Russia in Global Affairs

The US seeks to integrate NATO more closely into the emerging Asian partnerships, AUKUS and QUAD, while also strengthening cooperation between South Korea, the United States, and Japan. In this context, Washington wants South Korea, as a military power, to establish links with NATO through arms support to Ukraine.

The monograph by Anatoly Torkunov and Kim Hak-chun is undoubtedly unique; its release has become not only an outstanding event in the history of Korean studies in Russia and Russian studies in Korea, but also a milestone in the history of scientific and cultural cooperation between the two countries.

Presidential elections will be held in South Korea in early March. Given that there will be about a dozen candidates, as one might expect, everyone understands that the real struggle for the presidency will be led by representatives of the country’s two main political camps: Yoon Seok-youl and Lee Jae-myung. Nobody can predict the outcome of the elections, so that everything will be decided in the last days or even hours.

The Russian ideology might well take shape as an equivalent of chuch’es?ng ?a combination of ideas of self-strengthening and traditionalism, but tightly pegged to the endemics of a multi-ethnic/multicultural country.

The main achievement in Russia’s foreign policy for 2017, and for several years prior to that, has been the development of a strategic concept, for the first time since 1991. The physical embodiment of this concept is the idea of the Greater Eurasian Partnership.

Russia loses the least from a nuclear North Korea. This is why, on the one hand, it should take measures to avoid a conflict, and on the other, pursue a prudent strategy so that a conflict, should it break out, affects Russia less than other geopolitical rivals.

While the North Korea crisis hangs over regional and global peace, the world calls out to constructive and peaceful cooperation that can halt the ‘conflict spiral’. The Russian-Korean cooperation and Eurasian integration may become a remedy for the problem.

The rate at which Pyongyang has been developing its missile program shows that prospects for a successful disarming strike that may go unpunished will disappear within a year or two. Therefore, if the U.S. does not dare strike at North Korea, there will be no alternatives to a meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang.

None of the possible scenarios for solving the North Korean problem—negotiations, sanctions, and a military solution—can be considered acceptable and satisfactory. This means that the United States and the whole world will likely have to coexist with a nuclear North Korea.