I'm no lawyer but I can only dream that they might find more stuff to throw the book at him but somehow i doubt this.
How you go and help a country that your own country is at war with, starves women and children, sends a prisoner's entire family to prison camps for three generations where do all sorts of horrible things and spend only 5 years in prison.
People have been sent to prison far longer just because they had a bag of weed on them.
The sanctions are intended to exacerbate the destitution and starvation in North Korea in order to provoke political upheaval. They are also just the current strategy, and have been ineffective from a humanitarian perspective.
I wouldn’t undermine them personally, but I understand how a rational person could come to believe it was even a moral obligation to do so.
"""
Section 207 of the NKSPEA contains broad exemptions for food imports and humanitarian aid, and provides for waivers for humanitarian reasons, or when a waiver is important to the national security or economic interests of the United States. The Treasury Department has also published general licenses permitting humanitarian aid.
"""
And yet they still starve, it is almost like crippling economic systems but allowing shipments of rice is not humanitarian at all, but more a "face saving" position so they can claim they are not the baddies
It's almost like the place is run by a dictator who would take food out of the mouth of his own people to fund a nuclear weapons program that serves no purpose other than to keep him in power.
It’s exactly like that, but that was always the most likely result and hardly a surprise. The sanctions are meant to drive a wedge between the regime and the people.
The USD - crypto is an amazing tool for authoritarian regimes looking to evade sanctions. Assuming that's where you were trying to go, you totally misunderstand the problem. People in oppressive regimes can have all the crypto in the world but, if every time they use it to buy food, there's a guy with a gun who takes it for the regime, then it's even more useless than it's normal Monopoly money status.
I’ll rephrase. While the intent is to topple or pacify the government by starving the regime, this strategy essentially requires the suffering of the people. Happy and content people don’t revolt or push for political change.
We are openly doing this to Russia right now, rooting for the economic collapse and stark decline of living standards.
In both situations we assume that making life much more difficult for the people now will achieve our goals.
If he were smuggling in food, sure, but I struggle to see how helping the North Korean government use crypto is going to lead to the people eating better.
If you think filling the coffers of the North Korea, a country with a caste system that mandates certain people have limited food access, will improve the lowest caste member's lives then I've one in Pyongyang to sell you.
With all due respect, that's the point of sanctions. You've brought it up as some sort of gotcha. It's not. They're a means to cripple the war-making ability of a nation without actually bombing them into submission or shooting them. As such they're not just placed on a nation for fun or random purposes.
To say look North Korea is evil they don't feed women and kids misses the fact that this is a policy we did for whatever justifible reason. Kids are not eating and dying because of choices we made.
Kids are not eating well because NK leadership spends all the country’s money on themselves and the military in order for them to stay in power.
If your neighbour beats his children and constantly threatens to shoot your house up, you are not morally obligated to spend money at their restaurant.
If you prevent the next door neighbour from bringing in food because you have a fued with them you can't turn around and say look at those kids not eating. It's because you live like kings.
They spend money on military not to supress the local population, they do it to protect themselves against you.
You are morally responsible for your choices including preventing kids from eating.
It seems based on some premise that North Korea is only bad because other nations are "mean" to it.
Many authoritarian regimes have historically used food availability as a weapon against their own populations. North Korea clearly is one such regime.
There is no private enterprise in North Korea-- I don't know what you think lifting of non-food covering sanctions would do other than further strengthening a rogue state that has no intentions of having anything other than a perpetual slave caste.
That's like saying the judge is responsible when a man is experiencing a bad time in jail, instead of the man being responsible because he commited the crime which put him there.
A judge is responsible for decisions around sentencing and prision conditions. The choices they make have a big impact on whether prison will be successful in reforming a person. Sending 16 year olds to adult prison or decisions around solitary or conditions (no visitors) or type of prison can have a huge impact.
Sorry what. If I go to jail and feel bad about being there since it means I can't meet my kid, then the judge is to blame? What the actual fuck is that level of stupidity. Be better than that, dude.
International trade is a privilege not a right. If you want to thumb your nose at the international community on whom you rely to provide basic sustenance to your people you should prepare to have a bad time. Or figure out how to sustain your population without trade. But either way its the responsibility of NK, not the world, to find a way to feed the people of NK. That can be by participating in the world order and benefiting from trade, or by figuring out how to grow enough food at home.
It is neither a right or privilege given by a power higher than yourself. It is a decision by a group of powerful countries who influenced, bribed and threatened others to get everyone to partipate. It jails citizens who provide information on cryto trading.
It is no one's responsibility to feed anyone. People don't have a right to exist. People do whatever they can to survive around the world.
The countries that have decided to force these kids to die to further their geopolitcal goals are responsible for those decisions. Maybe they die for a better future for all or maybe they die because their lives don't matter to the countries preventing food from reaching them.
> It jails citizens who provide information on cryto trading.
I wish (kidding), but no, it jails citizens who travel to foreign countries to explain how to evade sanctions to people who would benefit from that information.
> It is no one's responsibility to feed anyone. People don't have a right to exist. People do whatever they can to survive around the world.
That's not what I said. I said that this obligation extends domestically. It may be good, nice, and moral - heck I support it - to save anyone you can on earth. It may even be a moral imperative but your obligation first and foremost is to your own at home.
> The countries that have decided to force these kids to die to further their geopolitcal goals are responsible for those decisions.
All I'm saying is if you rely on the relationships with others to survive probably don't poke them in the eye?
If you're dangling from a bridge, suspended by a rope, and some burly guy catches you. You realize you don't like his face. So you throw sand at him. He lets go of the rope, and you fall. Who's at fault? You could say it was the guy who let go of the rope. But for the love of all that is good and holy, why are you throwing sand at the only person keeping you alive?
Nobody owes you trade. Whether that's right, wrong, good, bad or anything else, it's fact. States would be well served to keep that in mind. It doesn't usually come up until the "and find out" part of "screw around and find out" happens.
Imagine knowing literally anything about north Korea and wanting to help that government. He should be put away for life for aiding crimes against humanity.
You can know that North Korean government does bad things but still be against sanctions. It is not self evident that broad sections help the situation or the people of NK.
You're assuming the goal is some sort of democratic revolution rather than keeping the economies of those countries constrained so they have less money to spend on weapons.
Interesting implications for the case of Cuba. If so, their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA. So much for arguments of respecting national autonomy.
> Interesting implications for the case of Cuba. If so, their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA. So much for arguments of respecting national autonomy.
I believe their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA, that is unfriendly to US interests, and at least once offered the USSR, a then enemy of the US, to host nuclear ICBMs on their territory so they could more easily target Americans.
It’s not like the US randomly and unilaterally decided to sanction Cuba, nor is it like thousands of Cubans fled the country by any means possible to end up seeking asylum in the US for no reason.
> I believe their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA, that is unfriendly to US interests, and at least once offered the USSR, a then enemy of the US, to host nuclear ICBMs on their territory so they could more easily target Americans.
You do understand that if this is the bar under which nations can take drastic actions (up to and including fiascos like Bay of Pigs and assassination attempts), US criticism of the adventurism of others (e.g., Ukraine) has to be much more measured. For instance, it is fine to violate the sovereignty of nations, just maybe in a more limited way, etc.
How many countries on earth, do you think, had hostile foreign arms on their soil (e.g., the US) within the past 60 years that their neighbors might find threatening?
> How many countries on earth, do you think, had hostile foreign arms on their soil (e.g., the US) within the past 60 years that their neighbors might find threatening?
A lot. And the threaten countries all abso-fucking-lutely want to do something about it.
It sounds like we basically agree. I just find it a timely discussion with respect to Ukraine and the fact that the US positions nuclear assets all over the world.
Since whataboutism is so hugely popular in threads involving Russia, let's talk about the nuclear SRBM dispenser formerly known as Kaliningrad Oblast located between Poland and Lithuania (that's in Central Europe). Kinda makes those American gravity nukes stationed in West Germany look old-fashioned.
The whataboutism is strong because the hypocrisy and double think is so pervasive.
Many people believe in moral exceptionalism when it comes to USA foreign policy when the vast majority of the time it boils down to the same self-interested realpolitik as other countries.
>It's not hypocritical to want "your" side to win, and it's not from a lack of moral standing when you're motivating this taking-sides with "well, I like and wish democracies on people more than I like and wish brutal dictatorships on people".
Yes, it's a "our side is better than theirs" but I think hard and yes, our "side" is indeed better than NK's, Russia's, Iran's, Cuba's. I could contort myself in saying that our side is only better insofar as it makes me ~believe that it's better, behind a veil of fake democracy. But then that's be contortionism, and not a down to earth, pragmatic look at it.
>All sides in this stuff will play realpolitik and use their armies and kill and what not. But at the end of the day, where do you want to live? In which of these regimes is life preferable?
I agree that this is the correct framework to think about things, discarding the chaff of what is fair, good guys, and bad guys.
However, I don't think that where I would want to live translates to my country can do no wrong.
For example, I would rather live in the US than Cuba, but I don't think that warrants an invasion and regime change in Cuba. I also don't think it warrants sanctions on Cuba.
I think life in the US is better than most countries, but I have a moral and logical framework that usually opposes foreign intervention and coercion.
That is to say, I don't think the US has an moral obligation to be the world police and initiate regime change around the globe
And here I thought that since march of this year, we're of the general impression that countries have the right to defend themselves, and to seek external allies when bullied by a bigger neighbour...
We didn't invade after the Cuban Missile Crisis; in fact, Cuba remained closely aligned with the USSR until the end of the USSR. If Russia merely sanctioned Ukraine, nobody would be discussing this. Your rebuttal is facile.
Kennedy ordered a naval "quarantine" to prevent missiles from reaching Cuba. By using the term "quarantine" rather than "blockade" (an act of war by legal definition), the United States was able to avoid the implications of a state of war.
After several days of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement to not invade Cuba again.
When it came to Russia and Ukraine, the US refused ultimatums to stay out of Ukraine, and Russia did invade Ukraine a second time.
> the US refused ultimatums to stay out of Ukraine
Which is just a pretense. On different days, the "special military operation" has been to avoid NATO bordering Russia (which it already does in the Baltic), "remove Nazis", "fix Lenin's mistake of separating Ukraine from Russia", "free Donbass and Luhansk" and probably others that I forgot.
And anyway, US didn't do anything (this time). Ukraine has a right to join NATO if they want, without asking uncle Vladimir beforehand.
>Ukraine has a right to join NATO if they want, without asking uncle Vladimir beforehand
by this standard, Cuba has the right to have Russian nukes pointed at Washington DC. But we all know that the US would wipe Cuba off the face of the earth and kill every civilian there before that happened.
They are still under sanctions 70 years later for playing that game and assuming they have territorial autonomy.
We can only speculate why Russia was willing to fight over Ukraine and Georgia but not the baltics. One obvious difference is time. Russia had 18 more years to get in a better position to stop Ukraine joining.
The Baltic path to joining was also much faster, announced in 1999 and complete in 2004. The Ukrainian membership was announced in 2008 and had a many decade lead time because Ukraine was expected to tackle many internal issues of corruption and human rights first.
A separate factor is size, population, and location. Ukraine is larger and may have a more strategic position to take out planes and nukes heading to central Europe.
The invasion is one of the things that caused the CMC. Leaving that (as well as the CIA campaign of sabotage and terrorism against Cuba) out of the context is incredibly misleading.
If the US simply sat around on its hands and sanctioned Cuba, and left things at that, nobody would be discussing this. It went way, way, way beyond sanctions.
What point are you trying to make? The invasion of Cuba was idiotic, I agree. It has nothing to do with our foreign policy afterwards, which is not subject to rules about fairness.
We should not continue the Cuba embargo. It serves no public policy purpose. We should continue and enhance sanctions on North Korea, which actively works to destabilize the rest of the world, unlike Cuba. Iran is a trickier case, but on balance the world would be better off with more normalized relations with Iran, and its trajectory forward after normalization would very likely be better than it is with sanctions. The opposite is true of North Korea.
You can disagree with any or all of this, but the underlying point is: we are within our rights to coordinate sanctions on any country for a diversity of reasons.
I really appreciate you staking concrete positions on the countries. I mostly agree, but am on the fence about north Korea.
>You can disagree with any or all of this, but the underlying point is: we are within our rights to coordinate sanctions on any country for a diversity of reasons.
I think this is where we differ. Modern sanctions means we take everything that the opposition cant militarily stop us from taking. We seize bank accounts, ships, planes, loaned assets, all without respect for ownership.
In the might makes right context, yeah, we are within our rights. But this is in the realpolitik sphere where I have the right to murder every person that cant stop me.
If there was a real system of international law, I'd have more sympathy for this position. But there isn't.
Sanctions always involve balancing interests, and it's worth calling out that they have costs even when we believe we're right. But the balance of interests for all of humanity strongly favors sanctioning the DPRK.
Yes. This is true. We live in a US hegemony, enhanced globally by the fall of the USSR. This situation may change in the future, it may not. When we initially sanctioned Cuba we were primarily able to do so because Cuba geographically exists within the US sphere of influence. Now the entire globe exists within the US sphere of influence.
I don't think my earlier reply to you qualifies as "rhetoric". I was replying to the implication that the US just unilaterally decided to sanction Cuba for no good reason. The US had a good reason, it is pretty obvious what that reason was, and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Cuba's actions resulted in sanctions (and could have resulted in much worse). It is also, frankly irrelevant, that it was precipitated by the US doing something stupid.
Personally, I think we should have dropped the embargo on Cuba a long time ago, probably in the 90s. But that's not the case right now. It certainly wasn't a mystery to anyone why it started though.
Sanctions on Russia and sanctions on North Korea are both not only "might makes right", but fully justified within multiple different deontological frameworks. It is absolutely true that there is realpolitik afoot here, but that does not also preclude the possibility that the outcome is justified and fair.
Honestly, I'd love to hear/read some thoughts as to why dropping sanctions on North Korea would be beneficial to /anyone/ in a real way.
>Honestly, I'd love to hear/read some thoughts as to why dropping sanctions on North Korea would be beneficial to /anyone/ in a real way.
The most obvious benefit would be to the 25 million North Korean people. Lifting of sanctions would allow economic activity alleviating poverty and malnutrition.
Cuba can have their national autonomy, but other countries have no particular obligation to trade with them.
The primary "crime" which originally led to the imposition of sanctions on Cuba was that they nationalized assets owned by US entities without paying compensation. Now you could perhaps make a case that the Cuban government had a moral right to do that, but regardless of who was right of wrong it was certainly contrary to US interests. We don't want to set a precedent for allowing countries to get away with stealing US assets.
I do not think it is relevant today, but during the Cold War their crime was being all buddy-buddy with the USSR and offering to host some of their nuclear ICBMs.
The USSR is long dead though, and nobody is asking Cuba to hold on to WMDs for safe keeping, so the continued sanctions make no real sense in 2022.
A lot of countries do international trade with Cuba. USA is not banning everyone who trades with Cuba. I can go to any licor store in my country and buy a bottle of Cuban ron, for example.
The US penalizes any country giving foreign aid to Cuba, and prevents its membership in International Financial Institutions like the IMF.
Any company in the world doing business in Cuba is also sanctioned by the US and it's employees are barred from entering the US.
You may be able to buy a bottle of Cuban rum at your liquor store, but that store can not do business in the US, use US banks, and the senior employees may be barred from traveling to the US.
Yes, however the severity of the violation is dependent on the influence of the violator. Cuba's violation would be wrong but mostly meaningless compared to the US's.
It's not. They're free to choose who they trade with, using who that country trades with as a decider violates their autonomy.
You're just framing the violation as a choice and saying it is their right to make that choice. Sure, they also have the right to make the choice to invade Canada, but actually invading is obviously violating their autonomy.
I decide that I don't want to trade with Country A because they are producing weapons that they plan on using to attack me with. Now let's say Country B is trading with Country A, and I think they are trading components being used to produce the weapons in Country A.
Is it a violation of Country B's autonomy for me to decide to not to trade with them because they are trading with country A?
If I believe that anyone who trades with Country A is supplying them resources to build weapons to attack me, and I decide to not trade with any Country who is trading with Country A, am I violating the autonomy for all of those countries?
>Is it a violation of Country B's autonomy for me to decide to not to trade with them because they are trading with country A?
Yes.
>am I violating the autonomy for all of those countries?
Yes.
The clearer example would be imagine country A attacked me, would refusing to trade with country B violate their autonomy? And the answer is still yes, but both country A and B are already violating your autonomy so it's a justifiable violation.
With your example, I wouldn't say producing weapons clearly violated your autonomy, but that's a completely different argument.
shouldn't countries be allowed to decide whom to trade with? if so, doesn't that extend to countries being allowed to make their own rules of trade, including not trading with those who trade with unfriendly nations?
> shouldn't countries be allowed to decide whom to trade with?
One have to distinguish country and its citizens. Sanctions is not just 'country decides whom to trade with' but 'country restrict freedom of its citizens to trade' and that is rather significant infringement of freedom and as such it has to be justified by its necessity.
The point of sanctions is not to help the people of NK. The point is to starve their military of resources and reduce the threat they pose to the US and our regional allies. If the people of NK are harmed in the process then that's just unfortunate collateral damage. And no one is under any illusions that sanctions alone will result in regime change or eliminate the threat entirely; sanctions are just one essential component of a broader strategy.
Lol what if by spreading crypto knowledge in totalitarian states, you give people in those states a viable way to preserve their income and assets in a way that no other asset class can? Imagine someone trying to protest or escape a regime imposing capital controls on citizens such as North Korea or Canada. What if, those citizens could simply memorize or encode a 12-24 word phrase that could preserve their net worth against all forms of tyranny? What if by doing so, you create the conditions that lead to the eventual collapse or reform of said totalitarian state?
> What if, those citizens could simply memorize or encode a 12-24 word phrase that could preserve their net worth against all forms of tyranny?
... What if, they then LOST ALL OF IT in an instant because of a scam, a random crypto-market fluctuation or because it just becomes worthless because they have no way to ever translate it into something of value, let alone actually spend the "currency".
You're implying that he's helping the citizenry directly and not the state itself. I think that's a dubious claim when it's a conference hosted in Pyongyang.
That's not the case with North Korea. Most people don't have access to computers, let alone the internet, so they can't use crypto for their personal finances.
> Despite having connection to an intranet, North Korean smartphone users have to download apps at physical store locations where they can get apps approved by the North Korean government.
To use crypto for their personal finances, they wouldn't need general purpose computers and government approved apps could be sufficient. Though it's possible that they would be backdoored preventing the kind of economic freedom the poster was describing.
For the record, I don't think North Koreans are using crypto for their personal finances, I just disagree that they are unable to.
Yeah, sure. Guess how Kim Jong Un financed his nukes and ICBMs. Aided by people like this guy and through state sponsored ransomware attacks. Now imagine Russia using the same strategy. They're already using weapons from Iraq smuggled through Iran against Ukrainians.
You sound like someone who's never lived outside a western first world country.
Like those folk who pushed crypto as the saviour of the average Venezuelan. I mean, your next door neighbour doesn't understand bitcoin, how is someone in the third world who has never used a computer supposed to figure this shit out, and why should anyone trust crypto at all when most of it is scams?
Sanctions have achieved nothing but isolate North Korea, ruin the lives of generations of innocent people and entrench an authoritarian ruling class. Sanctions are a crime against humanity.
What if the news about NK is not entirely unbiased? (I have no proof either way, just asking the question)
Edit: People are taking my comment wrong. I am asking this because there are a lot of assumptions people have, I know almost nothing about NK, and the comment I replied to seemed somewhat irrational, a little reactionary and certainly vindictive.
Or how closed we are to them? There is no media unbiased about them in the west. But I do know you can travel to NK and see for yourself.
That said, it is easier to know things about Portugal than NK. They are definitely doing something to hide information. I'm just trying to say that any image based on the media from non friendly country is bound to be wrong. No matter how much different sources you have.
> But I do know you can travel to NK and see for yourself.
My understanding is that tourists in North Korea only see what the government of North Korea wants them to see.
Here's one (admittedly potentially biased) source that claims as much:
"Tourist travel to North Korea is only possible as part of a guided tour. Independent travel is not permitted. If you are not prepared to accept severe limitations on your movements, behaviour, and freedom of expression, you should not travel to North Korea." [0]
you can travel to NK, but you might end up like Otto Warmbier and come home a couple years later braindead. (he stole as a propaganda poster a souvenir, but brain death after a year of brutal torture seems.. extreme.)
you're also not allowed to travel without a guide.
also, given the videos I've seen taken by tourists when they've been able to sneak away from their minders, NK does not look very happy.
There's a difference between "media companies may have conflicts of interest or ideological bents" and "every single proposition ever stated by a journalist is specifically false".
it is true that a lot of mainstream media outlets that people consider "probably biased but overall trustworthy" just regurgitate talking points from the State Department, law enforcement, etc as fact.
One only needs to read the CIA's Wikipedia page or the CIA's own website to understand how embarrassing of a failure of thought and journalism it is to trust these institutions
