Comment by supertrope
13 hours ago
SK has a stronger military than NK and twice the population. Of course a large part of that is internal economic failure due to central planning.
13 hours ago
SK has a stronger military than NK and twice the population. Of course a large part of that is internal economic failure due to central planning.
The stronger military doesn't matter when NK has nuclear weapons, which deter any "unification efforts". Sure, South Koreans are doing great, but what difference did sanctions make to the lives of North Koreans?
You seem to be looking for some other outcome. NK with the economy of SK would have been a nuclear threat decades ago and would be stockpiling more nuclear weapons than the US has given their relative GDP allocations..
Would it be nice if sanctions were equivalent to invasion and does that matter to the argument that they are better to implement than do nothing?
North Korea has no dearth of access to nuclear weapons. They get enough raw material from countries other than Canada and the tech they need from China, Pakistan and now Russia. So no, sanctions have not harmed their nuclear programme.
But what they've done is worsen the lot for the layman North Korean.
North Korea was already a nuclear threat decades ago. Where they were lagging behind was in ICBMs that could reach the continental United States.