Secretary Blinken confirmed that North Korean soldiers will soon be joining their Russian counterparts in the effort to dismember and subsume Ukraine.

The reason it’s desirable to contain foreign aggression quickly and with an overwhelming commitment is that, when those conflicts fester, they tend to sprawl. Joe Biden’s failure to adequately support Ukraine’s defense provides us with a timely reminder of why restoring deterrence when it breaks down should be the top priority of any American president.

This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken casually confirmed that North Korean soldiers will soon be joining their Russian counterparts in the effort to dismember and subsume Ukraine into the Russian Federation. “We’ve not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we would expect that to happen in the coming days,” he admitted.

North Korea’s direct participation in Russia’s war of conquest only deepens its commitment to the Kremlin’s expansionist objectives. North Korea has reportedly provided Moscow with millions of artillery shells as well as the rockets and missiles it fires on Ukrainian positions. According to the Associated Press, Russia will repay the favor by providing the North Koreans with “high-tech weapons technology associated with its nuclear and missile programs, a move that will complicate U.S. and South Korean efforts to neutralize North Korea nuclear threats.”

So Russia’s war in Ukraine now not only jeopardizes the Western alliance’s position in Europe. It also imperils the interests of America and its allies on the Korean Peninsula.

Seoul isn’t taking any of this lying down. South Korea “is weighing directly providing arms to Ukraine,” the Financial Times reported on Friday:

Seoul has previously resisted entreaties from Western allies to draw on its vast stockpiles of military armaments, preferring to contribute to Kyiv’s war effort through non-lethal aid. But North Korea’s deployment in Russia’s western Kursk region, which US officials said on Thursday could be as large as 8,000 troops, is shifting that calculation, according to analysts and diplomats.

The Republic of Korea is just as imperiled by the chance that its old enemy’s soldiers will gain valuable battlefield experience and that Pyongyang will possess sophisticated Russian weapons platforms. On balance, South Korea’s material support for Ukraine’s defense would outweigh the contributions to Russia’s war effort provided by North Korea. We have little reason to believe that the DPRK’s soldiers — those who don’t defect – have much battlefield proficiency. But the introduction of formerly noncombatant foreign forces to the war (so much for Putin’s inviolable “red lines”) changes the nature of this conflict.

No one can now call it a “border dispute” with a straight face, to the extent that line was ever proffered with any sincerity. It is now, by definition, a global conflict.