The bipolarity paradox: A preliminary assessment of the implications of the strengthening China-Russia “quasi-alliance” for the Korean Peninsula
Dear Colleagues,
I’m very glad to send you my latest scholarly article that I co-authored for the fall 2023 edition of the North Korea Review. In fact, I’ve just returned from Seoul last week. While in South Korea, I naturally discussed the circumstances of the important September 2023 summit meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean General Secretary Kim Jong Un.
This new article establishes the context for these major events. The study documents substantial cooperation between Beijing and Moscow with respect to Korean affairs. While some disagreements between China and Russia do exist in this sphere, the main implication of these developments is the trend toward a hardening of the bipolar structure in Northeast Asia. However, the study points out a paradox in that this hardening of bipolarity could actually help to stabilize the spiraling tensions that have surrounded North Korea in recent decades.
If you have any trouble finding the full text of this article, please contact press@defp.org.
Thoughts welcome.
Lyle
The following was originally published in the fall 2023 edition of the North Korea Review.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
During July 2019, air force bombers from Russia and China linked up over the Sea of Japan and undertook a first ever joint strategic aviation patrol. After scrambling an altogether outsized fighter interceptor force to meet the visiting bombers, South Korean aircraft actually fired warning shots and flares, prompting a Russian general to complain of “aerial hooliganism.”1 In a somewhat similar first, a joint flotilla of ten Chinese and Russian warships brazenly sortied through the narrow Tsugaru Strait separating the Japanese main islands of Honshu and Hokkaido in October 2021. Such joint maneuvers by the erstwhile China-Russia quasi-alliance raised tensions even as the Northeast Asia region had been trying to recover from both the Covid-19 pandemic and the dangerous North Korea nuclear showdown that preceded it.
Now, a new crisis is sweeping over the region, and this must be viewed as a major reverberation of the violent catastrophe that has enveloped Eastern Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A major impact of the Ukraine War appears to be the further consolidation of alliance structures in the Asia-Pacific region, including between the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. At the same time, North Korea has resumed a rapid pace of missile development and Pyongyang has also countered by overtly reaching out to energize its old friendship with Moscow. September 2023 witnessed an extraordinary summit between the North Korean and Russian leaders and, shortly thereafter, North Korean weapons and munitions have started to flow into Russia in significant quantities. Meanwhile, the China-Russia relationship has also consolidated further. Indeed, June 2023 witnessed the fifth joint strategic aviation exercise linking Chinese and Russian air forces in a sortie that “entered the southern and eastern parts of the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ).”2 Taken together, these ominous developments seem to imply the solidification of a bipolar structure somewhat reminiscent of the 1950s.3
This paper will examine the impact of closer coordination between China and Russia for the Korean Peninsula, and with respect to North Korea policies, in particular.4 This analysis is drawn from the acknowledgment that the nature of the current Russo-Chinese strategic partnership could be characterized as a “quasi-alliance,” which is interpreted in the literature as “a national interest-driven close alignment in worldviews and general foreign policy goals leading to ... consultations and close coordination of practical policies, with no automatic commitments.”5 We concur with some existing assessment of Russian-Chinese relations as a partnership with “strong institutional foundations for an alliance,”6 but with some limitations which determined China’s policy of distancing itself from Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine7, and specific strategies to secure a country’s role in a concert-like management of international relations, which also fit the characteristics of quasi-alliance, or “entente.”8 Methodologically, this analysis relies on the numerous studies in the literature which justify the generally positive role of a bipolar international order for power balancing and international stability.9 To examine Russia’s and China’s specific perspective on North Korea, the elements of discourse analysis seem to be helpful for determining the role of prominent experts in the formation of an official policy course in China and Russia toward North Korea.10 One of the authors of this piece specifically examined the evolution of the Chinese position toward the North Korea nuclear crisis and the situation on the Korean Peninsula, especially during the U.S.-North Korea crisis in 2017.11 As the situation on the peninsula deteriorated, Chinese experts presented polar views on the relations between Beijing and Pyongyang ranging from favoring North Korea to cutting ties with this traditional Chinese ally, due to Pyongyang’s provocative behavior. Some scholars (such as Chu Shulong, Shen Zhihua) have advocated for severing ties with North Korea and putting emphasis on the sanctions regime including China’s unilateral sanctions. Other scholars, including China’s prominent strategic thinkers Yan Xuetong, Wang Xiaobo, and Dai Xu, had been consistent in opposing sanctions against North Korea and in considering China and Russia’s nuclear umbrellas for Pyongyang, in exchange for denuclearization. The majority of Chinese scholars presented the widespread view that in solving the North Korea nuclear issue, all interested parties should prioritize stability first, then denuclearization second. Some Chinese experts stressed the role of China and Russia in seeking ways to preserve stability on the Korean Peninsula. The Russian scholars have also been divided between the “liberals” (Georgy Kunadze, Sergey Lukonin, and Vassily Mikheev, who called for strengthening the South Korean vector and considered cooperation with the DPRK undesirable, and Pyongyang incapable of negotiating), skeptics (analysts from the Institute of World Economics and International Relations [IMEMO] who sought negotiations on the Korean Peninsula crisis without inviting North Korea), and “pragmatists” who advocated for an equidistant and interest-based approach (Georgy Toloraya, Marina Kukla, Alexander Zhebin, Alexander Matzegora).12
The investigation unfolds in five steps: first the crucial historical background of Russia-China interaction on the Korean Peninsula is expanded upon. That is followed by a look at how this relationship has developed in the era of Kim Jong-un. The third and fourth sections evaluate the results of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine for China-Russia policies impacting Korea. The fifth section lays out a number of related policy recommendations. While the situation continues to develop in troubling ways, a preliminary but somewhat counterintuitive conclusion is reached in this analysis: that given the nature of a Russo-Chinese “quasi-alliance,” the West should capitalize on the ability of China and Russia to secure coordinated effort on the Korean Peninsula without being endangered by a much more robust alignment between China, Russia, and North Korea. Moreover, a consolidating Russia-China partnership in Northeast Asia enhanced by the Ukraine crisis could help to eventually stabilize the volatile Korean situation.
View the entire research article below.
Alexander Fokin, “Russia Did Not Apologize for the Aircraft: South Korea Will Present Its Version of the Incident with a Violation of Borders” [Россия за самолеты не извинялась: Южная Корея представит свою версию инцидента с нарушением границы], Kommersant, July 24, 2019, https://www. kommersant.ru/doc/4040760, accessed June 20, 2023.
Dzhirhan Mahadzir, “Russian, Chinese Bombers Fly Joint Mission Near Japan, Korea as Russian Fleet Holds Major Drills in the Pacific,” U.S. Naval Institute News, June 6, 2023, https://news.usni. org/2023/06/06/russian-chinese-bombers-fly-joint-mission-near-japan-korea-as-russian-fleet-holds-ma- jor-drills-in-the-pacific, accessed June 19, 2023.
The tendency toward bipolarity and its relationship to global stability is a topic of increasing importance to scholars around the world. See, for example, Cliff Kupchan, “Bipolarity is Back: Why It Matters,” The Washington Quarterly 44(4) (2021), pp. 123–139; “Yan Xuetong: Trajectory of China-U.S. Relations in New International Order,” The 11th World Peace Forum, Beijing, https://www.pekingnology. com/i/132083573/yan-xuetong-trajectory-of-china-us-relations-in-new-international-order, accessed on June 30, 2023; and Timofei Bordachev, “Threat of a New Bipolarity?” Valdai Discussion Club, April 30, 2020, https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/threat-of-a-new-bipolarity/, accessed on June 30, 2023.
Also on this topic, see Elizabeth Wishnick, “The Impact of the Sino-Russian Partnership on the North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” The China-Russia Entente and the Korean Peninsula, The National Bureau of Asian Research Special Report 78 (March 2019).
Dmitri Trenin, “Vladimir Putin’s Strategic Framework for Northeast Asia,”Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies 31 (June 24, 2020), p. 56.
Alexander Korolev, “On the Verge of an Alliance: Contemporary China-Russia Military Cooperation,” Asian Security 15(3) (2019), pp. 233–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/14799855.2018.1463991.
Nien-Chung Chang-Liao, “The Limits of Strategic Partnerships: Implications for China’s Role in the Russia-Ukraine War,” Contemporary Security Policy 44(2) (2023), pp. 226–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13523260.2023.2174702.
Artyom Lukin, “The Russia–China Entente and Its Future,” International Politics 58 (2021), pp. 363–380. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-020-00251-7.
See: Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Stability of a Bipolar World,” Daedalus 93(3) (Summer, 1964), pp. 881–909; John J. Mearsheimer, “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War,” The Atlantic, August 1990, https:// www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/mearsh.htm, accessed August 15, 2023; Charles W. Kegley and Gregory A. Raymond, Great Powers and World Order: Patterns and Prospects (London: Sage & CQ Press, 2021); Akihiro Iwashita, Yong-Chool Ha, and Edwards Boyle (eds.), Geo-Politics in Northeast Asia (London &New York: Routledge, 2023).
This is more attributable to China, where the flow of publications and views have traditionally been monitored and coordinated by the party authorities. The role of Russian scholars has been less institutionalized (since the one-party system perished and the current parties serve as appendages to bureaucratic elite groups), but significant for informal deliberations among the foreign policy establishment, within the Presidential administration in particular. See: Mark Galeotti, “The Presidential Administration: The Command and Control Nexus of Putin’s Russia,” George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, February 2020, https://www.marshallcenter.org/en/publications/security-insights/presidential-administra-tion-command-and-control-nexus-putins-russia-0, accessed August 14, 2023.
Lyle J. Goldstein, “Here Is What Chinese Scholars Think about the North Korea Crisis,” National Interest, September 3, 2017, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/here-what-chinese-scholars-think-about- the-north-korea-22145, accessed August 20, 2023.
Artyom Lukin, “The Views of the Russian Expert Community on the Problem of Denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula after the Hanoi and Vladivostok Summits” (Взгляды российского экспертного сообщества на проблему денуклеаризации Корейского полуострова после саммитов в Ханое и Владивостоке), Bulletin of The Institute of Oriental Studies [Известия Восточного института] 2(42) (2019), pp. 58–66. https://doi.org/10.24866/2542-1611/2019-2/58-66; Konstantin V. Asmolov, Ludmila V. Zakharova, “Relations Between Russia and the DPRK in the 21st Century: Results at the 20th Anniversary” [Отношения России с КНДР в XXI веке: итоги двадцатилетия], Vestnik RUDN. International Relations 20(3) (2020), pp. 585–604. https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-0660-2020-20-3-585-604.