Russia's war in Ukraine has emboldened North Korea to test more nuclear weapons, report warns

Posted By TheNewsCommenter: From Washingtontimes.com: “Russia’s war in Ukraine has emboldened North Korea, report warns”. Below is an excerpt from the article.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — a non-nuclear armed nation — has prompted North Korea to accelerate its own nuclear program and embrace a “first-use” nuclear weapons policy in a bid to deter an attack by the United States.

That’s a key conclusion of a new report from a leading U.S. think tank that highlights the Ukraine war’s impact on the stand-off on the divided Korean peninsula. Given recent events, the authors suggest, neither China nor Russia will be eager to support U.S. and South Korean efforts to prevent a seventh nuclear test by Pyongyang.

“Additional nuclear tests by North Korea would be unlikely to prompt a serious reaction from China and Russia,” argues the report released Thursday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The analysis comes as the Biden administration struggles to generate an effective deterrence policy toward North Korea in the face of a string of provocative weapons tests and military moves last year from Pyongyang. The regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un tested more ballistic and other missiles in 2022 than in any previous year, and U.S. intelligence has for months warned that a test of a new nuclear bomb — the first by the regime since 2017 — may be imminent.

The Biden administration has responded with economic sanctions and increased military coordination with both South Korea and Japan, while also calling on the Kim regime to rejoin diplomatic denuclearization talks that collapsed in the final years of the Trump administration.

Read more...