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The Placebo Effect
// North Korea and the Cure for the World's Ills
The UN Security Council resolution on North Korea adopted in New York will permit the world's leading superpowers and their leaders, as well as the international community itself, to immediately resolve several issues at once. We will say first, though, that for resolving the main issue, the issue for the sake of which the resolution was adopted – a strengthening of the nuclear nonproliferation regime and the averting of the appearance in the world of another nuclear superpower – that piece of paper will have no meaning whatsoever.
In essence, the resolution can be compared to a medicinal preparation that causes a so-called placebo effect in a patient who takes it. A placebo is an empty, prettily-colored pill, and the point of the idea is that the person who takes it does not know that it's empty, and he believes wholeheartedly in the enormous strength of the medicine. The overall effect is one of autosuggestion (that's what the idea relies on), and the sick person begins to get well.
That's what the resolution concerning North Korea is. In celebrating the resolution, US President George Bush was in fact thrilled by the fact that he can once again feel his own significance not only in the eyes of Americans, but in the eyes of the whole world. After all, the resolution was peddled by his administration. After so much bad luck and so many setbacks on the road to the November congressional elections, the Republicans have swallowed the miracle pill and convinced themselves that now they'll "get better" – they'll be able to conquer the domestic political situation that's killing them now and go on to win the elections. Now we all get to watch to see whether the placebo effect starts working for the American patient any time soon.
The same situation is happening in the United Nations Security Council. So much has been said lately regarding the ineffectiveness of this international mechanism, which, they say, like the UN itself, already has no influence over anything! And now the Security Council has decided to relive its youth and, in the moment of the selection of its new general secretary, to convince itself and the rest of the world that now it has begun its new life. Specifically, it will once again take the regulation of global crises into its hands, having limbered up its numb limbs on Kim Jong-il, who will have punctually returned to hand. For the UN Security Council, like for George Bush, the resolution concerning North Korea is to play to role of a miracle drug that relies exclusively on self-persuasion.
But that's not all. Already, beyond the Security Council, the world powers, who had seriously lost faith in the possibility of finding a common language with each other, seem to be coming together again owing to the unpleasant escapades of Kim Jong-il and recovering the squandered possibility of agreeing with each other (or trading with each other). The best example is the United States and Russia. And for them the placebo tablet is exactly what the doctor ordered. It's not a sure thing that relations between Moscow and Washington will go on the mend, but why not try autosuggestion?
And what of the main personage, around whom this whole thing got started – the Korean patient? It's not likely that the sanctions package will fundamentally change something in the "country of morning freshness." It looks like a medicine for Kim Jong-il hasn't been invented yet.
Sergey Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 16, 2006
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