Sarah Palin lost big on North Korea tonight. She proposed imposing economic sanctions on North Korea. This is actually John McCain's idea because McCain is very hawkish against North Korea. This is a complete loser idea because it will only make North Korea more belligerent. Barack Obama and Joe Biden can pound on John McCain and Sarah Palin on this.
Since Kim Dae-jung became the president of South Korea in 1998, the Clinton/Gore administration supported Kim Dae-jung's reconcilatory Sunshine Policy. With the support of the United States, Kim Dae-jung has made a lot of progress on the South-North relations. Kim Dae-jung visited North Korea's dictator Kim Jung-il in Pyongyang and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong fight for South Korea's democracy and improving the relationship with North Korea. At the same time, the Clinton/Gore administration had made a tremendous progress on the U.S. relations with North Korea with then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit to Pyongyang.
When George W. Bush came into power, the first foreign leader he openly insulted was Kim Dae-jung and Bush insulted him at the White House. The reason was that Bush opposed everything Bill Clinton did and one of the things Clinton did was his support of the Sunshine Policy. Bush's mistreatment of Kim Dae-jung stirred South Korean's anger against the Bush/Cheney administration. Democrats like John Edwards and John Kerry blasted Bush for insulting Kim Dae-jung. In 2002, Senate Arms Services Committee Chair Carl Levin blasted Bush for pulling South Korea off the rug. Joe Biden also called for Bush to have a better dialog with South Korea.
With the emergence of Christopher R. Hill as U.S. ambassador to South Korea and later as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and with the conviction of Scooter Libby that wiped out Dick Cheney's foreign policy making power in the White House, Bush began to take the Clinton approach and supported South Korea's then Roh Moo-hyun administration's extension of the Sunshine Policy.
Both Democrats and Republicans (other than neocons) oppose imposing economic sanctions on North Korea. Barack Obama and Joe Biden and even George W. Bush and Condi Rice agree that imposing economic sanctions against North Korea will simply not work. (Dick Cheney might want it though.) North Korea is trying to develop the nuclear weapon (or nucular weapon as Sarah Palin pronounces) to use it as a tool to negotiate for food aid and security guarantee from the United States. Economic sanctions against North Korea will make Pyongyang even a more belligerent security threat in East Asia and destabilize the region.
Also, imposing economic sanctions against North Korea is impossible. All parties in the six-party talk (South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and North Korea) will be against it, even though South Korea and Japan now have conservative governments. The idea of imposing economic sanctions against North Korea is very extreme. And it is John McCain's idea that Sarah Palin articulated in tonight's debate and blew it completely.