Soft Power

How to wreck the Syrian economy virtually overnight: Interesting piece on NRO. Those who want to appease Syria, Iran, North Korea, etc., often portray the process as a false choice between appeasement and war. But the combination of bold public statements and economic leverage are precisely the kind of “soft power” that works so well on regimes that depend on exports–like Syria, Iran, and North Korea (and which Europe undermined in Iraq).

Syria has just lost one valuable source of revenue from smuggling Saddam’s oil. It’s about to lose another, ie., its pillaging of its wealthier neighbor in Lebanon. Losing its oil exports–which are small enough not to have much effect on the world’s oil supply–would be crippling. There’s plenty of time for us to demand truly free elections in Lebanon next month, or else. And if Assad holds them, the Syrian people will get the idea. Exit Assad.

Iran exports virtually all of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. One carrier battle group could put a stop to that. Iran will hold an election in June. If the United States sets Iran up to reject a decent-looking disarmament proposal, and Europe doesn’t stab us in the back again, we could have a setup for sanctions at around the same time. Exit the ayatollahs.

Incidentally, this analysis at Winds of Change, though already a good piece about Iran, works even better for me when you apply it to North Korea.

North Korea could be the hardest of the three to crack, despite the fact that it likely has the smallest economic margin of error. It has two long coastlines and three land borders with countries in various states of willingness to support its government. But what I’ve read suggests that they’re in such a state of bankruptcy that they’re already pitching “core” people out of the ship of state. China is an enormous X Factor–in its implicit threat to take over, or its ability to partially circumvent a blockade. The key is to make North Korea ungovernable for any dictatorial regime by mobilizing its population and making control prohibitively expensive. It also means letting the North Korean people themselves persuade the world to help them instead of those who rule them.

Establishing good commo and guerrilla logistics will be the key to liberating North Korea.