Key Points and Summary: Russia’s strategic agreement with North Korea could elevate its nuclear deterrence, addressing what analysts call the “Seltenian Disadvantage.” This disadvantage, named after theorist Reinhard Selten, highlights Russia’s difficulty in making credible nuclear escalation threats against NATO-supported Ukraine due to ambiguity in its doctrine.
-North Korea’s unpredictable reputation might amplify the perceived risk of escalation, deterring NATO’s support for Ukraine. While North Korea’s missile capabilities aren’t directly relevant to Ukraine, their inclusion in Russia’s orbit could pressure the West into negotiating peace.
-This risky alliance introduces an asymmetric dynamic, reshaping global nuclear strategy and the Ukraine conflict’s trajectory.
Could North Korea’s Alliance Strengthen Russia’s Nuclear Deterrence?
While South Korea’s former president’s adviser, Moon Chung-in, is undoubtedly correct about the marginal tangible effects of the Russia-North Korea Strategic Agreement on Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, this cooperation may have an indirect effect that warrants deeper analysis of an aspect of our understanding of the new strategic dynamics arising from the war in Ukraine.
My perhaps unconventional claim is that cooperation with North Korea may release Russia from what I call the Seltenian Disadvantage, named after one of the most significant theorists of rationality and deterrence, Reinhard Selten. This disadvantage afflicts actors whose otherwise rational strategy necessitates a particular move that can appear irrational (even if the overall strategy remains rational and credible). For Russia, the Seltenian Disadvantage undermines the credibility of its threat to escalate to nuclear warfare if NATO supports Ukraine in a manner Russia perceives as direct NATO warfare against it. While Russia’s potential move to nuclear warfare may not seem credible, the reckless reputation of North Korea as an ally in this war might enhance the credibility of Russia’s nuclear deterrence.
Russia Under the Seltenian Disadvantage
Here is how this could work. Deterrence is grounded in a logic of threat whereby an act of aggression—clearly defined in advance—will trigger a response that is also pre-defined. Even some irrationally risky moves may become credible if the failure to execute such retaliatory moves would undermine the entire, well-defined, and effective deterrence strategy.
In such cases, the costs of destroying a coherent deterrence strategy may outweigh the risks of the individual escalatory action. By contrast, ad hoc retaliations are less credible because failing to undertake such responses does not damage the overall credibility of the deterrence strategy: after all, the retaliation was not pre-determined within the nuclear doctrine and, thus, would appear as a reactionary improvisation.
Russia’s strategic deterrence is well-defined at the highest levels of escalation: a full-scale nuclear attack or a conventional assault that threatens the “existence of the state” or aims to disarm a substantial portion of Russia’s retaliatory capacity will provoke an all-out nuclear response against the aggressor. This response is not limited to military targets but also includes civilian ones. On this level, Russia does not suffer from the Seltenian Disadvantage.
However, the threshold for using nuclear weapons in a limited manner is lower and less precisely defined. President Putin has threatened that the use of nuclear weapons (though not necessarily against civilians) could occur “upon receiving reliable information about the massive launch of aerospace attack vehicles and their crossing of our state border, meaning strategic or tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft.” Such use would not be confined to the actual aggressor but could also target a “rival nuclear power supporting a conventional strike on Russia.” This escalation threshold remains ambiguous: the extent of collaboration by a “rival nuclear state” and what qualifies as a “massive launch” of an attack are not clearly delineated. As a result, at this level of escalation, Russia faces the Seltenian Disadvantage, namely, a lack of credible escalatory moves defined in advance as absolute red lines.
Weapons of Mass Escalation
For instance, whether Ukraine’s use of U.S. Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) against targets deep inside Russia constitutes a “massive” conventional strike, and whether NATO’s navigational and intelligence assistance to such strikes qualifies as support by “rival nuclear powers” sufficient to trigger a Russian nuclear response, has remained unclear. According to Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns, in 2022, NATO allies considered such actions potentially provocative enough to spark an escalation. In contrast, former President Joe Biden later assessed that these actions did not constitute a massive attack warranting a nuclear response.
For Russia, deterring the use of ATACMS was difficult because such a move was seen as irrationally risky. Moreover, not escalating did not compromise the credibility of Russia’s overall nuclear deterrence strategy, as the definitions of aggression and response were unclear. The indirect nature of NATO’s support for Ukraine created a scenario for which Russian doctrine was unprepared, and the subsequent improvisation and redefinition of doctrine details after undesired actions had already occurred further weakened the credibility of Russia’s escalation threats.
Russia has sought to make its response to ATACMS more credible by using less costly escalatory moves grounded in a logic of symmetry. If NATO supplies Ukraine with tactical missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory, Russia reciprocates by supplying similar capabilities to the adversaries of Western allies.

ATACMS firing back in 2006. Image Credit: U.S. Army.
However, this response neither prevents nor deters Western support for Ukraine’s missile capabilities. It also does not resolve Russia’s Seltenian Disadvantage because a retaliatory response developed after the undesired development represents revenge rather than deterrence. Within a symmetrical and rational framework, Russia cannot escape the reality that its threat to escalate to nuclear strikes has failed. What an alliance with North Korea may offer, if the conflict persists and escalates further, relates to the asymmetry of rationality or recklessness.
Russia’s conceptualization of the ladder of escalation likely differs from that of the United States. Russia is unlikely to escalate by engaging in nuclear warfighting against NATO, a scenario it would undoubtedly lose. Instead, if forced to confront NATO, it might attempt to shift the Seltenian Disadvantage onto NATO by striking one NATO country with nuclear missiles and declaring the attack a limited response to NATO’s actions against Russia.
Russia could then state that further escalation would not occur if NATO ceased the actions that provoked the strike. The decision would then rest with NATO. Such a maneuver could risk an all-out nuclear exchange, which would be suicidal for both sides. Consequently, Russia’s threat of such a move may lack credibility as it could be deemed irrational. However, escalation under the Seltenian Disadvantage is not credible for rational actors. In that case, it might still carry credibility if the actor required to make the irrational move is North Korea, a state often perceived as recklessly unpredictable.
The distance between North Korea and Ukraine is less than 4,500 miles (approximately 7,000 kilometers). At the same time, the range of the North Korean Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is estimated by Japanese military experts to exceed twice that distance.
Additionally, North Korea has recently developed and tested solid-fuel ICBMs, such as the Hwasong-18, which enhance mobility and deployment speed. While such capabilities do not deter actions on the current level of warfare, North Korea’s unpredictability could amplify the perceived risks and costs of war. This unpredictability could provide an additional rationale for the West to encourage Ukraine to return to the negotiation table.
About the Author:
Timo Kivimäki is Professor of International Relations at the University of Bath (UK) and Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Sejong Institute (Seoul, Republic of Korea). In addition to purely academic work Professor Kivimäki has been a frequent consultant to the Finnish, Danish, Dutch, Russian, Malaysian, Indonesian and Swedish governments, as well as to several UN and EU organizations on conflict and terrorism. Finland’s former President, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari has publicly praised that Professor Kivimäki’s advises in Aceh Peace Talks were “vital for the success of the process” and that his help in peace processes in Indonesia and Myanmar were “worth gold.”

Martin
January 26, 2025 at 10:45 am
IMHO, NATO is the real ‘Reckless Alliance’.