North Korea has joined Putin’s war effort. A timid West must respond by Mick Ryan

The world is finally taking notice of north Korea. Yes, finally. (But for how long – will it fade from the limelight soon enough as we shift focus to other threats? Funny how that works.

Is north Korea giving us the wake up that we need to understand this paragraph?

Excerpt:

There is also a significant geostrategic impact from the North Korean deployment. The authoritarian quad of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea has been waging an information, influence and economic war on Western nations, and the post-World War II international system, for some time. The speeches of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are replete with references to their war against NATO and the West. But this North Korean deployment to Ukraine is an escalation in the confrontation between the forces of authoritarianism and the democracies of Europe, Asia and North America.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (Center-R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) walk past children attending a welcoming ceremony at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang on June 19, 2024. Photo for illustrative purposes. (Vladimir Smirnov / POOL / AFP)

North Korea has joined Putin’s war effort. A timid West must respond

North Korea’s Out-of-Theatre Deployment

The deployment of North Korean forces to Ukraine has geostrategic ramifications.

The Sydney Morning Herald · by Mick Ryan · October 24, 2024

October 25, 2024 — 9.51am

In the past 24 hours, the US administration has verified that North Korea is deploying troops to Russia, with the possibility of them fighting in their war against Ukraine. Ukrainian and South Korean government sources have previously reported that at least 1500 North Korean troops, and possibly up to 10,000, are part of this initial deployment.

The mission of the North Koreans remains a mystery. They could be used in occupation duties behind the front lines in Russian-occupied Ukraine. Alternatively, the North Koreans could be used as front-line troops in the eastern offensive by Russian ground forces, or part of Russia’s campaign to push Ukrainian troops out of Kursk. Given the recently signed Russia-North Korea defence pact, Kursk seems like a logical destination for the North Koreans.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un raises a toast with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Credit: North Korean government/AP

They are likely to be a logistical burden for the Russians and there will be cultural, doctrinal and tactical challenges with the integration of the North Koreans into Russian ground formations. Given the size of the North Korean contingent, they are unlikely to have a decisive impact on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. Russia is currently suffering around 1200 casualties a day in Ukraine. The North Koreans represent about a week’s human expenditure by Russia.

North Korea, which already supplies rockets and artillery munitions to the Russian war effort, has much to gain from becoming a co-belligerent in the war against Ukraine. Politically, it ensures it has a grateful “fellow traveller” in Russia. Additionally, Russia may provide an array of financial incentives for North Korea’s troop deployment. It is likely to share with North Korea many of the new tactics and technologies developed for the war, as well as intelligence on captured Western equipment. Less likely, but still possible, the Russians could share technology to enhance the capacity of North Korea’s nuclear weapon delivery systems.

Regardless, this deployment will help North Korea undergo a rapid transformation and modernisation of its military forces. This will be a destabilising influence for the Korean peninsula and the Pacific region.

There is also a significant geostrategic impact from the North Korean deployment. The authoritarian quad of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea has been waging an information, influence and economic war on Western nations, and the post-World War II international system, for some time. The speeches of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are replete with references to their war against NATO and the West. But this North Korean deployment to Ukraine is an escalation in the confrontation between the forces of authoritarianism and the democracies of Europe, Asia and North America.

NATO, and the US administration, have sought to shy away from that confrontation for the past decade. While some of the rhetoric around competing with China has evolved, the unwillingness of the US and other nations to call out Putin’s bluffs on escalation in Ukraine (and in Europe, too, with his ongoing sabotage campaign) means that authoritarian leaders now believe they can undertake a broader range of military aggression with impunity.

When this authoritarian coercive behaviour has been called out by Western political leaders, there is an immediate response from the massive propaganda agencies of Russia and China denouncing “Western aggression”. One of the favourite rejoinders from China, in particular, is that the West is engaging in Cold War thinking.

Chinese dictator Xi has used this term frequently, and for good reason. He understands, better than most Western leaders, that their return to the kind of successful thinking and strategy that won them the Cold War would be bad for China. Cold War thinking saw Russia contained, and the international flows of technology and finance were steered away from it (and China) by a large coalition of like-minded nations over several decades. The Chinese leader knows that if the West were to return to Cold War thinking, his nation’s ascent would be stymied and potentially reversed.

This is the geopolitical context of the North Korean deployment. It is as much about stepping up the confrontation with Western nations as it is about North Korea gaining intelligence and foreign currency from Russia, and the modernisation of its military.

What might be the response of the US administration and NATO? So far, there has been the equivalent of a strategic shoulder shrug from the American and NATO leadership. The US administration, never a rapid or decisive actor during this war in Ukraine, has essentially issued a “wait and see” holding statement. NATO, reliant on consensus decision-making, appears to lack the will or capability to respond to the North Korean provocation.

With this kind of slow, risk-averse political leadership, it is little wonder that authoritarian leaders such as Putin, Xi and Kim believe the “East is rising and the West is declining” and have decided to act to hasten that process. By adopting an “avoid World War III” strategy, the Biden administration has appeased rather than resisted authoritarian aggression – and may well have made it more likely.

Mick Ryan is a retired major general who served in the ADF for more than 35 years and was commander of the Australia Defence College. He is the author of War Transformed and an adjunct fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

· President Yoon Seok-yeol speaks on the phone with Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

• Discussing measures to respond to illegal military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, including the North Korean military's dispatch of troops to Russia -
• Confirmation of firm commitment at the highest level to strengthen Korea-NATO cooperation -

President Yoon Seok-yeol had a phone call today (October 21, Monday) at the request of Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and shared information about the deployment of North Korean combat troops to Russia. and discussed future response plans.

On the phone, the President congratulated Secretary-General Luther on his inauguration (October 1) and expressed hope that Korea and NATO will continue to work closely together in the future so that they can contribute to the security of the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic.

The President explained that North Korea has gone beyond supporting large-scale weapons of destruction to Russia and has gone so far as to send elite troops, and that our intelligence authorities have recently confirmed that about 1,500 North Korean special forces have been dispatched to Russia and are receiving adaptation training. .

The President said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Russia's reckless military closeness reaffirms that the security of the Inter-Pacific region and the Atlantic region are inextricably linked, while at the same time fundamentally shaking the rules-based international order and threatening peace on the Korean Peninsula and in the world. , our government said it would never sit idly by.

The President said that our government will closely monitor trends in Russia and North Korea and actively take step-by-step measures in accordance with the progress of military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, and that he hopes to explore practical countermeasures with NATO and NATO member countries in the process. .

Secretary-General Luther expressed serious concern about North Korea's deployment of troops to Russia, which directly violates international law and UN Security Council resolutions, and expressed NATO's readiness to actively cooperate with the Republic of Korea to respond to Russian-North Korean military cooperation that threatens international peace and security. He emphasized that there is. In addition, Secretary-General Luther requested that the Korean government send a delegation to NATO to share more detailed information, and hoped that defense industry cooperation and security dialogue between Korea, Ukraine and NATO will be strengthened to respond to North Korea's troop dispatch to Russia in the future.

In response, the President said he would quickly dispatch a delegation to share information and take steps to revitalize security cooperation between Korea, Ukraine, and NATO. Regarding the President's statement that he hoped that our process of joining the NATO Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation System (BICES) would proceed quickly so that Korea and NATO could communicate in real time and share information safely and efficiently. , Secretary General Luther responded that he would actively take care to ensure that progress is made quickly.

The two sides agreed to closely monitor trends in illegal cooperation between Russia and North Korea, including the possibility of Russia's transfer of sensitive technology, and review effective joint responses to this.