Guerrilla History - History of Sanctions on the DPRK & China w/ Tim Beal

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

This episode of Guerrilla History is a continuation of our Sanctions As War miniseries (get the book here).  In this fascinating episode, we bring on the Tim Beal to discuss the history and ongoing reality of sanctions on the DPRK and China, as well as how these two cases are intimately related.  Get the word out and share this with comrades involved in the anti-sanctions movement. Tim Beal is a retired New Zealand academic who has written extensively on Asia, particularly on Northeast Asia and US imperialism. Recent publications include the new introduction (alongside our friend Gregory Elich) of I.F. Stone's The Hidden History of the Korean War, ‘Korea and Imperialism’ (The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism), and ‘In Line of Fire: The Korean Peninsula in US-China Strategy’ (Monthly Review).  You can find more of Tim's work by looking at his website, especially the section on Asian Geopolitics. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined by only one of my co-hosts, unfortunately, as Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, is not able to be here right now. But we are joined by my other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, who is the host of Revolutionary left radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing today? Hello, Henry. I'm doing great and I'm excited for this really important conversation. Yeah, absolutely. We've got a great topic and a great guest lined up. Just before I introduce them,

I want to remind the listeners that you can find Gorilla History of the show on Twitter by going to at Gorilla underscore Pod. G-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-E-R-I-L-A underscore pod. You can keep up with all of the things that we're putting out by following us there. And you can help support the show and keep us on the proverbial air, I guess, at this point, by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, guerrilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And without further ado, we have another episode of our Sanctions as War Series. Today we're going to be covering the chapter, the Western Frontier U.S. Sanctions Against North Korea and China, which was written by our guest, Tim Beale, who is a retired

New Zealand academic, who's written extensively on Asia, particularly Northeast Asia and U.S. imperialism. He has many publications. I will be sure to link to some of those in the show description. Hello, Professor. It's nice to have you on the show. Hello, Henry. Good to be here.

And hello, Brett. Yeah, so as Brett said at the beginning, this is an incredibly important topic. So we've talked about the economic sanctions regime that has been placed on China. in one of our previous episodes of the series. But we haven't talked about the DPRK within this series beyond, I believe in the introduction. We may have talked about it a little bit. But of course,

the DPRK is one of the most sanctioned countries in the world with devastating consequences. And we are certainly going to get into that. Before we even get into the conversation about the specific sanctions regime that has been put in place on the DPRK and how that, how China is involved with that in terms of its relation to the DPRK. I'd like to actually start by asking how you got involved with thinking about imperialism, sanctions, the DPRK and China. Wow, that's a big question.

Well, I tell you what, one of the trigger points, in fact, was reading I.F. Stone's book, the hidden history of the Korean War. and it's good that you've asked me that because a monthly review press brought that out in 1952 caused a, I think I say it caused a stir, it didn't cause a stir because it was very much suppressed in the United States but it has been lingering around for 70 odd years and now they're bringing out a new addition

which is out this month and that's I guess what really started me thinking about, I was doing, I was studying Chinese at Edinburgh University as a sort of 1970 and I came across this book and, you know, things started to make sense. And I've been sort of following it ever since. Not so much on the Korean front until the late 90s when I met, a fine fellow in New Zealand, Wellington, a Methodist, a Methodist preacher, in fact, who ran the local DPRK society, and he invited me to go to North Korea. And I went. And so that was my first on-the-spot experience of being in North Korea. I've been to South Korea before. But being in the north quite a different sort of career and of course

you know you had the effects of the effects of sanctions and you know I can still see the photographs I took at that time with the children even in Pyongyang

even in the best schools if you like you know where the elite go there were signs of malnutrition amongst these children and that was to do with sanctions So it's going on, gone on from there. I was sorry, there's a long, long-winded answer to your simple question.

Yeah, no, by all means be as long-winded as you want. I have a question for you, but before I get into it, can you say a little bit more about your time in the DPRK and sort of, I know you just mentioned malnutrition amongst even the elite school children at that time. Was there anything else that stood out to you in your personal travels there? I suppose the thing that really struck me in a sense is a normality of North Korea

because the image you're given from outside is that it's a what, you know, a bizarre place, regimented. So you get all these stereotypes about Korea. But you get there and what struck me I guess was that it was in a very normal people

were very friendly but I mean in many ways it was as a foreigner it was all rather strange they tended to be overprotective they wanted to keep an eye on you and so forth which is all very understandable

in the circumstances but it was a you know it goes beyond the the cliché about we're all human as that aspect. But it was just a, if you looked around with eyes that wanted to see, you realized that this was a society that had the problems, the aspirations, or what have you, of, in the sense of societies elsewhere.

And so once you came to terms with that, you saw things rather differently. And I have this, I think it was on a later occasion, some celebration in Pyongyang, a big march, a civilian march, nothing very military. I mean, that was the other thing. There were very few signs of soldiers around.

I mean, I've been to South Korea and you saw a lot of, you saw the visible, at that time, the visible repression. You saw the police, the anti-riot police and what have you on street corners and so forth. But you didn't see any sign of that in North Korea. And there was very little sign of the military around Pyongyang and the various places I, visited. So anyway, going back to this parade, it was very funny because

they had, one of the features of this parade was this group of, I don't know what you call them, they looked like American drum drum majorettes, what is it?

The women who dress up in sort of military uniforms and and what's the word for it? I think it's drum major at. That's it. Something like that. Anyway, and they wear these sort of 18th century costumes, that sort of thing. And that's where you were.

You would think you were in the United States. So they're, you know, in the sense they weren't particularly anti-American or anti-West. they took somehow they took that in their stride it was a very strange very strange experience it's incredibly interesting

well let's go ahead and move to your essay because I like the way you opened your essay you opened it with the concepts of manifest destiny and the Western frontier and when we hear those terms we think about colonialism in North America but you extend it by saying that the American West are implicitly

saying that the American West extends into and across the Pacific ocean, and you connect this with three phases of U.S. imperialism. Can you kind of discuss these concepts and explicate the three phases of U.S. imperialism in this context?

Now, the first phase is I, we have the manifest testimony, the expansion across the continent, across the Pacific, Hawaii, Guam, and places like that, ending up on the shores of Eurasia.

So the big first conflict was with Japan over China. So that occupies the most of the first half of the 20th century when Japan was trying to take over China. It had taken over Taiwan in 1895 and it took over Korea which was not part of China but was the tributist state of China and then it moved into Manchuria and then in 37

it was 32 the 37 it began its war against China so that was a Japanese and America was a in many ways the main by no means not the only one but a principal opponent

of Japanese rule so looking back you can see it, I think, as a struggle between these two, Japan and the United States, over who would control China. Now, their forms of control, of course, were very different.

The Japanese was more direct colonialism, building on the themes of pan-Asianism and various, other things like that, whereas the United States was

more hands-off, the open-door concept where you had nominal idea was that China would be had territorial integrity, it had sovereignty, et cetera, et cetera. But of course, behind the scenes, you've got the political influence of the Chinese government. And of course, economically, the United States was without parallel. You know, if the door was open, the idea was it, it was American. who could walk through that door faster and more effectively than anyone else. So that gets us to – that's – I've ended, of course, in 1945.

The United States sort of precipitated Japan into war in similar ways as it's precipitated Russia into war over Ukraine. in it, so that's one of the patents of American imperialism. So in 1945, we have the United States as a paramount power in East Asia. And it divides Korea because you can't take all of Korea, because it hasn't got the forces on the spot. So it comes to a deal with the Soviet Union. It forces the Soviet Union to a deal that the surrender will be taken by the Soviet Union.

forces in the north, American forces in the south. And the idea was that the country would be reunified, there'd be elections, all that sort of stuff. And, of course, that the foreigners would leave. Well, Soviet troops left in 47, 48, I think. And as we well know, the American troops are still there. once Americans get into a base around the world they seldom leave unless they are pushed out so that was the second stage is the if you like the the road to the war 45 to 1950 and it's important

to realize that the Korean War although it officially starts in 1950 in fact it's set in motion in 1945 by all the various things that happened during the period of American American occupation. And then the third phase would be the

after the actual kinetic war. So 53, the war comes to a cease basically a ceasefire and armistice. The United States can't go any further. Well, neither side can go any further is a military stalemate. And so the instrument of

coercion and power, control from the United States, moves towards sanctions. So sanctions then becomes a principal, not the only, but a principal tool of American policy towards this part of the world, towards North Korea, and towards China. Okay, so those are your three phases. I want to hop in now and ask a somewhat methodological question. So at this point, you then are talking about this part of the world. And through the rest of the chapter, you kind of intertwine the sanctions that were put on place and the impacts of the sanctions on both China and the DPRK and how they relate to one another,

both between the relations between these countries, the influence of these countries on one another, the importance of these countries to one another, as well as the importance of each of these countries, some one more than another, we'll just put it that way, to the United States. And so the methodological question, before we get into talking about the sanctions

that were put on China and the DPRK and how those impacts were very differentially felt by those two different countries, The methodological question is, you know, can you explain why you decided to examine this in this way where you're taking these two countries and then telling the story together about the story of U.S. sanctions on both of these countries rather than, you know, the alternative would have been to write an entire section on the relations of China and the history of sanctions on China, much like we covered in a previous episode and then a separate section on the DPRK. and, of course, mentioning that these, you know, these are related to each other. But it was like a central point of your chapter that these are very much inextricably related. Yeah, and you're quite right. I mean, this is the traditional way is to look at these two places separately.

And as I argue, this is a mistake because they are very much intertwine. when the United States arrived as a paramount power in 45 it wasn't concerned with Korea Korea was not important to it Korea was only important as a location as a place to have a base to protect Japan which was very important

and as a forward base in Asia so Korea in itself wasn't important Now, that has changed over the years, of course, especially with the Korean War, then the close contact between South Korea and the United States over these 60, 70 years. North Korea has become very much an important issue in the United States politically and in propaganda terms and military terms since then. but it originally started off as sort of a stepping stone on the road to China. And China remains, as we all know, the main aim of United States foreign policy is the main obstacle to American hegemmy around the world's main challenger and so forth.

So China is vitally important, and Korea fits within this China offensive, if you like, but it also has developed a life of its own. So I think the two things have to be looked at together. They're not separate. And one of the reasons the United States keeps sanctions against North Korea, keeps the tension going against North Korea, is to justify its military presence in South Korea. And he wants a military presence in South Korea,

not because of North Korea as such, but because that's where China is. So if you look at the American forces in East Asia, the main base is in Japan, and then not very far behind that becomes South Korea. And South Korea has all sorts of advantages for the United States. because the United States has direct control over the South Korea military, which is a very substantial military.

So it's very important for the United States to keep this tension going to justify its military presence in South Korea and in Japan, and the reason for that is, of course, China. So the whole thing is very much linked together. Yeah, I think that's really important. And I really also sort of echo Henry's sentiments about the importance of linking China and the DPRK together. And of course, if anybody has a time to look at where, you know, the Korean Peninsula is located on a map, you can see that this is a hot geopolitical area in general and specifically for U.S. hegemony in the Pacific. So that's crucial. But now that we have a lot of the background, a lot of the context, both the Chinese and American context, can you talk a little bit about the specific sanctions throughout any period of time? that the U.S. imposes on the DPRK and how those sanctions impact, importantly, the people of the DPRK. Okay. Well, the sanctions started in 1950 with the outbreak of war, and they have continued ever since.

So I think Henry said North Korea's most sanctions country, amongst the most sanctions country in the world. It's certainly the country was the longest continuing American sanctions. So we've had sanctions, we had military threat against North Korea in some sense since 1945, but certainly since 1950. Now, in the early days, the effect of sanctions was perhaps minimal, very difficult to really tease out because of the relationship with Soviet Union and with China, North Korea's relationship with those too. So the normal, of course, of events, of course,

we had very little economic contact with the United States during the war. It could conceivably have it after the war, but it was very much integrated within the Sino-Soviet bloc at that stage. So American sanctions were not particularly important. They become important, of course, for the collapse of, well, two things. collapse to the Soviet Union and China's move towards capitalism. And so this had a devastating effect on the North Korean economy. And the economy sort of went into free fall in the early 90s,

because it had been built on this particular relationship. For one thing, we get back to parallels again. It had cheap oil. from the Soviet Union. And the oil was used both for transportation and for fertilizer. So if that oil is cut off, boom, there goes your agriculture, and there goes your transport. And we get sort of a mirror image of this in a sense in Western Europe today.

And they've been cut off from Russian oil and gas and are suffering, no means, as badly as North Korea, Korea, but it's still an impact. So from that period, you get the effect of, if you like, bilateral sanctions really coming into effect. So without the trade and aid, the economic relationship with the Soviet Union and China, North Korea is very much on its own. It attempts to build up relations with other countries, such in the early 19th, 70s, made an attempt to open up trade with Western Europe.

And, of course, there's always been sort of active in the anti-imperialist struggle, very active, for instance, in Africa and so forth. So we had these bilateral sanctions, and they have a devastating. It's difficult, of course, to separate out the various aspects, because you've got the removal of the trade with the Soviet Union and with China to some extent, and that's, if you like, the primary aspect. But it has also to be seen within the context of American sanctions and American relations with what was in Russia

and China. So both Russia and China from this period on, to some extent, are complicit with the United States in sanctions against North Korea, Russia more than China, but under Yeltsin and what have you, all the contracts were cancelled and all that sort of thing. And then the next, the final stage in that is in the mid-2006, when we have the shift towards United Nations sanctions. So we're moving from bilateral sanctions to United Nations sanctions, sanctions through the United Nations Security Council. And this is very important because it broadens the range of sanctions. so it's not merely the United States

and its immediate vassal countries all members, if it's a UNSC resolution, then all members of the United Nations in theory should conform to it and implement it. Now as it turns out implementation has varied over time

between countries but it certainly broadened the effect. And so we get this idea that sanctions against North Korea

are legal, our moral, and that anything that North Korea does to evade these sanctions or to protect itself, etc., et cetera, becomes illegal. So we get this sort of mythology

being developed. And unfortunately, Russia and China were complicit in that. They voted for these resolutions. Now, of course, we're getting a change. Things are slowly changing. I think both countries, because the United States is becoming more bellicose towards both of them in separate ways, then they are becoming more resistant to American attempts. at control through the UNSC.

And we get this strange situation where both of them talk very highly of the United Nations and they contrast the United Nations and international law with the American rules-based international system. And they point out that the UN is a real thing. But at the same time, the United States. nations, of course, has been corrupted over the years in all sorts of different ways. And Korea is at the heart of that corruption because by an accent of history, the United States was able to get United Nations endorsement for its military operation in Korea during the Korean War. And it still has what the Americans call the United Nations command situated in South Korea.

which, in fact, is the American occupation force in South Korea, the expeditionary force in South Korea. It's not controlled by the United Nations, but it still has this title. So the United Nations has begun a very important part of the American strategy towards Korea. And the great triumph in the 2006 thereafter was to get the United Nations Security Council to condemn North Korea for testing nuclear weapons. When you think about it, the United States had tested over 1,000 nuclear weapons.

It was the only country who's ever used nuclear weapons twice. We know that wasn't really to end the war for other purposes. and yet, at the same time, it could get the United Nations to condemn the small country defending itself, building a nuclear deterrent. So it was a great triumph for American political power, and, like, a condemnation of China and Russia in going along with that. Yeah, just a quick follow-up here. because you just mention the nuclear weapons and like as you're sort of implying it's this double-edged sword on one hand it's the thing that the u.s uses to point at and say see they're doing more missile testing they have nuclear weapons they're a rogue nation we have to sanction them on the other hand it's probably in many people's minds the only thing that has prevented a much more aggressive either invasion or full-on attack from north korea of course china and russia are players in that region as well but to your mind what do nuke's play in preventing a more aggressive American action against the DPRK? Well, pretty, pretty essential.

And we have the example, of course, of Libya. Libya had a sort of nascent nuclear weapons program, and I think there's Condoleezza Rice persuaded them to, a lot of pressure to give these nuclear weapons up. up, et cetera, et cetera, with the promises that all would be well then between the United States and Libya, and of course, a few years later, that was quite forgotten, and as we saw what happened to Libya, and it was interesting that when John Bolton, as Trump's national security adviser, was trying to derail

the negotiations, he kept him bringing up the word Libya to remind North Korea as if they needed reminding, but to remind them that that's what happened when you abandoned your nuclear deterrent. You're then defenseless, and the United States, you know, could be absolutely ruthless. And so there was a lesson there. So the Koreans, North Koreans say, and I think, you know, it's a reasonable thing to say, it's a nuclear deterrent which has preserved peace in northeast Asia over the, well, I was since they've had them, and their general ability to retaliate,

even for nuclear weapons, before that. I mean, it was Kenneth Walts who pointed out that Iran having a nuclear weapon was peace-enhancing because small, threatened countries don't use nuclear weapons aggressively, because they get destroyed, they can only use them as a deterrent. So if you have a situation where they threaten small country manages to get a deterrent,

then that produces peace because the aggressive power doesn't dare to attack. Yeah, and before I go with my follow-up question here, one of the things that I want to highlight that you pointed out in your check, chapter of sanctions this war, which is an absolutely true point, is that the United States is saying that a lot of these sanctions are being placed on the North Koreans because of nuclear testing, whereas the United States, and again, as you correctly point out, has conducted over 1,000 nuclear tests without ever having any even threats of sanctioning or censure or any sort of repercussions for any of the

nuclear testing that it's carrying out, which creates a very discriminatory atmosphere within the international system. You point this out very correctly. So I want to make sure that the listeners are aware that this is something that absolutely is the case. And it just goes to show how hypocritical the international system generally is, in particular the United States. But the question I want to follow up with is, you know, a lot of these sanctions, they're brought up with the justification regarding nuclear weapons. But, of course, the goal of the sanctions is truly regime change, as it is with most of the sanctions that we've talked about within this series.

And the way that they plan on doing that is by causing extreme suffering of the populace and hoping that if they cause enough suffering, that the people will rise up and overthrow their own government, which is not an effective strategy, nor is it a moral or human main strategy. It could be effective. It could be, but historically there has not been very many examples of where sanctioning, it has been very effective in causing suffering and it has been very effective in causing death, but it has not been historically effective in affecting regime change.

Exactly. So the question that I want to ask is if you can explain why, I think that it's fairly obvious, but it's perhaps worth reminding the listeners, you know, why the United States is trying to affect regime change. And since it has not been effective in that ultimate goal of affecting regime change, what are the impacts that have been felt in North Korea in the ways of lost economic factors within the society, suffering of the populace, things like this, the things that the United States is trying to do in order to affect regime change. We have seen a lot of that. So if you can talk about those impacts as well.

Well, it's interesting. The United States continues with these sanctions, even though they're not effective. And it does it because sanctions traditionally, now this is where things are changing now, but traditionally sanctions for United States for cheap. I mean, we'd have sanctions against North Korea, even sanctions against China, you know, in the 50s, the 60s, what have you, and this would have no impact on United States at all. So there were no economic impacts, there were no casualties, no body bags, all that sort of sounds. So it was very attractive from that point of view.

The fact that it wasn't effective, perhaps, in terms of the American political system, is not that relevant. I mean, that's how the system works. So they keep on sanctioning, even though it may be ineffective. In some ways, of course, it's counterproductive too, because as long as the people in the sanctions country,

and this is a key thing, if they realize that their immiseration, what their suffering is due to the foreign country, in this case the United States, then this solidifies them around their government. And what Americans hope is that the people in the sanctioned country will blame their own government. Yeah, I mean, the problem with sanctions, of course, that it is invisible. There was a very interesting argument beginning the 20th century and into the 20s and 30s

about the effect of total war, about bombing. And in fact, it carried on after that, you know, people like Curtis LeMay or what have you, who argues that with bombing you could destroy the enemy civilian morale. You drop enough bombs, can enough people, and they turn against a government and surrender. Now, of course, it turned out the other way around that the bombing tended to solidify support for the government and resistance to the resistance to the enemy. But the advantage of, in the sense,

the thing about bombing is it is very visible, you know, and you know that the planes up above our enemy planes and they're the ones that dropping the bombs. It's all straightforward, and you can make that connection. Sanctions, of course, is different. That's where it becomes dangerous for the sanctions country, because it's not clear to anyone, you know,

it's not necessarily clear the reasons for, you know, the lack of food in shops or, you know, the electricity not working and so forth. So it is a, that's a big challenge, I think, for the sanctioned country. And so the more, if you like, political control they have over communications and so forth, the better. So it tends towards, I guess, making countries more, totalitarian is, you know, a misused word,

but that sort of thing. And, of course, it replicates what happened in Europe during the Second World War, where governments, and I'm thinking here of Britain, took a lot more control, over public discourse than they had in the past because the need to control public opinion. So one of the effects, I guess, of sanctions against North Korea has been this pushing of a more controlling state apparatus than would otherwise be the case. Yeah, I just want to throw in one quick thing before Brett.

I know, Brett, you have the next question. This is like a classic example of fostering siege mentality. We talked in a previous episode about sanctions of siege warfare. Yeah, yeah. And we can see here that the imposition of sanctions, and this is not just in the case of North Korea, but in many of these cases that we've talked about, the imposition of sanctions, and when the populace knows that the suffering being, exacted on themselves is a result of imperialist aggression via sanctions that it actually steals

the society in many ways. You wouldn't normally tolerate the type of suffering that these people go through without having revolts in the streets. If it was not for this imperialist aggression via sanctions that they're facing, the very fact that they are under sanctioned draws the the society together in many ways and steals the resilience of the people in a way that they're able to bear much more than they would be willing to or be able to if it were not for that. So what we end up seeing is an even greater amount of suffering with an even lower likelihood of achieving the goals that the United States sets out to achieve. So it's just, I mean, it's like a very, very classic example of siege mentality.

and it really relates to that, that discussion that we had on sanctions as a form of modern siege warfare. But Brett, like I said, I knew that you had the next question. Yeah, it was really quickly bouncing off that last comment and Tim's comment is that that's the double-sided nature of this issue as well, which is, yes, there is this unifying effect, especially with good political education about the imperialism and how it's impact the society. But there's also this other thing that happens, which Tim was talking about, which is you force a, country to have a defensive, which caches out as more authoritarian structure of society to sort of batten down the hatches, protect the state as such, not allow infiltration. And then the U.S. and its allies will point to that and say authoritarian regime and then continue to defile and slander them, you know. Just one quick thing, Brett, to balance in off of that. So we just

recorded, I know you weren't at the conversation, but we just had this conversation. about the new edition that we're putting out of Domenical, sort of Stalin history and critique of a black legend, which is set to come out on July 1st. And my translators and editors had this conversation with me, so myself, Salvatore, Engel de Mauro, and David Pete. And one of the things that is very present within this book, which the listeners, you know, you can check it out as a free PDF when it comes out on July 1st or get a, you know, low cost print edition if you want. One of the things that's very present in this is that when we see this external force being applied on a state, and in the case of the Soviet Union, for

example, we see an increased amount of what could be considered repression and we could consider, you know, like very, very strict guidelines of what people must do and what they're not allowed to do during this period of time. And what happens then is that these specific things are used as an example of the totalitarian nature of Stalin and of the Soviet Union without examining the fact that, well, when Britain was attacked by the exact same army that attacked the Soviet Union, they also put in very same things. Yeah, exactly.

They also put in very draconian impositions that restricted the freedoms of the citizenry. This is something that happens when you. you are under attack from an external force. And so we just had this conversation. I think that that episode will be coming out the week after this one. So even though it was recorded just before this, it'll be coming out a week or two after this. So keep your ears peeled, I guess.

But it's something that we always see when, well, I shouldn't say always, you know, maybe not in the case of France. But in many cases, we see this. And in this case, again, we see. a very brutal sanctions regime that's put in place and people are surprised that there's then the imposition of some sort of restrictions within the country in terms of media or in terms of access to the internet

and things like this. It shouldn't be a surprise, but yet it's weaponized as one. Absolutely, yes, yes. Yes, we forget our own history. And we're made to forget our own history and our own experiences. and there are, as you say, very interesting parallels, I suppose, especially Britain is a key one because it was a large country which was not actually physically conquered by the Germans in any respect.

So it was its contact with the war was through somewhat at a distance. And yes, I'm sure there are all sorts of parallels. else between what happened in Britain, what happened in the Soviet Union, what happens in North Korea today? It's just the nature of the situation, yeah. Right. And I would also add the Japanese concentration camps after Pearl Harbor in the United States itself, an authoritarian imposition on people of Japanese descent because they were, you know, for whatever reason, worried about Japanese people here on American soil. And so they literally created concentration camps for Japanese descendants here in the United States. So yes, it happens to every country. But I would

I would love to, you know, I want to be respectful of your time as well, Tim, bring up some more contemporary issues. I know before we started, you mentioned having written this article before the Russia-Ukraine conflict and most of the Biden administration. And so I just kind of want to talk about the conflicted role of China in the modern context, the role Russia plays in all of this, and just sort of your thoughts on the contemporary situation with regards to the deep. PRK, China, and of course, what the Russia-Ukraine conflict adds to all of this. Okay. First of all, a couple of points before we get into that. The internment camps in the United States during the war, primarily Japanese, but also included Koreans, because Koreans were Japanese citizens, and for Americans, couldn't distinguish between the two anyway. So, you know, Korea was considered as part.

of Japan, and so people of Korean ethnicity were also locked up. And again, there are parallels as what the Soviet Union did, because the Soviet Union moved Koreans from the parts of, you know, it's far east, because they saw them as sort of Japanese, and they moved them into Central Asia. So there are always parallels if you look beneath the surface. We haven't had a chance to really talk about the sanctions on China itself, and that, I think, is a big subject. But if we look at the present situation, we're getting a great increase in American sanctions against China. I mean, we've gone through three stages very quickly.

From 1950 to into the 70s, the United States had embarking on China. So they cut off trade, hoping to produce regime change. That didn't work. To 73, we have Kissinger playing the China Guard, realize that China's not going to go away. It can be used against the Soviet Union. And so we get this sort of detente with China through the 70s. and the establishment of diplomatic relations

and the great increase in trade until whatever 2010 or something Obama's pivot to Asia when the American has become very frightened of the rise of China they talk in terms of military power but the main challenge has been economic and also to some extreme social

I mean, if we look at the reaction to the COVID pandemic, China's done very much better than the United States in handling that. So we're getting now this resurgence of sanctions against China, and that, of course, makes the Chinese less willing to implement sanctions against North Korea. Yeah, and the same, of course, goes for Russia. Russia adds another dimension. I mean, there's always been sanctions against Russia against the Soviet Union, but they go up and down depending on the relations. And, of course, with the new stage, shall we say, of the

in saying or sanctions or bring them down et cetera and that hasn't worked has had all sorts of both been ineffective and it has

increased support for the government in Moscow I'm told Henry perhaps can say more about that and this in turn affects their implementation

of sanctions and also the resistance within the Security Council so they're refusing now to conduct them North Korea for whatever missile tests or something which a few years ago they would have so they're slowly coming around

as fast as I would like to see them do and the past can't be undone so there's been a lot as damage has been unnecessarily created because of their complicity, but things are now changing because they are becoming under direct attack and they're joining North Korea. And in fact, there's an interesting comment by

Henry can correct my pronunciation. Prozogant, progoshan, the Wagner group chairman. How do you pronounce his name? name? Henry? Pre-goshin. Regersion. Right. And he said, well, a couple days ago, apparently said, we must become like North Korea. We must close our borders. We must accept austerity for a while to defeat what they're throwing at us. So there is a coming together now. As the United States, if you like, goes into further decline. It becomes more and more desperate. It's lashing out

in all directions and so what was happening mainly to places like North Korea is now spreading to China and Russia so the situation has been transformed.

Does that answer your question, Brett? Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, thank you. I have a few things that I want to say about Russia with regards to these. Before I do that, I just want to make sure that I get the opportunity to ask this question before we close the conversation because it is very relevant.

So we talked about the impact of sanctions on the DPRK. I know that you used some statistics and numbers in your article. Let me just pull them up. So, for example, in 2010, that there was a report that came out that through 2005, they had suffered losses of $13.7 trillion from U.S. sanctions and $16.7 trillion. from property losses. Yeah, that was a North Korean estimate. Yep, yeah.

Right, and that during the famine, during the 1990s, about 300,000 deaths were attributable to the famine, which also, again, related to the sanctions because they were unable to bring in the food that they could have used or aid in many cases was even blocked from coming. It still is, of course. Of course.

So I want to also bring up the impact on China because, of course, China is big and strong compared to the DPRK, which is not. So one of the things that you talked about a little bit is the varying impacts of the sanctions on these two countries. So, you know, if you can run through that briefly, and then I would like to talk about Russia for a second. Okay. Yes, well, and obviously the sanctions have had far more effect on North Korea and they have on China. One of the interesting things of the, when there were at the early stage, the embargo of 25 years against China, the Chinese, of course, were impacted, but what is overlooked is that, in the a sense, so was the United States, because the United States lost out, the United States

and Western countries, like Western capitalism, lost out on this potential trade. And if you see what's happened since then and sort of extrapolate backwards, you can see that from the point of view of a capitalist, there was a huge loss of potential. I mean, they could have, if they hadn't had sanctions, if they had started the trade in 1950 rather than 1980, then for good or bad there would have been huge economic impact for the United States. So the sanctions, of course, somewhat work both ways. although one of the attractions of sanctions traditionally for the United States is because the United States has been so much bigger

than the target countries, it hasn't really affected them. But now this is changing. So the sanctions against China are impacting primarily at this stage the sort of the porn the porn countries Japan, South Korea and so forth on the on the borders there's interesting

article today that Warren Buffett is as pulling out of Taiwan he had investments in TSMC the semiconductor company and he thinks that's now too dangerous

so he's he's pulling back. So we're getting this effect now on American capitalism and, of course, on capitalism in the frontline countries like South Korea and Taiwan. And, of course, the same thing has gone in terms of Russia, the sanctions against Russia. Obviously, I have had an effect on the Russian economy. They don't appear to have any effect on Russia's military-industrial complex. You can tell us more about what's in the shops.

And a lot of the main impact has been on Western Europe, which is, again, the pawns which suffer. So the landscape of sanctions is very much changing. And we don't know how it's going to develop, but it is clear that there has been quite a transformation from the past. Yeah, so just briefly about sanctions in Russia and a couple of things that are kind of related to the conversation that we've been having. And I'll keep it relatively brief because we plan

bringing Jeremy Kuzmarov on to talk more about Russia and sanctions. It'll be another interesting conversation because like you, he also wrote his chapter of this book before the current conflict in Ukraine and the imposition of severe sanctions on Russia. And he's been writing a lot more about the sanctions since then. So it'll be interesting to talk about that chapter as a point in history and then how things have developed since then. but that's just to say that I'll try to be a little bit more brief here since we'll be talking

more in depth at that point. So in terms of, you said, products on the shelves and whatnot, you know, there has been some change, but not as much change as people may think here. A lot of products from various Western brands are just no longer available at all. So your favorite ice cream is no longer available. The deodorant that you used to yet, you know, is not on the grocery store shelves anymore, things like that, but actually many of the companies that are from the West that do have those products here, we still see them on the shelves for one of three reasons, primarily. The first reason being that many of these companies knowing that they take an economic hit by pulling out of Russia, they claim that

their product is an essential good and therefore is exempt from sanctions because things like food stuffs and medicines are generally exempted from the sanctions that are put in place and the countries that have pulled out of Russia, generally pull out everything except for their quote unquote essential products. And at the beginning, it was looking like very few things were going to be included on that essential products list, but they found ways to include more and more things on the list. So, you know, they're still making money on their products and most of the products that you would have thought maybe would get pulled out are actually still present.

You know, you can still get your Coca-Cola on the shelf. That's still all around here. The second thing that we see, the second reason that we still see some Western products on the shelves is that there are parallel imports that are coming in, even from companies that have pulled out the methods of circumventing the sanctions, that are done here is, well, I'm not the expert on parallel imports, so I shouldn't speak

too much on it. But the system of parallel imports is actually pretty sophisticated at this point. And so we're seeing a lot of products come in through that kind of like gray economy, I guess. And the third way is that even the companies that have pulled out of Russia, a lot of them had production facilities in Russia. And so when they decided that they would Paul out, of course, they didn't want to take a complete loss on it. And so they sold the production facilities to local entrepreneurs and corporations here. And so it's now Russian individuals and Russian corporations that are operating the exact same equipment and producing the same products. And in many cases, they use either the same name or like a slightly rebranded name. So just a random

example, one of our favorite coffees that we have in my apartment is a coffee that was from Finland, originally, Paolig. Very nice coffee. Of course, they decided that they would pull out. So now the logo is almost exactly the same. They like changed the head on it just slightly. And now instead of going by the name

Paolig, it's something else that starts with POW. It's Pao something. I don't remember exactly what they changed the name. But it's the same packaging, just with a slightly rebrand. That's an interesting question. So the new owners are trying to identify with the pass in a sense, rather than

bringing out the nationalist aspect. I mean, they could change the name and say, you know, make a point that this is now Russian-owned. There are, yeah, you see, you see both tendencies, actually. So with some companies, they make very stereotypically, you know, Russian names. So we had, when some of the Coca-Cola products were being pulled out, they really started to increase the production of, Dobri Cola. And when McDonald's pulled out, now all of the McDonald's buildings

are serving McDonald's foods with slightly different names, but the exact same foods made on the exact same machines operated by the exact same people, but now instead of being called McDonald's, it's Kus no it's Tochka. So, like, tasty, and that's it. So, you know, it's, in some of the cases,

it is something like that where they have russified it to some extent. But with things like coffee, for example, almost all the coffees on the shelves here, and it's really funny, they all have French names or Italian names, but they're all Russian companies and produced in Russia. So, like, Hardin is a coffee company that we have here. And of course, it's made in Russia. We have something else that's in French that's on the shelves. So some of these things, they, you know, they make it sound exotic. So they take the complete opposite track, but we have seen both. But the other people are seeing the growth of Russian companies, new Russian companies

developing for the domestic market now that the foreigners are not there? Yes and no. So we're seeing much more in terms of Russian companies that are replacing some of the products, but in many cases they're owned by the same parent corporations that we're seeing from similar products already. So when we see, just for example, a coffee company, I'm just going to keep using this example, when the coffee company goes out of business, it's not as if some savvy individuals decided, oh, there's people that were buying this coffee, we'll buy this production facility and start

rebranding it and selling it. No, it was one of the biggest coffee conglomerates operating within Russia that bought it. And they just changed the name slightly of that individual coffee brand under their conglomal. So that's, that's actually mostly what we're seeing is that we are seeing new, like, new names and new brands come out, but they're all owned by the same companies. It's the same. I don't want to use the O word because the American media refers to all very, very wealthy Russian individuals by this. And you never hear the term American oligarchs. But, you know, American oligarchs are called philanthropists, don't they?

Yes, exactly. So the Russian philanthropists, yeah, the Russian philanthropists. They have bought up all of these companies But the other thing that I wanted to say That's really interesting And it's not related to what you see on Oh, sorry, there is one more thing We see a lot more Chinese products on the shelves

A lot more Chinese products on the shelves Everything from deodorant to tampons To toothpaste to everything Like you find Chinese products that we didn't have before There was always some There was always some like you know Branded with you know Chinese language

You know Mandarin on the packaging but now it's there's a lot more but the thing that i wanted to talk about was the rhetoric actually and this is quite interesting to me is that uh we've talked about kind of some parallels and some differences but the relations between the sanctions on the dpr k and china the portrayal of these is still very different here so since the sanctions have been imposed on russia since the beginning of the conflict we've seen a complete i don't want to say complete change We've seen a very dramatic shift in the narrative in the Russian media how China is spoken about. So now China is our dear friend.

We have an enduring partnership. We're looking for like mutual development, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anytime that you see China in the news, you see very glowing things and about how we're having this like enduring friendship that's going to go into the future, regardless of what the West is doing to us. when the DPRK is brought up in the news you don't see that you don't see that at all and in fact there was a very kind of popular news article that came out in the west which was kind of funny they were saying Russia is running out of weaponry so they're now buying weapons from North Korea and immediately all of the Russian news networks all of the Russian politicians like were taken aback and a gas that the idea that they would have to buy something from the DPRK

whereas in the case of China they're talking about their loving friendship and how they can mutually support each other in various industries we have a lot of oil here they have great manufacturing and blah blah blah blah blah with North Korea when it's like

oh we would buy something from North Korea no no no that's not real that's definitely fake news so it's very interesting that after having this conversation and reading the chapter and thinking about how these two you know different countries, the relations between them actually create a lot of similarities in

the sanctions regimes. Of course, there's many differences as well, but they are very closely related. The way that the Russian relations to these two countries is portrayed is very different still, even though it's changed a lot in a very friendly, positive way with regards to China. It has not with the DPRK. No, no. Well, yeah, I mean, you've had 70 years. years of propaganda against, well, not in Russia, 70 years of propaganda against North Korea

in, you know, throughout most of the world. And so that has, has its effect. And then I guess, you know, from 90s onwards, you've got the same thing in Russia. So that's a long, it's a long time, isn't it? We're talking about 50 years, not 50 years, we're talking about 40 years, how many years, 30 years, of hostile propaganda. So that works its way through. Popular consciousness, elite consciousness. The media will run with this very much. So it's interesting how the rhetoric and public perceptions

lagged behind changes in reality. Eventually things, you know, the perceptions may catch up with reality. But as for the weapons, yes, that was an interesting, an interesting story that people were so anxious to tonight. Both the North Koreans and the Russians, and, you know, it was not obvious why they should. China, I think, is different because China is playing the neutrality card and so forth. I suppose North Korea too, because North Korea always had good relations with Ukraine.

A lot of it's, as you the other day, the planes, its commercial planes, a lot of them come from Ukraine. I mean, there's no particular reason why North Korea would be sort of more pro-Russia, you know, have to choose between Russia and Ukraine. I mean, the connection, of course, is with the United States. But if we just think of those two countries and themselves, then there's no reason for North Korea to differentiate between them. Yeah, that was a very interesting point. And Tim, we want to definitely be respectful of your time. So we're going to wrap up here.

I want to thank again. Our guest was Tim Beale, who's a retired New Zealand academic. Tim, thanks for coming on the show. It was really great to talk to you. It was a pleasure reading your chapter within Sanctions as War. Can you tell the listeners, if you have anything that you would like to direct them to any of your works that you would recommend them to check out if they want to see more? Well, as always, you'll give them my website address on your, yeah. So they can pick up any of my articles on that.

the other thing is we've got this new edition of Stone's Hidden History of the Korean War this is out this month and I've written with a colleague written the introduction to that and that's freely available now on the monthly review website so if you go to monthly review they can pick up the introduction to that and as to sanctions well I've got nothing in the pipeline at the moment But as I said, so much has changed since I wrote those, since that book was published, since I wrote that article, it would be, it's very tempting to try and come back to it sometimes. So in that sense, watch this space, see what we come up with, because it's always necessary to look underneath the surface,

to be aware of what you see in the media, of course, is frequently wrong, incorrect, lie, is just honest, what have you, and you have to sort of ferret amongst the surface to get some idea of what's actually happening. So there's plenty more to be unraveled. Excellent. We'll definitely keep track of that. Brett, how can the listeners find you in all of the excellent work that you do? Yeah, first of all, thank you so much, Tim, for coming on.

It was a real pleasure and an honor. You can find everything I do at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. And for those who are interested, I am launched. a brand new, a secret. Well, it's going to be not a secret soon. A brand new project. So if you're so inclined, definitely stay tuned to the Rev Left. RSS feed, our public account, and we'll be announcing something pretty cool in the coming weeks.

Great. As for, I guess I'll do our co-host first. Adnan was not able to make it today, but you should still follow him on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, and listen to his podcast that he runs the M-A-L-L-E-S-E-E-A-N. J-L-I-S, which focuses on the Middle East and the Islamic world and Muslim Diaspora. As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-E-C-K-1-9-5. You can follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-E-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-R-A-U-S-P, and you can help support the show and keep us up and running by going to Patreon.com forward slash guerilla history.

again, it's you E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. I'm going to be able to be.