Tom Le, Annalise Chang, Munique Tan
The Russia–North Korea Treaty on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, signed in June 2024, has renewed fears of anti-Western coalitions and dealt a seismic geopolitical shock to the balance of power in East Asia. Once ratified, the treaty will improve communication, increase cooperation across several sectors, strengthen strategic and tactical cooperation, and guarantee mutual military and non-military support in the event that either country is attacked.
By tying their fates, Russia and North Korea are increasing the costs of conflict for would-be challengers. Dialogue and diplomacy have been lauded as the path to peace in international relations. But the security pact’s unexpectedness suggests that groupthink in expert forums is overshadowing open policy debate and creative solutions. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there has been limited discussion of Russia–North Korea cooperation, with panels mostly rehearsing well-established concerns over Pyongyang that have dominated international discourse.
In the over 1000 panels at the International Studies Association’s Annual Convention since 2022, only 35 sessions mentioned North Korea. Major topics included nuclear posturing, US deterrence, human rights, effects on South Korea and cyber threats. North Korean foreign policy discussions were often limited to its relations with — or impact on — the United States and South Korea. Only one panel covered North Korea’s ties with China, while Japan was mentioned justonce.
At the American Political Science Association, the world’s premier political science gathering, only seven sessions of the over 1200 panels mentioned North Korea. Regional conferences fared no better. At the International Studies Association’s Asia-Pacific 2023 conference, only six of approximately 450 panels covered North Korea.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue, where experts gathered for less theoretical, more policy-relevant discussion, no one foresaw a defence pact. Attendees condemned North Korean arms transfers to Russia, with South Korean officials even indirectly charging UN Security Council members, China and Russia, with failing to hold Pyongyang accountable. Focusing on multilateralism to deal with single-state threats, Japanese and US officials each discussed trilateral information sharing. The dialogue failed to spark discussion about security commitments among non-democratic states in response to the West’s deterrence and containment strategies.
Since the Russia–North Korea security pack treaty was announced, scholars and officials have debated on how to respond. Some pundits warn the treaty harms US interests and threatens the international order while others contend that such a coalition goes against Chinese interests or that South Korea, Japan, and the United States should respond. Increased sanctions on North Korea and Russia, public information campaigns, coordination with China, and stronger alliances have all been proposed.
Given the near-universal agreement over the security pact’s magnitude, it is remarkable that the security community had not seriously considered and prepared for such a scenario.
The lack of proactive new research and counter-hypotheses — and resultant groupthink — contributed to the United States’s disastrous war in Iraq and have led anti-China attitudes to dominate security discourse in Washington. The security community’s focus on trilateralism has permeated the government level, with Washington pushing Seoul and Tokyo together, and defining the reactions to the Russia–North Korea news.
The difficulties of prediction are made manifold by the complexities of researching Russia and North Korea. North Korea may be the ‘hardest intelligence collection target’ in the world, given its demographics, limited and dangerous intelligence access points and well-hidden assets. Russia has also shut itself off from the international community since it invaded Ukraine, which makes it difficult to collect up-to-date information on the country. The West has also made studying North Korea and Russia increasingly difficult by barring each from academic conferences, international sporting events, and academic exchanges, leaving fewer opportunities to communicate and gain up-to-date data.
Security experts may be reluctant to explore how Russia and North Korea could escalate the current conflict — at least publicly — out of fear of creating panic, revealing classified information, outlining strategies to the enemy or creating problems that do not exist. The pressure to publish disincentivizes difficult-to-prove hypotheses, especially the highly speculative ones requiring significant fieldwork. Experts have used summits and conferences to stake out well-established positions. ‘Like-minded’ allies can better prepare for system-level disruption by being a little less like-minded.
Multiple levels of disruption are necessary to dislodge the security community from groupthink. An overreliance on a few big-name scholars makes the security community vulnerable to their liabilities, limitations and narrow policy preferences. Knowledge gaps and biases can be mitigated by drawing on a variety of scholars across disciplines and sectors.
Incentive structures must also be shifted to reward research beyond trending issues. Crises capture headlines, but the damage has already been done by the time a scenario has reached the crisis level.
Simulations are low-risk practices that allow the security community to test hypotheses and responses. Greater variance in scenarios and regular practice are needed to generate useful data. AI can help generate thousands of scenarios to consider. Taken together, groupthink can be disrupted when scholars and practitioners lean in on their comparative advantages rather than echoing each other.
Tom Le is Associate Professor of Politics at Pomona College and a non-resident fellow with the Institute for Global Affairs Independent America project. He is author of Japan’s Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century (Columbia University Press).
Annalise Chang is a Chinese and Public Policy student at Pomona College. Munique Tan is an Economics and International Relations student at Pomona College.
Source: East Asia Forum
