Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. June 19, 2024 | |
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has traveled to North Korea's capital as he continues warming up to Kim Jong Un. What is each leader getting out of this deepened relationship?
North Korea appears to have become important to Russia's war on Ukraine. After Moscow's initial siege failed and morphed into a grinding war of attrition and artillery, US intelligence said in September 2022 that Russia was buying millions of shells and rockets from North Korea. Kim trekked to Russia's far east to meet Putin last September, and South Korea said in February that it had detected shipping containers heading from North Korea to Russia that could contain as many as 4.8 million artillery shells in total.
After this month's summit on the Ukraine war in Switzerland and a 10-year US security pact with Ukraine signed by President Joe Biden, Frida Ghitis writes for CNN Opinion of Putin's motivations for visiting Pyongyang: "In recent weeks, Ukraine's supporters … have held multiple meetings, offering not only symbolic backing but also very concrete new assistance … So, it's hardly surprising that Putin is pushing against his diplomatic isolation and seeking to invigorate his weapons pipeline … The timing of all this stepped-up diplomacy … is not a coincidence. … On both sides of the conflict, world leaders are keeping a wary eye on the calendar. With each gathering, summit, historical commemoration, the day draws nearer to what is arguably the most important event of 2024—the US presidential election, in which one of the candidates [former President Donald Trump] has indicated he disapproves of the scale of Washington's support for Ukraine and intends to cut it."
Whereas Putin wants artillery shells, The Economist writes, "North Korea's wish list probably includes nuclear weapons designs, re-entry vehicles for intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as technology related to satellites, submarines and hypersonic weapons. Russia could also provide less flashy, but still important support for North Korea's conventional forces, such as spare parts for aircraft or ships and more modern air defences." A warmer relationship with Russia could also give Pyongyang more leeway in dealing with its main benefactor, China; Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace tells The Economist this opening with Russia constitutes "the biggest strategic opportunity for North Korea since the end of the Cold War."
That said, while the word "bromance" is thrown around vis-à-vis Putin and Kim, and while some Western commentators worry about a three-way, anti-Western partnership between China, Russia and North Korea, The Economist sees these relationships as more transactional and limited. The magazine concludes: "The picture that emerges is less of a neat authoritarian axis and more a messy love triangle." |
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| Has the Far-Right Wave Regathered? |
Center- and far-right parties delivered shows of strength in this month's European Parliament elections, with the far right's success especially pronounced in France.
Young Europeans increasingly are turning to the far right (and in some cases to xenophobia), Nicholas Vinocur and Victor Goury-Laffont write for Politico, citing as reasons "a hodgepodge of factors ranging from Europe's cost-of-living crisis to the isolation many youths suffered during the COVID lockdown years to a delayed backlash following the bloc's 2015 migration crisis when nearly two million migrants flowed into the bloc." Across Europe, results "showed that the politics of borders is still a live phenomenon," per a Financial Times op-ed by 'Borderlines' author Lewis Baston. At The New Statesman, Christophe Guilluy writes that class resentment and a rural-urban divide have been crystallized in France and are driving its politics; to Guilluy, far-right politicians are merely following this strong, unhappy popular sentiment rather than leading it. Le Monde's Louise Couvelaire reports from Paris on the commonality of far-right sentiment: "Many people living in working-class neighborhoods say that far-right ideology won the match some time ago. The European elections merely confirmed a reality they say they experience every day."
Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman wonders if the far right will be normalized as simply "the right." Rachman writes: "Political scientists talk about the 'Overton window'—the range of policies that are regarded as respectable by mainstream opinion at any given time. What politicians such as Trump, [French National Rally legislative leader] Marine Le Pen and [Reform UK leader Nigel] Farage have done is to shift that window, so policies once regarded as on the extreme right have moved into the mainstream. … So what remains of the distinction between the right and the far right? The crucial dividing line is attitudes to democracy. If a political leader refuses to accept the results of an election and wants to smash the 'deep state' (in reality, the state itself), then he or she is clearly on the far right." |
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Do Chinese Nukes Make Sense? |
China's nuclear arsenal has made headlines this week. As Bryan Pietsch writes for The Washington Post, a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicated China's stockpile of nuclear warheads had grown from 410 to 500 last year and that by 2030 China may have as many intercontinental ballistic missiles as the US or Russia.
Why is China growing its arsenal? In Foreign Affairs, two theories have been floated recently. In early May, an essay by Tong Zhao of Carnegie China suggested this is mostly about politics and prestige: "This emphasis on nuclear weapons as a form of general leverage has taken hold among Chinese strategists, especially given rising tensions with the United States. As Beijing demands better treatment by Washington … Chinese public opinion leaders have contended that a larger nuclear arsenal would force Washington to genuinely respect Beijing and tread more cautiously. The notion that nuclear weapons possess extensive—almost magical—coercive power in and beyond the military realm is probably more a product of intuition than of rigorously examined logic and evidence."
In a letter to the magazine, former US diplomat Ashley J. Tellis, also of the Carnegie Endowment, responds that China's growing arsenal is perfectly understandable as a military strategy: As China rises in geopolitical power, it doesn't want nuclear inferiority looming as a disadvantage in any potential future war with the US, say over Taiwan. Tellis writes: "An important aspect of Beijing's nuclear transformation … is deterring any neighbors who directly or indirectly threaten China with significant conventional or nuclear forces, as well as any forward-deployed and -operating U.S. forces that could be used to attack China or undermine its core interests." Zhao, in turn, replies that specific military goals don't account for "the buildup's timing, scale, or scope." |
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