Good morning,

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping traveled to North Korea this week, his first visit since 2019, the topic of Pyongyang’s nuclear program was conspicuously absent from public discussion. And no wonder. Whereas the Kim regime once relied heavily on China for basic necessities, giving Beijing leverage to constrain Kim’s nuclear ambitions, today Pyongyang has options. The key change, as Oriana Skylar Mastro explains in an illuminating essay, is North Korea’s relationship with Russia. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Pyongyang and Moscow have been lending each other military and diplomatic support—fueling North Korea’s nuclear program and making Beijing work harder to keep Pyongyang onside. But Mastro argues that this is not the only reason to be alarmed by the partnership. Uneasy dynamics among North Korea, China, and Russia are “making the Korean Peninsula a more dangerous place,” she warns, and could even draw the United States into a conflict involving the three of them—“nuclear powers all.”

Until next week,