The West did nothing to stop North Korea’s alliance with Russia, and there will be consequences

In one form or another, all of America’s major enemies — China, Russia, North Korea and Iran — are intervening in and taking advantage of our election.

North Korea just had its say by directly joining Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; South Korean and Ukrainian officials reported last week that some North Korean personnel, probably military engineers, were killed in Ukraine.

U.S. intelligence then declassified a report that said at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers are undergoing combat training in Russia, a development that U.S officials say could have global implications. Ukrainian intelligence places the number at 12,000.

“It’s effectively the participation of a second state in the war against Ukraine on the side of Russia,” President Volodymyr Zelensky announced to Ukraine’s Parliament.

Though Western intelligence and political leaders were clearly surprised by the deployments, they logically operationalize the Russia-North Korea strategic partnership announced in June. In that agreement, the parties pledged mutual cooperation should either come under “attack” or “armed invasion.”

The document did not specify whether it would apply to retaliatory action taken by a third country in response to aggression perpetrated by either of the parties, such as Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, or Ukraine’s recent responsive incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. But the infusion of North Korean forces in the last few weeks into the Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine, and their possible use in the Ukrainian-held part near Kursk, signifies that Moscow and Pyongyang make no distinction between offense and defense, and are acting in flagrant defiance of international law.

The Russo-North Korean pact, which Kim Jong Un insists on calling an “alliance,” cites Article 51 of the United Nations Charter as somehow validating North Korea’s intervention. But that provision affirms “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” It authorizes the use of defensive force by the victim of aggression and its allies — not, perversely, further offensive action by the aggressor nation that triggered the conflict in the first place.

Article 51 protects Ukraine and those who help it, not Russia and North Korea. Their invocation the article to justify expanding Russian aggression (and now North Korean aggression) against Ukraine makes a mockery of the U.N. Charter and turns on its head the principal international lesson of World War II. If left unchallenged and unchecked, it increases the chances of World War III.

National security spokesperson and former Adm. John Kirby put the matter in terms of the laws of war. “We recognize the potential danger here," he said. If these North Korean troops are employed against Ukraine, they will become legitimate military targets.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin implied the North Korean intervention could have military ramifications beyond the immediate War zone: “If they’re co-belligerents — if their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf — that is a very, very serious issue. It will have impacts, not only in Europe. It will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific as well.”

That is already happening.

South Korea just announced that, given the enhanced capabilities to attack the South provided by North Korea’s participation in the Ukraine War, Seoul is seriously considering sending weapons to assist the Kyiv government’s self-defense. It is possible, depending on how North Korea reacts to that development, that at some point South Korean soldiers could also be sent to fight the North Koreans there.

Ukraine is already experiencing a reprise of Nazi-like aggression as in World War II; conflict between North and South Korea in Ukraine would also make the besieged country a proxy site for the renewal of the Korean War.

China and Russia have their strategic anti-U.S. partnership, announced in February 2022 by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin just before the invasion of Ukraine. China and North Korea have had a “lips and teeth” diplomatic and economic partnership for decades. While Iran lacks similar formal arrangements with any of the other members of the new Axis of Evil, it engages in weapons transactions with all of them.

The other three members of the group have all provided Russia with essential weapons, munitions and other material aid, but North Korea is the first so far to provide fighting forces in support of Russia’s aggression. Yet, because of the Biden-Harris administration’s inhibiting fears of escalation, no NATO members have dispatched organized military forces to Ukraine. That may now change.

Kirby said, “We’re going to be talking to allies and partners, including Ukrainians, about what the proper next steps are going to be.”

Given Israel’s widening conflict with Iran and the demands on the West from Russia’s war with Ukraine, which existed before North Korea’s unwelcome intervention, many in the U.S., including some in Congress, may feel that America’s security circuits are already overloaded. That is a dangerous predicament even before considering the looming China threat against Taiwan.

Yet, fraught as the international situation is, there has been astonishingly little in-depth discussion of foreign policy from either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, and a paucity of substantive questioning from the media. Over the coming weeks, members of the new Axis of Evil may have further unhappy surprises for the democratically distracted West.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.