Russia and North Korea Form an Alliance of Pariahs | Opinion

By Ariel Cohen, alumnus of The Fletcher School, Senior Fellow at Atlantic Council

President Vladimir Putin has just met with a man who is even more widely despised than himself, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The two held their summit at a Russian space facility in Russia’s far east, and Putin had a chance to show off his nation’s superior technology, which may be on the block in exchange for military help from Pyongyang.

North Korea has loomed аs a potential supplier of arms to Moscow since the beginning of the massive Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. From absurd claims propagated by Russian media that North Korea would send 50,000 troops to the front to Ukraine firing seized North Korean munitionsback at the Russians, Pyongyang, together with Tehran, has appeared as an arsenal of autocracy.

Pyongyang earlier denied it would send any support and some questioned what support could even be offered. Now, a year after U.S. military intelligence warned it would happen, North Korea is taking center stage on the Ukrainian battlefield. Washington should be worried—not because of the quality, but quantity of materiel.

Russia’s artillery-centric strategy in Ukraine has exhausted its stockpiles, and it is struggling to keep up. If North Korea has plenty of one thing, it is artillery. In fact, North Korea has an estimated 14,000 artillery systems. The Defense Intelligence Agency rates Pyongyang’s artillery as a significant threat.

During the Cold War, it received millions of shells from the Soviet Union, and prior to Pyongyang acquiring nuclear weapons, it exercised deterrence by threatening to level South Korea’s capital, Seoul, with artillery.

While Kim has plenty of cannons and shells, North Korea lacks much else. Russian weapons technology can still provide North Korea with invaluable engineering, production processes, space support, and nuclear submarine tech, in addition to food and cheap energy.

The possibility of a deal between Russia and North Korea has proven troublesome for the United States. North Korea had been sanctioned as late as August 2023 for trying to secretly aid Russia. Vice President Kamala Harris stated it would be a “huge mistake” for Putin and Kim to meet. She was ignored. National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson urged North Korea to cease negotiations with Russia in a statement, citing previous commitments the country has made not to sell arms to Russia. Predictably, Pyongyang is undeterred.

This lack of response is unsurprising. Joel Wit, a former State Department official who has negotiated with North Korean officials, stated: “Do we have leverage over North Korea? It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the answer is a resounding no. We have no leverage over North Korea at all, unless we want to start taking measures that might lead to a war, like intercepting their ships.”

Russia and North Korea don’t care what the United States wants, and there is little to be done to halt the inevitable arms deal between Russia and North Korea. It is easy to be dismissive of an impoverished state like North Korea whose ridiculous claims, including having invented the hamburger, are played for laughs in foreign affairs. Unfortunately, this is no laughing matter. Russia is turning to North Korea to get a payback for the aid the Soviet Union delivered over decades, all so it can continue saturation bombing. To pay for it, Russia will give North Korea things it can’t get elsewhere due to sanctions. Artillery does not have to be cutting-edge to be devastating.

Pyongyang’s diplomacy is more cunning than many realize and has been so for decades. During the Sino-Soviet split, North Korea adroitly threaded a middle ground between Maoist China and the Soviet Union during their tensest period of rivalry, extracting huge quantities of economic aid with few concessions. Despite all it has done to its own citizens and on the international stage, North Korea has repeatedly managedto get aid from the international community. The absurd headlines emanating from North Korea are tools of deception, not self-delusion.

North Korea’s protector, Beijing, has a fuzzy role in this latest development. It’s not clear if Beijing gave the go-ahead. The presence of the Chinese military delegation in North Korea at the same time that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoiguvisits suggests a role for China.

Chinese-North Korean relations, once described by Mao as being close as “lips and teeth,” turned frosty in recent years. Beijing’s hopes for a stable but pliant North Korea have been frustrated by Pyongyang’s saber-rattling and unwillingness to economically reform leading to a cooling of relations by 2017. North Korea’s nuclear program, once seen as a niche tool of plausible deniability in Beijing’s arsenal, became a liability for China as it discovered that you can’t easily control a nuclear power. However, when the U.S. and South Korea made breakthroughs in negotiations, China re-engaged and likely generously increased its aid to North Korea. Pyongyang took the better deal.

Still, there are clear recourses available for American policymakers. Russia is reaching out to pariahs to preserve its ability to stay in the fight—first Iranian drones, and now North Korean artillery. U.S. training and support of the Ukrainian military is, in part, a response to the behavior of an actor that is now turning to one of the vilest regimes on Earth.

(This post is republished from Newsweek.)