A total oil embargo on North Korea would only lead to war, as it did with imperial Japan

Echoing 1930s imperial Japan, North Korea today is demanding respect. To use a phrase recently levelled at North Korea, by the 1930s Japan was “begging for war” (with China, at least), and an oil embargo merely hardened Japanese entrenchment.

Last week, following a series of missile launches and an underground nuclear test, the US ambassador to the UN declared North Korea to be “begging for war”. This week, the 15-member UN Security Council unanimously passed a raft of new sanctions, including a universal ban on purchasing North Korean textiles (the country’s second-largest export, after coal) and the cessation of all gas exports to the isolated state.

What’s more interesting is what was culled from America’s original proposal: the use of force, if deemed necessary, to board and inspect ships to enforce these economic sanctions; an asset freeze; a travel ban for Kim Jong-un; visa cancellations for North Korean workers. The last one means Russia can still use North Korean labour (although no new visas are to be issued).

Most significantly, oil exports are to be capped but not banned outright: China and Russia know that a complete oil cut-off would heighten North Korea’s self-destructive tendencies and hasten its collapse, as occurred when the US and friends invoked an oil embargo on an increasingly aggressive imperial Japan.

In both imperial Japan and modern-day North Korea, we see an authoritarian militaristic regime headed by a cult leader propagandised into a godlike figure. But, unlike Japan in the early 1930s, North Korea has no empire and no serious expectations of attaining one. However, it does share other characteristics with imperial Japan. Foremost is a desire to be respected by the more established powers, including those in the West. Alone, this demand for respect is of limited concern to the world; but when combined with rampant militarism and Kim’s self-serving and overblown sense of his own power, we are in the deepest nuclear crisis since the cold war.