguing that North
Korea has defied international norms concerning
nuclear weapons by exiting the NPT in 2003 and
moving quickly toward a nuclear test. It also
stands accused of counterfeiting US currency,
selling large quantities of narcotics and
laundering the profits from various illicit
activities through various financial institutions.
And Pyongyang's human-rights record, according to
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the
UN Special Rapporteur Vitit Muntabhorn, among
others, is dismal.
Civil-society
organizations point to Myanmar and South Africa as
comparable cases where sanctions have had moral
appeal. Despite some similarities, however, the
internal situation in North Korea differs
substantially from those in Myanmar and apartheid
South Africa. Most important, no domestic group
within North Korea supports sanctions, as did the
African National Congress in South Africa and the
National League for Democracy in Myanmar, both of
which saw the sanctions as strengthening their
respective domestic struggles for democratic
transformation.
As a result, should
sanctions indeed lead to regime change in North
Korea, no viable domestic movement waits in the
wings to provide a new policy direction. The
institution most likely to take over in a
situation of chaos, the military, is unlikely to
have a different approach to the nuclear or
human-rights issues. South Korea, meanwhile, has
rejected the "absorption" scenario, in part
because of consideration of cost, in part to
facilitate a more humane and stable inter-Korean
reconciliation.
Washington's own behavior
in recent years also undercuts the arguments that
sanctions are the appropriate response after
repeated failures to achieve a negotiated
settlement to the current crisis. For the past six
years at least, Washington has refused to pursue
the most obvious and likely productive option -
sustained direct negotiations with Pyongyang.
Furthermore, Washington's insistence on
maintaining the "first strike" option and
developing new nuclear weapons, in particular, has
not only undercut its moral standing but also
given Pyongyang an additional rationale for its
own nuclear program.
And, perhaps most
critically, because of the increased risk of war
in and around the Korean Peninsula, the sanctions
are not only a blunt instrument but possibly a
very dangerous one as well. While North Korea's
human-rights record is deplorable, a war on the
peninsula, which would result in the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Koreans in the first
months of conflict, would be a human-rights
disaster of much greater magnitude.
Will they work? A final
consideration is the efficacy of the sanctions.
Here, too, sanctions fail the test. North Korea
has its own indigenous capacity to produce nuclear
weapons and missiles, so cordoning off the country
will not necessarily eliminate these programs.
Nor do the sanctions have consistent
buy-in. China, in particular, is reluctant to
police its border to such a degree to prevent the
flow of proscribed goods. South Korea is not
willing to interdict North Korean ships. The US,
meanwhile, has claimed that the October UN
sanctions applied to all alleged activities that
finance WMD production, including
money-laundering, counterfeiting and
drug-trafficking, a position that is neither
consistent with the language of the resolution nor
universally accepted by the signatories.
Equally problematic is the fact that the
sanctions are all-or-nothing. They offer North
Korea no incentives to commit to the negotiating
process or comply with the requirements set out by
the resolutions. As sanctions experts David
Cortright writes, "Sanctions are most effective
when combined with incentives, as part of a
carrot-and-stick diplomacy designed to resolve
conflict and bring about a negotiated solution."
In short, sanctions are unlikely to
succeed in either forcing North Korea to accept an
agreement it opposes or collapsing the regime. In
fact, in the case of North Korea, economist
Ruediger Frank concludes that economic sanctions
are not only costly for the participants, they
also challenge the very processes of economic
reform and democratization that the sanctioning
countries presumably want to encourage.
How to proceed Although they
enjoy some measure of support from the
international community, the sanctions levied
against North Korea only add fuel to the fire.
Moreover, they fit a disturbing pattern of
Washington's non-diplomacy toward Pyongyang. The
economic campaign begun in 2005 pushed North Korea
toward accelerating its nuclear program. The more
recent sanctions, if implemented with naval
interdiction, increase the risk of war.
Clearly, a change in US policy is needed.
More specifically, the United States should first
work with China and North Korea to separate licit
from illicit financial activities so that the BDA
can unfreeze the North Korean assets that support
its legitimate practices. Next, the US should
directly confer with North Korea on how best to
ensure financial transparency in the latter's
financial activity. To tackle the more recent UN
sanctions, both sides must be willing to make
concessions according to an "action for action"
sequence that can remove the immediate threat that
naval interdiction poses for sparking a military
conflict.
Finally, mindful of the priority
of averting war in and around Korea and satisfying
the legitimate security needs of both North Korea
and the US, Washington must be willing to suspend
its economic campaign against, and commit to
direct bilateral talks with, North Korea, with the
aim of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and
normalizing relations.
Normalization is
not a reward. Rather, it is the framework within
which the US and North Korea can best deal with
their outstanding concerns. In sum, the Bush
administration and the new Democratic Congress
can, and must, take clear, preventive steps to
ensure that Northeast Asia doesn't descend into
the kind of violence that continues to convulse
the Middle East.
FPIF contributor
Martin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of
economics and the director of the political
economy program at Lewis and Clark College,
Portland, Oregon. John Feffer is the
co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the
International Relations Center.
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