Fears that North Korea might copy Putin’s nuclear blackmail if Russia loses the war with Ukraine.

Russia is not the only autocracy misleading the West with nuclear threats.

North Korea is no longer in the news, but the danger it poses hasn’t gone away.

The US has said it will send more advanced weapons such as fighters and bombers to the Korean Peninsula in response to the growing threat from Pyongyang.

During a visit to Seoul, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup discussed military exercises in February to heighten the allies’ response to North Korea’s possible use of nuclear weapons.

Experts have been warning since last summer that Pyongyang is gearing up for nuclear tests after a five-year suspension, a move that indicates North Korea continues to develop advanced weapons capabilities.

In October, Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that “another nuclear test would be further confirmation that the program is moving forward in an incredibly, incredibly disturbing way.”

Pyongyang already has nuclear weapons on the battlefield that it can use against the South, though some observers doubt they are still capable of launching a nuclear strike on the US mainland.

Experts say North Korea hopes Washington will recognize its nuclear power and its global importance.

As such, the Kim Jong-un regime will be keeping a close eye on developments in Ukraine, especially the West’s response to Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threats.

“China and North Korea will be watching to see if nuclear coercion works against Ukraine’s attempts to defend itself. Russia has to lose – and be seen as a loser – to prevent this from happening,” said William Alberke, director of strategy, technology and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He suggests that Putin is testing a “crazy theory” of international politics linked to Richard Nixon’s Cold War foreign policy that says countries will succumb to nuclear threats if they think the enemy is unstable enough to deal with them. .

“US President Richard Nixon told Henry Kissinger to give the impression that the United States might use nuclear weapons. It didn’t work then — America left Vietnam with its tail between its legs — and it won’t work now if the West doesn’t give in to Putin’s threats,” Alberke says.

Natalie Tocci, director of the Rome Institute of International Affairs, agreed that North Korea will evaluate the effectiveness of nuclear blackmail in Ukraine, but adds that other potential nuclear powers will also be watching.

“Where I think things are even more troubling is in the Middle East, where nonproliferation has had some power and Ukraine has made sure that what little there was is gone,” she says.

“I’m afraid this has changed the calculus in Iran, and therefore Saudi Arabia, and maybe Turkey… why stick with conventional weapons when you can occupy another country brandishing a nuclear baton?”

But not only in Moscow there are voices that NATO is threatened with a dangerous escalation.

A ragtag team of politicians, activists and commentators, ranging from far-right populists in the US and Hungary to traditional Russian leftists in Italy, insist that accepting Eastern European countries seeking asylum from Russian NATO aggression has sucked Moscow in. into recklessness. and that Western policies threaten to provoke a nuclear confrontation.

But these delusions are not only used to justify Russia’s unprecedented use of nuclear blackmail to invade a neighboring country, but also make further nuclear coercion more likely.

The overlapping security implications of world events were highlighted by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during a visit to Tokyo on Tuesday. He stressed the need for Japan and other democracies to cooperate with the alliance to protect the international order.

Stoltenberg said transatlantic and Indo-Pacific security are “deeply linked” and a Putin victory in Ukraine would mean that authoritarian regimes could use brute force to achieve their goals. “It’s dangerous,” he said.

In December, Japan made a major break with post-war pacifism. The new security strategy includes the acquisition of pre-emptive strike capabilities and cruise missiles to counter growing threats from North Korea, China and Russia.