Just reported the United States has issued more sanctions on North Korea. How is that even possible? Shouldn’t the US have maxed out sanctions on North Korea by now considering the history between the two countries for the last six decades?
I don’t know if this is included, but I believe we do provide some food aid and other limited assistance. American tourists are also perfectly free to visit- I know a few people who have been.
I’m surprised they were ever taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Also from what I read of it, the sanctions list 10 people individually. No idea who they are, how they got those names or what they can do that they aren’t already doing. But these seem like more targeted sanctions against high ranking individuals.
Reading up on state sponsors of terrorism, the list feels like bullshit. Several countries are on there for supporting left wing insurgencies. The US has supported many right wing insurgencies so we have no real room to talk about state sponsoring terrorism. Having said that, NK is one of the worst nations on earth for sponsoring terrorism against civilians and should rightfully be on the list.
The sanctions were on specific Korean institutions and individuals associated with the N. Korean gov’t, rather than the country itself.
But even so, its mostly symbolic, since N. Korean bigwigs and their businesses don’t do a lot of business in the West.
It’s not about talking. It’s about what the US sees as it’s own national security interests(admittedly with some nod to humanitarianism thrown in). The US is well within it’s right to sanction whichever country it pleases.
In 2008, several sanctions were removed from NK and they were removed from list of terrorism sponsoring states in an attempt to get them to dismantle their nuclear program. As always, the softening stance did nothing and so the sanctions are back on and the eternal dance goes on.
Where does NK do its banking? China? I doubt much is in the US system that could be seized, but I don’t know.
It is just a very absurd list from what I’m seeing. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are not on the list, but Cuba is. And the US has supported more right wing insurgencies than I can recall off the top of my head. So its a very political list where countries are added and taken off for political reasons rather than because they actually support terrorism against civilian targets.
The thing to understand about sanctions is that they are tools. We don’t put sanctions on entities as some kind of penalty for being bad. We put sanctions on entities because we are hoping those specific sanctions will lead to some kind of specific desired outcome.
Let’s say you really want Country X to do something- say give up a nuclear program. We don’t have a lot of tools to make that happen between “ask them nicely” and “start a war.” The threat of sanctions is a useful mid-level stick, and the promise to lift sanctions is a useful carrot.
They aren’t always particularly effective, but it feels a little more proactive than just asking them over and over again.