North Korea’s Government Is Terrible — And That’s Beside the Point

America doesn’t choose its enemies for their moral qualities

by ANDREW DOBBS

When I wrote a piece about how the U.S. government misrepresents North Korea’s alleged threat to the world, I didn’t focus on North Korea’s problems — writing things that everyone already knows is boring.

This failure to mention the regime’s repression, however, led to a great deal of consternation from readers across the political spectrum. Military buffs on one Facebook forum called me a liberal and told me to leave the country.

Actual liberals were aghast — and certain I was confused. Even self-proclaimed socialists on Reddit were scandalized. It truly brought everyone together.

There were many others who liked the article of course, and nowhere in the piece did I say the North Korean government was a good one. Yet arguing that there’s logic behind their actions and a right to self-defense was still widely considered tantamount to endorsing forced labor camps or writing in Kim Jong Un for mayor.

I could see two very clear facts at play here. First, the demand that I write about the North Korean government’s repression had nothing to do with informing readers because everyone knows this fact already. And second, that the failure to say this created stress in the audience, provoking a backlash.

The easy conclusion here is that the reflexive need to relate all writing about North Korea back to their repressive government is a conditioned response, it’s a trope that has become requisite to every story about the country and a sign of the author’s political acceptability.

The function of this programming is obvious. If every story about North Korea has to focus on the government’s repression and most stories about North Korea are told in the context of U.S. military aggression against the country, then the implication is that the U.S. military threatens North Korea because its government is so notably repressive.

But this is obvious bullshit. The United States doesn’t care about human rights or freedom when deciding which nations to support or oppose — North Korea’s repression is irrelevant to America’s military conflict with the country.

Freedom House, an international human rights NGO, publishes a report every year called “Freedom in the World” that classifies the governments of the world as “free,” “partly free” or “not free.” Indexes like this have big problems, but for our purposes this one works.

Freedom House consider North Korea “not free,” just in case anyone was worried.

There are, in fact, 55 countries labeled “not free” in the last report, and the United States has military or close economic relationships with at least 30 of them — just under 60 percent. I say “at least” because a few of them are hard to judge.

Is the United States allied with Iraq, a “not free” country whose government the United States literally invented? The Iraqis seem pretty tired of America’s shit, but they have let us bomb ISIS, so it’s a tough call.

Similar questions exist for Libya, Yemen and Gambia — basically the countries where we have directly or indirectly intervened in recent years. America’s interventions make countries less free, not more, it seems. Yemen, for example, now has two terrible governments, one the U.S. government supports and the other the USA helps Saudi Arabia commit atrocities to suppress.

Oh, and in case you missed it, a coalition of Nigerian, Senegalese, Ghanaian, Malian and Togolese military forces invaded Gambia at the beginning of 2017 to install a new president. The old government was the “not free” one, and while its relations with the United States were strained, it welcomed Peace Corps assistance and a bilateral immunity agreement for its military.

This means that the United States would hold that government harmless before international courts even if its military, say, kidnapped more than 1,000 people and disappeared them on charges of witchcraft after their president decided that a witch had killed his aunt in 2009.

To be fair, the United States did in fact support military intervention to end this regime, one of the last foreign policy acts of Pres. Barack Obama’s administration. Other countries on the list have enjoyed somewhat less ambiguous support.

Turkmenistan, for example, was host to a cult of personality for their late president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov that made the Kims look like they weren’t really trying. He had a golden statue in the capital with a motor that turned it throughout the day so that it always faced the sun, and every media broadcast began with an oath that the speaker wished that their tongue would wither away if it ever spoke against Niyazov.

Despite this, the United States happily used Turkmenistan airspace during the initial Afghan invasion and there were credible if unconfirmed claims that the CIA maintained a base there. The country has received small amounts of U.S. military aid and weapons, and in 2015 the U.S. military trained 60 of its officers for God-only-knows-what.

Niyazov died in 2006, and his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, dialed back some of his cult, even taking down the rotating statue — though he later replaced it with a gold statue of himself riding a mighty steed — and saying that the tongue withering declaration should only be used for “special occasions.”

Still, the new Turkmen regime allows no political opposition and torture is endemic — it rivals North Korea for its repression, but it’s acceptable to the United States because of its strategic support for America’s imperialist adventures. In fact, here’s a photo of Berdimuhamedow with Pres. Barack and Obama and Michelle Obama in 2009.