With the bilateral U.S.-Japan partnership focused primarily on China’s threat to Taiwan, and implications for the security of Okinawa and Japan’s other southern islands, and signs of increased coordination within the bilateral China-Russia partnership adjacent to Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, coupled with Moscow’s fortification of the occupied southern Kuril Islands, further intensification of coordination between Russia and China, Russia and North Korea, and the potential emergence of a genuine Russia-China-North Korea strategic triangle, as discussed in Part 1 of this Global North series, would be worrisome to the West.
- Between a ROK and a Hard Place: Considering DPRK and a Reunified Korea in the Arctic
- Thinking the Unthinkable: DPRK’s Emerging Role in the Arctic
- DPRK as a Strategic Bridge and Arctic Wild Card
- DPRK: Junior Partner, Spoiler, or Emerging Arctic Actor?
- Reunification Scenarios and Korea’s Future Arctic Role
- The Moscow-Beijing Leg of the Emergent ‘Tri-Axis’
- Reassessing Russia’s Role and the Broader Tri-Axis Challenge
- Explore Books Written by Our Contributors
Fortunately, as U.S. Army War College Research Professor of Indo-Pacific Security Studies Dr. Brian G. Carlson noted in his December 17, 2025 U.S. Army War College publication (“Security Implications of the China-Russia-North Korea Triangle”), “Despite their growing cooperation, this grouping currently falls short of a coherent bloc comparable to the Warsaw Pact or to US alliances,” limiting their coordination for now.
The security implications of an increasingly coordinated and more tightly integrated Moscow–Pyongyang–Beijing strategic triangle go well beyond the Indo-Pacific region.
But in the future, a tightening of their strategic coordination is certainly plausible, if not yet probable. In such a circumstance, any attempt by Beijing to forcibly reunify Taiwan with China could potentially trigger a diversionary move by Russia and North Korea to the north. Such as a simultaneous or sequential effort by Pyongyang to forcibly reunify North and South Korea while the US and Japan are distracted by a war between Taiwan and China to Japan’s south; and/or a diversionary move by Moscow to resume, after its 80-year freeze on further offensive operations in the Kuril island chain, to make a new push for further territorial expansion to the nearby island of Hokkaido.
Stalin had plans to invade and partition the island were, but ultimately cancelled them in the waning days of World War II – a multi-decade time scale comparable to Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, in which the case for a full-scale military conquest proved likewise compelling to the Kremlin after a lengthy passage of time.
Such a synchronized war of expansion by what would, by virtue of these coordinated military actions, now be a genuine Tri-Axis of regional powers unlike any seen since World War II, and while certainly not imminent or even yet probable, is a scenario worthy of consideration and preparation to counter.
But critics may counter-argue that the triangular dynamics of such a modern-day Tri-Axis are lopsided and thus likely operationally challenged – even Pyongyang’s military intervention in the war in Ukraine as a defender of Russia’s territorial integrity under the terms of its bilateral defense pact with Moscow proved as underwhelming militarily as it was attention- and headline-grabbing, yielding high DPRK troop losses prior to their merciful withdrawal (in conjunction with Ukraine’s own withdrawal from Kursk).
While offering compelling proof of the strategic value of the Moscow-North Korea leg of this emergent mainland Northeast Asian strategic triangle, it also presents hints of limits to this value. But this does not, of itself, constrain future coordinated operations of the bilateral Russia-North Korea partnership, nor doom the emergence of a genuine Russia-China-North Korea axis – it just buffers our expectations with a dose of realism. Hence its description in Part 1 above by Chatham House’s Korea Foundation Fellow Edward Howell as fundamentally “dangerous” to the West.
Between a ROK and a Hard Place: Considering DPRK and a Reunified Korea in the Arctic
Most media and scholarly literature discussions of Korea’s interests in and impacts on the Arctic consider the perspective of the Republic of Korea (ROK), better known as South Korea, rather than its northern counterpart, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), better known as North Korea – or even that of a future reunified Korean Peninsula.
It is imperative that we continue to consider what role DPRK may play in the future Arctic.
While both Korean states have been part of the international system since the 1948 partition of the Korean Peninsula after World War II, their asymmetries (notably in population, with ROK’s 52 million people being double DPRK’s 26 million; and in their political-economies, with the ROK being an innovative, high-tech democracy and the DPRK a centrally-planned communist dictatorship prone to stagnation and famine but with advanced military capabilities including its own thermonuclear deterrent and an emergent subsurface ballistic missile capability) have profoundly impacted their relative contributions to world politics and the global economy, and this has been as true for their divergent roles in the Arctic until the present time.
But that does not mean North Korea should be excluded from our thinking about Korea’s role in the future Arctic – and from the alignment of interests of both Pyongyang and Beijing with Moscow as discussed above, one can envision North Korea factoring into the equation on the Tri-Axis side.
With DPRK’s growing nuclear arsenal, demonstrated thermonuclear capabilities, and emergent strategic nuclear submarine capabilities (still aspirational), its raw military power is certainly understood, and to some degree appreciated, by both sides (particularly under the first and second Trump administrations, where the President’s respect for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s accomplishments is well documented, and fledgling diplomatic outreach shattered pre-existing taboos).
It is imperative that we continue to consider – with wider participation among not just Arctic stakeholders, but global stakeholders with Arctic interests – what role DPRK may play in the future Arctic, lest we are confronted by challenges of unexpected black-swan events.
Thinking the Unthinkable: DPRK’s Emerging Role in the Arctic
In short, borrowing from the colorful phraseology of Cold War nuclear theorist Herman Kahn, we must, when thinking about Korea in the Arctic, be prepared to think about the unthinkable. But in contrast with its southern counterpart, North Korea does not have a published Arctic strategy, and to date it has not been especially active in Arctic diplomacy – nor has Pyongyang pursued Arctic Council observer status like its democratic Northeast Asian neighbors.
However, when it became a signatory to the (1920) Spitzbergen (Svalbard) Treaty in 2016, joining ROK which did so in 2012, DPRK began its journey as a cooperative member of the community of Arctic-engaged nations – and had the West not broken with Russia in 2022, and put on ice East-West cooperation across the North (as illustrated by its boycott of the Arctic Council), DPRK may well have petitioned to join the Arctic Council as an observer under Moscow’s term as rotating Council chair from 2021-23 with an agenda that adhered to the Council’s well established research traditions and commitment to a cooperative Arctic, and an openness to other members of the “East” joining this Arctic intergovernmental forum.
As discussed above, DPRK has enjoyed a strengthening – and since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – increasingly important military partnership with Russia, having provided much-needed artillery to alleviate Moscow’s strained effort to subjugate Ukraine militarily, and coming to Russia’s defense after Ukraine counter-invaded and occupied the Kursk region of southwestern Russia, overrunning its border defenses, the first European deployment of DPRK troops in wartime, and a reversal of the flow of manpower witnessed during World War II and the brushfire wars of the Cold War which saw western troops deployed to East Asia, but apart from Japanese assaults on western colonies and former colonial states in South and East Asia, this was not replicated in reverse until now.
We must therefore be ready to respond to a more active and kinetic DPRK in the Arctic as well, as the region continues its historic thaw, economic opening, and increasingly contested geopolitics.
DPRK as a Strategic Bridge and Arctic Wild Card
North Korea is also a close economic partner (and, to a significant degree, dependent) of China, and as such plays a bridge role in regional diplomacy and economics with important (if under-utilized) forward geography from which to counterbalance Japan and support China and Russia. Though its external trade is a fraction of ROK’s, DPRK punches well above its demographic and economic weight in defense capabilities, with recent battlefield experience in support of Russia against Ukraine.
While asymmetrical in many ways, the emergent Moscow-Beijing-North Korea Tri-Axis of power is no less symmetrical than the Axis Powers in World War II, which put up a robust and destabilizing existential fight that required a world war to quell.
In the event that military conflict between East and West should break out in Beringia and the Arctic, planning to respond to China and Russia without consideration of the supporting role DPRK could play would be incomplete. Indeed, DPRK’s painful experiences with American bombardment during the Korean War, and even more traumatic experiences of its generational colonial occupation by imperial Japan, suggest that DPRK might feel highly motivated to challenge the ambitions of its historic rivals in a future Arctic conflict in or adjacent to the High North Pacific, and as a loyal partner in any future military effort to secure China’s access to, and Russia’s control over, the Northern Sea Route.
But with a limited capacity to project power from its own shores by air or sea, DPRK’s military role will likely be most heavily felt in the Russian Far East and adjacent territories, though its emergent ballistic submarine capabilities may in time provide it with the tools to project power further into the High North Pacific, and across the international dateline to American territory in Alaska much the way Japan did during World War II – with its added capacity to strike North America with its nuclear missile force.
DPRK: Junior Partner, Spoiler, or Emerging Arctic Actor?
As Russia continues to face isolation from its democratic counterparts on the Arctic Council, and further integrates its resource-economy with China and other Asian markets, one can envision a growing role for the DPRK as a junior partner to China (an economic superpower unto itself) and Russia (a military great power with the nuclear capability of a superpower), elevating DPRK as a potentially important Tri-Axis partner in the defense of an emergent diplo-military bloc.
DPRK could also emerge as a potential spoiler to a peaceful Arctic order, with a long history of asymmetrical hybrid conflict, including active terrorism, sabotage and transnational crime networks, aimed not at fostering Arctic cooperation in alignment with its neighbors, but instead at undermining Seoul’s (and potentially, Tokyo’s) Arctic ambitions.
But just as the Arctic Council has welcomed a wide diversity of stakeholders from outside the region ever since the expansion of observer states began more than a decade ago, there may also be room for DPRK to more actively join the diplomatic community of cooperative, Arctic-engaged states much the way the PRC (with much skepticism from the West) has endeavored to do since articulating its own Arctic policy in 2018.
Reunification Scenarios and Korea’s Future Arctic Role
What policy pillars might define a future DPRK Arctic policy and strategy? How might it both differ from, and resemble, those of its Northeast Asian neighbors? Like Putin’s Russia, will DPRK be pulled in two conflicting directions at once – with thesis and antithesis colliding in contradiction as it works toward a synthesis, or might it find a way to be both authoritarian and diplomatically cooperative at once, as Beijing has (despite its many critics in the West) largely done?
And looking ahead, in the event Korea does one day (near or far) reunify, either peacefully through an economic collapse of the DPRK under ROK’s expanded sovereignty, or militarily through an invasion of the ROK by the DPRK under Pyongyang’s expanded sovereignty.
A reunited Korea will have a substantial population of nearly 80 million, a nuclear deterrent of its own enhanced by numerous high-tech defensive systems developed by ROK in response to its DPRK threat, and will have assets in demography, economy and military power comparable to both Japan and Russia – positioning it to become an even more salient actor in the Arctic than the ROK alone is today.
Considering potential reunification scenarios from the perspective of their respective impacts on Arctic diplomacy, security and economy can provide us with a much-needed if speculative starting point to assess the roles a reunified Korean Peninsula can play in the future Arctic, and help us to explore a wide range of possibilities on the role that DPRK and/or a reunified Korea may play in the future Arctic.
The Moscow-Beijing Leg of the Emergent ‘Tri-Axis’
Turning next to the China-Russia leg of the Tri-Axis, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) senior fellow and retired diplomat Robert Blackwill and chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security, Richard Fontaine considered, at the end of 2024, whether it is truly “No Limits” as proclaimed by both Putin and Xi in their comradely courtship.
As Blackwill and Fontaine described, “The widening power disparity between a stagnating Russia and an ascendant China threatens to transform their partnership into an increasingly lopsided affair. The two nations compete for influence in Central Asia, for two centuries in Russia’s sphere of influence, and Russia’s recent defense treaty with North Korea sparked concern in China. In the Arctic, too, Moscow and Beijing have competed for influence and resources.”
However, Blackwill and Fontaine add that “[s]uch critiques neglect the reality that the China-Russia relationship continues to deepen and widen, and occasional disagreements are dwarfed by the scale and momentum of their strategic cooperation. Theirs is a formidable partnership bordering on alliance, bound together by resistance to what they view as a U.S.-led, anachronistic international order, one that does not permit either country its rightful place despite their power, history, domestic legitimacy, civilizational triumphs, and vital regional interests.”
As Blackwill and Fontaine further described, “Their economic partnership is highly asymmetric but a source of significant mutual benefit: Russia has embraced China as its primary supplier of goods once sourced from Europe, while China has secured a reliable flow of Siberian hydrocarbons—an essential pillar of its energy security strategy. Even tensions in the Arctic have seemingly melted away; a July 2024 Pentagon report indicates that ‘increasingly, [China] and Russia are collaborating in the Arctic across multiple instruments of national power.’”
On the Arctic in particular, Blackwill and Fontaine noted Russia “is a gateway for China to the Arctic and the critical Northern Sea Route, unlocking new avenues for the PRC’s trade and influence. … In the Arctic, China and Russia’s coast guard cooperation demonstrates the growing depth of their maritime alliance, which challenges the United States through gray-zone provocations. This rapid expansion of the China-Russia partnership has established the Arctic as a frontier of strategic competition.”
Moreover, “Where possible tensions could emerge between China and Russia—over influence in Central Asia, activities in the Arctic, or relations with North Korea—Russia has sought to smooth differences and harmonize approaches. For all the betting that the Kremlin would never accept a junior partner status in its relationship with the Chinese superpower, Russia has done just that. China is essential to Russia, and Putin knows it.”
Reassessing Russia’s Role and the Broader Tri-Axis Challenge
But there are many reasons to perceive Russia as far more than a junior partner to China; its vast geographical expanse from Fennoscandia to Northeast Siberia provides a continental scale, as China, hemmed in along the coasts of Southeast Asia and East Asia by the Himalaya and Central Asian steppes, lacks a comparable continental scale, and with it, direct access to Arctic trade routes and resources, and Russia’s robust nuclear force provides a capability for deterring the West that China’s smaller arsenal does not yet achieve.
China’s demographic and economic scale do indeed dwarf Russia’s, albeit not by as much as it does North Korea’s, but these are not the only nor the most pertinent measures of national power at work here.
While asymmetrical in many ways, the emergent Moscow-Beijing-North Korea Tri-Axis of power is no less symmetrical than the Axis Powers in World War II, which put up a robust and destabilizing existential fight that required a world war to quell. The implications of today’s emergent Northeast Asian Tri-Axis are in some compelling ways comparable. As Helena Legarda, Head of Program for the Foreign Relations team at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), described it in a 2023 Internationale Politik Quarterly: “China’s military buildup, but also North Korea’s nuclear threats, have led to South Korea and Japan reinforcing their defenses. This may well lead to an arms race in the Indo-Pacific.”
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But the security implications of an increasingly coordinated and more tightly integrated Moscow–Pyongyang–Beijing strategic triangle go well beyond the Indo-Pacific region, and due to their geographical proximity and adjacency to the High North Pacific, will invariably affect the security of Beringia and the Arctic.
At the same time, the very same competitive emergent bloc dynamics that have led to recent defense modernization efforts on both sides of the Tri-Axis challenge may also catalyze a cooperative approach to the region they share, where geography has conspired to isolate the Sea of Japan and the ports and respective trade and marine infrastructure on all sides – with parallels to the geographical isolation of the Arctic basin to the north.
Just as climate change has accelerated interest in and utilization of the Arctic’s emergent maritime trade routes, we have seen some preliminary signs of a consequent acceleration of interest in and utilization of ports and trade networks along and within the Sea of Japan, for which the island of Hokkaido and the narrow straits adjacent to it have emerged as a compelling gateway to the Arctic via the Northern Sea Route, and for which the Tumen River may soon emerge as a maritime bridge connecting China to the Sea of Japan via the North Korea-Russia border, just south of Vladivostok.
One can envision a proliferation of regional trade links likewise emerging among and between all countries bordering the Sea of Japan, which in turn may motivate regional adversaries to tilt toward regional cooperation, from the partitioned Korean Peninsula to the partitioned Ainu homeland between Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands.
Benefits to all stakeholders include joint access to the Trans-Siberian Rail system at Vladivostok, trans-peninsular trade between the two Koreas, riverine transit along the Tumen River to and from China’s interior, and direct access to Japan’s vast domestic land, sea and air transportation networks as well as its international ports, which are predominantly concentrated on Japan’s Pacific-facing coasts – all catalyzed by their mutual interest in Arctic trade through the Northern Sea Route.
Whether the West can keep up with the pace of change and maintain a united front in the face of this emergent Tri-Axis challenge from the East as the polar thaw extends the theater of engagement further north, remains to be seen. But even if there is a collapse in Western unity – or perhaps because of such a collapse – the regional powers along the Sea of Japan, which include South and North Korea, China, Russia and Japan, may find many of their own compelling reasons to cooperate on the emergent opportunities arising from a thawing Arctic, of which increasing maritime trade stands out as perhaps the most compelling.
In this eventuality, the Tri-Axis becomes less a threat to the region and more the seed from which a more connected, united and aligned Eurasian region can emerge.
