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Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands while holding copies of their newly signed pact establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership between their two nations following their summit in Pyongyang, North Korea, on June 19, 2024. (TASS/Yonhap)

By John Feffer, author and co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies

The recent meeting of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un in North Korea marks a new stage not only in their alliance but in their ideological convergence. This is no mere marriage of convenience. The two leaders have become closer in their political and economic sympathies over the last two decades so that they now qualify as a compatible couple.

In this most recent meeting, Putin’s first trip to North Korea in 24 years, the two leaders acted very much like two spurned lovers in a rebound relationship. Putin has turned his back on the West and sees his political and economic fortunes in the East. Kim is giving up on reunification with South Korea and views Russia as a more likely partner for economic and military cooperation.

During the Cold War, of course, North Korea and the Soviet Union were close allies. In the 1990s, however, no one could have predicted that the two countries would ever resurrect that Cold War romance. 

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was beginning its experiment with democracy and its transition to a market economy. It was opening itself up to the world after decades of relative isolation within the Soviet sphere.  

North Korea, meanwhile, was slipping backward into economic collapse and famine. Although forced to accept humanitarian assistance, the government in Pyongyang remained very skeptical about the intentions of Western governments. 

Coming out of those very different experiences, Russia and North Korea arrived at similar conclusions: The West was not to be trusted. The West, after all, provided economic advice that helped to wreck Russia and refused to offer the Kremlin anything but a junior security partnership as NATO expanded eastward. With North Korea, meanwhile, the West dangled carrots to persuade Pyongyang to forgo nuclear weapons but never delivered on the promises, and promoted a human rights agenda that sounded a lot like regime change to North Korea’s political elite.  

Today, having turned their back on the West, the two countries look more and more like mirror images. They both face similarly steep sanctions and have increasingly similar corporatist economies. They both now spend a sizable percentage of their GDP on their military (8 percent for Russia; about double that for North Korea). 

Russia, once a shaky democracy, has become an autocracy centered around a single leader who has effectively made himself president for life. North Korea, never a democracy, has managed to keep its dynastic autocracy going for nearly 80 years. Both leaders insist on their absolute sovereign right to do whatever they like within their borders (and sometimes outside their borders). 

Apart from the ideological convergence, Russia and North Korea receive concrete benefits from their burgeoning relationship. 

North Korea is providing Russia with millions of artillery shells for its war in Ukraine. As much as half of these shells reportedly don’t work, perhaps because of their age, but they at least contribute to Ukraine’s sense of being outgunned. Ukraine has also reported evidence of Russia using North Korean ballistic missiles, which gives Pyongyang an opportunity to test its weapons in battlefield conditions. 

In return, North Korea is reportedly receiving food and energy as well as Russian technology that it can use for its satellite program and perhaps its nuclear arsenal as well. 

The new bilateral relationship has risen to the level of a military alliance. The two countries have pledged, if either one is attacked, to pursue “all means at its disposal without delay” to provide “military and other assistance.” That comes with a significant asterisk — the aid must conform to the laws of the two countries and to the UN Charter. But still, it’s a return to the relationship the two countries enjoyed up until 2000, when ties weakened considerably.

The two countries also agreed to work toward a “just and multipolar new world order.” The word “multipolar” used to mean an alternative to the bipolarism of the Cold War era and the unipolarism of the US-dominated post-Cold War era. This multipolarism was reflected in the “rise of the rest,” represented by the BRICS grouping (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), pressures to change the composition of the UN Security Council, and new trade patterns in the Global South.

But today, multipolarism has acquired a new meaning. Particularly under the influence of Russia, multipolarism now represents a challenge to the rule of law, the rights enshrined in the UN Charter and subsequent treaties, and the very notion that some principles take priority over the national preferences of any given country (or leader).

Russia and North Korea have already been coordinating with other nations on the outs with the international community like Iran, Syria and Nicaragua. So far, the axis doesn’t have anything near a critical mass. Russia would like to recruit China, but Beijing at the moment is too invested in the global status quo to side entirely with these rule-breakers. 

Perhaps Russia and North Korea are contemplating not just building up an alternative world order but further disrupting the current state of affairs. North Korea wanted the approval of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin before launching its attack on the South in 1950. With this latest meeting with Putin, could Kim Jong-un again be seeking a green light to invade the South, which some influential Pyongyang watchers believe is in the offing? 

Kim has certainly escalated its rhetoric toward the South in recent months and destroyed some obvious symbols of reunification, like the Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification. It would be quite nearly suicidal for the North to invade the South again. But countries will sometimes do unpredictable things, as Russia proved when it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

More likely, Russia and North Korea will just bide their time and hope to draw in more allies, particularly China. With the rise of far-right politicians elsewhere — Hungary, the Netherlands, and perhaps again in the United States — the West may well be too divided and too isolationist to mount a challenge to the new axis anchored by Russia and North Korea. At that point, China will decide to decouple from a West that is already in the midst of cutting ties with China.

So, this new alliance is not just a pact of outsiders. From the point of view of Russia and North Korea, it truly is the beginning of a whole new world order.

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