US says Russia-North Korea pact is a bigger problem than expected

Russia ’s burgeoning “alliance-like agreement” with North Korea is establishing the two regimes as “a fundamental force” challenging U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, a senior White House official warned.

“In the early months of that relationship, one might have been able to make an argument that perhaps this was a transactional relationship,” the White House National Security Council’s Mira Rapp-Hooper said Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute. “I think it is very clear that the DPRK and Russia have bought into a longer-term partnership that we have to reckon with as a fundamental force in both regions.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Pyongyang for the signing of a “mutual assistance” pact last month, building on North Korean weapons shipments to Russian forces that reportedly date back to the first year of the full-scale war in Ukraine. Their partnership has depended on the misgivings of the United States and allies about the threats posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons program because North Korea has “the opportunity to strengthen its military technology” with Russian assistance, as South Korea’s defense chief said this week.

“Although actual deployment has yet to be confirmed, North Korea may be in the process of completing the development [of tactical nuclear weapons],” South Korean National Defense Minister Shin Wonsik told a Japanese media outlet in an interview. “The weapon’s range covers areas where the U.S. military has bases in Japan, so North Korea may attempt to use nuclear weapons in time of contingency.”

Japan and South Korea fear Putin’s invasion of Ukraine could inspire analogous attacks by their neighbors. Shin will travel to Tokyo for a pair of meetings with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts Sunday. The talks will include a trilateral format for all three countries to synchronize their security policies.

“We are trying to create a framework that will serve as a standard for ROK-U.S.-Japan security cooperation and make it irreversible and irrevocable,” he said.

That prospect is the “silver lining” offsetting the “extremely troubling” upgrade in Russia’s relations with North Korea, Rapp-Hooper said.

“We have unprecedented intelligence sharing, unprecedented cooperation on sanctions, unprecedented cooperation on how we deal with this issue at the [United Nations],” she said. “And here's a second silver lining: Unprecedented engagement from European partners, who also want to do what they can to bolster both regions against this partnership … But nonetheless, it truly presents an unprecedented challenge.”

Russia, however, warned Wednesday that both South Korea and Japan could face consequences for their coordination with the U.S. and other allies.

"We would like to warn [Seoul] against any hasty steps that could further raise tensions on the [Korean] Peninsula," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko told state-run TASS on Wednesday. “Definitely, any actions against Russia will not go without a proper response. We don’t think this will enhance South Korea’s security.”

Rudenko also complained that Japan is backing policies “aimed at ‘double deterrence’ of Russia and China” in the region.

“Japan is not just boosting its military potential … but it is also broadening its naval activities in the vicinity of our Far Eastern borders, embroiling non-regional countries that are NATO members,” Rudenko said .

Those complaints coincided with a visit to North Korea by Belarus’s top diplomat in a show of coordination between Putin’s primary European client and his new Korean partner.

“Agreements were reached on the next steps to develop the legal framework and intensify cooperation between the foreign ministries and in a number of areas. These include healthcare, education, agriculture, culture and sport,” the Belarusian foreign ministry said in a Wednesday update. “The ministers took note of the similarity of positions and agreed to continue joint efforts to move toward a just multipolar world order.”

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Russia’s support has made the North Korean regime “the least isolated it has been in a long time,” Biden’s aide lamented.

“So that is something that we must all be worried about and cooperate against,” Rapp-Hooper said.