Bad Cop, Mediator or Spoiler: Russia’s Role on the Korean Peninsula
Alexander Gabuev | Carnegie Moscow Center
The summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the Russian city of Vladivostok brings Moscow back into the diplomatic game focused on the Korean Peninsula. This symbolic breakthrough aside, however, Russia doesn’t have a very strong hand among all the global and regional powers involved in the crisis resolution. The tools Russia has at its disposal are too limited to have an impact on the calculations and behavior of North Korea or the U.S. As asymmetry in the Sino-Russian entente gradually grows in China’s favor, Moscow is increasingly receptive to Beijing’s agenda and prepared to play bad cop in an unofficial division of labor on the Korean Peninsula. Russia could, however, be an indispensable partner in a broader conversation on security mechanisms in Northeast Asia, including offensive missiles and missile defense systems. The current lack of this broader conversation makes a solution to the North Korean nuclear issue less likely, if not impossible.
Putin Offers to Help Break Nuclear Deadlock at Kim Jong-un Summit
Andrew Roth and Justin McCurry | Guardian
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would require “security guarantees” in order to abandon his nuclear program, following the first ever summit between the two leaders. Putin and Kim promised to forge stronger ties during a two-hour meeting in the Russian city of Vladivostok, where the Russian president also offered to help break the deadlock over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme. With champagne toasts and performances of Russian folk dances, the meetings seemed deliberately planned to project an image of friendship between the two countries at a time when North Korea’s talks with the United States have stalled.
North Korea Wants Security Guarantees, but Can the United States Deliver?
Simon Denyer | Washington Post
North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons but only if it receives serious security guarantees, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after meeting with Kim Jong Un in Vladivostok on Thursday. The comment upended the conventional wisdom — that North Korea is desperate for sanctions relief, and that a continuation or even intensification of “maximum pressure” will eventually convince him to return to the negotiating table with a more reasonable offer than he tabled in Hanoi. Instead, it may be that Kim is really after something else entirely — a guarantee that his regime would be safe should it give up its nuclear arsenal. Kim is bound to be aware of what happened to Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi after they gave up their weapons of mass destruction — both men suffered violent deaths.
New missile gap leaves U.S. scrambling to counter China
David Lague and Benjamin Kang Lim | Reuters
Under Xi Jinping, Beijing has elevated its missile forces to a point where many rockets in the Chinese arsenal now rival or outperform those of the United States. This dramatic shift could render American carriers – the backbone of U.S. military supremacy – obsolete in a conflict with China.
Pressing the Button: How Nuclear-Armed Countries Plan to Launch Armageddon (And What to Do About the U.S.)
Jeffrey Lewis and Bruno Tertrais | War on the Rocks
“What would happen if the president of the U.S.A. went stark-raving mad?” That question appeared on the cover of Fletcher Knebel’s bestselling 1965 novel, Night of Camp David. Knebel, who also wrote Seven Days in May, described a president succumbing to paranoia as those around him struggled to keep him from starting a nuclear war. For obvious reasons, the book was re-released in 2018 in a new edition. The presidency of Donald Trump has renewed a lingering debate about how much of the terrible responsibility to inflict large-scale nuclear destruction nuclear-armed countries should invest in a single person. The question is not only about Trump, of course. He is a member of a club that also includes Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — “Rocketman” himself. It is a club that is far more exclusive than the Mar-a-Lago.
Modi Should Know India’s Status as a Nuclear Weapon State Demands Responsible Leadership
Shyam Saran | The Print
Many norms have been transgressed and several thresholds crossed in the ongoing Lok Sabha election campaign, whether in communal and sectarian polarisation of Indians or the politicisation of the armed forces. Now another threshold has been crossed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his most recent remarks on India’s nuclear weapons delivered in a threatening tone. National security has become an overarching issue, but not in terms of pledges to plug the many and glaring gaps in our security architecture and defence preparedness, but to deflect attention from them through strident rhetoric against external and domestic enemies. India’s security demands urgent and thoroughgoing reform of its armed forces, of its police and of its intelligence institutions and processes. Above all, the country needs a national security doctrine that contains a realistic assessment of current and emerging security challenges, the strategy which the country should adopt in addressing them and the institutional and governance reforms that the strategy will require for its implementation. National security cannot be “talked up”.