Another day, another North Korean nuclear threat, another post that writes itself
You know, I really should come up with a macro for these posts, or even a bot that posts them automatically. It only takes three easy steps. First, simply copy and paste North Korea’s latest threat(s) to nuke Seoul …
KCNA news agency quoted an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying in a statement, “We’ll take firm military action if the United States and its allies try to isolate us. [Reuters]
North Korea’s communist regime has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic bomb-making program in defiance of new U.N. sanctions. [….]
A commentary Sunday in the North’s main state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, claimed the U.S. has 1,000 nuclear weapons in South Korea. Another commentary published Saturday in the state-run Tongil Sinbo weekly claimed the U.S. has been deploying a vast amount of nuclear weapons in South Korea and Japan.North Korea “is completely within the range of U.S. nuclear attack and the Korean peninsula is becoming an area where the chances of a nuclear war are the highest in the world,” the Tongil Sinbo commentary said. [AP]
Then, paste in stock text and links for irony: President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 to reward its regime for promising to give up its nuclear weapons. Under , “international terrorism” includes acts that “appear to be intended” to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” Discuss.
… and presto, publish!
On a purely technical level, I guess it’s implied in the legislation you reference that these criteria can only be met by non-state actors. This is interesting as it’s only made explicit in certain USG documents such as the Foreign Relations Authorisation Act 1988-9 (upon which, of course, the FTO lists are based). Perhaps the reason for this is that if the criteria you mention were to apply to states as well, then it’s likely that other states whom it may be perhaps a little too incendiary — even if entirely accurate — to designate as ‘terrorist’ (like, say, Russia), or allies of the US (the best example, I suppose, being Colombia), or even the US itself may meet those criteria from time to time. So it may set something of a dangerous precedent in diplomatic terms.
If they need to stick the DPRK on some list or other in order to sanction them (do they?) they may as well just create a whole new one — “genocidal maniac states” or somesuch — and sanction away…
What section of what law “implies” that only a non-state actor can commit terrorism? I am not speaking of a criminal prosecution for terrorism, but of applying sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and Executive Order 13224.
I cannot name any other state that engages in direct, retail terrorism as it is legally defined as a matter of government policy with malice aforethought, although it’s certainly true that plenty of things soldiers of all nations do in wartime come close to the limit.
Ah, I see. We were taking different pieces of legislation as a reference and I suppose that’s my bad.
Regarding your other point, I would disagree that the DPRK is the only state which engages in terrorism (I guess it all comes down to the ontological instability of ‘terrorism’ as a category), but perhaps that’s an argument for another blog.