A North Korean Arms Embargo
In one of its many ill-considered decisions of the last decade, the United Nations responded to the attempted extermination of Bosnia’s Muslims by imposing an arms embargo on all parties to the conflict. It was a classic of moral, economic, and military equivalence leading to horrific results. On side was a large, mechanized army that controlled a massive industry for manufacturing and exporting arms, and which it was using in an unequal battle to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocents. On the other side were the mostly unarmed husbands and fathers of the victims who were fighting to protect them. Thus, half a million Bosnians died while the U.N. sat on its hands and shook its head in mild disapproval. These were the doldrum years of the Clinton presidency and the tenure of our necromatron Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, who had inherited and flunked a mission in Somalia and then declined to intervene as 800,000 were clubbed to death in Rwanda.
Now we are again told that North Korea’s poor and disfavored are starving. The WFP is trying to raise $200 million to buy food–mostly cereals. Would this food ever end up in the stomachs of the hungry? Good question, suggests the WFP:
Banbury said the tightening last year of DPRK government restrictions on WFP’s ability to monitor food aid and assess needs had undermined international support for the agency’s operation. The government’s review of operating conditions appeared to be motivated at least in part by significant concessions obtained by WFP over the previous two years. These included a significant increase in the number of monitoring visits and greater freedom to gather data about food availability, prices, incomes, consumption patterns and coping mechanisms. This ensured a better understanding of needs and better targeting of assistance. Banbury said he hoped that a new monitoring regime, agreed in principle by the government, would further improve the quality of monitoring and thereby boost donor support. “It is imperative for WFP and our donors to have confidence that the food aid goes where it should: to the hungriest of the hungry. The new monitoring arrangements are an important step in that direction, and need to be properly implemented.
Here, then, is my question: why can’t North Korea buy the food itself? Here, briefly, is why I think it can, should, and could be forced to do so without sustaining the very regime that perpetuates the hunger and hinders the fair distribution of food aid.
According to the latest CIA World Factbook, North Korea spent more than $5.2 billion on its military in FY ’02 (the latest available figures), and its GDP is equivalent to a purchasing power of $30.88 billion. The amount the WFP is seeking represents 4% of North Korea’s annual defense spending and .65% of its GDP. Granted, not all of this defense spending was necessarily for weapons development or procurement (plenty of it was), and it’s hard to have too much confidence in any outside estimates. Much of this defense spending was probably used to buy food for soldiers, and it’s possible that this could conceiveably reduce food demands on members of the “wavering” classes. However, as Marcus Noland’s research suggests, North Korea’s reaction to outside food aid has often been to shift a proportional share of its funds toward “commercial” purchases, even if millions more are still starving. If the World Community–with its ill-defined and oft Global Test–places some importance on the preservation of human life, it would intervene to reorder North Korea’s fiscal priorities.
If the United Nations, in its collectively dubious moral might, cared sufficiently to intervene and correct North Korea’s fiscal priorities, it would–
- Impose an arms embargo on North Korea.
- Order the freezing of Kim Jong Il’s estimated $5 billion in personally controlled overseas assets and hand the checkbooks over to a WPF (under the supervision of independent auditors). The remainder of the funds could be used to construct shelters for refugees in any neighboring country that could be shamed into accepting them.
It is just as true that if the United States, which claims to stand for higher principles, were to actually stand for them in the case of North Korea, it would call for both measures and seek to humiliate any nation opposing them before the eyes of the world’s Olympics-going public. One would hope that it’s failure to do so thus far is not out of hesitation to expose the ugly truth that China and some other nations would rather sell North Korea arms than allow its people to be fed. More likely, it’s the result of South Korean pressure, which one hopes President Bush will firmly reject when President Roh visits the White House just under two weeks from now.