US officials, led by Ambassador Nikki Haley, have been making the rounds worldwide pushing for all nations to sever diplomatic ties with North Korea. This further undermines the US claims of being open to talks, but it’s also not clear what they expect to accomplish.
Since the US has no direct diplomatic ties with North Korea themselves, any diplomatic efforts require some intermediary. Yet if the US got its way, and everyone cuts off North Korea ties, there are no such intermediaries.
In practice, the US doesn’t expect this to be a successful push. Officials suggest that North Korea takes its international standing very seriously, and even a little bit of diplomatic harm would greatly embarrass them, however.
Plus it’s not like the US has a lot of “non-war” options left for things to do to North Korea. The nation doesn’t trade with much of anybody, except for China and Russia, and the US doesn’t have any real chance of cutting off either of those partners. Convincing a couple embassies to close, it seems, is the closest the US can do to exerting influence, and even that very speculatively, and to little real end.
I keep a lookout for accounts of renegade American tourists visiting North Korea but I imagine that even rebels are scared to visit North Korea these days.
Eva Bartlett visited North Korea and has lots of short videos/interviews from her visit last July. Can’t link, but easily found.
Thank you for the useful tip. Here is one URL of her words and pictures:
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/09/04/photos-from-a-week-in-the-dprk/
Is the USA now completely off the rails? NO talks, no diplomacy (Haley has never heard of such a word), no peace treaty from the “end” 64 years ago of the war the USA used to destroy North Korea in the 1950s, no sign of any reasonable behavior, just violence threats, pretence that further isolation will somehow have some good effect? Who believes it? Treating a revered leader who at least has a semblance of experience in ruling his country as “rocketman”, “loser” etc would not be acceptable to any régime, yet Trump and all the PTB in the USA, continuing their losing lot of wars, seem to want more international dangers and expect normal nations to join the fray.
… Revered? Revered Leader is sort of a gratuitous title not backed by any reliable polling data. I mean who’d dare say, “No I don’t revere Great Leader” in North Korea.
Its not even listed on the Wikipedia “List of Kim Jong-il’s titles” page; you may have committed a grave offense and diplomatic incident that could take years for Antiwar to live down if NK finds out.
Thanks Brookland! LOL
I am now reading a book by a French journalist from Le Monde diplomatique “North Korea in 1OO Questions” and learning quite a bit, but obviously not enough!!
I’m not familiar with Juliette Morillot’s work apart from bits from BBC.
“La Corée du nord en 100 questions” (2016) does not appear to have an English translation yet; too bad.
North Korea has formal diplomatic relations with 164 countries, including some major ones, according to the U.S.-based National Committee on North Korea.
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/media/2017/12/01/USATODAY/USATODAY/636477212716444042-120117-North-Korea-diplomatic-relations-Relations.png