Last week, news outlets reported, in dire terms, the significance of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s journey to North Korea, where Kim Jong Un and hundreds of thousands of his citizens turned out to welcome him. A new alliance had arisen.
Not only would North Korea provide Russia with missiles and vast supplies of artillery shells for its war against Ukraine, but Iran was also shipping drones to Russia. And of course, Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping had already announced a “no limits” partnership.
One predictable outcome in the U.S. is to react with surprise and then overreact to Russian or Chinese initiatives. With sanctions and other obstructions limiting Russia’s warmaking capacity, it is shortsighted to believe that Russia would accept the status quo and not look for other options.
Before returning to Moscow and Pyongyang’s new pact of steel, it is important to observe an example of this default overreaction setting.
Two weeks ago, a four-ship Russian naval task force was heading for Cuba. Traditional and social media broadcast warnings as these ships sailed within 100 miles of the Florida coast.
However, a closer examination of this task force was warranted. Of the four ships, one was a fleet tug, one a tender, one the frigate Gorshkov (named for a former head of the Soviet Navy) and the last was a Yasen class nuclear cruise missile submarine, Kazan, that was photographed in some disarray.
The reasons for the tug and tender were clear. Russian warships are not dependable. That Ukraine has sunk a number of them, leaving them incapacitated pier-side and vulnerable in Crimea and the Black Sea, is illustrative. Also, the U.S. had a nuclear submarine in Guantanamo at the same time. But was anyone interested in moving past media sound bites?
Putin’s visit to Pyongyang and then to Vietnam was a colossal strategic blunder and a sign of great weakness.
First off, the fact that Kim did not go to Moscow and Putin, the leader of a military superpower, made the trip instead may have been well-received by Russian citizens, but that does not hide a crucial reality. To fight in Ukraine, Russia is dependent on Kim’s largesse. That is stunning.
Second, what was Beijing’s reaction? Beijing considers North Korea to be a boil under its geographic armpit that could burst. China views Kim as unpredictable, and his possession of nuclear weapons is not reassuring, but indeed frightening. This is not the equivalent of the British and French nuclear weapons, which are tightly aligned with the U.S. and NATO.
Third, what happens when Pyongyang lacks the long-term ability to persist as an armaments provider? If the war in Ukraine has not been resolved, where does Moscow go next? This is not a trivial problem.
What should the U.S. and NATO do about this, especially in light of the forthcoming Washington summit celebrating the alliance’s 75th birthday? As a first step, the alliance should step back and start from basic principles, examining the overall geostrategic, economic and military balance with Russia.
NATO’s combined GDP is about $45 trillion, $25 trillion coming from America. Russia’s is about $2.24 trillion, about 1/20th of NATO’s. Russia has a declining population of about 140 million. NATO citizens number well over 900 million.
NATO’s combined annual defense spending is about $1.3 trillion, of which the U.S. accounts for just under $900 billion. Russia’s defense budget is about $130 billion, less than 1/10th of NATO’s.
In every category of military power except numbers of tactical or non-strategic nuclear weapons, NATO has overwhelming numerical and qualitative superiority. And, in addition to the U.S., the United Kingdom and France have nuclear weapons.
To balance the ledger a bit, NATO consists of 32 members which do not always agree on many matters. That means 31 different armies and ministries of defense. Also, Iceland does not have a military. Hence, the disparities may not be as impressive as they seem.
Yet NATO has many advantages, including the geography surrounding Russia. New members Finland and Sweden now open a northern strategic front that can confound Russia for more than 800 miles and provides further access into the Baltic that challenges Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg.
The U.S. and NATO need to take stock, to examine more closely what could be overreactions to Russia. And NATO has huge resources from which to draw. One hopes the Washington summit will do that.
Harlan Ullman, Ph.D., is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon.