It's Time to Rethink Our Strategy. Sanctions Do Not Work!
The United Nations is considering more sanctions against Iran in a misguided attempt to force Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program. That worked so well with North Korea, I'm sure that Iran is just trembling with fear, on the verge of saying "uncle." Isolating North Korea and Iran just plays into the hands of their totalitarian leaders. While economic and political sanctions are considered among the world's most powerful weapons to force rogue nations back into the mainstream, they often misfire and punitive sanctions that continue to isolate countries and exacerbate their economic crises DO NOT WORK.
Politicians have been playing the blame game on Capitol Hill, quarreling over who bears the brunt of the blame for North Korea's nuclear test, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. Writing for The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof had an interesting take on the argument:
Pretty frightening. With two years still left in office, Bush has time to create a similar scenario in Iran. Decades of sanctions and isolation didn't work with North Korea and won't work with Iran. In fact, they have strengthened those totalitarian regimes. Designating them part of an Axis of Evil allows Bush to wash his hands of any responsibility for creating this dangerous state of affairs and precludes any attempt at a diplomatic solution.
If sanctions are too onerous, totalitarian regimes put their backs to the wall and fight like cornered rats. Sanctions do not send them quaking, tails between their legs, to the bargaining table. They will not grovel before the world and lose the respect of their citizens. They demand their right to play with the big boys. In their own eyes they are the equal of any nation on earth and cast themselves to their citizens as Davids fighting the world's Goliaths. They will let their citizens starve and suffer and die before they knuckle under. Power is everything to these bullies and to keep it, no price is too high.
Sure, the U.N. can bloody their noses with sanctions, but that won't change their behavior. Inclusion and example are the only avenues that will effect change. By encouraging trade and other, particularly business, contacts, the people in these nations will glimpse what has been denied them by their own leaders. By seeing peace, prosperity, democratic freedom and social justice through others, they will develop a yearning to experience it for themselves. This is what will topple the regimes of the world's bullies, not isolation and sanctions.
What does Kristof suggest? He says send a score of fat, prosperous businessmen to North Korea. "In a country like North Korea, where the government responded to famine by broadcasting a cautionary documentary about a man who exploded after eating too much rice, nothing would be more subversive than tubby foreigners."
Politicians have been playing the blame game on Capitol Hill, quarreling over who bears the brunt of the blame for North Korea's nuclear test, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. Writing for The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof had an interesting take on the argument:
"Well, Clinton inherited a situation that, if it had continued, would have resulted in North Korea having hundreds of nuclear weapons by now, and producing an additional 50 each year. Instead, Clinton negotiated a deal with North Korea that resulted in it producing not a single ounce of new plutonium in his eight years in office. In contrast, President Bush inherited that North Korean nuclear freeze and, if he had just left it alone, North Korea wouldn't have produced any new plutonium. But Bush overruled Colin Powell's efforts to continue the engagement -- and so North Korea has churned out enough plutonium on Bush's watch for perhaps eight nuclear weapons."
Pretty frightening. With two years still left in office, Bush has time to create a similar scenario in Iran. Decades of sanctions and isolation didn't work with North Korea and won't work with Iran. In fact, they have strengthened those totalitarian regimes. Designating them part of an Axis of Evil allows Bush to wash his hands of any responsibility for creating this dangerous state of affairs and precludes any attempt at a diplomatic solution.
As Kristof points out, "Look around the world at the regimes we despise: North Korea, Cuba, Burma and Iran. Those are among the world's most long-lived regimes, and that's partly because the sanctions and isolation we have imposed on them have actually propped them up, by giving those countries' leaders an excuse for their economic failures and a chance to cloak themselves in nationalism."
If sanctions are too onerous, totalitarian regimes put their backs to the wall and fight like cornered rats. Sanctions do not send them quaking, tails between their legs, to the bargaining table. They will not grovel before the world and lose the respect of their citizens. They demand their right to play with the big boys. In their own eyes they are the equal of any nation on earth and cast themselves to their citizens as Davids fighting the world's Goliaths. They will let their citizens starve and suffer and die before they knuckle under. Power is everything to these bullies and to keep it, no price is too high.
Sure, the U.N. can bloody their noses with sanctions, but that won't change their behavior. Inclusion and example are the only avenues that will effect change. By encouraging trade and other, particularly business, contacts, the people in these nations will glimpse what has been denied them by their own leaders. By seeing peace, prosperity, democratic freedom and social justice through others, they will develop a yearning to experience it for themselves. This is what will topple the regimes of the world's bullies, not isolation and sanctions.
What does Kristof suggest? He says send a score of fat, prosperous businessmen to North Korea. "In a country like North Korea, where the government responded to famine by broadcasting a cautionary documentary about a man who exploded after eating too much rice, nothing would be more subversive than tubby foreigners."
A great blog with which I totally agree. Sanctions are not the answer. The US and UN need to rethink their strategies. Perhaps funneling money to the poor people in these despotic countries in the guise of hospitals, food programs, and the like would make the people remember that they are not forgotten and that there is a better place out there. In a way that is what has turned China around from the Maoist place it used to be to something that almost resembles a normal country.
Posted by Anonymous | Sat Oct 28, 02:17:00 PM EDT