One of the great truths of history is that the great deceivers also deceive themselves. – Jaron Lanier
Alliances
Like-minded authoritarian leaders seem inclined to form alliances to provide some assurance that their conduct, however corrupt and brutal, at least finds approval by their colleagues. These leaders tend to find their own justification in the role they have played in advancing some national purpose. It is actually more the case that they have elevated themselves to a place that allows them to adopt any form of aberrant conduct necessary to achieve goals more suitable for themselves than their nations. When such goals are threatened, as inevitably occurs, the desperate dictator will reach out to his authoritarian colleagues for support hoping it to be available for the duration of his troubles.
For those leaders who choose to align themselves with the likes of Vladimir Putin, the risks have become clear. The impact of economic sanctions, restrictions upon access to financial networks, freezing of foreign assets, loss of moral status, denial of future trade relations, and the nature of particular conflicts, as in the case of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, have long-lasting consequences. These should weigh heavily upon those leaders when they are themselves faced by threats as their own particular national dynamic unfolds. Such is the nature of changing regional concerns that alter the predetermined plans of alliances.
It is Putin’s hope that circumstances come about in a way that will secure his desired victory in Ukraine – that the embarrassing military stalemate, after two years of warfare in Ukraine and the significant degradation of his war machine, can be overcome; that the financial and munitions support provided to Ukraine by the United States (U.S.), the European Union (EU) and other nations dwindles to an end; that the Russian economy survives the accumulating impact of international sanctions and the confiscation of its bank assets; that its oil and gas sector can sustain a profit margin sufficient to support his entire war effort; that his ethnic minorities and perhaps even his prized ethnic Russians do not rise up in revolt over the lost promise of their futures and that the U.S. elections bring back a failed president in the form of Donald Trump. His final hope would be for the support of his allies not to disappear when their attention is drawn away to their individual national and regional concerns rather than tending to his.
These are the elements that play to the unpredictability of the moment and that threaten Putin’s rather tenuous hold on reality. The West, in turn, must recognize how these combined elements may play out. There is a tendency to rush to conclusions about an outcome while focusing upon the unfolding of a single element in the scheme of this conflict without regard to the stability of the entire enterprise responsible for it.
The “Democratic” People’s Republic of Korea
The military support that Putin has managed to procure has largely been provided by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Iran, both of which already have serious disagreements with the U.S. and the West at large. The DPRK or as it is commonly known, North Korea, has remained in a perpetual state of isolation and under sanction by the United Nations (UN) and the U.S. for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. It has invited further condemnation by the European Union (EU) for its military cooperation with Russia and a number of arms transfers in return for help developing satellite technology and the promise of sophisticated military hardware in the future. In the immediate term, Russia has allowed the release of $9 million in frozen DPRK assets from one of its financial institutions which will, in turn, be used to purchase Russian crude oil. Russia appears also to have provided the DPRK a means by which it can skirt UN sanctions that have restricted its economy, providing it banking access with accounts that would ostensibly facilitate much-needed financial transactions and enable interaction with a number of countries leveraged through Russian connections.
In reaction to these developments, the U.S. and the EU imposed sanctions on a number of Russian entities involved in the transfer of short-range ballistic missiles and ammunition from the DPRK, and will undertake further similar action in time when appropriate. It should be added that Russia is in violation of a UN Security Council resolution prohibiting nations from trading military equipment with the DPRK. The UN chooses not to challenge Russia for this breech just as it has not questioned Russia’s legitimacy to sit on the Security Council for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the several atrocities that have attended it.
There are, however, more direct means of addressing the injustice. The first involves financial penalties and the increasing sophistication with which the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in concert with the Bureau of Industry and Security in the Department of Commerce and the Office of Foreign Asset Control in the Department of the Treasury, has approached the issue of sanctions. Its ability to tighten the noose around the necks of those entities, commercial and otherwise, that have provided countries like Russia and the DPRK opportunities to fund their malign activities or to launder money has become increasingly effective. The use of third-party intermediaries, transactional partners and the hiding of end-user identities have been under increasing scrutiny. Export controls restricting access to technologies for Russia’s defense industry and maritime sectors, oil refining, and industrial and commercial entities were implemented early on. The DOJ effort has been led by an interagency law enforcement task force, KleptoCapture, which works with international partners to further implement economic countermeasures to dismantle the deceptive practices of Russia and its enablers.
The DPRK’s economy has declined over the past number of years due largely to COVID-19 restrictions and UN sanctions. Its 2020 gross domestic product (GDP) had plunged 4.5% followed by further contractions of 0.1% in 2021 and 0.2% in 2022, but is expected to see about a 1% growth in 2024 resulting from its arms agreement with Russia and ongoing trade relations with China which accounted for almost 97% of total trade. The concern for the DPRK, however, will be whether Russia is able to afford its scheduled payments given the mounting concerns over its own economy. This has come about with Russia’s failure to sustain the level of oil and gas export it has promised for itself in its budget as a consequence of direct attacks upon its oil and gas industry. Otherwise, UN and U.S. sanctions will continue to exert a persistent toll not only upon Russia but upon the DPRK’s economy where the GDP per capita now amounts to the equivalent of only 3.4% of that of South Korea.
Other factors that will affect Russia’s arms agreement with the DPRK may well include the quality of the arms, the ability to actually deliver them in a timely fashion and to sustain the effort over time. Russia purportedly can only produce 7% of its army’s requirement of artillery shells making it necessary that shipments are maintained with some regularity. The DPRK’s conventional arms themselves are of questionable quality, a consequence of less-than-standard production methods and poor storage conditions. They have been shown to lack reliability with past reports indicating that more than 50% of its shells do not reach their mark and 20% failing to explode. Arms delivery may prove even more of a challenge.
A considerable distance separates the DPRK from the front in Eastern Ukraine, 4,150 miles (6,678 km), in fact. The most efficient means of transport of heavy munitions in this situation is by rail. This presents a problem of security in a country like the Russian Federation (RF) in which there are several enclaves of hostile ethnic minorities occupying the land east of the Ural Mountains and which are angered over the loss of people from their communities in Putin’s war upon Ukraine and over longer-standing issues over Moscow’s indifference toward their language and culture. Russia’s enlistment of ethnic minorities has been grossly disproportionate compared to that of ethnic Russians and their numbers have been further reflected in the list of casualties.
There is the added discomfort for Russia of the reach of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in its ability to conduct special operations in remote areas of the RF. A spectacular example of this sort of capability was the November 2023 explosion in Buryatia, a republic in Siberia north of Mongolia, on the Baikal-Amur railway that transports Russian oil and receives military freight from the DPRK. The explosion destroyed freight traffic in the more than nine-mile-long Besselov Severomuysky Tunnel along the Itikit-Okushikin section of the East Siberian Railway, which is also the main line for imports from China. This was the second such incident to involve the same railway.
The Islamic Republic of Iran
Iran and Russia formed a strategic alliance in 2022 after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, following which Iran began providing reconnaissance and suicide drones that were subsequently used to kill considerable numbers of civilians. Iran has continued to supply Russia with the same weaponry in the face of the atrocities it has committed during these past two years. It is indicating to the world an acceptance of Russia’s conduct in this war as somehow justifiable in spite of near global condemnation. The Council of the European Union condemned as unacceptable Iran’s military support of Russia’s illegal war, specifically for the indiscriminate use of drones upon a civilian population and Ukraine’s infrastructure. It proceeded to sanction six individuals and five companies involved in the manufacture of the drones, targeting them with asset freezes, a travel ban to the EU and prohibition of access to economic resources. Of greater consequence for Iran’s leadership will be the acceptance by its own people over such immoral conduct given their awareness of the regime’s own internal human rights abuses.
Iran itself is confronted by regional and internal concerns. The Near and Middle East has been for some time awash with militant groups spread throughout several nations. Certain of these are aligned with governmental regimes while others maintain primary allegiances to a religious belief or a separatist purpose. Iran has ties with many of these groups that have engaged in terrorist activity largely for the purpose of undermining Israel’s territorial claims and U.S. influence in the region. Iran was designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism by the U.S. Department of State in 1984 identifying its Islamic Revolutionary Guard – Quds Force (IRGC-QF) as the means by which support is provided to these groups in their execution of terrorist operations. The IRGC itself was also named a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department in 2019. These proxies – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq in Iraq, Harakat al-Nujaba in Syria, the al-Ashtar Brigades and Saraya al-Mukhtar in Bahrain – provide Iran with the deniability it needs to avoid accountability for their illegal activities in the region. Iran’s involvement in Gaza in the current crisis, in Syria with its longstanding civil war, and in Yemen with the threat upon shipping in the Red Sea has not gone unnoticed. Although regional geopolitics has provided Iran with some long-desired security in its immediate environment, it is certainly not absolute and its place in the global community remains a problem for Iran that’s unlikely to dissipate.
Russia’s meeting with Hamas in Moscow in March 2023, seven months before the terrorist attack upon Israel suggests foreknowledge of the event and the hope of a protracted conflict to follow that would draw in the Middle East. Collusion of this sort would divert attention away from Russia’s ongoing illegal war in Ukraine and produce a distraction for the U.S. The new situation, in fact, became the substrate for political discord within Congress that resulted in unneeded argument conflating U.S. overseas obligations with its own border dispute. The idea that Iran already provides materiel support for Russia’s war appears entirely in keeping with an inclusive plan to create the sort of global instability required by Putin that causes an irresponsible U.S. Congress to begin retreating from its obligations for sustaining an international order and to focus upon its national concerns. The same trademark mistake was made by the West in the 1930s that led to the invasion of Poland by Germany and Russia and launched World War II.
Iran, however, found itself getting somewhat too closely embroiled in a direct conflict with the U.S. over the recent attack upon a U.S. installation in Jordan. The attack was carried out by one of its proxy paramilitary groups, Kata’ib Hezbollah, in Iraq. Retaliatory strikes by both the U.S. and United Kingdom (UK) upon Iranian proxies in Iraq, Yemen and Syria have diminished their capabilities and a timeline for ending these strikes has not been established. The situation leaves Iran to contemplate what further degradation of its peripheral influence within the region will take place and how much further support will be required to replenish them. This contemplation occurs at a time when outcry in the U.S. is for direct strikes upon Iran itself.
Complicating Iran’s current situation has been the recent cross-border exchange with Pakistan when, in mid-January, it launched missile strikes into Pakistan’s Baluchistan province where an anti-Iran insurgency group, Jaish al-Adi, is situated. Pakistan returned the favor shortly afterward using missile strikes and fighter jets targeting Sistan-Baluchistan province in Iran where anti-Pakistan insurgents have been operating. Political and ideological differences between Iran’s Shia-led theocratic regime and the predominantly Sunni but sectarian Pakistani regime have made relations between the two nations, at times, tense. This has been compounded by the closer relations that Pakistan has had with Iran’s rivals, the U.S. and both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Iran’s closer ties with Pakistan’s rival, India makes relations particularly fraught with difficulty, and not likely to resolve soon.
On the matter of Iran’s commonly used Shahed-136 drones being sold to Russia at an estimated cost of $193,000 per unit with an order of 6,000 drones; a total of $1.75 billion was paid by Russia in gold bullion for its initial purchase of 6,000. A barter transaction may also be undertaken exchanging Iranian drones for Russian aircraft including the Su-35 fighter jet and the Mi-28 assault helicopter given the difficulty that Russia may have with outright purchases in the current year. The drones and other munitions have been smuggled into Russia by two methods, one by boat on the Caspian Sea and unloaded onto a Russian naval vessel, and the other by an Iranian airline, both creating transit vulnerabilities as in the case of the DPRK’s transfer of armaments.
A large military drone manufacturing site, situated in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, was targeted a year ago by a suspected Israeli drone strike with Israel likely acting in its own self-interest rather than directly aiding Ukraine. Other similar events occurred in an unusual cluster of incidences in the summer of 2020 that included a June explosion at the Khojir solid propellant missile facility and gas storage depot on Tehran’s eastern outskirts, another June explosion and fire resulting from a gas leak in a northern Tehran medical clinic which killed 19 people, a mysterious July fire causing significant damage within the centrifuge assembly facility for uranium enrichment at Iran’s Natanz nuclear complex south of Tehran, and a massive chlorine gas leak at the Karun petrochemical center in Khuzestan province of southeast Iran, as well as a transformer explosion and fire at the Zargan power plant in southwest Iran both on the same day in early July. In April 2021, another attack took place in the form of a blackout of the electrical grid serving the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. Two significant explosions occurred in February 2024 along gas lines connecting major gas fields in the Caspian Sea to two provinces situated in central and southern Iran and have been attributed to terrorist activity, implicating an Arab separatist group in Iran’s southwestern region but not excluding Israel.
Apart from its ill-fated association with Russia and the DPRK, Iran remains in a state of conflict with its own people regarding the regime’s restrictive internal policies concerning freedoms of expression, limitations in economic opportunities and lack of improvement in livelihood. Added to the civil unrest has been a conflict over theocratic ideology between the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) and the Sunni militant group, Jaish al-Adl, over territorial independence, which contributes to Iran remaining under constant threat of mass killings and targeted assassinations. An ISIS attack on a Shia religious shrine in Shiraz in southwestern Iran resulted in the killing of 15 and injuries to 40 in October 2022 and occurred soon after massive nationwide protests of the regime over the September killing of Mahsa Amini by Iran’s “morality” police. More than 500 people were said to have been killed with more than 70 minors among them during the course of the year that followed. An early January 2024 ISIS attack in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman, suicide bombers killed 100 people at a memorial ceremony. Jaish al-Adl militants have mostly targeted Iran’s security forces with abductions or killings of border guards, suicide bombings, and placement of explosive devices. The most recent attack on a police station in December 2023 killed 11, ending a year during which several similar attacks had occurred.
Leaving the impact of the actions of its several foreign adversaries aside, the level of unrest within Iranian society alone shows Iran’s leadership to be unable to grasp the reality of change. By February 2022, ten months before Mahsa Amini’s death, 66% of Iranians already had an unfavorable opinion of Ali Khameini, the Grand Ayatollah and Supreme Leader of Iran whose own favorability was actually only 26%. In a 2022 survey by Gamaan, a Netherlands-based institute, more than 60% of Iranians wanted a regime change or a transition from the “Islamic Republic” compared to only 18% who supported the political system as it was. Most revealing, however, was the favorable attitude by 64% of respondents given to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who led the nation before his overthrow by the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and who favored relations with the West.
And what of the attitude of the Iranian people toward Russia? The Copenhagen-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation’s 2022 Democracy Perception Index found that 50% actually have a negative perception of Russia with only 15% having something positive to say about their northern neighbor. A clear majority of the Iranian public considers Russia’s war on Ukraine to be illegitimate although it is divided on whether Iran should do more to oppose the war. Recent controversy has arisen in regards to Russia’s support for UAE claims of sovereignty over three ostensibly Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf – Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu Musa. Russia has been seen by Iran to side with the UAE on this matter whenever there has been a joint summit between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the RF despite its attempting to double-talk its way out of the predicament by reassuring Iran of its territorial integrity. Public protest before the Russian Embassy in Tehran has occurred over the fate of the islands and an editorial lambasted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asking, “What can the Russia and Arab statement on the three islands be called other than hypocrisy and double standards in foreign policy?” The situation is seen as humiliating for Khamenei while Iranians post accusations on social media of Russians having “backstabbed Iran for several hundred years.”
Whether some conciliation with the West can come about as a result of the several current issues confronting Iran in its present internal state-of-affairs, its Russian relations and the impact of economic sanctions may only be judged by how these issues interplay with one another over time.
The People’s Republic of China
The relation of China with Russia carries greater subtlety as there is no yet noticeable exchange of heavy armament for cash or commodities although Chinese semiconductor exports to Russia have more than doubled from the time of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. There is increasing evidence of Chinese electronics finding their way into Russia’s weapon systems; at least 15% of these parts were already being identified in Russian arms such as cruise missiles, helicopters, Iranian and Russian drones, and other armament by May 2023. The U.S. State Department has sanctioned a number of firms in China for helping the Russian technology company SMT-iLOGIC evade sanctions to obtain technology for Russia’s drone program.
Otherwise, a variety of nonlethal military aid has been provided by China to Russia in the form of protective gear such as bullet-proof vests and helmets as well as dual-use technologies. Particular drones that can be used to direct artillery fire or equipped with thermal optics for night surveillance have been acquired by Russia, amounting to more than $100 million worth just in 2023. Western technology has also surreptitiously found its way into Russia through a Chinese conduit with more than 60% of imported components in Russian weapons found to come from U.S. companies alone.
News of this kind does not align well with China’s attempt at a political settlement for Putin’s war, unveiled a year ago in January 2023, and which turned out to be more a set of principles. The plan gave no indication for Russia to pull away from occupied Ukrainian territory and blamed other nations for, “abusing unilateral sanctions” rather than faulting the aggressor. The announcement did not play well either when the Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, subsequently questioned the sovereignty of former Soviet republics in a statement that indicated nations such as the Baltic states and Ukraine lacked, “effective status in international law” and then blundered on claiming that Crimea was, “at the beginning, Russian.” To clarify, Crimea had been ruled by the Tatars for well over 300 years before tsarist Russian expansionism annexed the peninsula and proceeded to Russify the territory. Soviet Russia under Josef Stalin than attempted its genocide of the Tatars through famine, a brutal program of deportation and mass murder.
It appeared in the end that China’s peace initiative with its generalities was nothing more than an attempt to outmaneuver the U.S. by attempting to demonstrate that it could mediate major conflicts on the global stage. Russia, of course, responded positively as no clear criticism appeared of its illegal invasion of Ukraine and, otherwise, no substantive solutions were offered. And none have come forth since.
China’s refusal to condemn the invasion from the outset has cost it a good deal of diplomatic traction in the West. To worsen matters, days following Putin’s criminal indictment by the International Criminal Court in March 2023, Xi Jinping proceeded with a previously planned visit to Moscow as a demonstration of his support for Russia established with Putin’s earlier visit to Beijing in February 2022 just a few weeks before the invasion. Remarkably, as if to reject China’s concerns regarding the use of nuclear threats in its peace plan, Putin announced in May 2023 the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. There appears to be more of a transactional agreement between the two nations grounded by an adversarial stance against the West than any real ideological understanding that would cause China to meddle too far into Russia’s war.
Besides, China has more immediate concerns within its own borders to contend with. A stagnant economy has slowed its growth and a downward trend is anticipated. Economic growth was rapid for a China that was emerging from poverty in the 1970s only to languish at a middle-income status with its expansion slowing largely since Jinping became leader in 2012. The decade prior had seen an average annual growth of 10.5% while the decade since averaged 6.7%. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the rate to fall to 5.4% in 2023, declining to 3.5% in 2028. Youth unemployment, an aging population, a troubled real estate market, weakened productivity and sluggish demand leading to weak consumer pricing have contributed to a situation in which the financial system is incapable of generating the same sort of credit growth as it could before. The government’s management of the COVID crisis with its zero-tolerance policy stifled private enterprise and hurt consumer confidence. Foreign companies have pulled out of China with direct investment turning negative after 25 years.
Compounding the problem and similar to what has occurred in Russia, China has seen its first population decline, since 1961, with its National Bureau of Statistics reporting consecutive drops of 850,000 in 2022 and 2.08 million (0.15%) in 2023 bringing the total to 1.409 billion. Part of the decline occurred as a consequence of ending COVID lockdowns in December 2022 and the accelerated exposure to the virus within the population. Total deaths subsequently rose 6.6% to 11.1 million in 2023, the highest since 1974. Alongside this has been a decline in the total fertility rate with the average number of babies for a woman during her lifetime dropping to a record low of 1.09 in 2022 from 1.30 in 2020. New births in 2023 dropped 5.7% with 6.39 births per 1,000 people, a decline from a rate of 6.77 births in 2022. The projected decline in the labor force and the increasing burden of health care and need for social spending for an aging population will widen the fiscal deficit and increase debt burden in the coming years.
China will remain observant for the most part and perhaps not tread too much further into the abyss of this war in Ukraine although it has misjudged the consequences thus far of the decisions it has made. There remain too many variables to consider before an outcome is decided.
Authoritarian leadership, despite the appearance of efficiency in government decision-making, seems always to give way to simply bad judgment as leaders become more inclined to assume an attitude of infallibility once given the absolute power they require. Less inclined to believe there is a need for others’ opinions, the regime, misguided as it may be, with its propagandist toolbox, now becomes the sole means to lead its unsuspecting nation into an uncertain future. History has demonstrated in both world wars of the 20th century that a union of authoritarian regimes has led to their individual demise but not before leading the world into chaos, bloodshed and grief on a scale that had never been realized and somehow yet still unlearned.
Will those who have the means to stop Putin’s aggression and the threat it poses to Europe and, hence, the stability of the international order, once again fail miserably? These are the factors that remain on this topic moving forward to the next and final piece.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2024. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
