Former president Jimmy Carter. (photo: Sara Saunders/The Carter Center)
27 December 14
s we contemplate how to strike back at North Korea because it is believed to be behind the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s
computer network, the foremost proposal is tightening sanctions. In my
visits to targeted countries, I have seen how this strategy can be cruel
to innocent people who know nothing about international disputes and
are already suffering under dictatorial leaders.
The imposition of economic embargoes on unsavory
regimes is most often ineffective and can be counterproductive. In Cuba,
where the news media are controlled by the government, many people are
convinced that their economic plight is caused by the United States and
that they are being defended by the actions of their Communist leaders,
who are therefore strengthened in power. I have visited the homes of
both Castro brothers and some of the regime’s other top officials, and
it is obvious that their living conditions have not suffered because of
the embargo. Many Cuban families are deprived of good incomes, certain
foods, cellphones, Internet access and basic freedoms, but at least they
have access to a good education and health care, and they live in a
tropical environment where the soil is productive and where some
fortunate families may have trees that bear bananas and other fruit. In
addition, Cubans receive about $2 billion annually in remittances from friends and relatives in the United States.
The situation is more tragic in North Korea, where
none of these advantages exist. The U.S. embargo, imposed 64 years ago
at the start of the Korean War, has been more strictly enforced, with
every effort made to restrict or damage North Korea’s economy. During my
visits to Pyongyang, I have had extensive discussions with government
officials and forceful female leaders who emphasized the plight of
people who were starving. The United Nations’ World Food Program
estimates that at least 600 grams of cereal per day
is needed for a “survival ration” and that the daily food distribution
in North Korea has at times been as low as 128 grams. In 1998, U.S.
congressional staffers who visited the country reported a range of 300,000 to 800,000 dying each year from starvation.
In 2001, the Carter Center arranged for North Korean
agricultural leaders to go to Mexico to learn how to increase production
of their indigenous crops, and the U.S. contribution of grain
rose to 695,000 tons in the late 1990s during a brief period of
U.S.-North Korean reconciliation. However, the contribution was
drastically reduced under President George W. Bush and then terminated
completely by President Obama in 2010. I visited the State Department
then and was told that the main problem was North Korea’s refusal to
permit any supervision of food deliveries.
In 2011, I returned to North Korea, accompanied by
former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, former president of
Ireland Mary Robinson and former prime minister of Norway Gro
Brundtland, a physician who had been director of the World Health
Organization. We stopped first in Beijing for briefings from regional
World Food Program officials, who said there were no restraints on
monitoring of food deliveries to families in North Korea. They followed
us to Pyongyang and accompanied us to rural areas where tiny food
allotments were being distributed to families. The government gave an
official guarantee that all such food deliveries could be monitored by
the United States and other donors. I reported this to Washington, with
the assessment that one-third of North Korean children
were malnourished and stunted in their growth and that daily food
intake was between 700 and 1,400 calories per person, compared with a
normal American’s 2,000 to 2,500. Our government took no action.
There is no excuse for oppression by a dictatorial
regime, but the degree of harsh treatment depends at least partially on
the dissatisfaction of the citizens. Starving people are more inclined
to demand relief from their plight, protest and be punished or executed.
As in Cuba, the political elite in North Korea do not suffer, and the
leaders’ all-pervasive propaganda places the blame for deprivation on
the United States, not themselves. The primary objective of dictators is
to stay in office, and we help them achieve this goal by punishing
their already suffering subjects and letting them claim to be saviors.
When non-military pressure on a government is
considered necessary, economic sanctions should be focused on travel,
foreign bank accounts and other special privileges of government
officials who make decisions, not on destroying the economy that
determines the living conditions of oppressed people.
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