The world is drenched in blood. Covered in limbs, guts, or sinews, eastern Europe is no less horrific than the horrors of the ever expanding fronts in the Middle East. In a way reminiscent of the destruction of Iraq, the United States has deployed its attack dog, Israel, to rip to shreds the society in Gaza, eliminating the basis for a Palestina to exist alongside Judea. Described as a war on ‘seven fronts,’ the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza has expanded from the strip to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Expanding these wars

Regardless of the belligerents, a significant danger inherent in the expansion of either war is the convergence of conflicts. In contrast with the sidelined conversations China led with India during the BRICS 2024 summit in Kazan, Tatarstan, to settle long simmering border disputes, the world powers responsible for wars in the eastern Europe and the Middle East have not sought to bury the hatchet.

In contrast with its previous foreign policy designed to expand on the horizons of the Ukraine war with support for anti-Western coup d’états in such places as Burkina Faso, Russia has now decided upon a decidedly different path. It has set in motion what can only be described as the beginning of a convergence of conflicts. By concluding an unambiguous mutual defense treaty with North Korean, Russia has created a situation in which a de facto member of the NATO alliance-Ukraine-is now virtually at war with Russia’s new ally.[1] While Ukraine has not issued a declaration of war against Russia’s ally, its continued military presence in the Kursk region is definitively a violation of the terms of its mutual defense treaty. In its response, North Korea has not issued a declaration of war but its dispatch of 8,000 to 12,000 troops under the command of an identified North Korean general is an act of compliance. In the Kursk region Ukraine is not only fighting Russia but North Korea.

Coverage on the war, however, might seek to downplay the complexity of this new situation for Ukraine by way of a reference to a number of preceding events. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Bakhmut-Artemovsk, during which time the chief of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin complained about a lack of munitions, Sergej Schoigu, described in German as the Kriegsminister (i.e., war minister), visited North Korea to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean war. [1] In the article, the author explains how Schoigus “Besuch in Pjöngjang diene der Stärkung der russisch-nordkoreanischen Militärkooperation und sei ein wichtiger Schritt bei der Entwicklung der bilateralen Zusammenarbeit, teilte das Ministerium in Moskau weiter mit.” During the Ukraine’s 2023 ‘Spring’ counteroffensive, North Korean completed its first dispatch of munitions to Russia on a railway, passing through the interior of the Eurasian continent. OSINT bloggers subsequently concluded that a Ukrainian strike on September 21st, 2024 on one of Russia’s storage facilities eliminated the vast majority of these North Korean munitions.[2] The Ukrainians struck Tikhoretsk, “one of the three largest ammunition storage bases” with 2,000 tons, in Krasnodar where many analysts claimed on the basis of satellite imagery to be the endpoint for the more than 26 TEUs shipped from North Korean to Russia by rail. On July 30th, 2024 military bloggers with a flair for Arabic published a video, purportedly depicting the Russian armed forces targeting a British AS-90 with a North Korean Bull’s Eye. It was apparently the first recorded use of North Korean weapons by Russian forces. These events left no doubt about the trajectory of Russia’s relationship with North Korea.

What is troubling, however, about North Korea’s relationship with Russia is its conflict with South Korea. According to the terms of its mutual defense treaty, Russia is incorporated by reference into the North’s armistice with the South. Any act of aggression the South displays towards the North in violation of the treaty may actualize its provision for defense on its terms. These terms have no ambiguity. Russian politicians may celebrate Russia’s incorporation into the North’s armistice. The effect, supporters might argue, is that Russia has checkmated the U.S. with its new treaty. It puts the United States in a position where the U.S. must make decisions about the degree of its support for Ukraine in light of its treaty with South Korea. It has effectively limited Washington’s options in way they had not previously been.

Washington’s has no choice now but to balance compliance with its own mutual defense treaty for South Korea against its interest in a Ukrainian victory. Compliance with the treaty is counterposed to a Ukrainian victory; North Korea’s compliance threatens the underlying basis for a Ukrainian victory with its munitions, weapon systems or troops. Equivalent South Korean countermeasures to the elements of North Korea’s compliance threaten to trigger the ambiguous provisions in the articles from Washington’s own mutual defense treaty for South Korea. Should a confrontation arise, Washington’s defense of South Korean automatically requires Russia’s compliance with its defense of the North.

Despite whatever shortsighted calculations Washington’s limited options may have for positions on the Grand Chessboard, North Korea’s incorporation of Russia into its armistice is a major danger not just for the Ukraine, Russia, or the Koreas but the world. It is a major danger, since it is the first time in the history of the Ukraine war that one or more of the belligerent parties has established the basis for the convergence of the Ukraine war with a previously settled conflict such as the end of the Korean war on October 1st, 1953.

The belligerents in the Ukraine war are now much closer to a confrontation with the convergence of the Korean with the Ukraine war than in any previous period of time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. The convergence of the Ukraine with the Korean war, a process whose preparation is already well underway, is undoubtedly the beginning of a third world war.

A third world war involving the Washington, Russia, the Koreans over the Ukraine portends the eruption of a disaster unlike the first or second world wars. These countries, whose defense industrial base ranks within the top ten of the world, are countries whose militaries are ranked within the top five most powerful militaries in the world. U.S. News, for instance, ranks the United States at second place after Russia. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an organization that studies arms races, disarmament, and international security, ranks the United States in the first place among arms dealers next to Russia, North Korea and South Korea in that order. These countries have the potential, the military power, and the weaponry to cause significant, life-altering, historic damage on a scale perhaps unimaginable right now.

Alongside these facts about these nations is the more remote danger for Israel, the third greatest military, according to U.S. News, and one of the most well armed countries in the world. Israel’s decision to attack Iran, whose anti-air defense systems are hardly a match for Israel’s continued assertion of air superiority over the Middle East, stands in stark contrast with its inability to execute a ground invasion against its enemy, while Iran, whose Shia ruling elite are a constant state of disagreement with factions in Iranian bourgeoisie, the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp, or the middle or lower classes, cannot mobilize effectively for its defense large ground forces from Iraq, Syria or Lebanon for a ground invasion against Israel makes that front one of the most complicated scenarios in Israel’s seven fronts of warfare.

The United States, which is committed to an expansion of Israel’s projection of its power on land, sea or air throughout the Middle East, risks a direct conflict with Iran. While the most significant indication of Russian support for Iran is its dispatch of an S-400 anti-air defense system, there is a risk, albeit slightly less so for Iran than for North Korea, that Russia may find itself in a position where the preservation of the Khomeni regime is a more favorable foreign policy agenda for Iran than to turn a blind eye to Israel’s concerted efforts at its complete overthrow and restoration of the Shah or a pliant client regime like the Shah.

The remote possibility is even more complex than meets the eye. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is heavily invested into Iranian infrastructure and Iran imports the vast majority of its unrefined Brent crude to China and China may perceive any threat to these established Sino-Iranian trade agreements as a threat to its own national security; while there are no overt indications that China has shown support for Iran’s military, the billions of dollars in trade is hard to miss.

These situations with Iran over Washington’s decision to expand the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza to Iran threaten to widen the war in Iran in dangerous ways. Should Iran enter into a mutual defense treaty with either Russia or China, Washington’s continued insistence on sicking its attack dog on Iran could threaten the entrance of either one of these great powers into a war. It is not just the BRICS alliance that demonstrates Russia’s proximity to China; Russia has recently opened the gates to its to the South China Seas. In an unprecedented display of proximity, Russia has offered China free passage throughout the coveted River Tumen, a geopolitically strategic river for Russia’s continuously strengthened trade routes with Eurasian neighbors. Russia’s grant of free passage on the River Tumen to China empowers the latter with its ability to project more power on the South China Sea than at any previous period of time. These relations lay the groundwork for a powerful military alliance there as well as elsewhere throughout the world.

Any war involving Iran under the protection of Russia or China would become a world war, expanding beyond the confines of the Middle Eastern continent well into the heart of Eurasia, thereby converging these great powers into Iran’s conflict with Washington’s agenda for the Middle East. It is unclear how the neighboring countries in the Middle East such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar or Bahrain, most of whom call for a Palestina to exist alongside Judea, would react to a situation in which Russia or China agrees to protect Iran. If any of these countries interdicted Washington’s commitment to the expansion of Israel’s projection of its power on land, sea or air throughout the Middle East, the Eurasian war would become a multipolar world war.

References

[1] – [“Kremlin says its mutual defence agreement with North Korea is ‘unambiguous’,” Reuters, October 15th, 2024]

[2] – [“Putins Kriegsminister zu Besuch in Nordkorea,” Bild, July 26th, 2023]

[3] – [“Ukraine says it hit two Russian munitions depots overnight,” Reuters, September 21st, 2024]