Tag Archives: north korea

North Korea at al

China is unhappy. So is Belarus. Both countries are worried about North Korea sending troops to Russia in the middle of the Ukraine war.

President Xi Jinping is worried that the move will de-stabilise the Korean Peninsula, escalate and complicate the Ukraine War, increase Russian influence in the Far East and potentially drag China into a head-on conflict with NATO.

Alexander Lukashenko is concerned that the appearance of non-Russian troops in Ukraine will increase pressure on him to send Belarussian soldiers in support of the Kremlin.

Xi hates uncertainty. He likes his foreign policy to run along diplomatic railway lines painted bright red so that others know not to cross them. If there are going to be any spanners to be thrown, he wants to toss them and control their flight and consequences.

He does not like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. He is uneasy about the hereditary communist dictator’s nuclear arsenal. He supplies the regime with just enough aid and trade to keep them going, but not enough to threaten the status quo. This is because for the past 74 years one of the chief aims of China is to keep Korea divided and to maintain North Korea as a buffer state between the Chinese border and 25,000 American soldiers in South Korea. Anything which threatens to disrupt that policy is bad news in Beijing.

The bromance between Vladimir Putin and Kim threatens to upset this delicately balanced apple cart. Kim will want something in return for his troops. It will almost certainly include Russian military help which will embolden the mercurial North Korean leader and increase the threat to South Korea and Japan.

Belarus is on the frontline in the Ukraine War. The initial attack in 2022 was launched from its territory. Lukashenko is closely allied with Russia and continues to provide bases and logistical support. But Lukashenko knows he is unpopular. He clings to power with the help of the Belarussian KGB (yes, they retained the name of the old Soviet organisation). Committing his small military force of 50,000 to the Ukraine War would be unpopular and threaten his rule.

By the way, just everyone else is also unhappy about North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine.  It adds a new and dangerous dimension by internationalising the conflict.

Russia

Russia is unhappy too. The recent referendum in Moldova on closer ties with the European Union did not go the way the Kremlin wanted. It was extremely close: 50.46 percent in favour of closer ties and 49.54 percent against.

The Russians did everything they could to push the vote the other way. They played fast and loose with bribery, intimidation and misinformation. A BBC reporter was filmed being approached by a voter asking for the payment she had been promised.

The misinformation focused on an expensive advertising campaign which claimed the EU planned to brainwash Moldovan children to turn gay or transgender. The gay community is generally unpopular throughout Eastern Europe.