Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the imposition of sanctions.
It did however work when they finally implemented them properly.
That is not what I said at all. I merely pointed out that it’s rather hard to have a working economy when most of the world won’t trade with you.
That’s not an accurate description of what happened at all though. China didn’t want to trade with the west, they pursued a deliberate policy of isolationism after the cultural revolution until the rapprochement at the end of the 60s, after which the US developed significant trade links with them. The Russians were the same at first, up until Khrushchev arrived on the scene, Europe was keen to establish trade ties with them, it was only the US that remained sceptical.
So North Korea has nothing to do with the cold war. So noted.
Only in a broad sense, the US was never directly at war with China or the USSR. The cold war ended and the US is still technically in a state of war with North Korea.
Uh huh. Violent theocratic radicals seemed to be a-ok when they were fighting communists. Oddly enough when they start saying that maybe the West sucks too, they are no longer ok.
They were never ok, they were just useful for a time.
Oddly (and probably more nominally than anything else) Saddam’s Iraq was supposedly socialist.
No, Saddam’s Baath party were not socialist. The original Baathists were somewhat socialist (and also somewhat fascist), though predominantly pan-arab nationalists. Saddam was a pure fascist Iraqi nationalist.
Possibly because I don’t care about distinctions between your version of free trade or WTO tariffs or whatever. The difference I see is countries we like or need which we trade with. And countries we don’t, which we don’t trade with.
They are important distinctions though, so you should care about them. India for example is far more protectionist and socialist in its economic policies than China, both are members of the WTO, neither are subject to sanctions from the US or the west generally (India was for a brief period related to nuclear proliferation). The west happily trades with anyone regardless of whether they’re fully paid up members of the free-market capitalists club, unless they have good reason not to.
