Korea

Before attacking North Korea, please try everything else

Driving the increasing acceptance of a military option against North Korea is a belief that there is no alternative since sanctions haven’t worked.

This assumes sanctions on North Korea have seriously been tried. They haven’t.

Sanctions against North Korea to date have had two main problems: They were too narrowly focused or at best half-heartedly enforced by China, Pyongyang’s biggest trading partner. And North Korea’s activities to avoid the sanctions have never been seriously targeted.

Pyongyang engages in a range of illicit fund-raising activities, including currency counterfeiting, illegal drug manufacturing and cyber crime to name a few. But it’s the “licit” moneymaking operations around the world that are most astonishing.