Frederic Bastiat is widely credited for having said, “If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”

Although there is no evidence that Bastiat had actually said this, there is no doubt that Bastiat would have firmly agreed with the sentiment.

Since the late 18th century, when the world saw the ascendency of capitalist theory – which among other things promotes free trade among all nations – it has often been used as a rallying call to champion peace over war; trade over sanctions. After all, no two countries that have a mutual interest in trading with each other in peace have much incentive to go to war against one another. At least, that is the argument.

One of the most famous modern arguments championing the pacifying nature of free trade was Thomas Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention,” whereby he stated “No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s.”

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, as was proven to be the case when Russia went to war against Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 and 2014, respectively. It goes without saying that the theory is not completely foolproof. However, there is no denying that increased free trade since the latter half of the 20th century, and particularly since the collapse of the Communist Bloc, has had a generally calming effect throughout the world.

So why not champion normalizing ties with North Korea? Why not abandon the sanctions regime, sign a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War, and freely allow goods to cross between borders? Wouldn’t that have a calming effect on the Korean Peninsula?

In other words, pro-engagers are hoping that Kim Jong Un and his lackies are drooling idiots

That is the crux of the argument for peaceful engagement with North Korea and it is supremely naïve.

It is supremely naïve for one major reason. Those who advocate peaceful engagement with North Korea, either knowingly or unknowingly, rely on a big assumption – that the North Korean leadership would allow its people to trade freely with the rest of the world without having itself be at the center of it all. In other words, pro-engagers are hoping that Kim Jong Un and his lackies are drooling idiots who do not know that increased economic relations with the outside world will eventually force them to loosen their grip on power.

‘EXPANDED AS PLANNED’

Probably the best example that exemplifies the North Korean government’s unwillingness to throw open their prison gates to let in the wonderful effects of free trade is the recently mothballed Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC). When the KIC was shut down earlier this year, there was much gnashing of teeth among pro-engagers and one of those who complained about its closure was Moon Chung-in, a former advisor to the late former South Korean Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Without a hint of irony, he bitterly mourned the KIC’s closure when he said “There could have been phenomenal changes in the North if the Kaesong project expanded as planned.”

If it had expanded as planned. Back when the Sunshine Policy was still in full force, there were many elaborate and fanciful plans that were being floated and passed around among South Korean politicians and academics about how the KIC would have been expanded to allow for greater trade and freedom so that every stream and river in North Korea would eventually be flowing with milk and honey. There would have been rice in every bowl and a smile on every child’s face and everyone would have held each other’s hands and sung “Our Wish is Reunification” (Uriui Sowoneun Tongil).

To borrow an old phrase, “Man Proposes, the Kims Dispose.”

Of course, the KIC is not the only example of fanciful plans to open up North Korea that failed miserably. The road to hell is, after all, paved with good intentions and that road is often paved by naïve fools. Hyundai Asan poured millions into constructing the Mount Kumgang Tourist Region but it all essentially came to an end in 2008 when a North Korean soldier murdered a South Korean tourist. Later in 2010, the North Korean government confiscated everything that Hyundai Asan built, which came as a shock to only those who did not possess any sort of sense.

And the list of fools don’t end there. Other great projects that promised to pry open the Hermit Kingdom were the Sinuiju Special Region and Orascom’s North Korean adventure.

As Andrei Lankov said, this long history of people losing everything by doing business with North Korea “has done little historically to stop over-optimistic, over-adventurous or misinformed business types from falling into the same trap, again and again.”

Besides having ended in utter failure, there is one other thing that all of these ill-fated adventures had in common. They were profitable (at least initially) but easily controlled by Pyongyang. The North Korean government made sure that the workers who made their living at Kaesong were separated from the rest of their countrymen as much as possible. When it came to the Sinuiju Special Region, one of the North Korean government’s biggest complaints about it was that had it been completed the way it was intended, South Koreans could have traveled there freely. Orascom’s investments in North Korea have certainly benefited the denizens of Pyongyang – the country’s elites who owe their privileged lifestyles to Kim Jong Un – but hardly anyone else.

Each and every one of those failed do-gooders ought to lie in their beds every night and be constantly haunted

In every instance, the North Korean government has been the final arbiter that came between the North Korean people and those well-meaning business types who dreamed of making a killing while doing a good deed. Each and every one of those failed do-gooders ought to lie in their beds every night and be constantly haunted by the thought of how much their money and their investments had been funneled to help build North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction or how much of their money had been used to continue to imprison the North Korean people in their gulag of a country while the country’s leaders dined and wined like kings.

A GOVERNMENT OF ROBBERS

As long as the North Korean government is able to control the flow of money and assets that go into North Korea, as long as it has the ability to funnel however much money it wishes into its pet projects and expensive toys, as long as it is able to confiscate and “nationalize” foreign assets, the dream of opening up North Korea through the liberalizing effects of free trade will forever remain just that – a fever dream.

The carrot cannot and does not work; at least not in North Korea. Until it does, the stick must be used.

The sanctions and secondary sanctions are slowly but surely drying North Korea’s reserves of cash and President Park Geun-hye’s rather impressive efforts to cut off North Korea’s other lifelines from Iran and Uganda must certainly be annoying the North Korean tyrant. So much so that the boy king is now resorting to somewhat unusual means of funding his tinpot dictatorship – robbing banks.

This is the reality of North Korea. A country that desperately needs money to keep its elites in check and its soldiers armed and fed, but which will not open itself up to free trade – therefore compelling it to threaten, blackmail and rob so that its leaders can continue to reign in hell.

Considering the evil men that we are dealing with in Pyongyang, one has to wonder where the pro-engagers’ seemingly eternal sense of hope and optimism springs from.

Image: Rodong Sinmun