What Russia’s Embrace of North Korea Means for America

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ventured abroad in September to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, ending a period of self-imposed diplomatic isolation that began with the COVID-19 pandemic. This summit meeting was largely motivated by the opportunities that Pyongyang sees in the geopolitical discord unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not least Moscow’s apparent willingness to provide Pyongyang with critical raw materials and technologies and to use its veto at the United Nations Security Council to shield Pyongyang from international censure.

North Korea’s exploitation of growing rifts between Russia and the West, paired with its seemingly insatiable ambitions for advanced nuclear capabilities, should prompt a substantial reevaluation in Washington of the problems posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and, by extension, how the United States approaches the Korean Peninsula. The theory that pressure could change Pyongyang’s strategic calculus and force Kim to disarm has proved futile. The changing geostrategic environment in Northeast Asia today only further limits the viability of any American strategy that prioritizes denuclearization above all other ends on the Korean Peninsula. Washington must adopt a more pragmatic approach centered on proactive risk reduction and conventional deterrence. Rather than rely on coercive economic pressure to change North Korea’s calculus regarding the fundamental value of its nuclear weapons—a dubious proposition even before Moscow’s embrace of Pyongyang—a U.S. policy based on reducing nuclear risks and escalation pressures while giving North Korea incentives to reengage diplomatically would offer a more practical way to lower the likelihood of nuclear conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

NUCLEAR RECKONING

The Biden administration’s May 2021 review of North Korea policy concluded that in addition to seeking the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the United States would work toward a “calibrated, practical approach,” designed to “make practical progress that increases the security of the United States, our allies, and deployed forces.” In practice, this stated policy has failed despite U.S. attempts to restart open-ended diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. North Korea has been unwilling to reciprocate U.S. diplomatic overtures and has instead cultivated closer ties with Moscow and Beijing, making good on a strategic recalibration that Kim first hinted at in the weeks and months after the failed U.S.–North Korean summit meeting in Hanoi in February 2019. In the absence of negotiation, Washington has focused exclusively on reassuring its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, and promoting stronger trilateral ties among Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo. The Japanese and South Korean governments, for their part, have continued to advance their conventional capabilities with an eye on the advance of Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities.

As the Biden administration conducted its policy review, East Asia’s security environment was evolving, offering North Korea increasing opportunities to pursue its military modernization goals while being shielded from further international opprobrium. Moscow had not yet openly embraced Pyongyang, but, along with Beijing, had started to tilt in its direction. By 2021, both countries started to express the view that sanctions on North Korea needed to be adjusted—in part, to reward Pyongyang’s self-imposed moratorium in 2018 on long-range missile and nuclear testing. Alignment between Moscow and Pyongyang became more pronounced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with both countries sharing increasingly aligned interests against common perceived threats from the United States and its allies. Now Russia and China block any censure or strengthening of multilateral sanctions against Pyongyang at the United Nations Security Council, with China openly calling for the United States and its regional allies to address North Korea’s “legitimate security concerns.”

North Korea’s rapidly evolving nuclear capabilities have also affected the regional security environment. Since the announcement of a major five-year military modernization plan in 2021, Pyongyang has made significant strides to “further strengthen [its] nuclear war deterrent.” In particular, the country has demonstrated a clear quantitative and qualitative advancement of its missile capabilities by launching more advanced missiles capable of stressing missile defense systems and better surviving attempts at preemption by the United States and its allies. It is no longer apt to describe most North Korean launches as “tests”; they are more frequently demonstrations of military utility and rehearsals for nuclear and high-intensity conventional war, rather than attempts at evaluating new technologies.

Pyongyang has also, for the first time, openly moved toward the development and deployment of tactical nuclear weapons (shorter-range nuclear delivery systems with lower explosive yields), which would reduce the threshold for nuclear use. Where Kim once relied on generally imprecise, higher-yield nuclear weapons that would be impractical for striking military targets, North Korea now sees tactical nuclear weapons as granting it a capability to “repel” an attack on its territory by U.S. and South Korean armed forces should deterrence fail. Kim would seek to use these lower-yield weapons while retaining higher-yield, longer-range missiles in reserve to compel Washington and Seoul into ceasing further escalation. On top of that, North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament updated a law that cements nuclear weapons as the centerpiece of Pyongyang’s national defense strategy and indicates a clear intention to rely on that arsenal early in a conflict, a strategy that aims to offset North Korea’s conventional military inferiority relative to the U.S.–South Korean alliance. With Kim making an accompanying statement that Pyongyang will “never give up” its nuclear weapons, denuclearization is an unrealistic short-term goal, and—at best—an uncertain long-term aim.

PIVOT TO ... RUSSIA?

Kim’s meeting with Putin, set against the backdrop of North Korea’s ongoing nuclear modernization, indicates a stark shift in Pyongyang’s progress toward bolstering its strategic interests. Both leaders openly discussed unprecedented levels of potential technical cooperation, meeting at Vostochny Cosmodrome—a space launch facility in Russia’s far east—due to Pyongyang’s ongoing interest in space launch technologies and satellites. Although Kim and Putin did not issue a joint statement outlining any quid pro quos, they stand to gain much from each other. North Korea possesses large numbers of artillery shells and rockets that are reverse-compatible with Russian legacy military systems, while Moscow can offer Pyongyang a range of benefits from technical knowledge—such as space capabilities—to commodities such as food or raw materials.        

Predictably, the United States condemned Russia’s embrace of North Korea, but Pyongyang’s new strategic convergence with Moscow has not prompted the Biden administration to reassess U.S. policy despite representing arguably one of the most positive geostrategic developments for North Korea since the end of the Cold War. Regardless of the policy review’s lofty ambitions, the United States has failed to reduce the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, or otherwise influence Kim’s choices, beyond relying on deterrence to avert a major war. Moreover, Washington’s muted reactions to Pyongyang’s unprecedented flurry of missile activity in 2022 and 2023 indicates a general normalization of the North Korean nuclear program. This situation is untenable, as unconstrained Russian–North Korean rapprochement—especially with unprecedented levels of technical cooperation—could supercharge the threat that North Korea poses to the United States and its allies.

NEW SOLUTIONS FOR NEW REALITIES

To effectively reduce this threat, Washington can no longer proceed with its status quo approach to North Korea. The United States should start by prioritizing risk reduction over denuclearization as a more practical means to averting nuclear war—the United States and its allies’ single most important security objective on the peninsula. It is important to remember that North Korea also has a fundamental interest in avoiding unwanted nuclear war. A U.S. policy focused on risk reduction would center this mutual interest, providing a starting point for dialogue and progress toward averting nuclear war unlike, from Pyongyang’s perspective, the nonstarter of denuclearization. Risk reduction efforts aimed specifically at addressing misperceptions and avoiding inadvertent or accidental escalation would go a long way in advancing that mutual interest.

As Pyongyang seeks advantage amid great-power rifts, policymakers in Washington should not complacently assume that North Korea’s past behavior—seeking capability through weapons development before turning to diplomacy—will repeat itself. With North Korea’s more favorable ties to Russia (and perhaps China), Kim may see no urgency in reengaging the United States. Amid these circumstances, Washington will need to proactively make proposals that lower nuclear risks without compromising general deterrence. Sanctions relief alone may no longer be sufficient for Washington to lure Pyongyang to the negotiating table in practical terms, as a lack of sanctions implementation by Russia and China lessens the perceived benefit of such concessions for North Korea. Nevertheless, Washington should consider limited forms of sanctions relief if it could help induce North Korean compliance with risk reduction initiatives.

Proactive risk reduction proposals could involve transparency measures such as missile launch notifications; exchanges on nuclear doctrines between U.S. and North Korean officials; and open-ended discussions on strategic stability between North Korea and the United States and its regional allies. For such risk reduction proposals to work, Washington would have to enter talks with North Korea premised on interim outcomes far short of denuclearization. U.S. policymakers would also likely need to reduce perceived threats to Pyongyang, for instance, by scaling back the types or scale of regional military exercises; adjusting its own characterizations of the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal; or being more attuned to how the alliance’s narratives about its military readiness and exercises can unintentionally escalate tensions. It will be critical to strike a balance between adopting measures that maintain deterrence while avoiding measures that could unnecessarily stoke instability in relations with Pyongyang.

A policy prioritizing risk reduction would not condone Pyongyang’s nuclear program nor preclude denuclearization as a long-term aspiration. Indeed, measures to reduce more immediate nuclear risks could enable long-term progress toward denuclearization. But prioritizing denuclearization in the short term inhibits efforts to reduce the most acute risks to the United States and its allies in the years ahead. Above all, it is time for U.S. and allied policy to acknowledge that it is not North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons that poses the greatest threat to their interests but the possibility that those weapons might be used in a conflict.

REFOCUSING DETERRENCE

To complement proactive risk reduction efforts, the United States should also put greater emphasis on the conventional—rather than nuclear—aspects of its extended deterrence relationship with Seoul. Over the past year, Washington’s attention has largely focused on nuclear deterrence in response to growing South Korean debate about acquiring an independent nuclear arsenal, as exemplified by the Washington Declaration, a statement issued during South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s visit to the White House in April 2023 that stresses the salience of nuclear weapons in deterring North Korea. While emphasis on the alliance’s nuclear dimensions is intended to assuage South Korean concerns about the credibility of the U.S. nuclear umbrella, such a focus risks hindering future negotiations with Pyongyang. It also risks undermining the deterrent value of the alliance’s conventional capabilities and heightening escalation risks by implying that only nuclear weapons can effectively deter nuclear weapons.

Focusing on conventional deterrence instead of nuclear deterrence could help to reduce escalation risks and preserve the full scope of the alliance’s deterrence capacity. Conventional military capabilities, such as the precision-strike assets Seoul has and continues to invest in significantly, can go a much longer way in deterring North Korea, as they can credibly hold North Korean assets at risk without increasing the nuclear temperature on the peninsula. Conventional military forces are also much more flexible in managing limited crisis contingencies such as limited North Korean attempts at territorial revisionism, with the U.S. nuclear arsenal remaining the ultimate backstop and a potential option to respond to North Korean nuclear use against allied cities or U.S. territory. Greater coordination and integration of the alliance’s command structure will be key to ensuring the combat capability required for a credible conventional deterrent. The Washington Declaration’s call to connect South Korea’s new Strategic Command with the U.S.–South Korean Combined Forces Command, while vague, is an important starting point—as is the recently finalized alliance tailored deterrence strategy for North Korea.

Historical analogies have limited utility to Northeast Asia’s current security environment—and could even lead policymakers to dangerous conclusions. Unlike the early Cold War dynamic, in which NATO was conventionally inferior to the Soviet Union, North Korea is conventionally inferior to the U.S.–South Korean alliance and is seeking to offset that inferiority with nuclear weapons. Accordingly, adding more nuclear capabilities, whether in the form of U.S. nuclear deployments to the Korean Peninsula or South Korean nuclear weapons, would do little to augment deterrence but could drastically increase Pyongyang’s incentives to use nuclear weapons first and early in a conflict.

Kim’s rapprochement with Russia may make it tempting to entirely write off U.S. engagement with a nuclear-armed North Korea. Washington should recall, however, that Pyongyang has traditionally been willing to seek benefit where it can. Indeed, the United States has long been the grand prize of North Korean foreign policy. A bold rethinking of the U.S. approach could give Pyongyang reason to test diplomacy once again. This would not be a capitulation but a recognition of the reality that the United States and its allies will coexist with a nuclear-armed North Korea for years—likely decades—to come. Given that reality, the foremost objective must be keeping nuclear risk as low as possible.