Valdai Club

Russia has a realistic view of the situation and understands that some Central Asian states have a cautious attitude to the special military operation in Ukraine and do not support all actions by Moscow. Under the circumstances, Russia will not speed up the SCO’s transformation into a military-political coalition, writes Alexander Vorontsov, Head of the Korea and Mongolia Department, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.

There is the understanding that, along with the events that took place on March 31 this year with the launch of ICBMs, the alleged test of a nuclear weapon, also carried out for the first time since 2017, will begin a new cycle of aggravation of the military-political situation on the Korean Peninsula, writes Valdai Club expert Alexander Vorontsov.

The experience of the JCPOA is very useful and positive for the efforts of the international community to find ways to involve Pyongyang in a dialogue in order to determine a mutually acceptable formula aimed at stopping and freezing the DPRK nuclear programme, writes Alexander Vorontsov, Head of the Korea and Mongolia Department, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.

It is common knowledge that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has always believed that normalizing relations with the United States is the only possible way to overcome the crisis on the peninsula and remove the threat to its very existence.

The above question is what is troubling most people in China today. And the answer is: “If they want our money, which means cutting the trade deficit and making the Chinese environment more comfortable for US business, this challenge can be easily met. But if they want our life and are blocking our technological development, as in the case of Huawei, and are impeding the further economic growth in order to take it, then we have an intractable, long-lasting conflict on our hands.”

Pundits of many countries note that disagreement grows between Washington and Pyongyang on the issue of the DPRK’s denuclearization. First, no universal definition of the very concept of denuclearization has been determined and agreed upon. One side interprets it as the elimination of nuclear weapons while the other sees it as elimination of the entire nuclear-missile military-industrial infrastructure.

From the onset of this year the military-political situation on the Korean Peninsula made a U-turn from war to peace and, much to the surprise of many politicians and analysists, started speeding full steam ahead when it came to politics and diplomacy.  

On August 13, DPRK and the Republic of Korea agreed to hold another summit meeting: in Pyongyang in September. The next important moment for the settlement on the Korean peninsula will be in November, when the United States holds midterm Congress elections. Valdai Club expert Alexander Vorontsov discusses the settlement prospects and why secrecy and the lack of transparency on this issue play to the interests of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.

News about the cancelled Trump-Kim summit may please somebody, but certainly not supporters of peace and tranquility on the Korean peninsula. Many world media, as usual, isolated phrases from Donald Trump's letter to Kim Jong-un, not bothering to look carefully at the entire text of the written message and tried to dishearten supporters of the US-DPRK summit, scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.

April 2018 will see the launch of the annual large-scale US-South Korean military exercises, put off by one month on account of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. What makes them fundamentally different is that they should be held against the background of preparations for a sensational summit between the North Korean and US leaders, scheduled for May. This is an additional intrigue and a challenge to the unique situation that has emerged on the Korean Peninsula.