Russia & North Korea: This Generation's Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Now that North Korea is all in, things just got more real.
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In 1939, before executing an invasion of Poland, thereby assuring a second world war, Adolf Hitler wanted to ensure German soldiers attacking from the west would not encounter aggression from the Soviet Union from the east. While wishing to remain out of the increasing tension long enough to bolster his military, Soviet leader Josef Stalin agreed to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler, promising Soviet forces would not interfere in Germany’s plan.
Two years later, Stalin learned an agreement with the German dictator was about as good as a handshake with fingers crossed behind Hitler’s back when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union in violation of the pact.
Here we are, eight decades later, shadows of another world war looming as Europe is closer to war than it has ever been since 1945 and fascist ideology threatens democracy’s future at home and abroad. This time, though, it’s Russia reaching out to other authoritarian regimes for help in its now two-year onslaught of Europe’s largest democracy, Ukraine.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was in North Korea last week for talks with Kim Jong Un that culminated in both men signing a “defensive” pact requiring each country come to each’s aid if either is attacked.
As the Associated Press (AP) reported:
Kim said that the deal was the “strongest ever treaty” between the two nations, putting the relationship at the level of an alliance, and vowed full support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Putin said that it was a “breakthough document” reflecting shared desire to move relations to a higher level.
As the talks began, Putin thanked Kim for North Korea’s support for his war in Ukraine, part of what he said was a “fight against the imperialist hegemonistic policies of the U.S. and its satellites against the Russian Federation.”
Kim said Moscow and Pyongyang’s “fiery friendship” is now even closer than during Soviet times, and promised “full support and solidarity to the Russian government, army and people in carrying out the special military operation in Ukraine to protect sovereignty, security interests and territorial integrity.”
Could this “defensive pact” be this generation’s Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?
In his op-ed for The Guardian, Simon Tisdall explained:
NBC News on Wednesday reported that US intelligence officials believe Putin is providing North Korea with nuclear submarine and ballistic missile technology in exchange for arms for his war in Ukraine. Citing six senior US officials, the US news network said the Biden administration was concerned Russia might help North Korea complete the final steps needed to field its first submarine capable of launching a nuclear-armed missile.
It was not immediately clear whether Russian support for ballistic missiles would indicate intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the mainland United States, or the short-range ballistic missiles that North Korea has reportedly supplied Russia with during the war and also could use in the event of a large-scale conflict with South Korea.
US Undersecretary of State Bonnie Jenkins believes North Korea is anticipating receiving aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, armored vehicles, and ballistic missile production equipment or materials.
Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met last fall with Kim to express North Korea’s “steadfast will” to expand Russian ties, for which US officials assert North Korean weapons are being shipped to Russia.
Around the same time, Chinese president Xi Jinping met with Putin to ostensibly discuss trade at a time when there is growing concern China may invade Taiwan. Like Putin’s claim Ukraine is really historically part of Russia and not a separate country, Xi claims the island democracy of Taiwan is really part of mainland China and should be “united by force” if necessary. He’s already asserted he is prepared to go to war with western powers over it.
Earlier this month, at a commemoration ceremony for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, as President Joe Biden warned of the precarity of the present moment, Vladimir Putin threatened to send long-range missiles to his allies that could be used against nations supplying Ukraine.
The main thing preventing Xi from going ahead with it is international condemnation of Russia. If Ukraine’s western allies take their eyes off Ukraine’s fight for survival, it will provide Xi and other dictators permission to follow suit with their own invasions. If we just stay out of it, as many insist we ought to do, it will be emboldening autocrats all over the world at a time when more democracies are backsliding toward authoritarian regimes.
As Biden asserted:
The autocrats of the world are watching closely to see what happens in Ukraine, to see if we let this illegal aggression go unchecked. We cannot let that happen. To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable.
What democratic governments, particularly those in Europe, understand is that allowing Russia to run roughshod over Ukraine would give Putin a green light to march into any other country he wants. If Western allies abandon Ukraine, why shouldn’t they also abandon other European democracies under the guise of “peace”?
Simply, supporting Ukraine is preventing world war three.
Historian and author of On Tyranny, Prof. Timothy Snyder explained in a recent Guardian piece titled, “We’re in 1938 now: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history”:
If Ukrainians give up, or if we give up on Ukraine…It’s Russia making war in the future. It’s Russia making war with Ukrainian technology, Ukrainian soldiers from a different geographical position. At that point, we’re in 1939. We’re in 1938 now. In effect, what Ukrainians are letting us do is extend 1938.
In April, President Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid bill. $61 billion of it went to aid Ukraine.
To get a sense of how consequential this is, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and head of the United Russia party, Dmitry Medvedev, is hoping for another civil war that “would finally lead to the inglorious break up of the 21st Century’s evil empire, the United States of America”.
He added on Telegram:
I cannot with all sincerity not wish the United States to plunge into a new civil war as quickly as possible.
Putin, Kim, Xi, and other present and aspiring despots want Western democracies to fall, and they’re lining up hoping this fall’s US election goes the way they want with the election of a fellow autocrat — the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.
This wouldn’t be so dire a concern if there wasn’t an entire faction of sitting republican US Congressmen and women actively working to help make it a reality.
In February, a former FBI informant republicans held up as a witness in their quixotic mission to impeach President Biden turned out to be a Russian mole. Alexander Smirnov, the Oversight Committee’s “star witness,” lied to the FBI when he alleged Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each. Donald Trump appointed the federal prosecutor who debunked this claim.
Under marching orders straight out of the Kremlin, 46 House republicans voted earlier this month defund NATO.
Georgia Rep. (and MAGA darling) Marjorie Taylor Greene could have been reading a script ripped right from Vladimir Putin’s Ministry of Propaganda when she spouted:
As long as we remain a member of NATO, the United States will continue to function as the military ATM of European countries at the expense of our own citizens, putting our own national security and our economy at risk.
But the fear of NATO encroaching closer to Russia’s borders is a ruse. While that has been a convenient defense of Russia’s aggression against its neighbors, Vladimir Putin himself has admitted his objectives are to re-unify the kingdom of Peter the Great.
As the BBC reported two years ago at the start of the invasion:
When Russia invaded its neighbour on 24 February, Putin falsely claimed it was a “special operation” limited to the eastern Donbas region to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and reduce the supposed threat to Russia.
But even as he was uttering those words, his troops were moving on Kyiv and bombing land even further west. More than 100 days later, a fifth of Ukrainian territory is under Russian military control, with puppet administrations who talk of referenda on joining Russia.
And now Putin feels bold enough to admit that his “operation” is in fact an occupation.
Putin claims Ukraine rightfully belongs to him and “there would be no peace until Russia achieves its goals”.
The American republican party wants nothing more than to leave Ukraine twisting in the wind, as it demonstrated in December when GOP lawmakers met for a closed-door two-day Heritage Foundation-funded summit with Hungary’s hard-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, a staunch opponent of Ukraine aid.
Supporting Ukraine is preventing world war three.
While there are progressive voices calling for “a negotiated peace,” other nations’ autocrats are watching how the United States reacts to Putin.
Now that North Korea is all in, things just got more real.
The question is, will Putin make Hitler’s mistake?