Security Council imposes vicious sanctions on North Korea

By Fred Goldstein

The United Nations Security Council has voted 15-0 to impose draconian sanctions upon the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in retaliation for its nuclear test of Oct. 9. The sanctions resolution was piloted through the Security Council by the U.S. government, which has 10,000 nuclear warheads and is the only power ever to use nuclear weapons in warfare.

The sanctions violate the United Nations Charter, which recognizes the right of nations to self-defense against aggression or intended aggression. Washington has been threatening the DPRK with nuclear attack since its 1950-53 war in Korea. The testing and development of a nuclear bomb by the DPRK has taken place strictly within the framework of unrelenting threats by Washington.

Most recently the Bush administration referred to the DPRK as part of an “axis of evil,” threatened the government of North Korea with “regime change,” and authorized the Pentagon in 2002 to develop “flexible plans” to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, including the DPRK, as well as authorizing first-strike nuclear use. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld threatened the DPRK with nuclear attack in 2003. And the Pentagon also began developing a new generation of “bunker-buster” nuclear warheads aimed at underground facilities in the DPRK and Iran.

Another part of Bush’s “axis of evil,” Iraq, was also threatened with “regime change” after Sept. 11, and the Pentagon invaded and overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. Iran is also under constant military and economic threat from Washington.

The Clinton administration twice threatened the DPRK with nuclear war—once in 1993 when the government in Pyongyang said it might leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in response to demands that it permit intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Clinton administration was only prevented from launching an attack on North Korean nuclear installations by last-minute negotiations between former President Jimmy Carter and then North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. Clinton carried out mock nuclear exercises against the DPRK in 1998.

Right now the Pentagon has nuclear-armed submarines and guided missile destroyers in the sea off the Korean peninsula and nuclear-capable bombers on the island of Guam. The U.S. carries out military exercises on a regular basis that are open practice for war against the DPRK.

The big business media has called the government of North Korea “paranoid” and “irrational.” Paranoid means seeing threats that are not there. Irrational means doing things that don’t make sense. The threat of nuclear attack from the U.S. government is clearly there and has been for years. Thus it makes sense to try to develop a deterrent against a known threat.

Sanctions resolution ‘A declaration of war’

The DPRK has declared before the U.N. that “The resolution cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of war.” In fact, the sanctions resolution violates the U.N. Charter, which forbids acts of aggression and protects the right of sovereignty of nations.

It is said that the governments of China and Russia negotiated with Washington to moderate the language of the final resolution, making it less threatening and aggressive.

From the point of view of unrestrained great-power chauvinism and imperialist arrogance, the sanctions resolution can perhaps be regarded as “moderated” from its original more stringent requirements. But from the point of view of the DPRK, the sanctions laid out in the resolution can only be regarded as an attack upon its economic and military survival and its very sovereignty as a nation. The resolution is filled with high-handed dictates in the language of colonialism.

It “demands” that the DPRK stop any further nuclear tests or ballistic missile launches. It “decides that the DPRK shall suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program” and that it “shall abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.”

But it does not stop there. Section 8 of the resolution, among other things, decides that “all member states” will prevent the “supply, sale or transfer to the DPRK” of “any battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems ... or related material including spare parts.” It further calls for the prevention of any “technical training, advice services or assistance related to the provision, manufacture or use” of all military items specified.

This amounts to an order to undermine the entire military establishment of the DPRK precisely when it is threatened with war.

It calls for all member states to “freeze immediately the funds, other financial assets and economic resources which are on their territories ... that are owned or controlled, directly or indirectly by persons or entities ... engaged in or providing support for” nuclear weapons or ballistic missile programs and to “prevent any funds being made available” to those parties.

It requires that all member states “shall take the necessary steps to prevent the entry into or transit through their territories of the persons designated ... as being responsible for, including through supporting or promoting, DPRK policies in relation to the DPRK’s nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related ... programs, together with their family members.”

This provision virtually forbids every government official, party leader, or military personnel and their families from traveling, subject to approval by the “great powers.”

And it calls for the search of all cargo going into or out of the DPRK. This demand for other countries to search DPRK cargo can, by itself, be considered a demand for acts of war.

No threat from Korea

The latest hysteria being drummed up by the Bush administration and the capitalist media is the so-called “threat” by the DPRK to conduct a second nuclear test. They are all acting as if the DPRK were threatening the people of the U.S.

Unlike the Bush administration, the DPRK has pledged not to be the first to use a nuclear weapon. In other words, the nuclear weapons program of the DPRK is strictly a retaliatory deterrent directed against a potential nuclear attack by Washington, and nothing else. It is also military logic that the DPRK is not going to initiate a nuclear war with the imperialist power that has enough nuclear weapons to wipe out a good part of the world.

The only “threat” caused by the DPRK’s nuclear testing is the threat to the nuclear ambitions of U.S. imperialism in Asia and the threat to its ability to wage “preventive warfare” and to carry out “regime change” in the DPRK—a goal which it has had for years and which was intensified after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist countries.

The DPRK has already experienced one war, led by the United States, in which 4 million Koreans were killed and every village, town and city in the country was reduced to rubble. The DPRK came under attack then for the same reason it is coming under attack now: It is a socialist country that refuses to bow down to imperialism.

Korea was divided by Washington after World War II. The Korean liberation forces led by Kim Il Sung had driven the Japanese imperialists out of Korea, ending 35 years of brutal Japanese colonization. But the south was occupied by U.S. troops, who then were armed to the teeth by the Pentagon in preparation for war with the socialist revolutionaries in the north.

The government of the DPRK, set up in 1948, has time and again offered the basis for overcoming the crisis. They have put forward the demands for recognition of their sovereignty, for guarantees against attacks by Washington, for normalization of relations with the U.S., including signing a peace treaty to formally put an end to the Korean War. The DPRK has repeatedly put forward proposals for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the region around it.

Instead, Washington has only increased its threats and arrogant and bullying demands aimed at increasing tensions. It has forced the DPRK into a corner, where it has to submit to imperialist bullying or fight for its life. The DPRK has chosen to fight in self-defense for national salvation. It is the U.S. government that is the real threat to peace and international stability on the Korean peninsula.

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