Ukraine could lose the war against Russia without additional military equipment from the U.S. and its allies, NATO’s top civilian official warned.
“There is an urgent need for more ammunition, more weapons to Ukraine,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday while traveling in South Korea. “If they don’t get that they will not able to resist and repel the Russian invaders under Russian aggression.”
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That warning acknowledges more doubt about the outcome of the war than many Western officials have been willing to express over the last year. Stoltenberg offered that assessment while emphasizing the “interconnected” security needs of NATO and the democracies of the Indo-Pacific, a general claim underscored by his suggestion that South Korea send weapons to Ukraine.
“I urge the Republic of Korea to continue and to step up,” Stoltenberg said at the CHEY Institute in Seoul. “On the specific issue of military support, I would say that’s, at the end of the day, a decision for you to make … if you believe in freedom, if you believe in democracy, if you don’t want autocracy and tyranny to win, then they need weapons.”
South Korea has emerged as a heavyweight in the world of weapons exports, in part through the signing of a deal for Poland to purchase about 1,000 South Korean main battle tanks built by Hyundai, along with more than 670 howitzers and 48 light fighter jets. Poland has been a leader among NATO allies sending aid to Ukraine, so the deal perhaps helped prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to warn Seoul not to send weapons to Ukraine.
“What would the Republic of Korea think if we resumed our military cooperation with the DPRK?” Putin said in October, using the formal acronym for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime. “Would you be happy? I would like you to think about that.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol responded by affirming that South Korea has sent only “humanitarian and peaceful assistance” to Ukraine, while brushing off Putin’s threats. “In any case, it’s a matter of our sovereignty, and I’d like you to know that we are trying to maintain peaceful and good relations with all countries around the world, including Russia,” the South Korean president said.
Stoltenberg acknowledged that North Korea poses “a clear and present danger” to South Korea, while implying that a Putin victory in Ukraine could embolden Kim into new aggression.
“North Korea has also delivered rockets and missiles to the Russian Wagner Group, further fueling Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” he said. “We must keep supporting Ukraine, for as long as it takes. Because if President Putin wins, the message to him and other authoritarian leaders will be that they can get what they want through the use of force.”
South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, in a separate appearance with Stoltenberg, expressed gratitude for “NATO and the NATO member-countries who came to assist us … during the Korean War,” which raged from 1950 to 1953, and remains technically unresolved. (The violence ended through an armistice, but North Korea and South Korea have not signed a peace treaty.)
“Given today’s unprecedented global challenges, we believe that solidarity among countries that share values of freedom, democracy, and rule of law is more important than ever,” the South Korean foreign minister said. “We look forward to working more closely with NATO to address today’s emerging security threats.”
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Stoltenberg avoided “speculating” on how NATO would respond if North Korea were to attack South Korea, but he acknowledged that many non-nuclear members of NATO, such as South Korea and Japan, live under the shelter of the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
“We don’t believe that a world where NATO and NATO allies, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France — that are the three NATO allies with nuclear weapons — that if we get rid of our nuclear weapons, and countries like Russia, or China and North Korea, keep theirs, that will not be a safer world, that will be a more dangerous world,” he said.
