OPINION — Vladimir Putin has compared himself to Peter the Great, as he tries to recreate the Russian Empire. On August 8, 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, claiming it was a peace enforcement operation. It ended later that month with a ceasefire 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 February 20, 2014, Russia invaded and then annexed the Crimean Peninsula. And on February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, thinking it would be a “cakewalk.” 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 over 30,000 Ukrainian civilian casualties and approximately 31,000 military personnel killed in action. Russia reportedly suffered over 300,000 military casualties. And 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, Putin should be concerned about his credibility and support from the Russian people and elites. His reckless decision to invade Ukraine and the recent sham election that gave him 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 Putin.
It appears, however, that Putin, the former KGB officer expert at “active measures” – political warfare to influence world events and weaken the U.S. — is confident that he’ll prevail, domestically and internationally.
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Putin’s embrace of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the North’s military support to Putin’s war in Ukraine is part of 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 for 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 United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions is indicative of 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 to 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 February 2022, there are “no limits” to their partnership,
Russia and China embarked on a journey of two authoritarian states determined to oppose U.S. influence in the world. They 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 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 (SCO).
No doubt 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, to include the 2020 national security law in Hong Kong and the new national security bill – Article 23 — enacted in March 19, 2024.
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If Putin’s goal was to put a wedge between the U.S. and China, he may conclude that he succeeded.
Recent developments, however, should give pause to Putin’s optimism. At the United Nations China abstained when Russia vetoed the UNSC resolution to extend the Panel of Experts monitoring North Korea’s compliance with sanctions; Xi Jinping recently publicly declared that: “China opposes any threat or use of nuclear weapons” when Putin was threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
More importantly, Xi Jinping, confronted with significant economic challenges in China – foreign firms 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 again encouraging foreign investment in a China that will rely more heavily on a market economy. Xi Jinping’s meeting in Beijing with U.S. business leaders last week was a good sign that China is moving in that direction.
Putin needs China and North Korea to support his 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 its approach to Pyongyang, that it is North Korea’s interest, for the security of the country and well-being of its people, to have a normal relationship with the U.S. and South Korea.
This opinion piece by Cipher Brief Expert Joe Detrani was first published in The Washington Times
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