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International diplomacy to stop the North’s weapons program has hit a dead end, and its Northeast As͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌ 
 
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March 16, 2023
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Jay Solomon
Jay Solomon

Hello and welcome to Semafor Security, where we dive into the forces and personalities defending, defining, and destabilizing global security.

North Korea’s growing nuclear capabilities have put its neighbors on edge, and international diplomacy aimed at curbing Kim Jong Un’s weapons ambitions has faltered. As a result — as I report today — the U.S. and South Korea are working more closely on plans to counter Pyongyang, with the Biden administration seeking to assure Seoul that Washington can still shield it from attack. Nearly 24,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed in the South, as a “tripwire” against North Korean aggression.

Elsewhere, I profile China’s new defense minister, a general already on the U.S.’s sanctions list, and look ahead to the next front in the brutal trench warfare between Russia and Ukraine.

Speaking of which: My colleague, Tanya Lukyanova, has a Telegram exchange with the chief of Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Let me know what you think of this newsletter, and please send tips to jsolomon@semafor.com.

Sitrep

Washington. The Kremlin’s ambassador warned the U.S. against conducting air operations near his country’s borders, a day after Russian jets took down an American Reaper drone over the Black Sea. “The unacceptable activity of the U.S. military in the close proximity to our borders is a cause for concern,” Anatoly Antonov said in a statement.

Vienna. China sought to block the U.S.-U.K.-Australia nuclear submarine program at a meeting of the U.N.’s atomic watchdog. Beijing’s representative said the Western initiative, called AUKUS, is a threat to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. President Biden met with British and Australian leaders in San Diego on Monday to christen the program, which is estimated to cost nearly $400 billion.

Kreminna. Russia is massing its forces near this town in Luhansk Oblast, another attempt to break through Ukrainian lines and move westward. Ukrainian soldiers say the fighting is similar to what’s happening further south in Bakhmut, where Kyiv and Moscow have battled to an essential stalemate using trench warfare. Ukraine is seeking to hold these lines and launch a spring counter-offensive.

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Jay Solomon

As North Korea advances on missiles, the U.S. and South Korea plot a response

Lee Jin-Man - Pool/Getty Images

THE SCOOP

U.S. and South Korean officials have begun working more closely together on plans to deter North Korea’s increasing military capability as international diplomacy aimed at combating Pyongyang stalls.

U.S. and Korean officials told Semafor that joint talks on how to respond to the North’s recent advancements on arms, including tactical nuclear weapons, accelerated after U.S. President Joe Biden’s first meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in November.

The two sides have discussed increasing the presence of U.S. naval and air assets in Northeast Asia and working more closely on military planning, in part by expanding joint “table top” exercises used to wargame possible confrontations with the North, including nuclear exchanges. The U.S. also will continue to build up Seoul’s conventional military forces.

President Biden will host Yoon at a White House summit on April 26, and U.S. and Korean officials say discussions there will focus on enhancing South Korea’s policy of “extended deterrence.” Seoul is seeking greater intelligence sharing with the U.S., more say in Washington’s nuclear doctrine in Asia, and better coordination with other U.S. allies.

KNOW MORE

Washington and Seoul have been warning for months that the North is preparing to test its seventh nuclear device. While it hasn’t happened yet for reasons that are still unclear, Pyongyang continues to demonstrate its growing nuclear capacities, unnerving its neighbors in Northeast Asia.

Last month, North Korea paraded new intercontinental ballistic missiles the U.S. says are designed to hit the American mainland. The country also displayed tactical nuclear weapons infrastructure, such as mobile launchers, that North Korean leader Kim Jung Un announced last September are part of a military doctrine that seeks to strike U.S.-allied targets in South Korea and Japan.

Recent attempts to pressure North Korea through the U.N. Security Council have failed, lacking support from China and Russia — a shift from 2017, when Beijing and Moscow joined the U.S. in sanctioning Pyongyang for its last nuclear weapons test. The U.S.’s ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has accused China and Russia of offering North Korea “blanket protection” and called the lack of Security Council action, “worse than shameful.”

Long-time North Korea watchers, both in Washington and Seoul, say the days of diplomatic cooperation on North Korea between Western powers and China and Russia are likely over, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and deteriorating relations between the U.S. and China.

“There’s been a massive geopolitical shift. I don’t think the Chinese or Russians have any incentives to help us with North Korea,” said Joel Wit, a former U.S. State Department official who oversees the 38 North program that closely tracks North Korea. “It’s a very dangerous situation.”

THE VIEW FROM SEOUL

President Yoon’s recent suggestion that the U.S. might need to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea, or South Korea might have to develop them themselves, is a sign of the growing sense of alarm in Asia. “We can have our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly, given our scientific and technological capabilities,” he said in January.

While South Korean leaders have since backtracked and said they remain fully committed to the denuclearization of the peninsula, the government is also facing domestic pressure. A Gallup Korea poll conducted in January found that 77% of the country supports developing nuclear arms.

THE VIEW FROM BEIJING

Chinese diplomats told Semafor this week that Beijing remains completely committed to denuclearizing North Korea but argued the U.S. needs to lessen tensions in Northeast Asia. They criticized recent war games between the U.S. and South Korea near the North’s borders and said Western sanctions have become counter-productive.

“The crux of how the Korean Peninsula situation gets to where it is today is clear,” said embassy spokesman, Liu Pengyu. “The main reason is that the parties concerned have refused to respond to the denuclearization measures taken by [North Korea] and continued to pressure and deter.” China supported former President Donald Trump’s direct engagement with Kim.

JAY’S VIEW

I’ve covered the North Korean nuclear program since the 2000s when I was stationed in Seoul for The Wall Street Journal. It’s stunning how dramatically the geopolitical map and security situation in Northeast Asia has changed since then.

Throughout the George W. Bush administration, American diplomats worked closely with Russia and China, as well as the U.S.’s Asian allies, to try and box in North Korea’s nuclear development. Many of the talks were actually hosted by China’s Foreign Ministry in Beijing. The Obama administration created a similar structure during its two terms to try and place Iran’s nuclear program under wraps, making Moscow and Beijing equal partners.

Critics will point out that none of this elaborate diplomacy actually brought lasting agreements to end Pyongyang’s and Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. But it’s almost impossible today to imagine the U.S. convening any international forums involving China and Russia, whose leaders have vastly more leverage over North Korea than the U.S. Those days seem to be over as the world enters a more dangerous neo-Cold War phase.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Some North Korea watchers with whom I’ve spoken are convinced China is quietly counseling Pyongyang to slow down on nukes. China is wary of South Korea and Japan rearming, they believe, and doesn’t want the North to give them more reasons to do so. Kim Jong Un hasn’t tested a nuclear bomb in six years, they note, despite U.S. claims of seeing preparations at the Punggye-ri test site.

Others believe nuclear diplomacy may not quite have dead-ended yet, either. The Singapore Declaration, signed by Kim and Trump in 2018, laid out steps for the U.S. and North Korea to establish diplomatic relations and for the North to disarm. “This could serve at least as a basis for talks,” said a U.S. official.

NOTABLE

  • The U.S. and South Korea are attempting to reorient their alliance nearly 75 years after the Korean War. Establishing “extended deterrence” in a changing Northeast Asia will be a challenge, Bruce Klingner writes at the Heritage Foundation.
  • The story of a secret mission to overthrow the Kim regime, involving an Ivy League activist, highlights the often bizarre nature of the U.S.-North Korean conflict. My former WSJ colleague, Bradley Hope, pens a cracking narrative.
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One Good Telegram

Last week, we reported Ukraine had been turning down elite Afghan soldiers seeking to fight — and Russia had been starting to recruit them. We followed up on Telegram with Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group.

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Advance/Retreat

⋉ Advance: Pacific prep. The U.S. Army is expanding training centers in Hawaii and Alaska with an eye for potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific. The Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Centers partner American troops with allied soldiers from Asian countries to wargame battles that could play out on islands in the far Pacific and cold weather climates in South Asia. “We are generating readiness, and we are projecting it into the region,” General Charles Flynn, commander of the Army’s Pacific forces, said last month.

⋊ Retreat: Hypersonic bets. The U.S. Air Force is delaying a decision on purchases of hypersonic weapons for another year, a senior Pentagon official said this week. The missiles fly five times faster than the speed of sound and are being aggressively developed by China and Russia. (Ukraine said it failed to intercept some Russian hypersonic weapons earlier this month.) Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner said more research and development is required to develop the right “mix” of weapons.

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Stat

The Pentagon has gained access to four new military bases in the Philippines, following an agreement with the Marcos government that’s seeking to counter China’s growing power in the South China Sea.

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Person of Interest
Reuters

General Li Shangfu: China named a U.S.-sanctioned general as its new defense minister, further challenging the Biden administration’s attempts to re-engage directly with the People’s Liberation Army. The U.S. State Department blacklisted General Li in 2018 for procuring weapon systems from Russia, including Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 ballistic missile batteries. At the time, he was the director of China’s Equipment Development Department.

As China’s new defense minister, Li will be a central player in modernizing his country’s military forces. He trained as an aerospace engineer and worked in Beijing’s satellite program. He’s also served as the deputy commander of the PLA’s Strategic Support Force, which oversees space, cyber, and electronic warfare.  He’s member of the Central Military Commission headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The defense minister typically functions as the Chinese military’s chief diplomat, and the Biden administration suggested Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was still willing to meet General Li directly despite the sanctions that theoretically prevent him from traveling to the U.S. “We are prepared to engage when it’s in our interest to do so. We’ve made that clear from the very start,” said State Department spokesman, Ned Price. He added that Austin twice attempted to meet China’s outgoing defense minister, Wei Fenghe, but Beijing refused.

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— Jay

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