Abstract
As a Northeast Asian power sharing a 17-Km border with North Korea, Russia has a keen interest in Korean affairs. The future of Korea is of great concern to Russia both because of the Korean peninsula’s geostrategic importance and South Korea’s alliance relationship with the United States. This article addresses three primary questions: (i) How has Russia’s Korea policy evolved over the years? (ii) What position does Russia take on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions? and (iii) Will Russia support Korean unification? Russia professes its support for Korean unification. But there are important caveats. Given all the caveats, Russia will be neither active nor positive in supporting Korean unification, especially since it is likely to be achieved on South Korean terms. Will Russia then tolerate a Korean unification, which is likely to follow the German model of the South’s absorption of the North? Under the right circumstances, Russia might. In the German case, Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet leader and the cooperative relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union were the keys to the smooth sailing to Germany’s unification in 1989–1990. As with the German case, the state of US–Russia relations and the type of leader in the Kremlin will prove the most crucial factors in Russia’s acceptance or non-acceptance of a unified Korea. In this article, the author argues that Russia’s interests in and policy toward the Korean peninsula have been consistent over the years in two important ways. First, Russia opposes any power’s dominance in Korea. Second, Russia prefers a status quo on the Korean peninsula to a Korean unification. The author also argues that Russia will acquiesce to North Korea’s status as a de facto nuclear weapons state for lack of a viable alternative.
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