{"id":1427367,"date":"2023-09-14T01:20:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1427367"},"modified":"2023-09-14T01:20:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T05:20:00","slug":"the-reported-russian-north-korean-military-deal-is-all-about-geostrategic-balancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-reported-russian-north-korean-military-deal-is-all-about-geostrategic-balancing\/1427367\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reported Russian-North Korean Military Deal Is All About Geostrategic Balancing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Reported Russian-North Korean Military Deal Is All About Geostrategic Balancing<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Russia and North Korea\u2019s complementary balancing acts at the global and national levels vis-a-vis China coupled with China\u2019s reluctance to burn all bridges with the West as it begins building alternative global institutions are the real driving forces behind the first two\u2019s reported military deal.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Many observers believe that Russia and North Korea have decided to strengthen their military ties due to shared threats from the West.\u00a0<\/strong>Reports<\/a>\u00a0claim that they\u2019re exploring a swap whereby Russia would share hypersonic, nuclear, satellite, and submarine technology with North Korea in exchange for Soviet-era ammunition and artillery. The first part of this deal would balance the\u00a0emerging US-South Korean-Japanese triangle<\/a>\u00a0while the second would keep Russia\u2019s\u00a0special<\/a>\u00a0operation<\/a>\u00a0going\u00a0into next year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s likely a lot of truth to this assessment since it makes sense for them to help each other against their shared opponents in the\u00a0New Cold War<\/a>, but there\u2019s more to it than just that. <\/strong>For starters, the preceding report about their impending swap doesn\u2019t account for Russia\u2019s growing edge in its\u00a0\u201crace of logistics\u201d\/\u201cwar of attrition\u201d<\/a>\u00a0with NATO that\u2019s responsible for\u00a0defeating Kiev\u2019s counteroffensive<\/a>. Even without North Korea\u2019s Soviet-era supplies, Russia is still impressively holding its own against all of NATO.<\/p>\n

This proves that Russia\u2019s military-industrial complex (MIC) already meets its needs in the present and beyond, thus raising the question of why Russia would countenance a military deal with North Korea in the first place, let alone such a seemingly lopsided one.<\/strong> A cogent explanation is that Russia\u2019s MIC might struggle in that scenario to meet its military-technical obligations to third parties, ergo the need to purchase lower-quality supplies so that production facilities can prioritize higher-quality exports.<\/p>\n

Even if that\u2019s the case, then it doesn\u2019t answer the question of why Russia would be willing to share such potentially game-changing military technology with North Korea for these supplies instead of simply paying for them with hard currency, nor why it either can\u2019t or won\u2019t try to get them from China. Likewise, one might also wonder why North Korea can\u2019t receive the aforesaid military technology from China and would have to request it from Russia as part of their reported swap.<\/p>\n

The answer to those three questions concerns China\u2019s reluctance to burn all bridges with the West as well as Russia and North Korea\u2019s shared interests in preemptively averting potentially disproportionate dependence on the People\u2019s Republic<\/strong>. Beginning with the first balancing act, while President Xi arguably envisages China leading the creation of alternative global institutions as\u00a0strongly suggested<\/a>\u00a0by his decision to skip last weekend\u2019s G20 Summit in Delhi, he\u2019d prefer for this to be a smooth process.<\/p>\n

Any abrupt bifurcation\/\u201ddecoupling\u201d would destabilize the global economy and therefore sabotage his country\u2019s export-driven growth, but the US might force this scenario in response to China\u2019s large-scale arming of Russia and\/or transfer of game-changing military technology to North Korea. For that reason, President Xi likely wouldn\u2019t agree to either of those two deals except if they were urgently required to prevent their defeat by the West, but neither is facing that threat so China won\u2019t risk the consequences.<\/p>\n

As for the second part of this balancing act, even if President Xi offered to meet Russia\u2019s and North Korea\u2019s military needs, those two would still probably prefer to rely on one another for them instead of China in order to not become disproportionately dependent on the People\u2019s Republic. Both regard that country as one of the top strategic partners anywhere in the world, but each would feel uncomfortable if they entered into relationship where Beijing plays too big of a role in ensuring their national security.<\/p>\n

From Russia\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s a matter of principle to\u00a0never become disproportionately dependent<\/a>\u00a0on any given partner since such ties could curtail the Kremlin\u2019s\u00a0foreign policy sovereignty<\/a>\u00a0even if its counterpart doesn\u2019t have any nefarious intent<\/strong>. In the Chinese context, relations of that nature might make some policymakers less interested in maintaining their country\u2019s balancing act\u00a0between China and India<\/a>, thus leading to them subconsciously favoring Beijing and pushing Delhi closer to Washington.<\/p>\n

Should that happen, then the\u00a0global systemic transition to multipolarity<\/a>\u00a0would revert back towards bipolarity (or rather\u00a0bi-multipolarity<\/a>) as Russia turbocharges\u00a0China\u2019s superpower trajectory<\/a>\u00a0in parallel with India helping the US retain its declining hegemony. The result would be that only those two superpowers would enjoy genuine sovereignty while everyone else\u2019s would be greatly limited by the natural dynamics of their competition. Russia obviously wants to avoid this scenario at all costs.<\/p>\n

Unlike Russia\u2019s global interests, North Korea\u2019s are purely national, but they\u2019re still complementary to Moscow\u2019s. <\/strong>Pyongyang had been disproportionately dependent on Beijing since the end of the Old Cold War after the USSR collapsed, but China later leveraged this relationship to expand ties with the West by approving UNSC sanctions against North Korea. Russia did the same for identical reasons, but North Korea wasn\u2019t dependent on Russia so Pyongyang didn\u2019t hold a grudge against Moscow like it did Beijing.<\/p>\n

It was this growing distrust of China that inspired Kim Jong Un to seriously explore Trump\u2019s ultimately unsuccessful de-nuclearization proposal in order to rebalance his country\u2019s relations with the People\u2019s Republic. The same motivation was why Myanmar agreed to a rapprochement with the US under Obama that also ultimately failed. Both countries felt that their disproportionate dependence on China was disadvantageous and accordingly sought to rectify it by rebalancing ties with the US.<\/p>\n

Since the American dimension of their balancing acts didn\u2019t bear any fruit and is no longer viable, each is now looking towards Russia to play that same role in helping them relieve their disproportionate dependence on China. Russian-Myanmarese relations were explained\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0while Russian-North Korean ones will now be elaborated on a bit more. From Pyongyang\u2019s perspective, even if Beijing gave it game-changing military technology, this could always be cut off one day if China reached a deal with the US.<\/p>\n

In fact, China probably wouldn\u2019t consider giving North Korea such technology anyhow since that could make it more difficult for Beijing to ever leverage its influence over Pyongyang again in pursuit of such a deal with Washington, thus limiting China\u2019s own foreign policy sovereignty.<\/strong> The likelihood of Russia reaching a major deal with the US anytime soon is close to nil after all that\u2019s unfolded over the past 18 months, so North Korea believes that Russia will be a much more reliable long-term military partner.<\/p>\n

Russia and North Korea\u2019s complementary balancing acts at the global and national levels vis-a-vis China coupled with China\u2019s reluctance to burn all bridges with the West as it begins building alternative global institutions are the real driving forces behind the first two\u2019s reported military deal.<\/p>\n

This grand strategic insight enables one to better understand the true state of relations between these countries and therefore helps objective observers produce more accurate analyses about them going forward.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 09\/13\/2023 – 21:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/reported-russian-north-korean-military-deal-all-about-geostrategic-balancing<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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