On national sovereignty:
I've come to the conclusion that tyrannical and non-democratic* nations deserve no sovereignty. Why should we countenance truly evil regimes like Zimbabwe, and North Korea? By what right does a tyrant deserve the protection of international law when they violate it by virtue of its very existence? We do not allow criminals to remain in their houses unmolested because a man’s home is his castle. Certainly we have restraints on the state’s ability to violate the sanctity of one’s home with good reason. However, suppose the man has a piece of property with a fenced in yard and clearly definable boundaries. His tenant is in the back yard talking on the cordless phone. He says he’s forbidden her to talk to certain people on the phone because they are dangerous people who undermine his authority at home. He’s warned her before but she feels it her right to talk to whomever she pleases. He seizes the phone beats the woman and puts her through a show trial where all the participants are his cronies. She is tried, convicted and shot. All this in plain view of the neighbors who report it to the police. Would the police then say they didn’t have the authority (legal or moral) to intervene? That is essentially what is happening with the UN and Cuba. Everyone knows Cuba has a horrendous record on human rights and oppression but nobody is doing anything about it. Instead of condemning Cuba (or North Korea or Zimbabwe, take your pick), the find creative ways of reflecting blame back on to the United States. The UN has neither the will nor the force projection ability to change anything. They are a deliberative body composed of petty tyrants who need a stage upon which to grandstand and fete each other while issuing proclamations that denounce the US, Israel or better yet, both. We have clearly seen that the US has assumed the role of moral arbiter in the world and rightly so. There was a vacuum created by the fecklessness of the UN. They were only too happy to go on and on appeasing dictators rather than doing anything about them. No amount of brutality is too much for the diplomats at the UN. The most important thing is diplomacy as an end.
The world cannot function under such a model when weapons that are capable of killing people by the thousands are accessible to anyone with mild technical abilities and a modest budget. It is incumbent upon free and peaceable nations to actively deter such attacks. You cannot do this by putting up walls in a free society and restricting the freedom of the populace. This is not legal, moral or effective. The only alternative is to abrogate these threats where they originate. How that is done depends upon the nature and source of the threat. If there is a fanatical group of individuals committed to your total destruction to the point of sacrificing their own lives in the process, there is no bargaining with such people. The only options are death or permanent imprisonment. Both of these are fraught with problems and most of them are unavoidable. If they are imprisoned, you will have their brothers in arms taking hostages to try and force the release. Either we yield to their demands which opens the door for more of the same. Or we do not and we end up with a situation like the theater in Moscow where hundreds die and that’s the good news.
There are others that are varying degrees of vileness. From Mugabe's Zimbabwe which is currently vying for worst hellhole on earth but still losing to the DPRK. To places like Hong Kong (pre '97) and Singapore. Both of the latter are undemocratic but peaceful. None of these should be allowed to dictate any sort of International Law or even be heeded on the world stage as legitimate leaders. To do so is complicity in tyranny, oppression and even murder. There is, however, a problem. If the US were to make it a policy that we would not allow these regimes to stand because they are oppressive or tyrannical, we would be very busy indeed. We could easily spend decade upon decade in armed conflict to liberate people who aren't very fond of us and who's nations pose no threat to us. It may well prove too large a burden for us to shoulder alone. Certainly our recent successes in Iraq and Afghanistan show that we are unmatched in war. Aside from total war with nuclear weapons, there is no army on earth that could defeat the US. It would take the combined military forces of many nations to even begin to rival us. Even then the risk of the conflict becoming a nuclear (and thereby final) war escalate considerably.
The other question is one of degrees. How do we decide if a nation is tyrannical enough to invade and conquer? What are the criteria? What do we do with those that are just short of the benchmarks for invasion and conquest. I submit as Paul Wolfowitz recently said, that we must first use economic pressure as a lever to move the tyrants. Where this model fails is in nations like Iraq, Iran and Saudi who are sitting on vast oil (or other natural resource) reserves that give them limitless funds and the ability to indefinitely stave off any economic hardship resulting from American economic pressure. Not to say that they wouldn't suffer but they would certainly survive. As we've seen in Cuba, Iraq and North Korea when these embargoes are placed upon these nations the elite live in splendor and the people starve.
In the case of Cuba and North Korea, embargoes are effective but not necessarily a solution. Cuba has been isolated from the US for over 30 years now and the end result is a very rich Castro and very poor people. Is this the result of the sanctions? Yes and no. Yes because it forces everything to go through Castro who enriches himself personally from most of the transaction that affect Cuba. No because the sanctions are ignored by the rest of the world. Canada sends hordes of tourists to Cuba every year and Spain is their largest trading partner. There is little that Spain cannot provide that they do not need.
A true blockade of Cuba would be a dangerous undertaking. We would have to surround the island nation and perhaps use strong pesuation (read: firing upon) with some friends and possibly allies. The damage to our Coalition in Iraq would be too much strain and quite frankly, not worth it. Cuba, while a pugnant regime, is not a danger to us nor does it hold significant strategic value.
North Korea has been called a rogue state. It is more accurate to say that they are a crime syndicate that is running a country. Ad d a sizable dose of personality cult and huge doses of propaganda and that is the vile cocktail that is the DPRK. They sell missile technology to anyone with cash and have taken to counterfeiting US dollars as well as drug dealing. Recently uncovered papers in Iraq detail Saddam’s efforts to buy an entire missle factory from Kim Jong Il which would give it the aibilty to product Rodong 3 missles which would put much of the east coast of the US in range of Iraq. Saddam found out what we learned after 1994’s “Agreed Framework”. That is, Kim is not a trustworthy negotiating partner. Up until the end, Saddam was demanding the refund of the $10MM downpayment he made on the factory.
It is also rumored that Pakistan’s first nuclear tests were not just theirs alone. Allegedly, the second bomb was North Korea’s. It was much safer to detonate one in Pakistan as they were going to do so anyway and were not in America’s crosshairs. Given the DPRK’s recent announcement that they have finished reprocessing the fuel rods from their light water reactor, it seems to be a plausible scenario.
In addition, there are extensive satellite photos detailing the opium crops that are run by KPA and surrounded by multiple rings of electrified fencing. The KPA is also believed to have a special division dedicated to forging US currency. Large quantities of counterfeit cash was siezed when a North Korean ship was stopped when their ships registry didn’t match their manifest.
Their embassies were closed on a large scale in the late 90's. The only ones that were allowed to continue operating were those that were "self-sufficient". Meaning, they were required to come up with creative ways to fund their operation or face closure and recall home. Drug running has proven very popular with DPRK diplomats. Several have been PNG'd from Scandinavia, Russia, and even China when they were discovered smuggling drugs in their diplomatic pouches.
These are all hallmarks of a crime syndicate that has simply siezed a country. All of these misdeeds pale in comparison to the horrors that occur in the prison camps. There are no words to describe the barbarity of what goes on in those camps. I started to read the 100+ page document called “The Hidden Gulag” which details the torture, murder and abject evil that reigns in those camps. As I sit here I am literally at a loss for words. There is no adjective or noun that adequately describes the conditions there and the mindset of those who run those camps. Nor those who decided on their creation and countenence them as a necessary means of controlling the populace. What can be said of a place where murdering an attempted escapee gets you a college scholarship? What can be said about a man who puts newborn babies in a bucket to die because his/her mother is a “counter-revolutionary”? Are there words to encapsulate such barbarity? If there are, I don’t know them. The fact that ANY nation trades with the DPRK is evidence of moral bankruptcy. That the UN does nothing to condemn or destroy this regime tells me they are not serious about human rights nor about peace or freedom. The UN should be rallying the world to condemn North Korea and see it collapse as quickly as possible. Either through revolution or exile for it’s leaders. Failing either one of those, they should embargo the place or invade it. For a single leftist to complain about the treatment of Iraqis or the behavior of US troops ANYWHERE while not denouncing North Korea as singularly evil makes you unworthy of the title American.
*There are possible exception for peaceable but non-democratic regimes like Monaco which has elective offices but they have no real power and are largely ceremonial. I guess “free” might be a better descriptor than “democratic”.
I've come to the conclusion that tyrannical and non-democratic* nations deserve no sovereignty. Why should we countenance truly evil regimes like Zimbabwe, and North Korea? By what right does a tyrant deserve the protection of international law when they violate it by virtue of its very existence? We do not allow criminals to remain in their houses unmolested because a man’s home is his castle. Certainly we have restraints on the state’s ability to violate the sanctity of one’s home with good reason. However, suppose the man has a piece of property with a fenced in yard and clearly definable boundaries. His tenant is in the back yard talking on the cordless phone. He says he’s forbidden her to talk to certain people on the phone because they are dangerous people who undermine his authority at home. He’s warned her before but she feels it her right to talk to whomever she pleases. He seizes the phone beats the woman and puts her through a show trial where all the participants are his cronies. She is tried, convicted and shot. All this in plain view of the neighbors who report it to the police. Would the police then say they didn’t have the authority (legal or moral) to intervene? That is essentially what is happening with the UN and Cuba. Everyone knows Cuba has a horrendous record on human rights and oppression but nobody is doing anything about it. Instead of condemning Cuba (or North Korea or Zimbabwe, take your pick), the find creative ways of reflecting blame back on to the United States. The UN has neither the will nor the force projection ability to change anything. They are a deliberative body composed of petty tyrants who need a stage upon which to grandstand and fete each other while issuing proclamations that denounce the US, Israel or better yet, both. We have clearly seen that the US has assumed the role of moral arbiter in the world and rightly so. There was a vacuum created by the fecklessness of the UN. They were only too happy to go on and on appeasing dictators rather than doing anything about them. No amount of brutality is too much for the diplomats at the UN. The most important thing is diplomacy as an end.
The world cannot function under such a model when weapons that are capable of killing people by the thousands are accessible to anyone with mild technical abilities and a modest budget. It is incumbent upon free and peaceable nations to actively deter such attacks. You cannot do this by putting up walls in a free society and restricting the freedom of the populace. This is not legal, moral or effective. The only alternative is to abrogate these threats where they originate. How that is done depends upon the nature and source of the threat. If there is a fanatical group of individuals committed to your total destruction to the point of sacrificing their own lives in the process, there is no bargaining with such people. The only options are death or permanent imprisonment. Both of these are fraught with problems and most of them are unavoidable. If they are imprisoned, you will have their brothers in arms taking hostages to try and force the release. Either we yield to their demands which opens the door for more of the same. Or we do not and we end up with a situation like the theater in Moscow where hundreds die and that’s the good news.
There are others that are varying degrees of vileness. From Mugabe's Zimbabwe which is currently vying for worst hellhole on earth but still losing to the DPRK. To places like Hong Kong (pre '97) and Singapore. Both of the latter are undemocratic but peaceful. None of these should be allowed to dictate any sort of International Law or even be heeded on the world stage as legitimate leaders. To do so is complicity in tyranny, oppression and even murder. There is, however, a problem. If the US were to make it a policy that we would not allow these regimes to stand because they are oppressive or tyrannical, we would be very busy indeed. We could easily spend decade upon decade in armed conflict to liberate people who aren't very fond of us and who's nations pose no threat to us. It may well prove too large a burden for us to shoulder alone. Certainly our recent successes in Iraq and Afghanistan show that we are unmatched in war. Aside from total war with nuclear weapons, there is no army on earth that could defeat the US. It would take the combined military forces of many nations to even begin to rival us. Even then the risk of the conflict becoming a nuclear (and thereby final) war escalate considerably.
The other question is one of degrees. How do we decide if a nation is tyrannical enough to invade and conquer? What are the criteria? What do we do with those that are just short of the benchmarks for invasion and conquest. I submit as Paul Wolfowitz recently said, that we must first use economic pressure as a lever to move the tyrants. Where this model fails is in nations like Iraq, Iran and Saudi who are sitting on vast oil (or other natural resource) reserves that give them limitless funds and the ability to indefinitely stave off any economic hardship resulting from American economic pressure. Not to say that they wouldn't suffer but they would certainly survive. As we've seen in Cuba, Iraq and North Korea when these embargoes are placed upon these nations the elite live in splendor and the people starve.
In the case of Cuba and North Korea, embargoes are effective but not necessarily a solution. Cuba has been isolated from the US for over 30 years now and the end result is a very rich Castro and very poor people. Is this the result of the sanctions? Yes and no. Yes because it forces everything to go through Castro who enriches himself personally from most of the transaction that affect Cuba. No because the sanctions are ignored by the rest of the world. Canada sends hordes of tourists to Cuba every year and Spain is their largest trading partner. There is little that Spain cannot provide that they do not need.
A true blockade of Cuba would be a dangerous undertaking. We would have to surround the island nation and perhaps use strong pesuation (read: firing upon) with some friends and possibly allies. The damage to our Coalition in Iraq would be too much strain and quite frankly, not worth it. Cuba, while a pugnant regime, is not a danger to us nor does it hold significant strategic value.
North Korea has been called a rogue state. It is more accurate to say that they are a crime syndicate that is running a country. Ad d a sizable dose of personality cult and huge doses of propaganda and that is the vile cocktail that is the DPRK. They sell missile technology to anyone with cash and have taken to counterfeiting US dollars as well as drug dealing. Recently uncovered papers in Iraq detail Saddam’s efforts to buy an entire missle factory from Kim Jong Il which would give it the aibilty to product Rodong 3 missles which would put much of the east coast of the US in range of Iraq. Saddam found out what we learned after 1994’s “Agreed Framework”. That is, Kim is not a trustworthy negotiating partner. Up until the end, Saddam was demanding the refund of the $10MM downpayment he made on the factory.
It is also rumored that Pakistan’s first nuclear tests were not just theirs alone. Allegedly, the second bomb was North Korea’s. It was much safer to detonate one in Pakistan as they were going to do so anyway and were not in America’s crosshairs. Given the DPRK’s recent announcement that they have finished reprocessing the fuel rods from their light water reactor, it seems to be a plausible scenario.
In addition, there are extensive satellite photos detailing the opium crops that are run by KPA and surrounded by multiple rings of electrified fencing. The KPA is also believed to have a special division dedicated to forging US currency. Large quantities of counterfeit cash was siezed when a North Korean ship was stopped when their ships registry didn’t match their manifest.
Their embassies were closed on a large scale in the late 90's. The only ones that were allowed to continue operating were those that were "self-sufficient". Meaning, they were required to come up with creative ways to fund their operation or face closure and recall home. Drug running has proven very popular with DPRK diplomats. Several have been PNG'd from Scandinavia, Russia, and even China when they were discovered smuggling drugs in their diplomatic pouches.
These are all hallmarks of a crime syndicate that has simply siezed a country. All of these misdeeds pale in comparison to the horrors that occur in the prison camps. There are no words to describe the barbarity of what goes on in those camps. I started to read the 100+ page document called “The Hidden Gulag” which details the torture, murder and abject evil that reigns in those camps. As I sit here I am literally at a loss for words. There is no adjective or noun that adequately describes the conditions there and the mindset of those who run those camps. Nor those who decided on their creation and countenence them as a necessary means of controlling the populace. What can be said of a place where murdering an attempted escapee gets you a college scholarship? What can be said about a man who puts newborn babies in a bucket to die because his/her mother is a “counter-revolutionary”? Are there words to encapsulate such barbarity? If there are, I don’t know them. The fact that ANY nation trades with the DPRK is evidence of moral bankruptcy. That the UN does nothing to condemn or destroy this regime tells me they are not serious about human rights nor about peace or freedom. The UN should be rallying the world to condemn North Korea and see it collapse as quickly as possible. Either through revolution or exile for it’s leaders. Failing either one of those, they should embargo the place or invade it. For a single leftist to complain about the treatment of Iraqis or the behavior of US troops ANYWHERE while not denouncing North Korea as singularly evil makes you unworthy of the title American.
*There are possible exception for peaceable but non-democratic regimes like Monaco which has elective offices but they have no real power and are largely ceremonial. I guess “free” might be a better descriptor than “democratic”.
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