Moscow – Pyongyang – Beijing. The Nature of Relations at Present

In today's rapidly changing environment of strategic rifts in the world, the relations between the three neighboring states identified in the title of the article are also dynamically evolving and being filled with new content. Since the establishment of the DPRK and the PRC, the interaction between them, although not cloudless at times, has generally remained close, defined by good-neighborly partnership and, at certain stages, even allied obligations. In the face of new challenges to their security posed by the United States and its allies, in recent years the three states under consideration have objectively had additional grounds for strengthening cooperation with each other. The actual rapprochement of the three mainland states and the existence of a fundamental prerequisite for its further deepening in the form of a varying degree of hostile policy on the part of the U.S. toward all three mentioned states has seriously concerned U.S. strategists and stimulated the focus of close attention to the study of this phenomenon in order to find ways to separate the members of this "troika" from each other. At the same time, one cannot deny the objective fact that the rapid growth of the Russian-North Korean relations has aroused close attention in China, including in its expert community, in some segments of which different approaches to this phenomenon, including certain concerns, have manifested themselves. The conclusion is that the it is realistic that there are objective divergences of interests of the three countries on some specific issues, which, of course, require joint heightened and sensitive attention. Therefore, Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang should by no means underestimate the possible negative effect of these factors and should further improve both the quality of bilateral consultations and the level of coordination of their actions on the Korean Peninsula, in the Northeast Asia region and in the world as a whole.

Russia, DPRK, China, Korean Peninsula, geopolitical tension, alliance, cooperation, rivalry