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A discussion of North Korean troops in Russia. Have we crossed the Rubicon? Next on The Impossible State. North Korea is the impossible state. It's a place that stumped leaders and policymakers for more than three decades. It has a complex history, and it has become the United States' top national security priority. Each week on this show, we'll talk with the people who know the most about North Korea,
Welcome to The Impossible State. This is a crossover episode with my other podcast, The Truth of the Matter. But I'm really happy to be here today with my colleague, Victor Cha, who we always host this together and it's always a blast. Victor, of course, is president of our geopolitics and foreign policy department at CSIS, and he's also our Korea chair. We also have with us Maria Snegubaya, who's a senior fellow, Europe, Russia, Asia, and Eurasia program.
We also have our colleague Mark Cantzian, senior advisor, International Security Program, and we welcome Dennis Wilder, who's a senior fellow for the Initiative of US-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University. Welcome all of you, thanks for being here. - Thanks. - So Victor, I wanna start with you. This is really incredible. Last week, the United States government confirmed and released evidence that North Korea is sending troops to Russia.
This backs up South Korean and Ukrainian claims that have been made in recent weeks. This morning, we're talking on Monday, October 28th, NATO confirmed that Korean troops have been sent to the Kursk to help Russia fend off this Ukrainian incursion. Pentagon also said on Monday that North Korea has sent some 10,000 troops, 10,000.
to the region. So let me just start with you, Victor. Why is North Korea doing this and what are they getting out of it? Well, thanks, Andrew, for the question. So this is a very big move by North Korea. I don't think there is
Anything that one country can do for another, that's a bigger symbol of allegiance and support than sending troops in wartime. North Korea has sent a lot of ammunition to Russia, but sending troops is, I think, at a whole different level.
Certainly, I think they're getting money for it in the sense that the Russians are paying for some of these forces. And that may matter in some respect. But I think for Kim, it's a bigger strategic move. It's not just transactional. He's trying to lock the Russians in in terms of their security commitment to North Korea.
because he's providing troops and ammunition for Russian needs. So this really is a renewal of sort of the Cold War Security Treaty, but with a twist being that now it's North Korea that's helping Russia rather than historically the Soviet Union helping North Korea. I think they're certainly getting improvement and training for their conventional capabilities. These troops are well trained, but they've never been in war before, and so this is an opportunity for them to get training.
But there's also probably a lot of military equipment that's being exchanged at the conventional level to help modernize North Korea's conventional forces. And then finally, I think the bigger concern, I don't know, it's nothing we can confirm at this moment, is that there is some transactional aspect to this relationship, which is that Kim is not stupid. He knows Putin needs both the ammunition and the troops. So why not exact a higher price for that?
which is to try to ask for higher-end military technology to help him break through some of the technological ceilings that he's facing in terms of modernizing his WMD program and his ballistic missiles. And one element of that is ICBM technology, and the other element of it is North Korea's desire to build a sea-based missile
leg of the triad in terms of their nuclear capabilities. And Kim has made very clear that he wants to have nuclear submarines. I'm not saying it's happening right now, but it's something to be concerned about. And it can't hurt with their energy needs overall, can it? No, it certainly doesn't either. I mean, there is...
As you know, CSIS with satellite imagery, commercial satellite imagery has been looking at the Russia-North Korean border, the Tumangang-Kasang railway crossing, and we see lots of petroleum cars, petroleum-shaped tubular rail cars that are on both sides of the customs area. So they're probably on one side all fueled up and they're going to the other side and they're dispensing all their fuel.
There's a lot that Kim, I think, is getting out of this. If we consider where he was before the start of this war, he was coming out of a three-year COVID lockdown, completely spent out on all sorts of supplies and energy. And so he's sitting pretty right now between Russia and China. You know, before I get to our other guests, you've called this, and you wrote a piece late last week,
where you talk about this is a moment where North Korea is really crossing the Rubicon. What do you mean by that? Because they never have before sent troops like this combat. You said 10,000 combat troops to another country to fight.
In another sense, it's kind of reversed traditionally the way we think about the Russia-North Korea relationship and that it was always about Russia helping North Korea and so that's different. And I think it's really sort of changed the future DPRK-Europe relations. Europe traditionally has been seen as more
neutral in quotation marks among the Western partners than the United States for North Korea. There is a lot of cultural exchange, language exchange. The North Koreans had diplomatic representation in almost every EU capital.
And so there was interaction that took place there, but I don't think the Europeans are gonna forget anytime soon what the North Koreans are doing. And if they are in combat and they're killing Europeans, they're definitely not gonna forget. - Right, so Maria, speaking of Europe,
Putin recently at the BRICS summit did not deny that North Korean troops were in Russia. Tell us, what is Putin thinking? Why is he bringing the North Koreans into this effort, especially
Originally, we thought it was 3,000 troops. Now it's 10,000 troops, and I can imagine it's only going to grow. Yep. Well, the conventional wisdom is that Russia is struggling in Ukraine, and then there is also the Kursk situation, and it's possible that Putin is reluctant to call on Ukraine
for new mobilization, so hence he is actually resorting to this alternative, which by the way does not really give him a really nice picture, right, that he has to outsource the troops from elsewhere. Having said that, I'm not so honestly concerned
I'm not so much certain that is indeed the case. Frankly, looking at the polling data, looking at the economic situation in Russia, indeed, the price tag for recruiting new volunteers, the method for troops recruitment Russia has largely relied over the last year, has been rising. So it means that it's more expensive for the Russian budget to recruit a new soldier. But it's not – it's more like a demand-supply story, meaning that, yes, there is fewer
Soldiers now available at that price tag so they increase it. It doesn't necessarily mean that there is no people Unfortunately, it's still the case that Russia can recruit more It's possible. So the question then arises why did Russia hold off from calling another mobilization? The first one just reminder was announced in fall 2022 they recruited about 300,000
Since then they switched to this volunteering method. The possible answer is twofold. First of all, Putin is known for delaying unpleasant decisions. Indeed, the first wave of mobilization he announced was the most consequential for his personal approval. So he actually tried to avoid that even if
I do not think it's anything consequential for him in the long term. It's a really long time until he gets to be reelected. There's no free election in Russia either way. And every time during this war that his rating declined, it would always bounce back. So that's unlikely to be a problem. Similarly, most of the economists we talk to say that, yes, there's inflation on the rise in Russia, but ultimately the government is not in demand for money. They have the money, they have the old revenues. Worse come to worse, they change the
ruble exchange rate easily, print more money and they essentially solve the problem of recruiting more so-called volunteers. So that is also not the issue. It is probably the case that this particular move has to do with this rebuilding, this so-called axis of upheaval between North Korea and we also know that the same like similar relationship has been established with Iran and perhaps it's a useful skill that North Korean
soldiers may gain on the ground in Russia, perhaps, unfortunately, with an eye on future conflicts. I would not necessarily see this move as an act of desperation of Russia that they run out of troops, they have no soldiers to recruit domestically. I don't necessarily think that is the case. Let me ask you a little bit about Russia's economy for a second. Of course, the United States over the last couple of years has imposed really tough sanctions. But just last night in our terrific 60 Minutes report,
It talked about how Russia's economy has actually grown. Tell me about that and how that bears on this. Yeah, well, unfortunately, you know, sanctions is a tool that we are only learning how to use at this scale when applied especially towards the country of Russia's size, of Russia's, you know, market economy, you know, that all of them,
Number three oil producer in the world. Yeah. And the problem is that, first of all, the oil price, the real Achilles heel of Russia are the oil revenues. Every single time that Russia or the Soviet Union had a major economic crisis over the last maybe 50 years, it would always be linked to the decline in the oil prices, which in turn meant declining oil energy revenues.
In this case, when the administration was introducing the oil price cap together with its Western allies, the goal was to avoid actually hitting the oil, Russia's energy revenues high, meaning that the oil price cap design that was in place was designed to keep the Russian oil on the markets while somehow reducing the actual revenues that Russia's getting. That was already kind of a questionable method given that
It was an effort to work against the market forces, right? Russia still offers the oil, but somehow it doesn't get enough because everybody complies with this insurance. Russia was able to very successfully circumvent it by just invading the shady fleet, which by the way, it composed by buying older used ships from also some of our Western allies, which deserve to be said. Now, absolute majority of its oil
Maritime shipment is being sold through this shady fleet that do not abide by the ZOE price cap and so it really has completely pretty much recovered the oil revenue losses which originally followed the Introduction of this design so we need to think much tougher about the unpleasant decisions We may want to take going forward if we are serious about really containing Russia so far that hasn't been the case
Do we have tools that you believe we can actually deploy in that regard? We with Europe, Russia and Eurasia team actually do right now work on the number of reports pointing out the alternative options that exist out there as core accounts as one. There's actually a way to also reinforce the existing oil price cap going after Russian shady fleet. There are a variety of the options.
However, it's true that they're not perhaps very comfortable. There's a possibility that the energy prices will respond. So it's also understandable that before the US presidential election, no administration is willing to bargain with something as important as gas prices.
like, gasoline prices. So from that perspective, we probably will have to wait and see how the election ends. But then I think the administration will have little excuse not to do something tougher as long as we are serious about trying to contain Putin.
That's a really important point. I want to turn now to Dennis Wilder. Dennis, how is China viewing this development? It's supporting Russia's war, but would they also support this piece of it? And do you think Beijing's losing control of Kim Jong-un? Well, thanks, Andrew. I think we have to step back and say that for Xi Jinping, he has been performing a high wire act ever since the war began.
On the one hand, I'm sure he didn't want a war in Ukraine. On the other hand, Putin is now in war. He cannot see Putin fail. He and Putin, to a certain degree, are soulmates on the subject of American aggression from their point of view. You have NATO and then you have mini-NATO in Asia from the Chinese point of view. And so for him, he's got to support anything that supports Putin. After all,
Clandestinely, he's been supplying the semiconductors, the sophisticated machine tools, really rebuilding the war machine for Putin. On the other hand, he pretends to be neutral. He wants to keep the relationships with Europe going strongly. He doesn't want the US too angry at him. They have great economic reasons for that.
and the Western allies and the Asian allies. He doesn't want angry at him. Now, the difficulty with this for him, so he's not going to say anything publicly about this. In fact, the radio silence in Beijing on this subject is staggering. There is not a word in the Chinese press
either about the strategic agreement that was made in the summer between the Russians and the North Koreans, or about the sending of troops. It's just radio silence. For him, the problem becomes that those who see an axis of upheaval now have new cannon fodder as far as the Chinese are concerned. How does China explain what's going on?
How do the Chinese internationally sort of ignore the fact that their client state is now fighting in Ukraine? And the Europeans, as Victor is saying, are going to be upset. And they're not just going to be upset at the North Koreans. They're going to be upset at the Chinese, too. His other problem, as Victor mentioned earlier, is they don't know what Putin is giving the North Koreans. The Chinese have been very careful
about nuclear assistance to the North Koreans, keeping them on an IV drip of economic support so North Korea remains stable. But if Putin goes down the road of nuclear assistance, this will bolster the American alliances in East Asia, maybe creating a true NATO. And so he's in a very, very difficult spot.
And I think what he'll try and do is hopefully for his own sake, ignore the whole thing. Interesting. I want to get Victor to respond to that in just a minute. But before we do, Colonel Mark Hansian, of course, retired Marine Corps Colonel, former OMB, now senior advisor at CSIS for some amount of years, and one of our great, great colleagues, Mark Hansian.
we're talking about you know 10 12 000 north korean troops on the battlefield um the estimates are at 10 now but others have said 12 even do we know what kind of troops they are and how russia might use them well the russians and the north koreans haven't said how they're going to use them and they're not in operation yet so we don't quite know i can imagine two scenarios uh when we were at the 3000 level
I could imagine them being used as specialists. That's what the North Koreans have done in the past, maybe helping with ballistic missiles that they've sent to Russia, helping perhaps with logistics, and maybe even drone operations. There are reports that they're doing some of that, but not on the front lines. It's not enough troops to make a difference on the front lines.
At the higher levels, 10,000, 12,000 or more, you could imagine then that there would be enough not only to do some of these specialist tasks, which have in the past been what North Koreans have done, but also to conduct ground combat operations in their own right. And that would be a tremendous change from what the North Koreans have done.
their military is designed to fight on the Korean Peninsula and not to deploy overseas. So this would be quite a change for them. I mean, I would imagine many of these troops have never been overseas. I'm sure that none of them have. Right. Essentially because North Koreans are not allowed to travel. Correct. Even within the whole country. Now, you asked the question, are these troops any good? Yeah. What's the quality? Well, the quality of the
North Korean military overall is probably not very high. They're highly indoctrinated, but the readiness levels are low because of fuel shortages and shortages of parts and things like that. And let's face it, they haven't been fighting.
and they have not had any combat experience. But these are probably specially chosen. There are reports that they come from what's called the Storm Corps, which is a special operations group. And typically when countries send forces overseas, they are specially picked. They're specially trained. They're specially equipped so that when they're doing a real world operation, they're fully prepared. I would expect that that's what the North Koreans have done.
Another thing I would add is that there were again reports that the North Koreans are wearing Russian uniforms and have been issued Russian gear. If that's the case, then you may see
the russians claim these are volunteers and communists have done that in the past the chinese of course in korea the korean war were you know technically uh volunteers and i suspect that is to get around international laws you know about making north korea an actual combatant uh in the in the conflict uh but if they did that then you could imagine them on the front lines but not as individual replacements
Generally, countries in these kinds of situations want to keep all their forces together so that they are operating under their own officers. And there's also a degree of national pride involved. You also have an immense language problem, which is if you took a bunch of North Koreans and put them in a Russian unit, how would they operate? So I would expect North Korean battalions maybe
How badly do you think the Russians need this from North Korea? I know they need munitions. They've been being supplied with munitions and other equipment. How badly do they need the forces being sent from North Korea now?
Well, they're desperate for manpower. They conducted a mobilization early on, of course, in September 2022. It was pretty chaotic, but it produced something like 300,000 troops, and that stabilized the Russian position.
They've been trying to avoid that ever since. In other words, another mobilization because that involves involuntarily forcing Russians into the military. So they've offered very large bonuses for people to volunteer. They call them contractors, contracts, soldiers. They've recruited abroad. They've offered individuals Russian citizenship. They've got Chechnyans, of course. This would be a part of that effort to try to fill the ranks
They've lost something like 600,000 casualties since the beginning of war. They're trying to expand their own armed forces. They're desperate for manpower. Yes, 600,000 casualties, meaning killed and/or wounded, is no joke. It's a huge number. It's far, far beyond anything the Russians have sustained since the Second World War. Would you say the Russians are bogged down at this point, or is this just a frozen conflict that they're trying to outlast the Ukrainians?
Well, a little of both. We have a stalemate, but the Russians continue to chew away at the Ukrainian lines. They're attacking in probably half a dozen locations and have been doing that for many months since the Ukrainian counteroffensive petered out. So they feel like they're making a little progress. It comes at huge cost, but they're making a little progress.
uh on the other hand you know they are not making large breakthroughs and capturing a lot of territory putin's strategy appears to be to outlast the west and force the west maybe to back off make ukraine accept a a settlement maybe a ceasefire on the current lines which would be a partial putin victory
Mark, thank you. Maria, I want to ask you, you know, how much do the Russian people actually know about this? We know that despite the sanctions, they still have iPhones, for instance. They have access to the Internet. You know, some of it's blocked sometimes, but some of it's not blocked and they have ways around it. How much do the Russian people know about this? And
To the extent that they do, what do they think about North Korea joining the fight? ASSISTANT SECRETARY ZEYAZADEV: Thank you. And I wanted just to flag that here, Rachel, disagree with Mark. Yes, Russians are running for a lot of people. They're not really constrained in the sense that if Putin wanted to – and he was really desperate – he could easily announce another mobilization wave and recruit more people.
They recruit about 300,000 per year already on the volunteer basis. If it's a forced mobilization with certain incentives, the first wave of mobilization did not have any monetary expense associated to it. So right now they just don't necessarily need another mobilization wave since for the current goals, and it seems like they're waiting, for example, until the US presidential election outcome
shows the ways forward they could potentially manage without North Korean troops if they wanted to from my perspective also at the rate of losing uh 1200 12 to 1500 of people per day in some areas in Ukraine you know you can do the math 10 000
trips is not going to be a big advantage, right? It's going to maybe last for less than 10 days, unfortunately. That's just the reality. But to your question, yes, there are information sources in Russia if you're willing to search for them still. Having said that, it's also true that the number is shrinking.
YouTube right now still exists, it's like the remaining major largest platform with independent media coverage, some of it, but they've been recently slowing it down, the authorities. So the problem, and it's historically been the case, that the absolute majority of Russians live in their own bubble. Unfortunately, the problem we're familiar with here as well.
And penetrating that bubble has been really hard for the Russian liberals, pro-Western, anti-war groups, even before 2022. Consistently, Putin has won that battle pretty much on day one, after he came to power in 2000 and concentrated control over the TV stations pretty much right away, where the majority of the Russians get the news. Since then, the situation has remained unchanged.
despite the fact that many Russians have switched online and increasing number of them now getting the news from the internet, still the problem persists that what sort of channels do they look up on the internet? Most of the time, of course, these are the channels that don't question their existing priors,
Don't create this cognitive dissonance. And the problem is that there is no actual challenges such as economic crisis, personal discomfort that would be an incentive for them to get out of that bubble. Mobilization actually was arguably one of the few developments since the start of the war that for an ordinary Russian created this question like what the hell is going on and am I going to be the next to be recruited and die?
And indeed, every time this kind of shocking events happen, we do see that independent online media get an increase in the audiences with more, you know, average Russians actually trying to get out, get more independent news. But unfortunately, soon after, typically the anxiety subsides and they go back to the comfortable bubbles.
It's interesting. Victor, I want to bring up something Dennis was talking about a second ago. And that is, is Beijing actually losing control of Kim? Well, they would argue that they never had much control of him in the future. When we were doing the six party talks, the Chinese would always say, oh, you think we have a lot of influence? We don't have a lot of influence. But
The Chinese jealously guard whatever influence they have over North Korea. And I'm sure, as Dennis said, there's probably a combination of a little bit of exasperation, a little bit of panic, and a little bit of
they don't know what to do with regard to the current situation. The exasperation is that North Korea has made this big step. Who knows if they even informed the Chinese before doing this? We don't know that. I think the panic is that Russia now has arguably much more influence over
North Korea than China does. The Russians and the North Koreans stopped reporting bilateral trade figures once the war started. And so what we know about Russia-North Korea interaction that we've talked about has largely been just through looking at commercial satellite imagery. And there we see like the customs areas on both sides and the level of traffic just off the charts, completely off the charts, unprecedented.
And meanwhile, at least some of the studies that I've seen show that China DPRK trade is still not back to pre-pandemic level. So that gives you some sense of who's got the influence there. And then I want to just, I agree. I mean, Dennis is the expert, but I agree with what he's saying about China. At this point, there is nothing that's good about what's happening between Russia and North Korea. There is no, from any angle,
there's really nothing that's good for China. It has both short-term and even potentially much more longer-term strategic implications for China, their neighborhood, the U.S. alliance system in Asia, all these sorts of things. Maybe a formalization of the mini-NATO. I mean, there are all these things that I would imagine people in China are thinking about. But what is still puzzling to me is the complete lack of
any action, right? And I don't know if that's incompetence or it's paralysis, like they don't know what to do or it's incompetence. They can't get their interagency to agree on what to do next, but, or, or she to, to, to know what he wants to do next. That's the part that, um,
It's hard for me to understand. People always say, you know, the Chinese think, you know, a decade in advance while we can't stop thinking about, like, the next five minutes or what we didn't finish yesterday. We're very, like, nearsighted. I mean, we're very, like, right here. I'm stuck on the Ravens losing to the Browns yesterday. Sorry about that. But if you look at this from a long-term perspective, you would think that there is nothing that's good in this for China at all. Right.
they should do something about it. - If I may. - Yeah, please. - You know, North Korea, from the Chinese point of view, is their chronic excedrin headache. They have not, ever since Kim killed his uncle, Chang Suk-taek, in 2013, Chang was the only guy they felt they could talk to and he started some economic reforms.
And Kim may have killed him in part because he was close to the Chinese. And so the Chinese relationship with the North, really going back to the Korean War, has always been a very tenuous one with neither side trusting the other side. So for them, almost like for us in your book, The Impossible State, it's somewhat similar. What do you do with this country? You need it as a buffer.
You keep it on an IV drip of a little bit of economic assistance. It doesn't hurt to have North Korea that's a little bit worrisome to the United States. But on the other hand, this guy is so unpredictable and could really mess up China's whole strategic position in East Asia.
It is, I think, a very real conundrum for Beijing. Yeah, and I would add that I think that one of the reasons that Kim Jong-un may be doing this with Russia is precisely because of China. China has always kept North Korea at this arm's length distance. Even though they are partners, they've never given them the sort of security, at least in the post-Cold War, post-war,
of relations between China and South Korea in 1992. They've never sort of given the sort of explicit security guarantee that Russia gave to North Korea this past June.
And so, you know, by sending these troops, it's like a down payment. It's like a down payment on an explicit mutual security partnership, which they could never get from China. So I think it's both a play to Russia and it's also a play to China. You know, we talk about U.S. competition with China all the time. It strikes me that maybe in the United States, we're not talking enough about
I'm sorry, about Russia and China's competition over North Korea. Mark, what are some of the people at DoD and NSC thinking about with this? Well, strategically, it's very difficult for the United States because we are so focused on China that whenever North Korea raises its head as a possible threat, that's a distraction from the primary focus, China, as the pacing threat.
And it diverts US strategic attention. We need different forces for a conflict on the Korean peninsula. In addition to aircraft and
ships you need a relatively large ground force many strategists wanted to cut the size of the army in order in order to fund uh air power and naval power for a potential confrontation with china so this is a a huge strategic problem in addition to the additional uh strategic problems in europe and the middle east war in ukraine has pulled us back into europe
Pulls some focus away from Asia, so has the conflict in the Middle East. So it's complicating the US strategic point of view, and then that's affecting forces in budgets. So colleagues, I want to pick up on what Mark's saying here. What should decision makers in the United States and policymakers do with this equation? Maria, let's start with you. Maybe I'll start.
Something that's clearly coming up consistently with the US government and the general approach towards Russia since 2014, not even 2022, is the lack of broader strategy. I completely agree that Russia is often shrugged off, just as North Korea allegedly is, as a short-term, acute, to quote one of the security documents, threat, but not a long-term challenge.
Consistently over this time, Putin defied these expectations and remained a very real problem which wasn't just present at the moment but actually continuously, which also exacerbates a lot of other problems that exist like North Korea and even China.
So clearly, there's a desperate need for consistent strategy towards Russia and increasingly Russia becoming much more than just Russia problem, but also at the very least North Korea and Iran problem, China with a question mark, but also we actually see this axis of upheaval forming. The easiest way to tackle this problem now that it's just been born before it's developed fully, before these countries have established financial channels, for example,
They're already working on it, like Russia and Iran, that are not subject to financial sanctions that we can impose on them, even if already the sanctions are not working well enough. Before it all happens, it's best to try and address the problem right away. And the easiest way to do that is to tackle Russia's energy revenues, which, by the way, will also be a problem for Iran. Because Iran is similarly a petro-state that's highly aggressive, but mostly because it's
This entire regime is based essentially on this petro-aggression problem. But unfortunately, we do not see the commitment. The West remains divided. Obviously, there are a lot of domestic challenges to deal with. And in a lot of ways, the emergence of this very hostile, threatening autocrats that keep popping up across the world is a function of the Western weakness. And of course, we're not going to overcome the Western weaknesses, but at least developing a strategy to address it.
and also tackle it where it's the easiest in Ukraine by helping Ukraine, backing up Ukraine, helping Russia contain Russia, helping Ukraine contain Russia, that would be the obvious way to go. - Victor and Denis, if you're on the National Security Council right now, what are you doing to prepare decision makers in the administration as to how to think about this? And I'll start with you, Vic.
Well, I mean, first thing, obviously, is collecting as much data as we can, intelligence as we can on the relationship. What if there's more to come? Like we went from 3000 last week to now you said 10,000, maybe 12,000. According to at least the South Korean sources, that's where they max out at. So are we going to go beyond that? Right. That would be one. But I mean, the other on the policy side is.
We don't have a lot of good tools directly to attack this North Korea-Russia problem itself. We couldn't do it during the munitions phase of this. And we're having, you know, I think we'll have as hard a time doing it on the troops phase. Maybe there's something you can do on desertions or things like that because, as Mark said, they're well-trained.
They're well trained, but they've never been trained for something like this, to be sent to a foreign country in the middle of a war zone without anybody who speaks your language, probably with very little supervision in the sense that when South Koreans went to Vietnam, there were like 25,000 troops. I mean, there were entire units, well trained, well commanded that went. This is a very different situation.
So where do we focus? We focus on things like consolidating and improving the alliance partnerships with the US, Japan, and Korea. I've said a number of times already in different CSIS meetings
outlets that we should work on a collective defense declaration among the US, Japan and South Korea. We should do more to improve relationships between South Korea, Japan and NATO. I was actually at a conference in Korea last week that was a NATO conference in South Korea.
I've never been to a NATO conference in South Korea before where they're talking more about intelligence sharing. Is there more they can do on common standards for military equipment? So things that help to push those relationships forward, I think, are very important. And if there is a way to work on China for this, then we should try to explore those avenues too and try to...
exploit the fact that we know the Chinese are not happy at all with what's happening between Russia and DPRK. - Yeah, over to you, Dennis. - Well, everything Victor says is what I would say. As the former CIA officer on this panel
I keep thinking there's an opportunity in intelligence channels here with the Chinese. We set up those listening posts in Western China against the Soviet Union, highly successful operation, even though the ups and downs of U.S.-China relations. We could, in this situation, talk about joint collection, joint analysis.
They want to know what's going on. We want to know what's going on. I would have our station chief reach out, see whether there's some interest on the Chinese side. I would bet there would be. Obviously, this would not be publicized. But I think there is an opportunity to exploit here, and I would get creative about it. That's fascinating.
You know, along those lines, something we haven't talked about yet, and I think we probably have a little bit of time left to talk about it, is what does Korea get out of this that could really hurt us? And when this collaboration between North Korea and Russia started,
Months ago, there was a famous visit where Putin and Kim got together and they were looking at satellites and they were looking at rockets. So technology for North Korea is a big priority in this relationship with Russia. Mark, talk about that a bit. And then I want to go around the panel to get views.
Well, Victor raised the question about technology transfer, and that is probably the most dangerous possibility from the US point of view. That is that the Russians transfer technology about ballistic missiles, about air defenses, and about nuclear weapons. North Koreans will also pick up some real world experience in combat operations. Just the experience of deploying to another country
can be very valuable because you have to do things in real life that, back on the training areas, you just simulate. So there's some value for the conventional forces, but I think the technology side is the most dangerous. - Victor, you wanna pick up on that? - Yeah, I entirely agree with what Mark said. Again, you're the military expert, but the other thing I think is also North Korea
9 million rounds of ammunition have gone from North Korea to Russia. Some of that stuff is really old and bad. But if we think that they're just depleting their stocks to help the Russians and they're not replenishing those stocks, that's incorrect.
they're replenishing replenishing them you know maybe in some sort of co-production arrangement with russia where they are getting much more capable munitions and who knows what else is providing on the conventional site and the point of all this is to say we all know north korea has a 1.2 million man army but it's not very good it's not well trained it's not well equipped but as a result of this relationship it may be better trained it may be better equipped
And of course, what we want to avoid on the Korean Peninsula is some sort of miscalculation by Kim. They think that, you know, I have nuclear capabilities, you know, I may even have tactical nuclear capabilities, and now I have, you know, capable conventional forces, better equipped, better trained. Like, do I now control all the rungs of the escalation ladder? And does that allow me to be much more aggressive, coercive, risk-taking, things like that? We don't want them to make that calculation or miscalculation.
Right? And so I agree, both on the high technology side, but even on the conventional side, this is worrying. Dennis, anything on this? Well, I think I go back to the fact that the Soviets tested 1,000 nuclear devices. The North Koreans have tested six. The amount of information that the...
Soviets or now the Russians have at their disposal to offer to North Korea is truly astounding tactical missiles multiple reentry vehicles Nuclear submarines. I mean I keep thinking about a North Korean SSB n floating in the Western Pacific an Incredible headache for all of us if that is what eventuates out of this Maria so
Russia obviously holds the cards here with North Korea. They're going to decide what they're going to give North Korea and what they're not going to give. How do you view this equation for Putin? What does he want to give North Korea to keep them interested?
It seems that Putin, especially after 2022, after February, is a little unhinged. It's like the situation when the masks are off and whatever it takes to create problems for the West, for the Western-led coalition. What we see consists, like, for example, with the case of Iran, that Russia backs down from its previous decisions, right, instead of participating in agreements that would actually encourage Iran
not to develop nuclear technologies. Right now we increasingly see rumors of Russia very actively, like Trump, potentially providing more technologies to Iran. So I believe that here the situation is somewhat similar. The effort – Russia is an agent of chaos right now, and right now in the open trying to empower hostile actors that would be detrimental for the West. And Russia thinks
it has the long-term winning cards just because the West appears divided unable to contain this shaping axis and there isn't enough resistance to that. So I think you can expect all sorts of this
detrimental effort. Having said that, it's still also true that Russia has limits to how far it will go. Even with China right now, we see that they're quite reluctant to share too much technology. There is still all these spy cases when, for example, some alleged Chinese spy had been caught in Russia. So the hope is that there is sufficient baggage in relationship between all of these countries, a lot of mistrust, a lot of hurt pride in the past.
that will also create a lot of obstacles for them, for their cooperation, and we should certainly exploit them. Victor, I want to end with you. How is South Korea looking at this? They've got to just be at their wit's end.
yeah i think they're quite um upset about it the uh you know they have provided a good deal of humanitarian economic support to ukraine and some military support indirectly from poland to the u.s army um i think it's very hard in my opinion it's very hard for south korea to be upset and then say we're upset and we're going to maintain the status quo in terms of what we're doing on ukraine i think they're going to have to
I shouldn't say they're going to have to, I think they're going to want to step up that support. How it manifests, we don't know yet.
I think it's important that they have had some unnamed officials in the last week put out that they are considering direct military support. I think that was as much for an international audience as it was signaling to a domestic audience because he has a very difficult domestic situation where he doesn't have control of the legislature and there is a domestic law in South Korea against providing military support and weapons directly to a country that is in war.
Right. So but I think that they are I think I wouldn't expect to see a change in the South Korean position and one that is focused on doing more for Ukraine. Yeah. And Mark, when you think about the U.S.-ROK military relationship, strategic military relationship, how do you think that that all fits into this moment right now where, as Victor said, it looks like South Korea is going to need to step up?
Well, the relationship, of course, has been very, very close. And they work together all the time, which is critical if you want two militaries to operate smoothly together. I think that this will...
reinforce the need for U.S. forces in Korea and for that relationship that this is, you know, the North Korean threat is not going to fade away and that we're going to have to pay attention to it. Colleagues, I want to thank you all today for this terrific discussion. We'll be back next week with another episode of The Impossible State. Thank you very much. Thank you.