Decoding The Russia-China-North Korea Triangle: Tracing The Roots Of My Research Journey

Shree Gupta

The North Korean Conundrum

It was during the month of January when I had enrolled myself in a course that delved into the dynamic between power and a country’s foreign policy that I first came across the distant outline of my present paper (now titled: Trump 2.0 and its Implications for the China-Russia-North Korea Triangle: A Comparative Analysis of the U.S. Foreign Policy [2017-2025]).

One of the modules of the course talked about small powers and their foreign policies and how they are shaped as a response to what the great and middle powers do. One of the core commonalities among these powers was their limited geographical size.

Perhaps it was then that it first struck me, because as I went through the list of small countries and verified whether their foreign policy was similar to what was discussed in class, there was one country that stood out to me for not toeing the line: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It was a country small in size, sharing space in a region with many great powers and yet seemed perfectly competent, independent and strong-headed, which challenged the little knowledge I had regarding the prevailing power configuration. That was the first skirmish I had with what is currently shaping upto be my research article.

Genesis of the Triangle

Later, as my interest grew and I looked into the various aspects of North Korea, I came across its significant relations with China and more recently with Russia. I was most fascinated by the presence of North Korean forces in Kursk since last year and it propelled me further in this direction. I started looking into how these three countries have been working together across various sectors and the unofficial and unspoken allegiance each has to the other. That is why I came up

with the self-realized nomenclature: the Russia-China-North Korea Triangle (hereafter referred to as “the Triangle”). The initial focus of the paper would have been the simple explorations of these countries and their ties with one another but by the end of February and around the beginning of the IMPRI fellowship, the Trump 2.0 presidency started changing the course of reality.

Trump 2.0: The Wildcard Entry

February and March brought along with a flurry of new changes in the countenance of Executive Orders and many of these directly impacted the Triangle. From the Oval Office meeting to the new tariff war between China and the U.S., almost every new announcement seemed to have a consequence for countries of the Triangle. But what was most intriguing for me was how this was going to impact the relations between all countries involved. Trump’s nationalist approach directly favours the Russians and hurts the Chinese. The big question then became: how would these policies reshape the relationship between them.

However, as I researched more about possible tangents, I became rather dissatisfied with the answers I was coming up with because they all felt rather speculative. Additionally, as more development kept coming in, it became harder to keep track of all geopolitical trends and more importantly, it became hard to decipher what all of these trends pointed towards. These challenges, however, became a little easier to tackle when I got my feedback email from IMPRI for my submitted abstract and the reviewer asked for a more structured presentation of proposed ideas. It got me thinking: what was truly my research question here and how was I supposed to get there.

Power of a Parody

So as I sat down with all my work again, and began reassessing all that I had read so far, all the connections I had drawn, trends I had followed, what truly helped was actually a Youtube short parody of Mr. Donald Trump talking about China. It caused me to look at President Trump’s previous administration and all its actions pertinent to China and thereafter, Russia and North Korea and I came to a realization that should have been evident from the start: the current 47th President of the United States of America was not as much of a wild card as I had initially thought.

In fact, a lot of his decisions were rooted in his previous term and mirrored the exact same strategy. And so I decided to employ a comparative analysis of President Trump’s first and second term in order to make my analysis regarding his current administration more robust.

Finding the Right Framework

But as I explored this new tangent, I noticed a critical gap: the Triangle’s positioning had vastly shifted between the end of Trump 1.0 and the current outset of Trump 2.0, and this was due to the different core values playing at the centre of the U.S. Foreign Policy under former President Joe Biden.

Mr. Biden’s Wilsonian approach to worldpolitik had caused the nations of the Triangle to come closer, causing a starker West and East divide, however, President Trump’s more Jacksonian approach mixed with his own signature callous transactional approach, has made things more marshy to navigate for the Triangle. Hence, it became evidently clear that the comparative analysis would have to be through three different administations and two different Presidents for three different countries evaluated collectively as part of a single strategic relationship.

The Journey Ahead

At this point in my research, I was clear as to the framework I would use to bring this dynamic from abstraction to reality, however the journey still continues. Currently, the predominant challenge in my research is assessing which events in the course of the three administrations (2017-2025) are sufficiently important and relevant to be included within and worked upon under the overall comparative framework along with the challenge of ensuring that the paper does not become speculative in any of its explored aspects.

As I continue with my research over the next few weeks, I hope to figure the answers to these challenges and produce an article that does justice to complexity of the dynamic it seeks to understand.

About the contributor: Shree Gupta is a student at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab. She is a fellow at DFPGYF Diplomacy, Foreign Policy & Geopolitics Youth Fellowship, IMPRI.

Acknowledgements: The author extends sincere gratitude to Impact and Policy Research Institute India team for reviewing the article and for providing the opportunity to write the article.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.