By Charlie Campbell
“If South Korea is going to burn those bridges with Moscow, I’m concerned that the situation could escalate in the Korean peninsula with Russia playing a more robust role to support Pyongyang,” says Lyle Goldstein, director for Asia engagement at the Washington D.C.-based Defense Priorities think tank and a visiting professor at Brown University. “No doubt, Pyongyang is one of the big winners in the whole Ukraine war.”
“One of the problems with European security is that it increasingly became purely about trying to deter Russia, which became convinced that it was on the outside and had nothing to lose in using force,” says Goldstein.
“The nightmare scenario in East Asia is that China decides they have nothing to gain from actively participating in this [security] architecture so they basically have to destroy the architecture.”