The war between Russia and Ukraine is not a regional conflict but a global one. That’s the argument European politicians and other western allies have been trying to make in recent weeks.
Everyone is nervous about what Donald Trump will do when he takes office in the White House for the second time in January.
Trump has talked about ending the war in 24 hours, likely by threatening to cut off the huge flow of military aid the US is sending to Kyiv, to force it to agree a settlement with Russia. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy would be faced with giving up large areas of territory occupied by Russian forces, or limping on without the support of his country’s biggest backer.
Trump has selected Republican senator Marco Rubio to be his next secretary of state. Known as a foreign policy hawk, Rubio favours the US taking a harder line on China and Iran, but has shifted closer to Trump’s position of ambivalence on Russia and Ukraine.
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In what looks like an attempt to stake out a narrative to sell to Trump to keep the US in play, western allies have recently been stressing how much the war in Ukraine involves not just Russia but China, North Korea and Iran too.
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New Nato secretary general Mark Rutte made the point when speaking to reporters in Brussels this week. “The horrifying fact is this, that four countries are working together ... China is helping Russia by sanction circumvention, by delivering dual-use goods; North Korea with troops and massive weapons supplies into Russia,” he said. “We know that Iran is supporting Russia with the war effort.”
North Korea has sent thousands of troops to fight alongside Russia on the battlefield and Iran sells Russia drones and missiles. China, Russia’s biggest economic backer, has been a major supplier of “dual use” technology and equipment, which can be used for military purposes.
Back when he was Dutch prime minister, Rutte was called the “Trump whisperer” for his ability to talk the US president down from political ledges during his first term. Now heading up Nato, he will have to try to keep a rash Trump from deciding to pull US support for Ukraine or the wider military alliance itself.
The plan seems to be to appeal – in as straightforward a way as possible – to Trump’s narrow view of the United States’ security interests. So Rutte has played up the help Russia is providing North Korea on missile technology, in exchange for the troops Pyongyang has sent to the front. This co-operation posed a “direct threat” to South Korea, Japan and “even to the US mainland”, he said.
When Zelenskiy travelled to Brussels to present his “victory plan” during an EU summit in October, he also stressed the global aspects of the conflict. The presence of 10,000 soldiers from North Korea fighting with Russia was a step towards a “world war”, he said. Addressing European leaders in Budapest earlier this month, the Ukrainian president again leaned on that line. “North Korea is now in effect waging war in Europe, North Korean soldiers are attempting to kill our people on European soil,” he said.
In one of his last appearances as the EU’s foreign affairs chief in recent days, Josep Borrell said China’s role in propping up Russia’s war was becoming more and more important. “Without North Korea, without Iran, without China, Russia could not support its military effort,” he said.
As the most under threat from Russia if Ukraine’s defence collapses, the Baltic States have expectedly been emphasising the global angle of the war.
Lithuanian foreign ministerGabrielius Landsbergis described the co-operation of Russia, North Korea, China and Iran as a coalition of chaos. “This is the coalition that has formed around Russia in order to sow havoc not just in Ukraine, but in the western world, and we have to stop it,” he said.
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Landsbergis was speaking to journalists on his way into a meeting of EU foreign ministers earlier this week. At that meeting ministers agreed to put further sanctions on Iran, expanding existing measures targeting its sale and transfer of drones to Russia.
One high-ranking EU official also recently briefed that some intelligence sources pointed to a factory in China producing drones, which then made their way to Russia. If hard evidence emerges of China directly supplying weapons to Russia, the EU could hit Beijing with economic sanctions, ratcheting up already high tensions between the two. Strategically, the more Europe and Ukraine can tie China directly to Russia’s war, the better chance they have of keeping Trump from turning off the tap of crucial US support.