Why are there North Korean soldiers in Ukraine? Is it a sign of Russian desperation?
Last week’s strangest news was that North Korea is sending troops to aid Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Why would Kim Jong Un send soldiers tens of thousands of kilometers to aid in a conflict that has no strategic impact on the Korean peninsula? Avid readers of the blog will know my answer: that he wouldn’t. The Economist frames the story as Russian desperation; why Russia would be desperate when it is winning on the battlefield, and the West’s support is waning with the America presidential election which could mean a second Trump term is right around the corner is not clear. My read on the situation is that this is a worrying development, but that the one in the driver’s seat is North Korea rather than Russia.
If your starting point is the tired and largely untrue stock NATO perspective that Russia is simultaneously a danger to all of Europe and struggling mightily to the point where a Ukrainian victory is possible with just a few more aid packages, then North Korean troops in Ukraine confirms desperation. But given the stark defender’s advantage in state-on-state military conflict I think Russia has achieved quite a lot on the battlefield, especially when considering just how much support the West has given Ukraine. To have managed to make offensive gains at all is remarkable, and to another state which has an infantry-based military and which places a low value on human life there is a lot to learn from the Russian war machine.
I think we should interpret North Korean troops as being in Ukraine because they want to be there rather than because the Kremlin wants them to be there. And coupled the fact that North Korea wants to learn about fighting a modern war with their recent hostile turn towards their southern neighbour and there is reason to be concerned about potential escalation on the Korean peninsula. North Korea launched a spy satellite in November last year, has announced that reunification is no longer an official goal in January of this year, and started to demolish roads in order to cut itself off from the South two weeks ago. Taken together it seems clear that the Kim regime is on high alert for a possible war on the peninsula.
I don’t think we should see this as gearing up for a planned invasion of the South, but rather being ready for an escalation or opportunity to attack. As I’ve argued on the blog before, the world is multipolar with three Great Powers: the US, China, and Russia (ordered in terms of importance). In a world where there is no longer a super power which could end a conflict almost immediately by declaring for one side, war as tool in international politics is back in a big way. China does not want the US by its borders, so while it does not want North Korea to go to war it would support the North against the South in a hypothetical conflict, and Russia would probably not intervene so there is more room to maneuver for Pyongyang than there’s been for many years. Again, I’m not saying that war in Korea is imminent, but it is now a possibility in a way it realistically hasn’t been for a long time. If China were to end up in a war over Taiwan, or the US got dragged into an Israel-Iran war I think there is a real risk that the North would launch an attack.
As I wrote in a blog post last year, I think the West is really underestimating Russia’s strength and the fact that the North Koreans want to emulate the Russian military is a clear sign to me that Russia is indeed a Great Power with both hard and soft power; even if that soft power is limited to the halls of power in paranoid dictatorships. The news of North Korean troops in Ukraine is strange to be sure, but many things about the Kim regime are. The story is not that Russia is desperate, but that North Korea is interested.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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