North Korean troops’ recent arrival in Russia to fight against Ukraine has transformed worries that war will spread regionally into fears that a global World War III may be on the horizon.
North Korea’s entry into the conflict is but a piece of an anti-Western alliance that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. It includes not only Russia and North Korea but also Iran, including proxy militias it sponsors in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as China.
Each harbors an ambition to upend eight decades of dominance by what they consider a sclerotic yet bullying West, and especially leadership by the United States, which they regard as being in decline.
Western analysts see Russia’s war on Ukraine, along with the participation of North Korean troops, as a first step toward undermining the democratic West.
“We’re in a pre-war era leading to global war, the most serious, the most dangerous and the most challenging we have had since World War II,” said Jack Keane, a retired US general who heads the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. “I do believe World War III is in the future,” he said in a television interview aired last Sunday.
On Tuesday, NATO chief Mark Rutter doubled down on alarm by describing a military peril that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.
“Russia, working together with North Korea, Iran and China, is not only threatening Europe, it threatens peace and security—yes, here in Europe– but also in the Indo-Pacific and in North America,” he concluded in a statement read following a meeting with French President Emanuel Macron.
As evidence of the spreading danger, he pointed to alarming current events, namely:
- The transfer of Russian missile technology to North Korea, an event that that particularly alarms South Korea and Japan.
- The burgeoning military alliance and exchanges between Russia and Iran that incudes Russian purchases of armed drones from Iran that provides the Islamic Republic with cash to pay “proxies” that “destabilize the Middle East” and to fund “terrorism further afield.”
- China, underwrites Moscow’s domestic war-making industries by making massive cash purchases of Russian fossil fuel in defiance of international sanctions. Beijing also supplies spare parts for a variety of run-down Russian military equipment.
The NATO chief pleaded for allied unity to face an anti-Western alliance. “We must stand together – Europe, North America and our global partners – to keep our people safe and prosperous,” Rutter said.
Rutter’s rallying cry was clearly aimed at Western countries whose enthusiasm for supporting Kyiv is flagging. The future of US policy under President-elect Donald Trump is attracting especially intense interest and worry.
Trump promised voters a kind of self-centered “America First” foreign policy, raising questions if that precludes continued support for Ukraine. General Keane fears that creeping US isolationism has encouraged belligerent adversaries to run amok.
“China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, who are cooperating, collaborating, coordinating together, believe that our leadership in the United States is weak, that we’ve lost the political will to confront them, much less go and fight them,” the retired US general said.
Apocalyptic commentary is not limited to the West. Zheng Yongnian, a foreign affairs analyst whose commentary frequently appears in official Chinese media, recently wrote that “The possibility of a world war may have been underestimated.”
“Looking at today’s situation, regional wars involving multiple countries, especially major powers, have already broken out, such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” he added.
Zheng blamed the West for current Middle East turmoil. “While the wars in the Middle East have manifested themselves mainly as a conflict between Israel and Hamas, many other countries, especially the US, have become deeply involved,” he concluded.
This summer, Dmitri Medvedev, a Putin ally and former Russian president, warned NATO that providing military aid to Ukraine was ensuring that “World War III is getting closer.”
In any event, a lot has changed since Trump’s last turn inside the White House between 2017 and 2021. Niggling problems that Trump faced in his first term have morphed into tense disputes and even deadly hostilities as US adversaries have turned to warfare.
Putin appears willing to continue the Ukraine war into Trump’s new term, despite certain estimates his forces have suffered around 610,000 casualties. North Korean intervention in Ukraine is due in part to Russia’s need for fresh troops, observers surmise.
“Russia is desperate for manpower but wants to avoid a second mobilization, which would involve involuntary call-ups of Russian citizens,” wrote the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
“US officials estimate that Russia is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers a month, barely enough to keep pace with the reported daily casualty rate of 1,000–or 30,000 a month,” the influential think tank wrote.
About 12,000 Korean soldiers have gathered near the Russian border town of Kursk, which Ukrainian forces took over this summer in a surprise attack. The North Koreans are joining about 40,000 Russian troops deployed for a counteroffensive. Beyond manpower, North Korea is also supplying weapons, including missiles.
“North Korea sent eight million shells to Ukraine last year, as well as dozens of short-range missiles, which will do far more to keep the Russian war machine afloat than a few thousand troops,” reports the US-based Council on Foreign Relations. “Western supporters of Ukraine, by contrast, have struggled to match this provision of ammunition and weapons.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insists that his forces could push Russia out of Ukraine if they receive the requested weapons. He is not only begging the US to continue supplying arms but also for permission to fire missiles at enemy forces deep inside Russia.
World War III talk has become more frequent as the Ukraine war drags on. Trump has said only that he will end the war “within 24 hours” of taking office next January, or even before, though he hasn’t explained how.
Meanwhile, Trump supports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to bomb Iran, an attack recently launched in retaliation for Iranian missile strikes previously aimed at Israel.
At the same time, two Iran-backed proxies—Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon– are under intense Israeli military pressure in a 13-month onslaught.
Trump considers both Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist agents of Iran. He supports Israel’s massive assault on Hamas as due retaliation for its October 7, 2023 attack on communities inside Israel.
He has also supported Israel’s invasion of Lebanon but has yet to lay out how much he thinks Hezbollah should be punished for supporting Hamas. Last week, the US Justice Department announced federal charges in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill Trump before the November 5 presidential election.
Finally, Trump has promised to slap 60% tariffs on China, a pledge that was central to his campaign. He justifies the taxes as a means of enticing manufacturers that fled to low-wage China to relocate to the US and create new jobs for Americans.
He hasn’t yet taken a position on China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nor on Beijing’s ever-louder insistence that it must “reunify” Taiwan with the mainland.
During his previous term in office, Trump made unconventional overtures to ease tensions with potential adversaries, none of which succeeded in reaching any significant breakthroughs.
He tried flattery with Putin, called the Russian leader a “genius” and described Russia’s 2014 limited invasion of Ukraine “savvy.” Flattery got Trump nowhere, however, judging by his second invasion of Ukraine in 2022 under Biden.
Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in Singapore and Vietnam to discuss denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. He followed up with a series of what Trump called “love letters” to the North Korean dictator. The exchanges eventually fizzled out and the denuclearization proposal died.
Most significantly, perhaps, Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping at his waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, where they discussed trade disputes but reached no accords to ease tensions. Trump later imposed tariffs on a limited range of Chinese products, all of which are in force today as he contemplates levying more.
It all begs the question if Trump’s unconventional approach to high-stakes diplomacy will have better luck this time around, or will he instead be in the chair when World War III becomes a reality, not a threat?
wow what a load of utter BS on ukraine, russia, china, iran etc etc …
Exactly!
The author claims that “… the Russian border town of Kursk, which Ukrainian forces took over this summer in a surprise attack “.
Can anyone tell him to stop spreading such blatant lies?
Ukrainians have never taken control of the city of Kursk. Kursk is located about 100 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border, and Ukrainian forces have never advanced more than 50 kilometers from the border. Currently, they have been pushed back to a distance of about 25 kilometers from the border.
This is not the first time that D. Williams has written fake news about Russia.
Anyone can express anti-Russian sentiments, but no one should distort the facts.
The alliance between Jews and Anglo Saxons is why the world is so messed up. If you carefully study all countries fully infiltrated, subverted and weaponized by these people you can count 4 regions spewing hatred, subversion, war and depravity. Israel, USA, UK and Ukraine. That’s what happens when Jews and Anglo Saxons come together. They are a cancer on our planet as a political force
Don’t miss out Australia in your wild conspiracy theory.
Chinese have very small weapons.
Australia is an irrelevant player on the global stage. It is all but a doormat for the Americans. Refer to the Balfour Declaration as the first key artifact of the Jewish-Anglo alliance. Then you have the unholy alliance between Likud and American Evangelicals. The capture of US Congress by AIPAC. There is plenty of undeniable proof if you have the intellectual honesty to look.
Don’t forget the space aliens!
The purpose of “defensive alliance” called NATO ended in 1991. Now it simply exists to launch wars and proxy wars on nations that never attacked in the first place.
John Mearsheimer explained the Ukraine situation and where it would lead very succinctly in 2015. Neutrality a-la 1955 Austria (real diplomacy not neocon threats) was a diplomatic triumph, and could have been the same for Ukraine. And it was so close until BoJo and Brandon killed the deal. Now Ukraine country is wrecked, demographically destroyed, and all neocons care about is their bruised egos. Instead the world gets the messes in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine. In the private sector these people with their track record would have been fired and run out of town decades ago.
Bucha stopped negotiations, not Bojo or Brandon.
The Ukr’s seem to want to keep fighting. Putin totally underestimated them and over estimated the Putinkim Army/Navy.
Russia is kaput, TFRs for ethnic Russians are at the point of no rerun. Forget Ukr, they have a future in Europe, while Siberia is being colonised by Chinese.
Bucha was a false flag. Everyone was huffing and puffing about an international investigation. THAT died a quiet death. Instead, Kiev has refused to put names on the bodies, most likely because the dead were considered “collaborators and traitors”, which Ukraine had announced would be “cleansed.”
OK, and the entire SMO has only taken….. 6wks. I guess you Russians have a different way of counting time.
Most casualties in war are only identified at the end of the conflict.
This piece is ridiculously one-sided BS. Mr. Williams is clueless about what is actually happening and “who” bears the major responsibility for the proxy war on Russia bleeding Ukraine, not to mention the U.S./West’s complicity in Israel’s brutal genocidal war on Palestinians.
As if you care (like Putin) about the bleeding of Ukr. The Ukr seem to want to continue to fight Russians, and good for them.
These are 2 peoples, bound for 300yrs by suffering and fighting side by side. Two brother peoples.
Putin obviously had no idea the Ukrs (even if they spoke Russian) did not want to be part of Russia. While Ukr will suffer, the cost to Russia is much worse. Their Armed forces have been shown to be ‘Putinkim’ (a pun on Potemkin Villages), they have lost control of the Baltic & Black Seas. Siberia is being taken over by the Chinese and demographically they are in freefall.
Job well done !
And yet, Russia is winning….economically, culturally, politically, diplomatically, and…..militarily. Europe is losing in all those areas. Ukraine is being destroyed to such an extent it would take decades to recover even if the carnage stopped now.
You keep saying Siberia is being taken over by the Chinese. What is your source for saying that millions of Chinese citizens are moving to Siberia of all places?
Russia is losing 3-4x the number of Ukrainians. It’s pure Math, typical Russian canon fodder up against a well trained Ukr Army. Russia does have many more mushiks they can throw in, so why are they now using NK soldiers?
My source is the fact I worked there, I still keep in contact with folks over there. It is not being talked about due to waycism fears.
Re: Ukrainians who “want to fight,” Ukrainian social media is flooded with videos of TCC personnel beating men and stuffing them into vans to send them to the front. These men can’t even vote whether they agree to Zelensky’s policy because he canceled elections and banned several opposition parties outright. So much for Freedom and Democracy.