North Korean Arc de Triomphe—a monument by Kim Il Sung in honor of... Kim Il Sung
It's a vacation week for many of the pundit regulars, which could be a net positive in the fight for reason. However, not everyone decided to sleep in.
Jimmy Carter, yes that Jimmy Carter, has something to say about sanctions—something that might strike even those in favor of opening up to Cube as radical.
As 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. ...
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. ...
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.
But hey, we can't let up now. Just another 30, 50, maybe 100 years of starvation will surely convince both surviving North Koreans that the current Dear Great Super-Duper Leader needs to be overthrown.
Come on in. Let's see what's up here at the tail end of the year.
Anne Applebaum says we're talking democracy for granted.
... those of us who live in functioning democracies take a good deal for granted, too. Our election systems are already in place; our constitutions were designed many decades or centuries ago. So were our political parties, courts, and laws on speech, assembly and the press. We don’t have to make them up ourselves or build them from whole cloth. Most of us don’t even think about the mechanics of our political system at all. We just show up to vote occasionally — or perhaps don’t even bother.
Nevertheless, when we watch political systems fail in other countries, we feel superior. Just as the poor are often thought to be lazy or feckless, so those who live in failed states are often thought to be immoral or culturally inferior. “Arabs can’t do democracy,” we say, as if that were a statement that will be true for all time, or “Ukrainians just aren't up to it.”
But imagine that you are the mother in a Ukrainian family in Kiev. If you would prefer to live in an uncorrupt state with the rule of law, it isn't enough just to show up and vote. You should also work as a volunteer for an anti-corruption NGO, be actively involved in civic education projects, donate money to candidates who aren't funded by oligarchs — and all of this while commuting to work every day on an ancient bus system, working in an office where they keep the heating low to save money and trying to live on a salary that’s worth less every month.
Actually, when I see the government collapse in another country, I think "hey, our program of destabilization as a means of maintaining leverage and assuring that there is an unending source of terrorism generated continues to work as planned."
David Ignatius looks at the last year in Iraq.
Watching events unfold in Iraq this year has been like viewing a slow-motion train wreck. Iraqi tribal leaders have been warning since spring about the rise of the terrorist Islamic State and pleading for American help. But after months of slaughter, the United States is only now beginning to build an effective tribal-assistance program.
Ignatius article goes on to outline how we've managed to turn bleh to awful, to godawful, to bleh, to possibly better bleh. And done it all while imparting a solid feeling to those on the front line that we just don't give a damn.
Daniel Drezner says that yes, 2014 was a pretty sucky year, but it could have been worse.
Perhaps the most important nonevent of 2014 was that war did not break out in the Pacific Rim. This was far from guaranteed at the beginning of the year. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, there was a lot of chatter that a century after the start of World War I, the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would lead to a similar conflagration. ...
Another nonevent in 2014 was the next U.S. recession. After growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2013, the economy shrank by more than 2 percent in the first quarter of 2014. The surprise slowdown prompted a lot of concerns that the American economy, which had been expanding since 2009, was about to go into recession. In March of this year, in fact, a majority of Americans believed that the economy was in recession.
Also, Putin's ambitions to restore the Soviet Union ran into a serious economic crimp in the form of plunging oil prices, ebola did not spread to the most heavily populated regions, and ISIS turned out not to be the unstoppable force as was touted. Still, it's that's the good news for the year, year = suck.
Leonard Pitts Is one of those with no new columns this week, which makes this an opportune time to catch up on all the good ones you missed.
Kathleen Hennessey has one of those stories that makes me shake my head.
As all presidents do, Obama has aged before our eyes — over six years shifting from a dark-haired politician drowning in his suit to a weathered president with the facial lines of an elder statesman. Or, perhaps, just a very tired one. ...
Obama's worn visage recently prompted an expert on the subject (and there are experts on the subject) to call his wife over to the television to check it out. And it led an ecology professor in North Carolina to spend hours collecting photos of Obama for an only partially satirical scientific analysis.
Playing off the term for graying of the hair, he titled the work, "Yes We Canities! A quantitative analysis of the graying of Barack Obama's hair."
Study conclusion? Presidents do not live in a zone of accelerated time, but only age about as much as the average person over a 4-8 year period. But wait! CNN has not yet weighed in on whether or not President Obama could be influenced by the aging effects of a black hole. Someone call Don Lemon.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch provides a year-end tip of the hat.
If any of the following statistics were negative, imagine how quickly the Republicans would be coming up with a word for the economy that included President Barack Obama’s last name:
• On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index hit 18,000 for the first time in history. ...
• Also on Tuesday, gasoline prices fell for the 89th consecutive day, to an average of $2.38 a gallon, according to AAA.
• Finally, the gross domestic product, the key measure of the size of the economy, grew 5 percent in the third quarter, confirming that the nation’s economy is rapidly expanding.
Actually, all that good news is kind of depressing. Obama has turned around a failing economy, extended healthcare to millions, and chopped the deficit year after year. Meanwhile, Republicans have driven Congress into the ground and staged a government shutdown just last year. And guess who the voters rewarded.