Who the hell wants to visit North Korea?

Let’s see…since the armistice ending the Korean War, the ruling Kim family has pretty much had to use hostage-taking to convince world leaders to visit their notoriously impoverished and grim country.  Fidel Castro was a notable exception, visiting in 1986 to pay his respects to North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.  Castro looked around and announced that his politics and North Korea’s were “completely identical on everything.”  North Korea couldn’t convince fellow disgusting dictator Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to visit, but in 2013, he sent members of his cabinet to establish diplomatic relations.  In 1994, at the height of tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program, Former President Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang for a private meeting with Kim Il Sung and negotiated a pause in the North Korean nuclear program and the release of an American hostage.  Former President Bill Clinton visited in 2009 and met with Kim Jong Il to negotiate the release of imprisoned American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.  The next year, Jimmy Carter returned to Pyongyang to secure the release of an American educator, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who had illegally crossed the border from China and was being held by the North Korean regime.

Donald Trump didn’t need a hostage.  In 2018 he famously walked twenty steps across the border into North Korea to shake hands with Kim Jong Un on his country’s territory after asking the North Korean leader, “Would you like me to step across?”  CNN reported that Kim “appeared overjoyed” in the moment and clapped Trump on the back, saying “I never expected to meet you at this place.”  This was after the infamous exchange of “beautiful letters” between the two, which was after Trump denounced Kim as a “cruel dictator” in a speech to legislators in Seoul.  Later Trump would Tweet, “Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat’?” 

And now comes Vladimir Putin to visit what has long been called the world’s “hermit nation.”  He arrived in Pyongyang by air yesterday, greeted warmly at the airport by Kim Jong Un.  Today, Putin and Kim signed a strategic mutual defense pact that promises each country will come to the aid of the other against “aggression” by foreign powers.  What Putin is really doing, however, is negotiating the release of artillery ammunition and missiles that he needs to use in his war against Ukraine.

Putin and Kim are leaders of pariah nations, unwelcome in capitals around the world by anyone other than fellow pariah leaders.  North Korea is one of the few nations where Putin can land the Russian version of Air Force One.  In May, Putin visited China and met with Xi Jinping and signed a statement declaring a “new era” of relations between the two nations that would be dedicated to opposition to the United States.  Putin is dependent on China’s large purchases of Russian oil and gas since sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut Russia off from trade with the west.  Putin would also be welcome in Tehran and Syria, but spinning the globe, it’s harder and harder to find countries that would allow his jet to land on their soil.   

Putin visited North Korea once before in 2000 during the early months of his presidency to establish relations between the two countries and pledge to oppose American military “dominance” around the world. 

Putin’s new partnership with Kim would be a hollow one if it weren’t for North Korea’s demonstrated arms production capacity.  The country has large reserves of coal and iron ore and for decades demonstrated its willingness to build weapons instead of, for example, producing enough food to feed its people.  North Korea probably has the world’s largest stockpile of long-range artillery ammunition in the world, having long ago arrayed thousands of its long-gun howitzers and multiple rocket launchers along the DMZ within range of South Korea’s capital, Seoul.  This is in addition to Kim’s more recently produced stockpile of ballistic missiles capable of hitting anywhere in South Korea and even Japan.  North Korea is also believed to have a limited number of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the United States and may be nuclear weapons capable.

North Korea is a tiny country, only 45,000 square miles, with a population of 26 million.  Its GDP is about $16 billion, with a per capita GDP of $640.  It’s almost comical to compare with the U.S. GDP of $26 trillion, which works out to $76,000 per capita.  Russia has zillions of square miles and a population of about 144 million.  As of 2022, its GDP is $2.24 trillion with a per capita GDP of $15,200.  The GDP of the European Union is $19 trillion, with a per capita of $43,000.

But these are just numbers on paper.  Even though Russia is no longer considered a great power, we’ve been able to see over the last two-plus years what a country like Russia can do with its limited resources.  The Wall Street Journal today sounded the alarm on Russia’s new array of alliances with China, North Korea, and Iran.  “The former Soviet Union [once] exported billions of dollars in weapons to the developing world,” the Journal wrote.  Today it’s at least in part the other way around as “Moscow scours the globe to sustain its Ukraine war.”  Russia’s need for weapons “has expanded into the sharing of sensitive technologies that could threaten the U.S. and its allies long after the Ukraine war ends,” the Journal reported, noting that Iran has helped Russia build a factory to produce armed drones.

The West spent the first years after the fall of the Soviet Union swanning around in the afterglow of the collapse of Communism and entered an era of opening high-end micro-bite expense account restaurants and fouling the upper atmosphere with Gulfstream exhaust.  Taking the opportunity to move its resources away from guns, the West indulged its fascination with impossibly expensive weapons systems like the F-35 fighter, which ended up being virtually unusable because in addition to being slow and unwieldy, it was so expensive and filled with ultra-secret systems that we couldn’t risk even one of them being shot down and pillaged for all the high tech junk it carries. 

But the end of the Cold war didn’t bring the expected end of hot wars, which rapidly grew in number and intensity.  Every martini-sipping expert at the Council on Foreign Relations now agrees that Europe is under threat after Russia’s outrageous invasion of Ukraine and the brutal way it has fought that war.  The U.S. and European nations, which have spent trillions on next generation weapons systems and so-called smart bombs have been left scrambling to jump-start the production of artillery ammunition for 155 mm howitzers, essentially hunks of steel surrounding wads of gunpowder.

The U.S., British and French nuclear capabilities did exactly nothing to deter Russian aggression in Ukraine.  Having F-35’s and F-22’s and F-16’s deployed all over Europe wasn’t much of a deterrence, either, and all that weaponry isn’t worth spit if the U.S. and NATO – or the U.S. alone or European nations alone – are not willing to deploy their sophisticated firepower against Russia to defend Ukraine.  Here’s the deal about power:  it doesn’t exist if it’s sitting still with engines off on concrete runways and in motor pools and armories. 

Vladimir Putin knows this and has used his dark knowledge to deadly effect in Ukraine. Now he has formed a partnership with a nation exactly nobody wants to visit or talk to other than him.  Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, tweeted a video of Putin coming down the stairs from his plane with Kim waiting on the red carpet to greet him with the caption, “This is what desperation looks like.”  Putin may indeed need to buddy up to his fellow pariah to get his ammo, but their alliance, even if temporary, is a dangerous one.

We should cancel production of new aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines and F-35 jet fighters and start up factories making more big guns and big bullets and tactical missiles.  We’re going to need them. It’s dark and getting darker out there in an increasingly hostile and violent world.