OPINION:
In 1240, Mongol warriors led by Genghis Khan’s grandson Batu besieged and destroyed Kyiv. They came for plunder.
Almost eight centuries later, another dynastic dictator is sending soldiers to fight over the same ground. He has come for something more valuable: Tuition and technology.
Last Sunday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that, based on his “very good relationship with Kim Jong-un,” he had instructed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea. North Korea, the president wrote, has been “unthreatening and respectful.”
I’m going to quarrel with that assessment. But first, let me remind you how we got to where we are now. On Feb. 24, 2022, Russian ruler Vladimir Putin ordered his tanks toward Kyiv, expecting a blitzkrieg conquest. His mission was not accomplished.
A year-and-a-half later, Mr. Kim began sending Mr. Putin millions of rounds of artillery shells and, subsequently, ballistic missiles and other weapons. And by late 2024, roughly 14,000 North Korean troops were deployed to Russia, where they fought the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk province.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this month that he has reason to believe that an additional 30,000 to 50,000 North Koreans will soon be on Russian territory.
No less threatening: Ukrainian intelligence says a roughly 90-man North Korean missile unit is deploying to Russia’s 112th Missile Brigade in Voronezh province, which borders Ukraine. Pyongyang is no longer merely supplying Moscow with missiles; it is now deploying missile personnel alongside them.
Thousands of North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded. But those who survive go home combat-hardened — experienced in a modern, drone-saturated war against a Western-backed military. Such lessons cannot be purchased or simulated.
And Mr. Kim is collecting additional benefits: Russian help with satellite reconnaissance, air defenses and other advanced military technology.
North Korea already possesses roughly 60 nuclear weapons, thanks to the failure of American diplomacy. The 1994 Agreed Framework and the 2005 to 2007 Six-Party Agreements were heavy on carrots, light on sticks. And Pyongyang cheated.
North Korean missiles can now reach not just Seoul, Tokyo, Guam and Hawaii but the continental United States. What remains uncertain is not their range but their reliability.
From where else does Mr. Putin’s help come? Since 2022, the Islamic Republic of Iran has supplied him with hundreds of thousands of artillery shells, Shahed drones, and the blueprints to build those drones at home.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, Mr. Putin has reciprocated with satellite imagery and targeting information on American warships, aircraft and bases: 24 Russian satellite surveys across 11 Middle Eastern countries in March 2026 alone, followed within days by Iranian strikes on those sites.
Then the loop closed: Last month, Western intelligence officials said Iran had used Russian-enhanced versions of the Shahed against American targets in the Persian Gulf
Restated: Iranian theocrats built the Shahed drones. Russian neo-imperialists perfected them on Ukrainian men, women and children. Now they’re being fired at Americans.
Beijing is assisting, too — backstopping the Russian economy with increased trade and by providing components for Russia’s missiles, drones, and other weapons.
And Iran is believed to be weeks away from receiving the first of 300 to 400 Chinese shoulder-fired air-defense systems — designed to bring down low-flying American aircraft and drones.
Mr. Trump said Xi Jinping had personally assured him that China would not participate in the war on Tehran’s behalf. So much for such assurances.
By the way: The two missiles Tehran fired at the U.S.-U.K. base at Diego Garcia in March — neither of which hit — were apparently Iranian Khorramshahrs, derived from North Korea’s Musudan, itself descended from a Soviet submarine-launched missile.
The evidence presented above leads to this conclusion: The Ukrainians are on the front lines against the anti-American Russian regime that threatens Europe, reinforced by the anti-American North Korean regime whose troops now have boots on the ground in Europe — both backed by the anti-American regimes ruling China and Iran.
Should the U.S. fully support an ally defending itself from this “Axis of Aggressors” — the title of a new Foundation for Defense of Democracies book documenting more than 600 instances of cooperation among the four regimes since 2019? I think the question answers itself.
Some serious analysts disagree. They argue that interceptor production is finite and every Patriot round spent in Europe is not stockpiled in the Pacific against a Chinese move on Taiwan, a self-governing democracy whose economy is essential to ours.
But you cannot husband munitions against four regimes by capitulating to three. Ukraine is where the Axis does its homework. North Korean officers are learning drone warfare, which they will carry home to the divided peninsula. Moscow is passing Beijing the combat lessons the People’s Liberation Army needs before any move on Taiwan.
Consider how differently World War II might have gone had President Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded that America could defeat the Germans but not the Japanese, or vice versa. Instead, he prioritized Europe while holding the line in the Pacific — because a sequence is not a surrender, and he never conceded a theater.
Reducing exercises with Seoul while North Korean crews gain combat experience in Voronezh will not help Mr. Trump bolster deterrence — not with Mr. Kim and not with his Axis partners.
I’ll conclude with one more historical note. The Mongol Empire once stretched from Korea to Eastern Europe. Ukraine rejoined Europe by the mid-14th century; Russia remained a vassal of the Golden Horde for another 100 years.
Today, Ukrainians are fighting so as not to become vassals of the wannabe czar in the Kremlin. Americans face a narrower question: whether we will treat one hostile coalition as one wicked problem, or as four separate and intractable conflicts.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a columnist for the Washington Times, and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
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