North Korean Nuka Kola

This is one of many propaganda posters produced in North Korea. Basically, it says that if they are provoked into wars of aggression that they will strike back, starting with the U.S. This matters because an entire country of people have been systematically taught to hate us. Whether or not many of the citizens actually hate us is irrelevant because the people in charge do.

And they have nukes. (Just to be clear, they don't have the technology to launch a damn rocket that can get over here yet, but there are other things they could do with enriched uranium and explosive nuclear devices.)


Recently, North Korea released official photographs of its nuclear facility. It's very cutting-edge, which means they got help from somebody. The area looks like this:

You can guess there could be a number of countries involved directly and indirectly in getting this technology over there and our foreign policy doesn't make us a favorite around the globe. Our dealings with North Korea, for example, have been stunningly ineffective. If you think politics is impossible in a state or even just America, think about getting people to cooperate on an international or global level. Despite the sheer hopelessness of many international endeavors, I still find them the most interesting. This is a small taste of the importance, complexity and stupidity of American Foreign Policy and international politics.

What are Sanctions?

Sanctions are laws that countries or groups (like the United Nations) make up that usually deal out some form of punishment on a particular country. It is used to try to twist the targeted nation's arm to make them behave. These punishments usually focus on diplomacy (usually pulling out all your ambassadors), economy (the favorite one, focusing on stopping a country from buying and selling goods in the international market), and military (kaBOOM-baby!). Sanctions used to be largely, general sanctions against entire nations, but are mostly now just targeted sanctions against individuals (big ballers) or entities (big business). They changed this because they didn't want the entire population to suffer for the dumb moves of men in power.

Sanctions are generally seen as a peaceful way to try and resolve a matter. They also have a crap record of actually achieving anything. We once sanctioned Iraq for 13 years. In the end we still went in there, guns blazing, no?

We have been increasing our sanctions against North Korea. They respond by showing us nice pictures of their new nuclear plants producing weapons grade enriched uranium. To me, that sounds a lot like an "EFF UUUUUUUUU!" Include that with similar messages from propaganda posters, like the one above and I think the message is crystal clear - they could give a crap about our threats.

Here are some points that make the resolution to this problem difficult:

• International politics has a lot to do with the idea of power. People have problems saying sorry and playing nice because it makes you look weak on the international stage. It's kind of like how some guys change voices when they're talking to their girlfriend, but if their other guy friends are around, they act different. Yeah, you know who you are.
• North Korea has never been formally acknowledged as a nation. Technically, North and South Korea are still at war. The difference is, the South has moved on from that time but the North is still frozen in that peculiar place.
• Many people thought that North Korea would go away or that its people would rise up against the severe oppression. It might be a very strange place, but it's not going anywhere and, unfortunately, the people fall into line because they just want to live.
  
• Nuclear weapons.
• South Korea is our ally and would be the most likely target for any extreme military actions or terrorist activity.
• The men in power in North Korea have their own internal struggles and power plays.
• A group of nations, called the Six Party Talks (US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea), have tried to find peaceful resolutions to this problem...epic fail so far.
• People like Kim Jong Il be crazy.
• No one can afford an armed conflict and North Korea knows it.
• Some people like watching the U.S. squirm.
• Some people think we shouldn't talk to a madman.

What do you think?