North Korea Joins Russia in Ukraine Conflict: A Dangerous Alliance?

North Korea and the Eurasian Alliance: The shift in focus from North Korea to Moscow is due to two parallel reasons related to the changing global geopolitical scene. The beginning of the change was visible in the shift in emphasis on Pyongyang’s “Foreign Ministry website”. Previously an imitation of the official line on supporting China, it was in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan that marked the evolution in a much broader foreign affairs commentary. “collapse of the world American-style” marked what Kim Jong Un called a shift to a neo-Cold War.

This came in the wake of the US-North Korea debacle The Hanoi Summit in 2019. While over the past few decades Pyongyang has capitalized on nuclear deals for economic and security benefits, Afghanistan has signaled a foreign policy reboot. Non-alignment with China and Russia was abandoned.

North Korea threw in its chips with the new multipolar reality, this was a turn to Russia and the specter of the multipolar world. The practical result was five years of nuclear North Korea defense plan which saw a shift to greater self-reliance away from strategic agreements with Washington.

The second reason for North Korea’s realignment was the war in Ukraine. Pyongyang quickly backed the war and admitted two annexed regions. The new Entente cordiale is both strategic, as in its bipolar geopolitical orientation, and transactional, in terms of mutual benefits which appears in both Moscow and Pyongyang.

Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping have united in their desire to counterbalance US dominance in the political economy. Everywhere US hegemony appears to be under threat. From Ukraine to Israel, firefighting has been the traditional US endgame. The wild card, of course, is the US election. A victory for Trump could see the US embrace the new polarity and launch a foreign policy shift towards non-interference. The Nomos of the Earth (1950), as predicted by Carl Schmitt in his influential book, sees the world dividing into “grossraums”.

The Old World of Europe passed into the New World of the USA However, the conflict between economic presence and political presence in the world created geopolitical problems for the USA. The US wants economic dominance at the cost of a confused foreign policy that juggles disparate regimes. , and now the New World is moving East, from Beijing to Moscow.

It sees the internal dissension of the West as self-destructive. Their perception is that liberal democracy is in trouble and is like vultures circling their prey.

Alliance signed this year between Moscow and Pyongyang means greater diplomatic, economic and military support for North Korea. What both countries aspire to is a Keynesian type of war economy. The battlefield in Ukraine is not only strategic, for Russia controlling NATO, but also economic. The question for the West is the extent to which Pyongyang will use the war as an economic boost.

Now I saw RUNNING North Korean troops in the war in Ukraine. The relations are therefore symbiotic for both Russia and North Korea. We can predict North Korea joining The alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) soon, as an integral part of the “war on the dollar”. The more alliances and alternatives Pyongyang creates, the more immune it is to sanctions.

While there has been an increase in Russian skiers in the Masikryong ski resort and North Korean tourists in Moscow, there are perceived limits to cooperation. The Rand Corporation Member that the dynamics of the alliance are constrained, especially by Moscow’s relations with Beijing.

The Chinese mantra of Tianxia sees China as the arbiter of a settled, prosperous Asia, a troubled North Korea, possibly with a conflagration with the South unnecessary, may soon delight in the same thought. Alliances provoke counter-alliances, and North Korean troops in Ukraine have already angered the South with a threat of sending weapons in Kiev. It is no longer a Metternichian system of intelligent diplomacy, or Alexander met Napoleon at Tilsit wine in 1807.

The nature of the technology and the absence of statesmen of caliber risk a serious conflagration in a world war. Bruce Klingner he stated that “North Korea will not send troops to increase its forces in Ukraine.” Such is the speed of change in international relations, with fires breaking out regularly. I think the North Korean-Russian relationship is more strategic than transactional. This is more dangerous because it signals long-term intent.

It illustrates the emptiness of talk of “liberal rule-based order.” The world has entered Bipolarity 2.0 and the rules of the Cold War no longer exist. This is, in part, a result of the West’s inability to play fair in the “Global South”. Globalization became one-sided, the first change of bipolarity was the Russian-Chinese one alliance based on the accumulation of resources. The second is much more serious because it sees the US as vulnerable. Europe is unwilling and unable to counter or interpret the new changes, stuck as it is in a disparate, bureaucratic mess of the EU.

For the Russians, turning away from the West also represents a strategic model. Although relations between Beijing and Moscow are traditionally complicated, Russia goes back to the Soviet era aa The Great Strategic Triangleputting themselves in the middle of the US and China. North Korea, as in the Soviet era, is aware of this new enlargement. Ties with Pyongyang make Russia less dependent on China. It also means adding pressure and leverage on US allies Japan and South Korea.

Evgeny Bazhanov has emphasized the logic of cooperation with North Korea since 2011. Russia wants a stake in the economic recovery in the Asian region; by facilitating the modernization of North Korean factories and the use of labor in Russia, meeting energy requirements and modernizing the North Korean military. The North Korean alliance did not happen overnight and is not just a response to the war in Ukraine. This was helped by Biden rhetoric against China which pushed Xi Jinping closer to Moscow.

The war in Ukraine is not so much about stopping NATO, although that is paradigmatic. It is also about the new vision of Eurasianism in Russia. Looking to the West no longer exists, while Russia looks to the booming East. North Korea is part of this look, and the US and the West are behind the game in cultivating a long-term strategy so dependent on the short or five-year term of liberal democracy. The West fails to understand the limits of economic globalization in foreign policy.

About the author

Brian Patrick Bolger LSE, University of Liverpool. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in universities across Europe. His articles have appeared in USA, UK, Italy, Canada and Germany in magazines such as ‘The Spectator’, ‘Comment Central’, ‘The Times’, ‘The American Spectator’, ‘Asian Affairs’, ‘Deliberation’, ‘L ‘Idro Quotidiano Indipendente di Geopolitica’, ‘National Interest’, ‘Geopolitical Monitor’, ‘Merion West’, ‘Voegelin View’, ‘The Montreal Review’, ‘The European Conservative’, ‘Visegrad Insight’, ‘The Hungarian Review’ ,’ The Salisbury Review’, ‘New English Review’, ‘American Thinker’, ‘Indian Strategic Studies’, ‘Philosophy News’. His new book – “Nowhere Fast: Democracy and Identity in the 21st Century” is now published by Ethics International Press. He is an advisor to several think tanks and corporations on geopolitical issues.

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