An opaque new treaty that Russian President President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed this week — which includes a mutual defense pledge and military assistance — has unnerved the United States, Japan and South Korea. But it is also galvanizing closer trilateral security cooperation and support for war-torn Ukraine.
Kim and Putin praised the agreement after their summit in Pyongyang on Wednesday, with the North Korean leader saying it amounted to a de facto “alliance” and the Russian president labeling it a “breakthrough document.”
But breathless exhortations by the two strongmen that the pact will usher in a new era of ties and set the stage for a “multipolar” world are unlikely to materialize any time soon.
Jean H. Lee, a Koreas expert with the East-West Center think tank, said the treaty was “the strongest show of partnership between Russia and North Korea that we’ve seen in decades — since the Cold War.” However, she noted that it was also rooted in each country’s self-interests, as Moscow seeks help with its war in Ukraine and Pyongyang looks to bolster its nuclear, missile and space programs while propping up its regime.
“This was a show of solidarity that was transactional in nature, a propaganda boost for both at a time when they are international pariahs, and an opportunity to create unease in Washington and elsewhere,” Lee said.
According to the full text of the landmark treaty released Thursday by Pyongyang, North Korea and Russia agreed to provide immediate military assistance if either faces armed aggression, effectively reviving a defunct Cold War-era mutual defense pact.
“In case any one of the two sides is put in a state of war by an armed invasion from an individual state or several states, the other side shall provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay in accordance with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter and the laws of the DPRK and the Russian Federation,” Article 4 of the agreement says, using the initials of the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Article 51 of the U.N. Charter provides for the right of a member country to take individual or collective defense actions.
It also outlines the creation of “mechanisms for taking joint measures with the aim of strengthening the defense capabilities” of the two countries.
“In essence, the agreement formalizes the intensified relationship that the DPRK and Russia have developed, particularly since the Ukraine war,” said Sebastian Maslow, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo focusing on East Asian security issues. “The agreement provides a framework for intensified cooperation.”
But while the new pact triggered immediate concern in Tokyo, Seoul and Washington, it could also push the three even closer, including on the issue of supplying Ukraine with much needed weaponry.
Until now, South Korea has only supplied nonlethal defense gear to Ukraine under a long-standing policy that bans providing deadly weapons to countries at war.
Seoul has reportedly indirectly supplied weapons to Ukraine by selling scores of munitions to the U.S., though it is unclear if the weapons helped Washington refill its own depleted stockpiles or whether the South Korean munitions were delivered directly for battle operations in Ukraine.
But Seoul said Thursday that, following the announcement of the North Korea-Russia pact, it was reconsidering directly sending weapons to support Kyiv.
“There are various options for providing weapons, and our position on the recent developments between Russia and North Korea depends on how Russia approaches the situation going forward,” South Korean national security adviser Chang Ho-jin told the Yonhap news agency.
Such a shift would open up the spigot from one of the last major untapped arms producers for Kyiv.
Putin lashed out at the remarks, suggesting Thursday that he did not rule out sending weapons to North Korea, warning the South that it would be making “a very big mistake” if it decided to supply arms to Ukraine, and that Moscow would respond to such a move in a way that would be painful for Seoul.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied claims by Western and South Korean intelligence services of earlier arms exchanges following a September meeting between Putin and Kim.
The U.S. State Department called Putin’s remarks about sending weapons to North Korea “incredibly concerning.”
“It would destabilize the Korean Peninsula, of course, and potentially ... depending on the type of weapons they provide, might violate U.N. Security Council resolutions that Russia itself has supported,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
The new treaty could also serve to enlarge NATO’s footprint in Asia — a fear that Putin used as a justification for the pact in the first place.
“The timing of this new agreement should be seen, first, in the context of deepening security ties between the United States, South Korea and Japan, and, second, in the context of challenging efforts to internationalize NATO’s security cooperation beyond the traditional Euro-Atlantic parameters into the Indo-Pacific,” said Maslow.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted the importance of the region during a visit to the U.S. earlier this week to firm up plans for a July 9 to 11 summit in Washington.
Putin’s defense cooperation with North Korea, he said, “demonstrates that our security is not regional, it’s global. What happens in Europe matters for Asia. What happens in Asia matters for us. ... So, this idea that we can divide security into regional theaters doesn’t work anymore.”
Experts such as Patrick Cronin, an Asia-Pacific security expert at the Hudson Institute think tank, say the new treaty “will stimulate closer alliance defense cooperation among the United States, South Korea, Japan and others, especially NATO member states.”
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol were already slated to attend next month’s NATO summit, and hold a three-way meeting set to include U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines. Those talks are now expected to focus on a united response to the increased Russian-North Korean military cooperation.
“We might expect something additional now out of the U.S.-hosted NATO summit,” said Cronin. “But the still-opaque terms of the Moscow-Pyongyang security pact are less important than the growth over the past year of a serious defense partnership between the Putin and Kim regimes.”
Following the September meeting, both leaders have ramped up their countries’ military and economic cooperation believed to have included massive North Korean transfers of some 5 million artillery shells as well as ballistic missiles and other weapons to Russia to help replenish stocks depleted by the war in Ukraine.
In return, North Korea is believed to be receiving advanced military technologies, including help with its space and spy satellite programs, as well as cash, food and raw materials. Russia’s use of its ballistic missiles has also given it valuable data as they are tested in actual combat in Ukraine, including against advanced missile defense systems also deployed to Japan.
The new North Korea-Russia agreement expands this cooperation to nuclear energy, space exploration, food and energy security, while taking implicit aim at the West, saying that the two sides “shall aspire to global strategic stability and establishment of a new fair and equal international order.”
Indeed, both leaders used their summit to criticize “U.S. hegemony” while embracing “a new multipolar world” — something Maslow said was “a reminder” that Moscow and Pyongyang continue to seek cooperation “in an attempt to undermine the liberal international order.”
“But this new order is designed to serve Russia’s and North Korea’s national interests, not the international community,” he said. “So I think we need to be careful about categorizing the security agreement as an ‘alliance.’”
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