Putin's Master Plan by Douglas E. Schoen

Author:Douglas E. Schoen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594038907
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2016-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

NORTH KOREA

Of all the world’s rogue regimes, North Korea remains a pariah with few peers, a dictatorship exceeding by far the “normal” standards of autocratic repression. The Pyongyang regime of Kim Jong-un is less autocratic than psychopathic, a dystopia out of a novelist’s nightmares. The horrors that North Koreans endure are magnified by the regime’s possession of nuclear weapons, which are used to menace its neighbors and the United States and create an ongoing climate of tension. While the United States has tried to isolate and neutralize North Korea, China, its traditional benefactor, has mostly propped up the communist regime, standing as its main friend and protector in the world. More recently, however, Beijing has pushed back on Kim, taking him to task for his refusal to pursue economic reforms and especially for his nuclear provocations. North Korea test launched a submarine-based ballistic missile in 2015, showing that its capabilities were more advanced than previously suspected. Chinese nuclear experts even met with American nuclear experts in April 2015 to warn them that they were underestimating North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. The Chinese believe that the North Koreans could double their count of twenty warheads within a year, and Washington is already worried about Pyongyang’s capacity to put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, that could reach the West Coast of the United States.

To be sure, Chinese cautions need to be taken with skepticism, since the Chinese, like Putin, are adept at playing the double game. But some longtime observers have speculated about some new distance opening up between Beijing and Pyongyang.

That’s where Putin comes in. Sensing an opportunity, Russia announced a “year of friendship” with North Korea for 2015, in which the two countries would commemorate “Korea’s liberation and the victory in the great Patriotic War in Russia” while deepening their political and economic ties. In November 2015, a Russian military delegation arrived in Pyongyang to sign an agreement formalizing protocols for the conducting of military exercises between the two countries to avoid misunderstandings. More substantively, Moscow has announced plans to cancel the $10 billion in debt owed by Pyongyang, develop the North Korean Rason port for export of Russian coal to the country, and invest $25 billion in infrastructure in North Korea, including railways. The communist backwater badly needs those investments. And, though the terms haven’t been formalized, the two countries are working on a deal in which Russia would sell a state-of-the-art fighter aircraft to North Korea.37

None of these developments is necessarily earthshaking, and the Russia-North Korea partnership is clearly not a major factor as of yet. But what commentators call a “pariah alliance” certainly contains the potential to wreak havoc internationally. At minimum, moving closer to Moscow allows Pyongyang more leverage against American attempts to isolate and punish the regime.38 As for Putin, having North Korea in his pocket gives him yet another destabilizing chip to play in his long game.

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