Russia’s Dangerous Nuclear Partnership with North Korea

By Ambassador Joseph DeTrani

Ambassador Joseph DeTrani served as the U.S. Representative to the Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO), as well as former CIA director of East Asia Operations. He also served as Associate Director of National Intelligence and Mission Manager for North Korea, was the Special Envoy for the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, and served as the Director of the National Counter Proliferation Center, ODNI.  He currently serves on the Board of Managers at Sandia National Laboratories.

OPINION — On September 13, North Korea publicly announced the visit of its leader, Kim Jong-Un, to a secret facility to produce weapons-grade uranium.  Pictures showed Mr. Kim surrounded by centrifuges, with accompanying text stating that North Korea would “exponentially increase the production of nuclear weapons…for greater defense and preemptive attack capabilities.” 

The U.S. has known since 2000 that North Korea had a secret program to produce Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons. In 2002, the U.S. informed the leadership in Pyongyang that their secret HEU program violated the 1994 Agreed Framework agreement, a deal that committed North Korea to freeze its nuclear program at Yongbyon and the construction of nuclear reactors for nuclear weapons in return for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactor for civilian energy.  

For decades, North Korea has repeatedly denied having a secret HEU program – during the thirty years of negotiations that produced the 1994 Agreed Framework, the Six-Party talks Joint statement of 2005 and again in the 2018 Summit Agreement between Kim and former President Donald Trump.  

The 2019 leadership summit in Hanoi ended with no agreement, in part because Kim refused to disclose the existence of North Korea’s secret HEU facilities.  This was unfortunate but not surprising, because North Korean leaders thought they could pretend to abandon their nuclear weapons program in return for eventual normalization of relations with the U.S., while retaining a secret nuclear weapons capability. 

It appears that Kim has now given up on his goal of normalizing relations with the U.S. He realizes that he would have to verifiably dismantle all his country’s nuclear weapons and programs, to include his HEU programs, if normalization of relations with the U.S. were North Korea’s ultimate objective.  Obviously, Kim has made a strategic decision: retaining and producing more nuclear weapons is more important than normal relations with the U.S.   

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently declared that “denuclearizing North Korea is a closed issue, as it understands North Korea’s logic that nuclear weapons are a foundation of its defense.”  Lavrov went on to say that Russia will stand with North Korea in resisting what he said the U.S. portrays as its expanded nuclear deterrence with Suth Korea and Japan.  

The irony in these comments from Lavrov is profound. Russia was part of the Six-Party Talks with North Korea from 2003-2009, and, with China, was during those years a voice calling for North Korea to abandon all nuclear weapons and programs. But now, after Russia invaded Ukraine and was subjected to international sanctions, it needs material support from countries including China, North Korea and Iran. And in this case, Russia apparently was prepared to not only accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, but to potentially aid North Korea with its nuclear, missile, satellite and conventional programs.  

Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in 2022 was a monumental disaster. Ukraine has taken a swath of territory in Russsia’s Kursk region, and despite Russian advances slong the Eastern front in Ukraine, Russian casualties are reportedly close to 1,200 each day, with estimates of the overall Russian toll of dead and wounded exceeding 500,000. These figures exceed the casualty toll the Soviet Union suffered in Afghanistan, in what became a decade-long war. The casualties in Afghanistan, and ultimately the war’s cost and the Soviet public’s disgust for a conflict that was killing so many of its people, were all factors in the Soviet Union’s eventual bankruptcy. 

Putin eventually will have to answer to his people for this tragic act of aggression of a sovereign, independent Ukraine. The key is for Ukraine to remain resilient, getting the material support it needs from the U. S. and the European Union. Hopefully, there will be a cease fire and end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it should be on terms amenable to Kyiv, not dictated by Moscow. 

When the war in Ukraine ends, Russia will no longer need North Korea’s artillery shells and missiles, and it will likely be unable to provide North Korea with any meaningful energy and food support. That’s when North Korea will turn to its reliance on China – which, again, is committed to the complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula — in efforts to retain China’s economic lifeline for the energy, food and trade so necessary for its survival. 

It will also be a time for North Korea to look to the U.S., as they have done since 1994, to eventually normalize relations – a normalization conditioned on complete and verifiable denuclearization — and be part of the family of nations, with the eventual lifting of sanctions and economic development assistance from the global community.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.

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