OPINION:
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As he tries to recreate the Russian empire, Vladimir Putin has compared himself to Peter the Great. On Aug. 8, 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, claiming it was a peace enforcement operation. It ended later that month with a cease-fire negotiated by France, with over 200,000 people displaced and the European Court of Human Rights ruling that Russia was responsible for grave human rights abuses in Georgia.
On Feb. 20, 2014, Russia invaded and then annexed the Crimean Peninsula. And on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, thinking it would be a cakewalk.
Mr. Putin and his security services were wrong: Ukraine could be a replay of the Soviet Union’s humiliating defeat in Afghanistan. The war in Ukraine just entered its third year, with more than 30,000 Ukrainian civilian casualties and approximately 31,000 military personnel killed in action. Russia has reportedly suffered over 300,000 military casualties.
As Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues, memories of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 — and the stark images of the thousands of body bags returned to grieving parents — and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw all Soviet troops from Afghanistan in February 1989, publicly declaring that Afghanistan had become “a bleeding wound.”
By all accounts, Mr. Putin should be concerned about his credibility and the support of the Russian people and elites. His reckless decision to invade Ukraine and the recent sham election that added six more years to his 24-year reign of power and now the security failure with the ISIS-K terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Krasnogorsk, outside of Moscow, with at least 137 people dead and more than 100 people injured, should be cause for concern for Mr. Putin.
It appears, however, that Mr. Putin, the former KGB expert at “active measures” — political warfare to influence world events and weaken the U.S. — is confident that he will prevail, domestically and internationally.
Mr. Putin’s embrace of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the North’s military support of Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine is part of Mr. Putin’s strategy to put a permanent wedge between the U.S. and North Korea, ensuring that North Korea views and treats the U.S. — and South Korea — as the enemy.
This alliance of two authoritarian states permits Russia to frustrate U.S. and South Korean efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue with North Korea. It gives Russia a presence on the Korean Peninsula, with over 28,000 U.S. troops permanently assigned to South Korea pursuant to a mutual defense treaty with extended nuclear deterrence commitments from the U.S. to South Korea — and Japan.
Russia’s recent veto to extend the Panel of Experts to monitor North Korea’s compliance with U.N. Security Council sanctions is indicative of Mr. Putin’s intent to use North Korea as a strategic asset to frustrate U.S. efforts to contain a North Korea determined to build more nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, to distances as far as the U.S.
The recent visit of Kim Jong Un to Russia for meetings with Mr. Putin and the recent flurry of reciprocal visits of senior officials from Russia and North Korea have made it clear that absent any major initiative from the U.S. or South Korea, North Korea is now aligned with a revanchist Russian Federation.
Compared with the 1980s, when the U.S. and China cooperated to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, Russia’s current relations with China are excellent. As President Xi Jinping said to Mr. Putin days before Russian troops invaded Ukraine in 2022, there are “no limits” to their partnership. Russia and China have embarked on a journey of two authoritarian states determined to oppose U.S. influence in the world.
They have expanded military relations with joint military drills and arms deals while expanding economic relations, with China importing oil and gas and providing Russia with greater quantities of manufactured goods. Diplomatically, they have expanded membership in the BRICS (Brazil, India, South Africa, Russia and China) and engaged more actively with Russia and Iran in the nine-member states affiliated with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
No doubt Mr. Putin was pleased to see the progressively tense relationship between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, the South China Sea, trade wars, semiconductors, intellectual property theft, fentanyl, Ukraine and other issues, including the 2020 national security law in Hong Kong and the new national security bill — Article 23 — enacted this past March 19.
If Mr. Putin had aimed to put a wedge between the U.S. and China, he might have concluded that he had succeeded.
Recent developments, however, should give pause to Mr. Putin’s optimism. At the United Nations, China abstained when Russia vetoed the Security Council resolution to extend the Panel of Experts monitoring North Korea’s compliance with sanctions; Mr. Xi recently declared publicly that “China opposes any threat or use of nuclear weapons” when Putin was threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
More importantly, Mr. Xi, confronted with significant economic challenges in China — foreign companies leaving China with less foreign direct investment coming into China, consumers spending less, challenging demographics, a real estate bubble, and sluggish economic growth — apparently realizes that it is not a given that China will be the predominant global power in 2049, the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Indeed, China may have to take a page from Deng Xiaoping’s playbook by encouraging foreign investment in China, which will rely more heavily on the market economy. Mr. Xi’s meeting in Beijing with U.S. business leaders last week showed that China is moving in that direction.
Mr. Putin needs China and North Korea to support Mr. Putin’s efforts to recreate the Russian Empire. He wants China and North Korea to view the U.S. as the enemy.
Hopefully, China will push back and not align itself with a revanchist Russian Federation. And North Korea will realize, assuming the U.S. and South Korea are more flexible and creative in their approach to Pyongyang, that it is in North Korea’s interest, for the security of the country and the well-being of its people, to have a normal relationship with the U.S. and South Korea.
• Joseph R. DeTrani served as special envoy for the Six-Party Talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006 and as director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views expressed here are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.
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