Russia’s Mutual Defense Pact With North Korea Is A Geopolitical Game-Changer, by Andrew Korybko

This didn’t get a lot of attention in either the alternative or mainstream media, but this defense pact really does have some momentous implications. From Andrew Korybko at korybko.com:

It raises the stakes in the US’ dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia in Ukraine, accelerates the US’ “Pivot (back) to Asia”, and could thus trap China and the US in an escalation spiral that moves the New Cold War out of Europe.

Russia and North Korea just clinched a mutual defense pact during President Putin’s trip to Pyongyang, which followed his counterpart Kim Jong Un’s visit to Vladivostok last September that was analyzed here. This agreement is a geopolitical game-changer for three fundamental reasons: it raises the stakes in the US’ dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia in Ukraine; accelerates the US’ “Pivot (back) to Asia”; and could thus trap China and the US in an escalation spiral that moves the New Cold War out of Europe.

To explain, the first outcome can be interpreted as one of Russia’s promised asymmetrical responses to the West arming Ukraine. If Russia achieves a military breakthrough across the front lines that’s exploited by some NATO members as the pretext for commencing a conventional intervention which provokes a Cuban-like brinkmanship crisis in Europe, then North Korea might provoke its own such crisis in Asia in order to remind the US about the principle of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD).  

Valdai Club expert Dmitry Suslov, who’s also a member of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and Deputy Director of World Economy and International Politics at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, published a piece at RT where he observed that the US “lost its fear of the mushroom cloud”. He therefore suggested a “demonstrative” nuclear test in order to scare some sense back into Western warmongers, but Russia’s new mutual defense pact with North Korea could serve the same purpose.

Continue reading