Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a rare ‘friendly state visit’ to North Korea on June 19, bolstering a geopolitical realignment with significant implications. Dictatorial leaders, both the host and the guest, preside over heavily sanctioned nations that are at odds with the industrialised world. Both are nuclear powers — one de jure, possessing the largest number of warheads and the other, de facto. One of them is at war with its smaller Western neighbour, and the other has been threatening to inflict one on its southern half. The countries share a short, approximately 40-km-long land and maritime border.
That is where the similarities end. Russia is the largest country in the world, straddling two continents and covering an area of 17.1 million square kilometres, a former superpower and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In comparison, North Korea is a tiny nation, with a landmass of merely 120,000 square kilometres. Isolated and impoverished, it would barely figure in the global consciousness were it not for its weapons of mass destruction and potential for mischief.
It has been a fiefdom of three generations of the ruthless Kim clan since 1948. Historically, it has been propped up by Moscow and Beijing, at times individually and sometimes jointly, as is the case now.
Traditionally, Moscow has held court and Pyongyang has come calling. Kim Jong Un has already visited Russia twice to ingratiate himself with Putin. The latter paid a brief visit to North Korea in July 2000, soon after taking office during the reign of Kim Jong Un’s father. North Korea has always looked up to Russia (earlier the Soviet Union) for political, economic and military support. That had begun to dwindle in recent times, due to Russia’s own resource constraints and the emergence of China as a major economic and military power. Nevertheless, the Kims have been steadfast in cultivating and leveraging relations with both their giant neighbours.
The relationship has not always been smooth. A fiercely independent Pyongyang has charted its own course, at times against the wishes of Russia and China, particularly when it comes to its own security. For example, it conducted six nuclear tests, which were strongly condemned by the comity of nations. It caused embarrassment and concern in both Moscow and Beijing. Neither country is comfortable with North Korea becoming a nuclear weapon state, as it could set off a chain reaction with Seoul and Tokyo following suit.
At the same time, they do not want to see the collapse of the Kim regime or its replacement by one that is pro-Western. As such, until recently, both countries had gone along with the US-led efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula, even at the cost of annoying North Korea.
That cooperative approach has since been abandoned with the fraying of Moscow’s and Beijing’s ties with the industrialised nations. In March this year, Russia exercised its veto at the UN Security Council (UNSC) to put an end to the monitoring of sanctions on North Korea by a panel of experts appointed by the international body. It opined that the sanctions were strangling Pyongyang and that the panel of experts was playing into the West’s hands by peddling biased information and focusing on “trivial matters that are not commensurate with the problems facing the peninsula”. Hitherto, for fourteen years, Moscow had never objected to the panel’s work.
So, what changed? The straightforward answer is – Ukraine war. Moscow suddenly rediscovered the utility of its highly militarised tiny neighbour. If Western voices are to be believed, North Korea has already provided 11,000 container loads of armaments and munitions, including missiles and artillery shells, critical for the Russian offensive in Ukraine. Kim has since become an indispensable ally of Putin, who needs to be kept in good humour. The grateful Russian Czar even gifted an Aurus Senat limousine to Kim, a car he himself uses. It mattered little that luxury cars are a proscribed item for the North under UN sanctions.
The Ukraine war could not have come at a more opportune time for Kim, who is treated as a pariah by most world leaders. He had been dealing with a failed summit with former US President Donald Trump, and neglect by current US President Joe Biden. Adding to his woes were increasingly aggressive and sophisticated joint military exercises by South Korea, the US and Japan, the reintroduction of US strategic assets (read nukes) in the Korean theatre, a stuttering economy bruised by the Covid pandemic and severe shortages of food and fuel.
Bitter and frustrated, Kim Jong Un pulled out all stops in advancing his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme, conducting 68 missile tests, the highest ever in 2022. Speculation was rife that he would carry out the country’s seventh nuclear test inter alia to validate the efficacy of its miniaturised nuclear warheads. Fortunately, that has not happened till date, though the possibility still cannot be ruled out.
Some Western analysts believe that a dramatic provocation could be staged by Pyongyang, possibly in October just before the US presidential elections on November 5. It is difficult to anticipate the shape or form it may take. The North can be ingeniously innovative. In recent weeks, for example, they despatched hundreds of giant balloons floating into South Korean airspace filled with filth and garbage, which mercifully did not contain any hazardous substances, but caused enough anxiety among the citizens.
Earlier in January, Kim denounced South Korea as the ‘primary enemy’, abandoned the goal of reunification, cut off inter-Korean communication channels, shuttered all three agencies responsible for overseeing relations with the South and ordered the dismantling of the monument of reunification in Pyongyang.
He also scrapped the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA) signed in November 2018, in which both Koreas had agreed on several confidence-building measures in the security domain. In November 2023, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea had partially suspended CMA in response to the launch of its first spy satellite by Pyongyang (also in November).
This is the background in which the visit took place. President Putin was accompanied by his Deputy PM Denis Mantrurov, Defence Minister Andrei Belousov and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, among other senior officials. He was greeted in person by Kim Jong Un at the tarmac on arrival. A rapturous welcome followed in the city. Pyongyang was dolled up in honour of the visiting dignitary.
As widely anticipated, the sides concluded a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement which includes a mutual defence pact, significantly committing them to extend “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties”. Both countries have described the agreement as “a truly breakthrough document”. Cooperation in other areas such as energy, trade, investment, transport, agriculture, tourism and culture, reportedly, were also discussed.
Predictably, Western capitals are concerned about the development. It is a fact that Putin’s visit and conclusion of the strategic partnership agreement would have far-reaching implications. First and foremost, it has boosted Kim’s standing within the country and abroad. Two, the sanctions regime on North Korea that was gasping for air has been effectively buried. Three, Russia has secured a reliable supply line for armaments and munitions, which it cannot have enough of, as an end to the Ukraine war is nowhere in sight. Four, besides receiving food, fuel and other essentials, North Korea would surely pitch for advanced military technology to upgrade its nuclear weapon, missile and space program. Five, Pyongyang’s stance towards ROK (South Korea) and its allies would harden, further accentuating tensions in the Korean peninsula.
It is obvious that necessity and adversity have propelled the sides closer. As their ties with the West are unlikely to improve anytime soon, the Moscow-Pyongyang bonhomie, even if transactional, is likely to endure. Former US President Bush had famously called North Korea, Iran and Iraq an ‘Axis of Evil’. One wonders what he may have to say about the new ‘Axis of Defiance’ comprising China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, which has materialised in no small part due to the West’s own policies.
The author is a foreign affairs specialist and an ex-envoy to Canada and South Korea. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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