A Stitch in Haste

North Korea is on the verge of mass starvation:

To combat growing food shortages, the North Korean government is sending millions of city dwellers to work on farms each weekend, largely to transplant rice, according to foreign aid workers.
…
Now, with worldwide opposition to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, foreign food aid is drying up. … Unless new food comes quickly from the outside, the number of North Koreans receiving foreign food aid will plunge to 1.5 million in August, from 6.5 million people this spring.
…
On April 11, the annual meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly approved two major policies for the year: increasing national defense against the United States and improving farm production.
…
North Korea’s economy has contracted by nearly 20 percent since 1990, when consumer prices are taken into account, according to a report released Tuesday by The Bank of Korea.

So how to deal with (nuclear) North Korea? We have two examples from history: the Soviet Union and Communist China. (If North Korea were non-nuclear, our two examples would be Cuba and Burma.)

With the Soviets, we fought the Cold War relentlessly. We did not go out of our way to trade with them, we didn’t try to coax them into adopting some nonsensical mish-mosh of capitalism and collectivism. We didn’t accommodate any demands for “two-party talks” or “six-party talks” or “59-party talks” or whatever. We just kept chugging along while they sank into total collapse. And, Vladimir Putin notwithstanding, the world is better for it.

With the Chinese, we took essentially the opposite approach. We played nice with them. We bought into their snake oil fraud of “market reforms.” We looked the other way regarding their human rights abuses (or see here — all 15 pages worth). We told the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama (who has led his religion far longer than John Paul II ruled the Roman Catholic autocracy) “too bad so sad” and went right on doing business with their invaders. And we never, ever, discuss their nuclear weapons or their arms sales to rogue nations and perhaps to terrorists (see also here).

And what do we have to show for it except a wealthy apparatchik class of favored elites there and a current account deficit here? By contrast, in the one area in which we are consistently tough with China — our brinksmanship-inspired support of Taiwan — the Chinese dictators repeatedly huff and puff … and then fold like a cheap suit.

So again I ask: How to deal with (nuclear) North Korea?

It’s a no-brainer.

I take no pleasure in the thought of millions of innocent North Koreans facing mass starvation. But I do take comfort in the certainty that, if we continue the Soviet-inspired policy of “wait them out,” rather than our foolish China-inspired “they’re not so bad” policy of voluntary blindness, then one day North Korea will be free.

Free trade only makes sense when it’s with free peoples. It may be too late to reverse course regarding Communist China. But it’s not too late regarding North Korea.

POST SCRIPT: Most readers are probably familiar with this picture –

Why negotiate with that?
UPDATE: Here’s a fresh AP article on the oppressiveness and repressiveness of China’s dictators –

From religion to the media, political activism to the Internet, [President Hu Jintao's] regime watches all — and silences all that challenge the Communist Party’s authority.

Members of non-sanctioned churches risk detention, potentially incendiary chat rooms are shut down, newspapers are kept on a short rein and employees of foreign news organizations have been arrested and accused of spying. Last month, an international conference on democracy planned for Beijing was canceled.

These are not people we should be doing business with.

Similar Posts:

• From the Archives: On North Korea
• To the Communist Party of China
• “China is Still a Dictatorship” Fact of the Day
• “China is Still a Dictatorship” Fact of the Day
• “China is Still a Dictatorship” Fact of the Day

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