Russia and North Korea cement closer ties

Russia and North Korea have signed a new deal that brings the two countries closer together than they’ve been since the Cold War.

What does this agreement mean for the U.S. — and the world?

Today, On Point: Russia and North Korea cement closer ties.

Stephen Sestanovich, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union in the U.S. State Department from 1997 to 2001. Professor emeritus for the Practice of International Diplomacy at Columbia University

Sung-Yoon Lee, fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Part I

DEBORAH BECKER: Quite a bit of red-carpet pageantry was on display last week for Russian President Vladimir Putin's first visit to North Korea in decades.

Amid goose stepping soldiers, choreographed dancers and cheering crowds, Putin and North Korea's President Kim Jong Un announced they have a deal. And it's one that primarily allows their countries to help each other in the face of aggression. This deal and the anti Western statements from both leaders are causing tension.

Among global rulers, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the arrangement shows that Russia is weakened by its war in Ukraine.

ANTONY BLINKEN: With regard to Mr. Putin and his travels to North Korea, look, we've seen Russia try in desperation to develop and to strengthen relations with countries that can provide it with what it needs to continue the war of aggression that it started against Ukraine.

BECKER: And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this pact goes beyond Ukraine and indicates a strengthening alignment among countries opposed to the West.

JENS STOLTENBERG: Putin's visits to North Korea demonstrates and confirms the very close alignment between Russia and authoritarian states like North Korea, but also China and Iran.

And this also demonstrates that our security is not regional, it's global. What happens in Europe matters for Asia and what happens in Asia matters for us. And this is clearly demonstrated in Ukraine where Iran, North Korea, China are propping up, fueling Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

BECKER: So how important is this revived relationship between Russia and North Korea, and what are the implications? Joining us to talk about this is Stephen Sestanovich, he's a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He also served as U. S. Ambassador at Large to the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001.

Stephen, welcome to On Point.

STEPHEN SESTANOVICH: Pleasure.

BECKER: Also joining us today is Sung-Yoon Lee. He's a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Welcome to our program.

SUNG-YOON LEE: Thank you very much for having me.

BECKER: So let's start with this agreement, strategic partnership, alliance, all kinds of names for what exactly this deal is.

But let's talk about what it means, in terms of allowing these countries to help each other in the event of aggression. Sung-Yoon Lee, what would you say that means to you, how do you reinterpret that?

LEE: It's a revival of the 1961 Soviet Union-North Korea Alliance Treaty, Article 4 of this new treaty explicitly states that if either party is attacked by a third country, a third party, that the other will lend, provide military and other assistance without delay. So in rhetoric, it sounds like an automatic military intervention clause, but in the end, all treaties, even the loftiest sounding ones are a piece of paper.

So whether Russia follows through on this pledge, it's up.

BECKER: So attacked by a third country, that would mean that an unprovoked attack would have to happen? How do you interpret exactly when this might exactly result in military action?

LEE: There is a lot of room for interpretation. So in the Russian held Ukrainian territories, for example, if there is a counterattack by Ukraine using Western provided American long range missiles and so forth, then North Korea could potentially justify that as an act of aggression against Russia by Ukraine or even by NATO or the United States, and use that as a pretext to send North Korean combat troops.

North Korea has ample supply of munitions. For a small country of 25 million maintains one of the biggest standing armies in the world, 1.2 million men strong. It also has millions of artillery shells. So North Korea not only can provide Russia as it has been with many artillery shells, 5 million, according to the South Korean government, but also really an unlimited supply of human lives, let's say.

North Korea shows little regard for human life, even the lives of its own people. North Korea is unique in world history to starve intentionally a segment of its population. It is the only country that was industrialized, urbanized, illiterate population in peacetime or not emerging from a war. To suffer a nationwide famine as North Korea did in the mid to late 1990s, which may have killed some 10% of the population, and in the intervening three decades, past three decades, North Korea is among the hungriest nations on earth. It's not that the Kim regime does not have money with which to import grain, import food, but chooses not to. They choose to spend their wealth on luxury goods, on missiles, on arms development, and so on.

BECKER: Stephen, I wonder, do you agree with that interpretation of when military action might, some type of activity from either of these countries.

And also, is this what Russia gets from this deal? It gets perhaps labor, perhaps soldiers and other things from North Korea. And if that's the case, what does North Korea get?

A lot of questions. (LAUGHS)

SESTANOVICH: Putin was asked this question at his press conference in Vietnam at the end of his trip. And he said about aggression, there's already aggression against Russia from Ukraine. Because their interpretation, their claim, whether it's really their interpretation, we don't know.

But their claim is that this is a war of aggression against Russia. But we can get a little too focused on this document. Because really this visit reflects a kind of a set of deals that have already been made in some ways. The core fact behind this visit was that North Korea has been giving a huge amount already of great value militarily to the Russian campaign in Ukraine especially artillery ammunition.

And so this visit and the treaty are in a way Putin's way of just giving a very big, effusive public thank you to Kim. To say, let's deepen this relationship. We know that North Korea has been giving a lot of great values. What we don't know yet is how Russia is going to reciprocate. That's partly a secret.

BECKER: Why is it a secret? Like why keep it a secret?

SESTANOVICH: Because first of all, there are all sorts of international sanctions against helping North Korea militarily. Putin has said in the course of the visit, and this is one of the things that is a payback for Kim, he said these sanctions need to be revised, and they've already taken some action to do that in the U.N. Security Council. But the question of what Russia gives North Korea may have been agreed on some points. They may have decided that they would help them more with their ballistic missile technology. For example, that seemed to be the focus of Kim's visit last fall to North Korea. There may be still bargaining on some other things.

We don't yet know how fully this military relationship will develop. But we have seen that basically this is a strong partnership that has taken place, that both sides are bragging about.

BECKER: And why now? What's the reason that this would be happening right now? I'm wondering what your thoughts are.

Is it because of the war in Ukraine has reached a certain point? Is it to send a message? Is it all of those things? What's happening that this would happen right now? I'd like both of you to answer that. Stephen, could you answer that first?

SESTANOVICH: I think the Russian dependence on military supplies is the big one, and Kim may have been saying to the Russians, look, we're helping you out big time.

What are you going to give us back? And that has, because the supplies from North Korea to Russia have been underway for quite a while. Russian needs are still great. They have ramped up their military production a lot at home. But they still want to be able to rely on equipment and ammunition that they get from client states and North Korea has been one of the leading suppliers.

BECKER: And does it mean then that the war in Ukraine is, has reached a different level for Russia and it needs more and that's why this is happening and that's why it needs this military capability or what would you say?

The Russians have certainly been trying to take advantage of some military momentum that they've had since the Ukrainian counteroffensive failed last year. They've been trying to inch forward, in the course of this year, not with a lot of progress, but they have been bombarding border areas to try to find a breakthrough, to try to inflict a greater punishment on the Ukrainian infrastructure, for example, so for this kind of campaign that the Russians are involved in, and they really wanted to succeed this year while the Ukrainians are still rearming essentially after the lapse of military equipment. While the U.S. Congress suspended aid, the Russians want to take advantage of what may be their best opportunity to grind the Ukrainians down this year.

BECKER: Just in a minute before we have to take a break here, Sung-Yoon Lee, why do you think now we're hearing about this partnership between North Korea and Russia?

LEE: Putin's invested a lot in cultivating relations with North Korea. He's the first top Russian or Soviet leader to have visited North Korea, which as you referred to, took place more than two decades ago in 2000, met with Kim Jong Un's father. And this is the third summit meeting between Putin and Kim Jong Un.

The first was in April 2019. The first summit didn't work out very well for Kim. He felt snubbed because Putin told Kim that, Hey, I'm going off to Beijing tomorrow, which is diplomatically, not really, it's breach of protocol. So he cancelled all of his itinerary except for a wreath laying ceremony the next day and took his train back to his home.

But the two men looked very happy to be together in Pyongyang, as well as in the Russian Far East at their second meeting last September.

Part II

BECKER: So I know, Sung-Yoon Lee, you mentioned that this agreement is almost similar to the 1961 treaty between the then Soviet Union and North Korea.

But that agreement was discarded after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I'm wondering, Stephen, if you wouldn't mind saying, do you think that this is a resurrection of that agreement and how is this different?

SESTANOVICH: Yeah, it's interesting because Putin could have pretended that this was something new.

But he has instead emphasized that this is a revival of the '61 treaty, although he seems a little unclear in his public statements as to when exactly it was signed. He keeps saying '60 or '62. What's striking about that is that he's not pretending it's part of contemporary reality. Just a revival of the Cold War camps. And that's shocking in its way, because Putin doesn't often try to present himself as the new leader of Soviet style force in a Cold War style environment.

Now, he's gotten a lot closer to that. He's saying, this is just the revival of a traditional relationship that we had with North Korea, no biggie. And that's striking because of the shock value to other countries. In the course of the Cold War, the Soviet Union did not try to develop really great relations with Japan and South Korea, for example.

But now more recently, there has been an effort to reach out to countries within the West and to develop constructive relations with them. That seems to be over. Putin is now saying, I'm throwing in my lot with the rogues. We are now the rogue alliance. And that's the way in which our foreign policy is going to be shaped.

BECKER: And Putin was also among those supporting sanctions against North Korea at the United Nations. So it does seem like --

SESTANOVICH: Absolutely. The Russians were part of that sanctions regime. Putin has now said, since the signing of the treaty, that those sanctions actually looked strange to him and reexamining them.

They're inhumane in their application. And so they're now plainly committed. And this is something that the North Koreans will surely want to take to the bank to trying to dismantle the sanctions regime. That may be one of the main ways in which they pay back the North Koreans for their military assistance.

And there are lots of world leaders watching this very closely. Obviously South Korea is concerned. And I want to hear from some South Korean leaders. We have the foreign minister. We have a piece of tape from the foreign minister Cho Tae-yul, who expressed concern about this agreement at the United Nations last week.

And he actually called Russia's actions deplorable. Let's listen.

CHO TAE-YUL: Any direct or indirect assistance or cooperation that enhances North Korea's military capability. It's a clear violation of the multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. And it is indeed deplorable that a permanent member of the Security Council, which had agreed to the adoption of these resolutions, is now acting in violation of the resolutions. And by signing this agreement.

BECKER: Some strong questions there from South Korea about exactly what Russia is doing in terms of flipping on these sanctions. And we also heard from South Korea's National Security Advisor, Chang Ho-jin, who said that this agreement would cause South Korea to reconsider whether it might send weapons to Ukraine, at this point, South Korea is only sending humanitarian assistance. Here's Chang speaking through an interpreter.

CHANG HO-JIN: There are currently 1,159 items that are subject to export controls to Russia, that have been used since the Ukraine war. But the government has decided to add 243 new items.

So a total of 1,402 items ... subject to sanctions in the future, and the issue of armed support to Ukraine will be reexamined.

BECKER: And we should say that Russian President Putin warned South Korea against sending any weapons to Ukraine. But I wonder, Sung-Yoon Lee, what you think of that in terms of South Korea being dragged into this even further, this involvement. And what is the threat to South Korea, this agreement between North Korea and Russia?

LEE: Even a cursory look at the map of Northeast Asia. You can see it's a rough neighborhood. You have Russia, China, North Korea, versus South Korea, Japan, and the United States by virtue of U.S. troops presence, both in South Korea and Japan. And the three rogue nations are armed with nuclear weapons.

So South Korea has been treading a careful line in trying to maintain amicable trade relations with Russia and has refused to provide directly lethal arms to Ukraine. And now the top policy makers in Seoul are saying we're going to reconsider intimating, that we might be prone to sending lethal weapons to Ukraine to be used against Russia.

South Korea is one of the world's biggest exporters of weapons, the world's seventh or eighth or ninth, depending on various surveys, largest exporter of lethal weapons. So South Korea is no joke, and South Korea can provide Ukraine with literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of artillery shells that Ukraine desperately needs.

I mentioned that according to the South Korean defense minister, North Korea has provided Russia with some nearly 5 million artillery shells. To put that in some context, that would be more than 10 times what the West, including the U.S. and other European states, have provided Ukraine in terms of artillery shells.

So Ukraine desperately needs help from all democracies around the world. And South Korea is poised to counter in a limited way, perhaps, but in a practical way, to provide artillery shells for Ukraine. And I think Putin really doesn't want to see that happen. So he issued a threat that would be a grave, big mistake for South Korea.

But what Putin might do to counter South Korea's actions remains to be seen.

SESTANOVICH: Deborah, can I add something?

BECKER: Yeah, sure, sure.

SESTANOVICH: Putin has a problem here in trying to balance a new set of threats with a desire not to create new vulnerabilities for himself, and I think it's possible he didn't anticipate the South Korean response, or at least not one that was quite as quick.

He said, even in Vietnam, before he came back to Moscow. He said, there's no need for South Korea to fear. But he said delivering weapons to Ukraine would be a quote 'grave mistake.' On the other hand, he's also emphasized the way in which he does mean it to be a threat to South Korea, and he's pretty not just careful in articulating that threat.

He actually made it pretty lurid. He said, we're getting Western weapons that are hitting Russian territory. You can't rule out that we'll do the same thing to North Korea. With North Korea, like he said, the West says they have no control over what happens to the weapons that they supply to Ukraine.

Maybe we'll do the same thing to North Korea, give them weapons and say, we have no control over what happens next. He said, let everybody think about that. So he wants to limit the damage that South Korea can do when we're in retaliation, but he also wants to exploit the menace.

BECKER: If South Korea did decide to send weapons to Ukraine, would this agreement, could it possibly mean that therefore that could prompt military action? What do you think, Sung-Yoon?

LEE: Yes. Democracies try their best to observe, to abide by agreements, especially international treaties.

Autocracies, not so much. So North Korea and Russia could use as a pretext, any move by South Korea to send directly lethal weapons to Ukraine as an act of aggression against Russia and take provocative measures. When you look at the internal dynamic in the Korean peninsula, you have one of the world's most totalitarian states in North Korea. And in the South, a thriving, open, wealthy democracy.

So in the long term, the sheer existence of South Korea presents an existential threat to the Kim regime. And I believe that the Kim regime has never given up on its ambitious dream of incorporating South Korean territory and South Korean people into its own. North Korea has been making progress on developing their nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities.

And that is a big step because to become one day a constant, imminent threat to the U.S. mainland gives North Korea immense leverage, prestige in negotiating with the United States, perhaps a peace treaty and compelling the U.S. to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea. In fact, Putin and Kim Jong Il, the current dictator's father, in an agreement signed in August 2001 in Moscow explicitly called on the U.S. to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea immediately. I think Kim Jong Un is sitting pretty in Pyongyang, very pleased with himself. I think he will be courted by Beijing soon because the Chinese don't really like it when North Korea moves away from China and closer toward the Soviet Union or Russia.

I think no one should be surprised if Kim shows up in Beijing next week or in the coming weeks and months.

BECKER: Let's, we'll talk about China in a minute. I just want to make sure that we also talk about Japan, because you did mention Japan briefly. And I wonder, Stephen, what do you think?

What does Japan do here? As Sung-Yoon Lee mentioned it's the neighbor with South Korea in this neighborhood that's a little bit risky for these countries. What are we hearing from Japan and what do you expect its next move to be because of this agreement?

SESTANOVICH: Japanese officials are saying things very much what the South Koreans are saying, that is They're horrified by this visit, the treaty, and the scale of military cooperation between the two sides. What we don't know yet is really how this balance of threats is going to play out.

Because on the one hand, Japan and South Korea have been growing closer together with a lot of American encouragement. You had the Tripartite summit recently, there's an effort to consolidate this alliance. On the other hand, none of these countries really wants to have new hostilities, new dangers, tensions, much less outright warfare on the Korean peninsula.

So we don't know yet whether this is going to sharpen the alliance among them and lead to more support for Ukraine, for example, which I think would be a very desirable outcome in terms of teaching Putin a lesson or whether it will make the Northeast Asian allies of the United States more nervous about what Putin can do.

And Putin is, he is somebody who casually experiments with threats. He tried the nuclear threat for a while, the threat of nuclear escalation. He discovered that didn't really work all that well, because people thought, why would Putin want to use nuclear weapons when he might risk the destruction of his own country and personal position, threatening to help North Korea is probably a little more credible. And as a threat, it may actually get the attention of other governments in a way that nuclear threats haven't.

So we just don't know how this is going to play out.

BECKER: And then let's go back to China, if we would, because obviously China's North Korea's largest trading partner here. And you mentionedSung-Yoon Lee, don't be surprised if we see Kim Jong Un in Beijing very soon, and explain a little bit there of China's role here and what we should be thinking about.

LEE: We tend to think of North Korea as paranoid. Overly proud. So they act out. They react to what big powers say or do. But I think historically, North Korea has been, with exceptions here and there, quite proactive in engaging and even defying bigger communist patron states like China and Russia.

So when North Korea inches away from China as it did in 1964, 1965, three years after signing a treaty, not only with the Soviet Union, but also with the PRC, with the People's Republic of China, within five days apart of being in Moscow and signing a treaty in China, in Beijing, when North Korea cultivated closer relations with the Soviet Union in 1964, and the Soviet Union started to provide North Korea again with tanks and anti-aircraft artillery and jets and so on, the Chinese grew irate and the relationship really reached the nadir, the Sino-North Korean relationship in the mid 1960s. But when North Korea, for example, attacked the United States by attacking a U.S. spy vessel, in international waters in January 1968, the Pueblo, killing one U.S. sailor and capturing 82 U.S. sailors for 11 months, while brutally beating them, torturing them.

The Chinese came out and said, we stand with the government and the heroic people of North Korea in their struggle against evil U.S. imperialism. Whereas the Soviet Union, the next year, in 1969, when North Korea shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane on Kim Il Sung's 57th birthday, April 15th, the Soviet Union offered the United States help in searching for any survivors, any debris.

We know that North Korea enjoys being wooed by both Moscow and Beijing, and I think it's been five years since Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un held a meeting, a summit meeting, so the time is ripe for a summit.

Part III

BECKER: Before the break, we were talking about the changing dynamics, really, of the relationships between Russia and other countries and North Korea. And there has been this sort of drumbeat of threats from North Korea, threats to the U.S. and other Western countries. But just this week we heard that North Korea said that for the first time it tested technology for launching several nuclear warheads with a single missile. So I want to talk about, is that test significant? And also, does this agreement perhaps mean that Kim Jong Un is moving beyond posturing? And there's something substantive here. Stephen Sestanovich, what would you say? Are we moving beyond posturing?

And what about this testing of technology for several nuclear war heads with a single missile this week on the part of North Korea?

SESTANOVICH: Certainly, one reaction from the United States in looking at this, that these developments is going to be that this kind of North Korean progress is the result of greater cooperation with Moscow.

And that is going to deepen suspicions and antagonism toward Putin and Russia. There are many areas where North Korea has wanted more technical assistance, whether it's ICBM technology, nuclear submarine missile launch capabilities, miniaturization of nuclear weapons for delivery systems.

All of these are areas where there will now be more intense monitoring to see what the result of Russian assistance is going to be. I think one of the results of this is going to be, since we were just talking about China, is the possibility of a certain kind of outreach from Washington to Beijing. I have heard American officials this week saying, maybe this is a moment where we ought to be saying to the Chinese, what do you think is going on here?

What's your friend Putin, your Mr. No Limits partnership pal, doing here? Because if there's real progress, technologically, militarily, from North Korea with the possibility of more kind of open threats of military action against South Korea or against American forces or at a long distance against American territory, this is going to increase the American presence in East Asia.

It's going to increase all kinds of military pushback of a kind that the Chinese will not want. So they have a certain kind of built in receptivity to an American message that says, look, your friend Putin is destabilizing your own neighborhood in a way that's not good for you.

BECKER: I wonder, Sung-Yoon Lee, what do you think?

What do you think about this agreement and whether we're perhaps moving beyond the posturing on the part of North Korea.

LEE: We have to take the growing North Korean military threat seriously. Because North Korea is so backward. It's a relatively small nation of about 25 million people, not tiny, but not huge.

And because of the very weird cult of personality of the so-called supreme leader, who is a demigod in that country, he is infallible. He is omnipotent, almost omniscient, because of this cult of personality and all the weird things they say, because North Korea is such a strange mix of medieval, cringe inducing mores, mannerisms, and buffoonish bellicosity, we tend to think they're crazy, or we tend to laugh at them.

If there were such a thing as an international mockability index, I think North Korea would reign supreme as number one. But they are not a joke. They have one of the world's largest standing armies. They have a huge conventional army. They have nuclear weapons. And when North Korea was assiduously building nukes and testing missiles and conducting nuclear tests, much of the rest of the world still laughed at them.

But they are very methodical. They don't just react to what the mighty United States says or does. They have their own plan. They have agency, and they often provoke, they like to stick it to the United States. They often conduct major military tests, weapons tests, on America's birthday, Independence Day.

North Korea conducted its first intercontinental ballistic missile test on July 4th in 2017. And Kim Jong Un came out and said, this is an official translation by North Korea. This is, quote, "A special gift package for American bastards," end quote. And there'll be more coming your way. Indeed, there was another ICBM test later in the same month, in July, and then a bigger ICBM test later in the year in November.

So they have nukes, they have ICBMs. We have to take them seriously. We, our tendency to patronize and underestimate North Korea has not worked out in America's interest. Do we need to take them more seriously now?

LEE: Yes, absolutely. We do. Yeah.

BECKER: Stephen Sestanovich, agree?

SESTANOVICH: Sure. The question is, what do you do when you take them seriously?

And the answer there is look to your own military deterrent capabilities look to the solidity of your own alliances and look to the opportunity to weaken the unity on the other side. And as I said, a moment ago, particularly to see if you can sew some unease in Beijing about what is happening.

The idea, I like the idea of an international mockability in index, which I think Kim Jong Un, would probably rank at the top of. What's interesting to me is that in the past couple of years, Putin has rocketed up. You'd have to show him gaining ground as an international pariah and for the United States, one of the go to responses in the course of a crisis of this sort is not just to focus on the North Korean threat, but more broadly to try to characterize what Putin is doing as worthy of international isolation, is just provocative to the interests of all stability liking states.

And that is, I would bet going to be an important line of American policy in response to this.

BECKER: Do you also think that this is going to result in more support for Ukraine? I'm just, it would seem, at least at first glance, that would absolutely be the case. Sung-Yoon Lee, do you think so?

LEE: I hope so. Japan is in a more sensitive position. Its post 1945 constitution, so called peaceful nation constitution, is an impediment for the Japanese government to providing lethal weapons to Ukraine. But Japan could be doing a lot more. For example, providing Ukraine with gas masks, all kinds of equipments that are practical, are all value to the Ukrainian troops.

So there's a lot more that Japan could do to stick it to Russia. There's a lot more that South Korea should be doing, providing lethal arms directly to Ukraine. And it remains to be seen if South Korea goes there or not, but I hope South Korea firms up and makes that decision, because the situation in Ukraine is a lesson for perhaps the Korean peninsula. Kim Jong Un, further emboldened, having Russia support, Russian support will be testing South Korea and the U.S. South Korea alliance more and more, perhaps even resorting to small scale and controlled but lethal attacks on the South. We saw that in 2010, when North Korea torpedoed the South Korean Navy vessel, killing 46 South Korean sailors in March.

And then later in the same year, in November, shelling an inhabited South Korean island, killing four South Koreans. So North Korea excels, I would say. It's not really a compliment, but they're very good at calculated provocations, as well as dramatically de-escalating and reaching out to South Korea or the United States, as we saw with Kim Jong Un in 2018, when he proposed a first ever summit meeting with a sitting president of the United States, which was affected in June that year.

The next time that North Korea returns to this kind of post provocation peace ploy, watch out. They will say sweet sounding things like, denuclearization, rapprochement, peace, and so forth, but whether it's Kim Jong Un himself or his powerful sister, who's been the spokesperson, the chief censor and policymaker for North Korea since 2020, just because it's a young, pretty, powerful princess, a woman, don't underestimate her.

Don't believe everything she says. They have an agenda.

SESTANOVICH: Can I add one thing about a country that can do more to help Ukraine?

BECKER: Mm-hm.

SESTANOVICH: Because I agree that both Japan and South Korea have an incentive now, a stronger incentive than before to help Ukraine, but so does the United States. And the assessment that is going to be made of this action by Putin has to include how to exploit his own vulnerabilities. He is the party to this partnership, that actually has the greatest immediate, on the ground, military vulnerability. And the best way to show that this is a feudal, doomed, pointless partnership is to show that it doesn't pay off in Ukraine.

And the United States has more than Japan and South Korea, although it should bring them into the alliance in a fuller way, the United States has every incentive now to continue to increase support for Ukraine, to relax the restrictions on the use of its weapons, and to show that Putin's attempt to forge a new rogue coalition is going to fail.

BECKER: It's not then to, or maybe it is, too much to think that what we're witnessing here is perhaps the formation of really what could become an anti-Western block of nations. Will it go that far? What are some of the long-term ramifications? Do you think, of this agreement that we witnessed being celebrated in North Korea last week, Stephen?

SESTANOVICH: For some time, the Russians have been saying we're redirecting our policy and our international interest away from Europe and the United States. Their foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said a couple of months ago, there's no prospect of relevant European-Russian rapprochement for the foreseeable future.

But Asia, that's going to be the future. The future of Russian foreign policy, I think, probably underestimating the new divisions that their policy can create, but the Russians have also emphasized that they want to create and strengthen what they call a world majority. And they've had some success in this, there's been more resonance for their ideas of what's at stake in the war in Ukraine, in the global South, than one might have expected.

But this kind of action, leaping to make Kim Jong Un the dearest friend of the Russian people, has its downsides for this effort to create a new Cold War style alignment, because plenty of countries in the global South, the Russians term, the world majority, don't actually see North Korea as a plausible part of their new international alignment.

They continue to regard North Korea the way people have, in voting for all of those UN sanctions over the past couple of decades. And Russian action has the potential also to weaken this world majority. How many countries really think? Oh, yes. We and Russia and China can be part of a new global alignment.

Fine. But how many think, We and Russia and North Korea can be part of a new global alignment. I think fewer. So the Russians are showing, in a way, some of the vulnerabilities of their own strategy. If you're really going to amp up ties to North Korea, you may have to pay the price.

BECKER: And Sung-Yoon Lee, what do you think in terms of a broad, perhaps anti West implications in the last minute and a half we have of our program here?

LEE: I think this peculiar pilgrimage to Pyongyang by Mr. Putin speaks volumes about the current status of Russia, or lack thereof, in the world, to court this cruel dictator as Putin is doing, this blooming petty bromance between the two dictators says a lot about the current status prestige off Russia.

Russia is a country with tradition with great art, music, literature, it was an envy, a nation of some envy around the world, once upon a time. But Putin has descended to the nadir, to the level of Kim Jong Un, of the despotic People's Republic of Korea. And he's going to be number two in the international mockability index if we come up with one.

So that says a lot. And I agree that it's not gonna work in their interest, this kind of alliance or this kind of joint flouting off international norms and international law will render both despotic leaders into even a more laughable, more mockable light.