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North Korea has set off a third nuclear test explosion. It has done so in defiance of the UN, America, Japan and even, reportedly, its sponsor, China. It has said to hell with everyone, in a brutal comment on western economic sanctions. The UN security council met yesterday and Washington threatened "significant consequences" — code nowadays for "tighter sanctions". Every shred of evidence suggests that these will not achieve the declared goal. They will merely add to the impoverishment of North Korea's people by its own government. Sanctions are the most counter-productive tool known to diplomacy. Yet we keep imposing them. Why’? Sanctions assume that all countries react to external pressure as might a capitalist democracy. They assume a misguided regime will change its mind and put financial advantage above its definition of national interest. "Smart sanctions" (really dumb sanctions) further assume the rich can be punished without punishing the poor, and that all dictators' wives want to fly abroad and shop at Harrods. They assume that trade guides political action and political action trumps dictatorship. Economic sanctions are hugely popular to western politicians, not because of their effect but because of their cause: the desire to stand on an international stage and being seen to "do something". They are the least- cost first resort of the laptop bombardiers of global intervention. They sound punitive and aggressive without inflicting any hardship on the imposer. After North Korea the other target in the sanctions frame is Iran. Everything at present suggests that ever-tighter sanctions have done nothing to curb Iran's nuclear programme. Indeed, by inducing paranoia, probably the reverse. Sanctions have certainly "bitten", to the glee of their advocates. They have brought inflation and a collapse in the currency, the rial. They have harmed ordinary people and solidified sentiment against the west and the "great Satan" of the US. Assassination and cyber- weapons have wiped out a few scientists and scrambled a few computers. What sanctions have not done is weakened the power of the ayatollahs or their private army, the Revolutionary Guards. Both seem as secure as ever, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018200