TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Peter Beinhart on Israel’s blockade of Gaza:

If all this were actually turning the people of Gaza against Hamas, perhaps—perhaps—it might have a cold-blooded justification. But if there is anything that the U.S. has learned from its half-century long embargo of Cuba, it is that policies of collective punishment don’t turn people against their regimes. To the contrary, they usually offer those regimes an excuse for their inability to govern.

That’s the proper context to consider Monday’s events.

Insofar as the blockade exists and is legal, boarding ships intentionally violating it is perfectly valid. Firing on individuals attacking the soldiers is also perfectly justified. I don’t think the “attack” is unjustified per se, but rather that the blockade it is a result of may be.

Placing sanctions on the Gaza Strip because a terrorist organization, whose professed goal is the destruction of Israel, is a valid response. A blockade may even be justified, but if your goal is to turn the people against Hamas, it is not. The blockade serves only to enrage Palestinians, and that anger results in support for the government. Rather than split the people and government, it provides the government powerful propaganda.

Comparing this to our policy on North Korea, though, is interesting. North Korea is almost entirely cut off from trade with the world community as a result of sanctions, and North Korean ships can be boarded and searched for illegal weaponry. North Korea’s aid comes from the U.S. and South Korea.

The North Korean people live in unimaginable misery due to the government’s idiotic economic policies and military spending. But it could be argued that preventing North Korea from freely trading with the world leads directly to the suffering of their people. After all, selling weapons to other countries does provide revenue that could pay for food and medical supplies for their people. What is different between Israel’s embargo on the Gaza Strip and the world embargo on North Korea?

The difference is their goal. The world’s policy on North Korea is meant to starve the government of goods and funding so it collapses, while Israel’s policy is meant both to starve the government and to make life difficult for the people. The North Korean policy almost certainly contributes to the North Korean people’s suffering, but it does so unintentionally. Israel’s policy, however, seeks to make life difficult on regular people to try to turn them against the Hamas-controlled government.

I’m not sure this distinction matters much at all, however. Both seek to topple the government, or at least make its operations so difficult that they are willing to negotiate with us. Both contribute to the suffering of regular people who have nothing to do with their government’s policies. Both haven’t worked–the North Korean government still exists, and is even more recalcitrant now than before–so using Beinhart’s analysis, both should be equally unjustified.

Why, then, is there so much outrage at Israel’s embargo, but not sanctions placed on North Korea? If we accept Beinhart’s argument, and the equivalency of Israel’s embargo and ours on North Korea, does this mean all sanctions are futile, immoral, and should not be used? If sanctions cannot be used, then, what options (besides war) do governments and the world economy have in dealing with nations acting against their interests?