6 ms·

Preventing the north korean regime from having the funds to grow its military presence seems like a fair use of economic sanctions to me - sadly, even if there

• guerrilla 2y ago
  You're not responding to the comment you're trying to reply to. The claim is that it does not actually do that, only starves ordinary people.
  • elhudy 2y ago
    I thought the context of the previous response was that sanctions do nothing to the regime i.e. in terms of strengthening, weakening, or getting rid of. The North korean dictatorship remains in place so that is agreeable. However, North korean military presence (seen as distinct from the regime presence) has seemingly faltered dramatically.
    • guerrilla 2y ago
      > North korean military presence (seen as distinct from the regime presence) That distinction is nonsencial in this context.
      • elhudy 2y ago
        No, it isn’t, as described by the divergent strengths of the two.
  • IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Do sanctions force North Korea to adopt ridiculous internal agricultural policies which leads to frequent famines?
    • cess11 2y ago
      Life expectancy follows South Korea rather closely, with the exception of a period in the nineties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_North_Korea_and_South_Korea.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_North_... Is that to be expected with frequent famines?
      • philistine 2y ago
        That chart does not at all show that it follows South Korea! It is massively behind and has suffered a debilitating famine in the 90s. That on top of the spurious data collecting in North Korea that probably skews those numbers. The people against sanctions want countries around the world to be forced to trade with North Korea. We don't have to be forced to trade with anyone. Free trade is earned, not a right for all the dictators of the world.
        • cess11 2y ago
          Right, so one famine in the nineties. Other than that the curve is very similar to the one for South Korea. Is this expected under regularly occuring famines?
          • philistine 2y ago
            REGULARLY OCCURRING FAMINES!!! What is this the 14th century?
            • cess11 2y ago
              Why are you screaming? I would expect a curve looking more like this, but less irregular: https://tum.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_Somalia.svg https://tum.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_Som...
        • etc-hosts 2y ago
          The way US sanctions against countries work is when we sanction a country, we also sanction any other country or entity or person who passes money or goods in return for money or goods from the targeted country. It's not simply "We've decided to not buy and sell goods from a certain country." more info here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-sanction-countries-work/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-... What really happens with US sanctions is the guys we sanction all decide to band together with each other and to oppose and hate America, and eventually withdraw from using the US Dollar, reducing the US's influence. That may be good or it may be bad but its definitely not what the US has in mind when it sanctions a country.
• jmyeet 2y ago
  North Korea has roughly the equal third largest standing army in the world. North Korea has nuclear weapons. What exactly have we prevented? My point is that economic sanctions never work against enemies. They only work against allies. Apartheid South Africa is the example that springs to mind. Take the economic sanctions against Russia after it's unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine. What have they done exactly? Russia is now basically a war economy. It still has energy exports because there's always a market for that.
  • elhudy 2y ago
    I don’t get why you’re trying to characterize NKs military as strong when it is objectively not so. The goal for stability in the region is for SK to have a stronger military. If we want to look at whether sancions have progressed that goal, then we would need to evaluate the relative strength of the two since the time sanctions went into place. How large of a standing army they have is not your kpi
    • maxglute 2y ago
      TBH NK special case in that they make sanctions bite extra hard out of (Juche) policy. They're in prime geography to evade/smuggle all they want. IMO pretty good illustration on the maximum limits of US sanctions - i.e. countries with enough industrial base with max sanctions and tying their own hands can still concentrate enough resources to nuclearize and build icbms. Reality is NK nuclearization threatens US regional security architecture and likely reached stretch goal of penetrating CONUS GMD, i.e. NK basically the only shit tier country that can on paper nuke US. Conventionally, now that we're in era of cheap drone warfare, harder to extrapolate NK/SK force disparity anymore. Risks no longer limited to artillery a few dozen km south of DMZ. NK building loitering munitions that can cover entirity of SK - SK has no longer have even modest strategic depth to hide high end hardware unlike few years ago. Ditto with Iran being able to credibly hit Israel. But that's more factor of tech proliferation.
• josephstalinOk 2y ago
  [flagged]
• matteoraso 2y ago
  I really doubt that worked, given that North Korea does most of its trade with China and Russia, who don't participate in the sanctions. Besides, they already have nukes and the ability to launch them over the ocean. The military presence has grown as much as the regime needs it to with the sanctions, so there's no point to keeping them anymore.
  • elhudy 2y ago
    Maybe, but thats a different argument from “your reminder that economic sanctions does nothing but starve ordinary people…”