Years ago, I read Massey’s Dreadnought and the Coming of The Great War [amzn] and one tidbit stuck in my mind: naval blockades are an act of war. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, usually cutting down to the core of the conflict – war supplies or food.
A blockade is a siege, really – it’s just that the attacker builds the wall and mans it, instead of attacking a defended position. It’s aggressive as all hell because it’s relying on the original weapon of mass destruction: hunger.
The US Naval blockade goes in on Cuba, 1898 [source]
Stalin was right: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction, too: it affects everyone in the target area more or less equally. If left to its logical conclusion, like at the siege of Leningrad in WW2, you get people eating shoe leather, corpses, cats, dogs, wallpaper paste – whatever can be metabolized. It’s also got statistics: at Leningrad, 30% of the population starved to death. Over the course of 900 days, surrounded by the Germans, 800,000 people died. Another thing about weapons of mass destruction: their effect is so unsparing and ruthless that we compare the weapon not the casualty-count – at Leningrad 10 times as many people died as at Hiroshima; it’s the total statistic that transfixes us: 30% at Leningrad, 20% at Hiroshima.
Right now, as you’re reading this, the United States is engaged in naval blockades of North Korea and Yemen. In both blockades, it’s life-supplies that are being cut: food, energy, medicine. The effect of those blockades is mass destruction – the goal is the disintegration of civil society. The motive is, well, vague mumble mumble politics mumble. I really don’t know why the US is bothering with North Korea except that it feels that its ability to force its will on everyone must be seen to be absolute.
Here’s the crazy part: they sell this idea as “liberation.” The US, right now, is making calculations that sound an awful lot like, “if the North Koreans have a bad harvest, we’ll be able to finally bend them over the negotiating table.” The person they are trying to influence is the sole leader, Kim Jong Un; the target they are using WMD against is the entire population of North Korea. In Yemen, there’s no Kim to point at; it’s just “insurgents” that are probably “backed by Iran” but in order to bend the insurgents over the negotiating table, the US is willing to blockade the entire country and use starvation against the entire civilian population. Meanwhile, the “insurgents” are probably
Cholera in Yemen.
Back in the crusader times cholera was what would bring down the castle. Bad water. Weakened by lack of food. In crusader times a castle might be under siege for years, and would hold out because there wasn’t any alternative.
The US, right now, is talking about “freedom” and being an important player in regulating the world’s politics, and they are using medieval weapons of mass destruction to make their point.
Not even to win a war, or conquer a castle. The US does this just to make a point.
See if you can wrap your brain around this: the US stated position is that we must starve the North Koreans in order to help them.
Saudi Arabia spent unknown millions on a public relations campaign to talk about how they are sending aid to help the poor people in Yemen. [irin]
The charm offensive organised by Pagefield included a short trip to Yemen for select journalists. A recent CNN report shows boxes of aid being unloaded from a truck. They’re labelled “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and bear the logo of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Centre. Similar scenes can be scene on clips on the YCHO website.
The Saudis are loudly spending billions of dollars on aid, to help the people that they are targeting. If they are concerned with the humanitarian disaster that is happening in Yemen, they could save billions and stop “helping” the Yemenis by dropping high explosive on them.
The UN is there to help too. Because the US is involved, the international community will have to sit on the sidelines and watch.
Remember. Weapons of mass destruction. How is this different from using nuclear weapons? It’s slower. That’s all. We cannot distill cruelty into measuring-cups and compare.
America doesn’t notice, it’s too busy watching the capering antics of a hair-piece stuck on top of a glob of chicken manure. He should be in The Hague on trial for crimes against humanity, not under investigation over some stupid corrupt Russian reach-around. He should be seated next to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney; I’m sure they’d find a lot to talk about.
The North Korean propaganda arm is a bit florid, but is basically right: [sky]
“Should the United States and its followers try to enforce the naval blockade against our country, we will see it as an act of war and respond with merciless self-defensive counter-measures as we have warned repeatedly,” said KCNA, citing a foreign ministry spokesman.
Remember, they’re the Bad Guys. And they’re nowhere near as scary as the Good Guys.
Also, I understand the twice-annual major US-South Korean joint military exercises (which surely won’t have any DPRK military guys thinking ‘best be on high alert and mobilise just in case it isn’t just an exercise’) happen at the same time as the planting and harvesting peaks. Surely just a coinkydink.
I misread that the first time.
American politicians cannot be that naive. Kim Jong-un looks pretty well fed, it should be obvious that he hasn’t experienced hunger and he isn’t going to starve even if the country has a poor harvest. Moreover, American politicians should have already noticed that leaders of totalitarian countries don’t seem to worry whenever their citizens are starving. For me this whole thing sounds more like, “We don’t like North Koreans, therefore let’s just kill some of them for the lulz.”
Ieva Skrebele@#3:
American politicians cannot be that naive. Kim Jong-un looks pretty well fed, it should be obvious that he hasn’t experienced hunger and he isn’t going to starve even if the country has a poor harvest.
No, really, they are. Or they pretend really well.
The premise is that the people will pull away and stop supporting their totalitarian dictator if they are pounded hard enough. That was the same reasoning they used in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, etc. Beat the people hard enough and they will something something quit fighting.
Never mind that the people already would probably be happy to stop fighting, it’s just that they can’t because they’re being bombed from high altitude and they can’t surrender – it’s the leader (who demonstrably does not give a shit about their people) who would have to surrender. If you think the scenario through, it’s bloody nonsense.
For me this whole thing sounds more like, “We don’t like North Koreans, therefore let’s just kill some of them for the lulz.”
That seems about right.
Although it may not be that they care about the North Koreans or Yemenis enough to want to specifically kill them. Maybe they just want to see explosions because explosions are very cool from a distance. And they’re more satisfying if they have a point, therefore the point is “look at that motherfucker – we pasted him!”
Any rational person should look at these leaders and realize “they are so horrible and eager to do these things, what’s stopping them from doing them to us?”
Ketil Tveiten@#1:
Surely just a coinkydink.
Definitely one of those.
Pre-medieval really. The Peloponnesian War was resolved largely thanks to naval blockades at the Hellespont preventing Athens from bringing in grain supplies from the Black Sea region. Also plague in the crowded streets of Athens, following their decision to hole up behind the long walls to spite Spartan attempts to engage them on land and burn their crops. Not that the Athenians were above trying exactly the same thing to bring tiny allied cities to heel.
Reginald Selkirk@#2:
I misread that the first time.
Maybe you just read the meaning behind the words.
Reginald Selkirk, everything is self-destructive when you’re dealing with the US. Do nothing? Drone strikes and “no boots on the ground” (give or take a few). Insurgents kill a few US soldiers? More soldiers take their place. Build actual WMDs that might reach the US? Blockaded into oblivion before you get there. Okay, actually the jury is still out on the last option and it’s hard to blame NK for trying.
And, as Ieva Skrebele already alluded to, some weapons of mass destruction are more selective than others. Hunger and disease – or, more generally, poverty, a WMD that is being deployed worldwide to different degrees – are far less likely to affect the leadership of the target. The lord of the castle is the last person to go hungry and if anyone has access to the dwindling medical supplies it’s him. (He also gets to sleep in a clean bed well away from the sick). Starvation and squalor are the privilege of the peasants and the poor sods acutally defending the castle wall.
@Ieva Skrebele@#2:
I wrote:
the goal is the disintegration of civil society
That’s what I think is going on. When the war pigs talk about making the people reject their leaders, the requirement for that is the destruction of society. They want to demolish civilization in the target area so thoroughly that the survivors there will welcome them as the new rulers of the shattered wreckage.
cartomancer@#6:
Pre-medieval really. The Peloponnesian War was resolved largely thanks to naval blockades at the Hellespont preventing Athens from bringing in grain supplies from the Black Sea region. Also plague in the crowded streets of Athens, following their decision to hole up behind the long walls to spite Spartan attempts to engage them on land and burn their crops.
True. Probably the first castle was the site of the first siege.
When you look at early forts like Dun Aengus, it’s not hard to see that siege warfare was going to inevitably depend on starving the target. The ancients just weren’t so concerned with pretending to care – Genghis Khan’s army was a weapon of mass destruction, too: when they said “we are going to kill everyone” they did.
komarov@#8:
The lord of the castle is the last person to go hungry and if anyone has access to the dwindling medical supplies it’s him.
Yes, it has always been that way. So, anyone who says they are going to influence the people to reject their leaders using these methods must know, in advance, that it is not going to work. That it never has worked.
Of course I have heard the argument that “once North Korean citizens experience famine, they will revolt against their leader and overthrow the dictatorship.” But it’s just obvious that this is not going to work. People won’t rebel there; they’ll just die of starvation instead.
If completely demolishing a civilization is the goal, then simply cutting food imports won’t be enough (North Koreans have already survived a bunch of famines). For that U.S. would also need to drop a bunch of bombs on the already starving people. There’s also a problem with “the survivors there will welcome them as the new rulers,” because surviving North Korean citizens would probably hate U.S. and blame them for their misfortune.
Let’s pretend for a second that Kim Jong-un actually does give a shit about his people. What would that change? Should he then open his borders to US invasion? Turn North Korea into Iraq 2.0? Give the US another perch on which to overlook China, possibly dragging the world into WW3?
I am ignorant of the extent to which he actually gives a shit, as well as the extent to which he even fully comprehends the situation and its array of potential outcomes. But does it even matter in the end?
invivoMark@#13:
Let’s pretend for a second that Kim Jong-un actually does give a shit about his people. What would that change?
Well, he would have formed a constitutional democracy and handed over power, then run for president and been elected by the now-adoring masses. I don’t think that would change anything.
I understand what is going on but I don’t see anything in the Yemen or North Korea situations that look like a path to some kind of valuable accomplishment. The only paths that look like a valuable accomplishment involve diplomacy, trade, normalized relations, and building a modern economy that can be looted by Wall St.
Unless you’re Caesar (at Alesia), in which case you build two sets of walls, one inside the other, around a settlement at the top of a hill sitting between a pair of rivers, that was already fortified (but apparently not to your complete satisfaction).
And after all the prep work to make sure they surrendered before starvation set in, there was still a battle. And then they surrendered. Boggles the mind.
consciousness razor@#15:
Unless you’re Caesar (at Alesia), in which case you build two sets of walls, one inside the other, around a settlement at the top of a hill sitting between a pair of rivers, that was already fortified (but apparently not to your complete satisfaction).
Caesar was exceptional in all ways.
Also, naval blockades won’t stop food getting into North Korea from China (or South Korea for that matter), and they have vested interests in not being flooded with refugee attempts. My (admittedly outdated) understanding is that China has been one of North Korea’s primary sources of food and relief supplies for quite some time now, even if their relationship is rocky.
As for
that’s been a common story in the inverse, as well: propped-up dictators skimming off any incoming relief supplies to make sure their own army and supporters got fed first and well.
“The Original Weapon of Mass Destruction”
It’s an action, not a concrete weapon. A metaphorical one, yes.
Alas, its effects are inversely proportional to the individual’s power.
Sure, destroy the populace, destroy the enemy.
—
Also worth noting nukes pollute the target area, and possibly more. Nastily and lengthily, at best. And they’re instantaneous in effect.
(Also, Carthago delenda est)
—
IMO, what’s happening in Yemen is clearly and unambigously what the UN was supposed prevent or fix. Ah well.
(Yugoslavia, it kinda tried sorta, and fucked up. But at least there was a token effort!)
PS I guess one could argue that the UN has been successful because WW3 has not yet eventuated, and we only notice the failures not the successes. FWTW.
PPS I remember when this video came out and it seemed so overt (propaganda-wise) that I felt cynical thinking of it as propaganda. Seems longer, actually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs
(Music video by Sting performing Russians. (C) 2005 A&M Records)
[duh. released in June 1985. Yeah, it was longer than 2005 — no wonder I was naive]
bryanfeir@#7:
propped-up dictators skimming off any incoming relief supplies to make sure their own army and supporters got fed first and well.
Somalia – the starvation there was entirely political. I don’t remember who said it but someone I was reading somewhere claimed that most famines are caused by politics, not drought or disaster or even shortage of food. The reason that the US troops went in and pointlessly slaughtered people in the “Black Hawk Down” incident was to try to kill Mohammed Aideed – a warlord who had been making the problem worse by hoarding food for his troops. As if killing him and half his people wouldn’t just result in lots of opportunities for promotion in the warlord department.
Well, maybe…
…or it could have led to parades with lots of little kids waving tiny US flags as the population celebrates their heroic liberators, the bringers of freedom and liberty. By the same token, any success by the US in North Korea* might result in reunification, liberty, democracy, prosperity and, perhaps most importantly, a 400 foot tall, gilded statue of Donald The Saviour, designed by the two countries’ foremost artists and architects. I imagine this to be the official goal of any US
interferenceoperation in foreign countries, invited or otherwise: Flags and ticker-tape parades. (Those always look good on the front page)*Definition of success: Pending
@ 3 Ieva Skrebele
American politicians cannot be that naïve.
Of course they can be, well actually are. Remember Cuba, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, ….?
Most American politicians do not seem to have ever lived, or even traveled, outside of the USA and they believe their own propaganda.
jrkrideau@#24:
Most American politicians do not seem to have ever lived, or even traveled, outside of the USA
I would love to see a breakdown of international experience by state, and by party. Because I bet you’re right – republicans’ experience going abroad is pretty much limited to the bombardier’s seat in a bomber, or going over to shoot civilians. “Yeah, I saw a lot of Vietnam.”
Only a person who hasn’t traveled around much can believe that America is the greatest country in the world, that all people living in other countries would love to move to U.S., that all foreigners admire U.S. I know Americans who actually believe these things, who assume that this is how foreigners perceive their country. If they tried traveling or just speaking with people from other countries, it would quickly turn out that these perceptions are not true.