Deal with North Korean troops exposes Putin’s weakness – Twin Cities

Russian President Vladimir Putin is suffering severe manpower losses as a result of his illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. He lost around 200,000 dead, double that number wounded, and at least 500,000 young men fleeing the Russian Federation to avoid the draft: a butcher’s bill of over a million.

As a result, he is turning to international sources of additional labor—Chechens, Cubans and, most recently and dramatically, North Koreans. At least 10,000 Korean infantry soldiers are heading to the battlefields of Ukraine to fight and die in a cause that must be utterly mind-boggling to them. They will indeed be strangers in a strange land, and you can bet Kim Jung Un is holding their families hostage to prevent defections. Many North Korean soldiers will die and some will desert despite the consequences, but their military impact will likely be insignificant.

In return, Kim will likely receive new advanced technology: better satellites, more accurate ballistic missile guidance systems, nuclear weapons advice and more sophisticated cyber tools. This will threaten South Korea – which is vocally opposed. Of course, the US agrees with this assessment and will condemn both Russia and North Korea.

But we should understand that this transaction is clearly an indication of Russian weakness, not strength. Putin was essentially forced to plead a bargain with his fellow dictator in the isolated Hermit Kingdom. What does it mean for global geopolitics?

Stepping back from the tactical impact, which will become clear as the winter unfolds, there is a larger strategic point to be made about Russia’s declining place in the international world. As John McCain said a decade ago, “Russia is a gas station in disguise.” It means its economy is a one-trick pony, or maybe a two-trick pony if you count oil and gas.

Russia now spends over 30% of its gross domestic product on military spending (hardly an investment in a diversified economy); it is under major sanctions from nations that account for over half of the world’s GDP and has around $300 billion in frozen assets in Western banks that will likely end up rebuilding Ukraine.

With a major brain drain as smart young men and their partners flee the draft, it has a demographic problem of the first order as the population continues to age and decline.

And despite Putin’s apparent iron grip on power, consider this: A hundred years ago, another Russian autocrat believed he had an iron grip on power — control of the diplomatic corps, all branches of the military, of the secret services, of the elites of the nobility. , all that mattered. This was Nicholas II, the last Tsar. He and his family were executed in a dirty basement in the Urals.

Just one summer ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the feared and powerful Wagner group and former Putin chef, staged a rebellion that drove his forces to the outskirts of Moscow before it became clear that the Russian Air Force would not support him. He was eventually executed by a “mysterious” explosion of his private plane between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The lesson of his rebellion is clear: while Putin appears to be in control, opposition forces—on both the liberal and conservative fronts—are always on a slow simmer. That’s Russia.

For the West, the real concern is, of course, a nuclear arsenal of some 5,600 warheads. In the turbulent period after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were serious concerns about the centrifugal forces that had broken up the Russian Federation – the core of the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The best course of action for the West should include keeping a close eye on Putin’s nuclear arsenal. It should also include concern about where these weapons end up in a chaotic end following a messy regime change in Moscow. That means we need to do deep research on potential replacements for the current czar, requiring good signals and human intelligence as close to Putin’s court as possible. Our ability to track nuclear weapons in the event of Russian chaos is important – something we developed at the end of the Cold War but has atrophied now.

It also means strengthening the NATO alliance, which collectively remains the best bulwark against continued Russian decline and chaos. Ensuring that Ukraine has a path to full NATO membership, perhaps with a “halfway house” of strong security guarantees is important in the face of Russia’s potential collapse.

All of this, of course, will depend on the next occupant of the White House. If the Trump team takes power, their well-known skepticism of NATO and affinity for Putin will make this more difficult.

All of this is deeply unsettling and full of bad choices. Is it better to see Russia collapse and Putin overthrown, but with a chaotic landscape and loose nukes? Or see Putin stay in control to continue to threaten Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Estonia and other European countries?

There are no good answers, but it clearly makes sense to prepare for the full spectrum of outcomes, especially as we see Russia floundering in Ukraine and recruiting North Koreans for their fight. Not a good sign of a stable regime, to say the least. We should be prepared for a wide range of end games, including a swift collapse of a rotten regime in Moscow.

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, retired US Navy admiral, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.