Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin argues that North Korea’s deployment of troops in support of Russia’s war against Ukraine is a sign of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s growing desperation.

“Putin has gone tin-cupping to get weapons from [North Korea] and Iran. Turning to a pariah state like North Korea for troops just underscores how much trouble he is in,” Austin said at a recent Pentagon news conference alongside his South Korean counterpart.

“Putin has lost a lot of troops, a lot of troops, and, you know, he has a choice of either getting other people to help him or he can mobilize, and he doesn’t want to mobilize because then the people in Russia will begin to understand the extent of his losses, of their losses,” Austin said. “This is not a sign of strength, it’s a sign of weakness.”

At the rate Russia is losing troops in Ukraine, upwards of 1,000 a day according to U.S. intelligence estimates, North Korea’s infusion of 10,000 or more reinforcements amounts to a roughly 10-day supply, not enough to turn the tide of battle. But it’s a gesture that presages an ominous marriage of convenience that could have profound repercussions for Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

“We fully understand the security implications,” Austin said. “And we take this very seriously.”

In his travels worldwide, Austin has often cited America’s vast network of allies and regional security pacts as one of the United States’s major advantages over its possible adversaries, including China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.

But China and Russia now have what they call a “no-limits” relationship, while Iran and North Korea have coalesced with Russia into what some have dubbed the “Axis of Upheaval.”

Iran supplied Moscow with its Shahed drones right when Putin was running out of missiles. And when Russia’s arsenal of artillery shells was exhausted, North Korea shipped 8 million rounds of 122- and 152-millimeter munitions along with scores of ballistic missiles.

But sending troops, that’s “crossing the Rubicon,” said Victor Cha, a Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who wrote a paper with that title.

“I don’t think there is anything that one country can do for another that’s a bigger symbol of allegiance and support than sending troops in wartime,” Cha said during the live taping of a CSIS podcast. “North Korea sent a lot of ammunition to Russia, but sending troops is, I think, at a whole different level.”

The Defense Department is concerned that foreign troops fighting on behalf of Russia could widen the war, perhaps prompting other countries to pick sides and send their contingent of fighters. Yet its bigger worry is what North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is hoping to get from Putin in return.

“Certainly, this development, this willingness of Kim to literally put skin in the game here, soldiers in Russia … would connote an expectation that he thinks he’s getting something out of this,” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said at a briefing last month.

“It is concerning,” Kirby said. “It’s been concerning. Until we have a better sense of what the North Koreans at least believe they are getting out of this as opposed to what they actually get, it’s hard to know and to put a metric on exactly what the impact is in the Indo-Pacific. … It could be significant.”

During his talks with Austin at the Pentagon, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-Hyun downplayed any risk of imminent war with North Korea. Still, he voiced Seoul’s biggest fear — that Russia will help North Korea upgrade its nascent nuclear arsenal.

“There is a high possibility that North Korea, in exchange for their troops’ deployment, would ask for cutting-edge technology,” Kim said through a translator. “North Korea is very likely to ask for technology transfers in diverse areas, including the technologies relating to tactical nuclear weapons, technologies related to their advancement of [intercontinental ballistic missiles], also regarding reconnaissance satellites and [ballistic missile submarines].

Cha, the CSIS expert, said there is every reason to believe Kim Jong Un is expecting more than simple gratitude from Putin.

“Kim is not stupid,” Cha said. “He knows Putin needs both the ammunition and the troops, so why not exact a higher price for that, which is to try to ask for higher-end military technology to help him breakthrough some of the technological ceilings that he’s facing in terms of modernizing his WMD program and his ballistic missiles.”

A North Korea with a more robust nuclear arsenal would not be in China’s interest either, Cha argues.

It could prompt the U.S. to upgrade its alliances in the region to what has been referred to as a “mini NATO” and further erode what limited influence Beijing has over Pyongyang.

“The Chinese relationship with the North, really going back to the Korean War, has always been a very tenuous one with neither side trusting the other side,” Dennis Wilder, senior fellow on China at Georgetown University, said at the CSIS event.

China has kept North Korea on what Wilder described as an “IV drip of a little bit of economic assistance,” while using it as a buffer to the U.S. and its allies in the region, including South Korea, Japan, and Australia.

“It doesn’t hurt to have a North Korea that’s a little bit worrisome to the United States,” Wilder said. “But on the other hand, [Kim Jong Un] is so unpredictable and could really mess up China’s whole strategic position in East Asia. It is, I think, a very real conundrum for Beijing.”

Despite somewhat frosty relations with China, the U.S. has been reaching out to see if Beijing is willing to intervene in some way.

“We have been making clear to China for some time that they have an influential voice in the region and they should be concerned about steps that Russia has taken to undermine stability,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters after it was confirmed North Korean troops were training in Russia. “They should be concerned about steps that North Korea has taken to undermine stability and security.”

“I think that one of the reasons that Kim Jong Un may be doing this with Russia is precisely because of China,” Cha said. “China has always sort of kept North Korea at arm’s length distance. … They’ve never given the sort of explicit security guarantee that Russia gave to North Korea in June.

“I think the panic is that Russia now has arguably much more influence over North Korea than China does,” Cha added. “Sending these troops … it’s like a down payment on an explicitly secured mutual security partnership, which they could never get from China. So, I think it’s both a play to Russia and it’s also a play to China.”

“I go back to the fact that the Soviets tested 1,000 nuclear devices,” Wilder said. “The North Koreans have tested six. The amount of information that the Soviets, now the Russians, have at their disposal to offer to Koreans is truly astounding — tactical missiles, multiple reentry vehicles, nuclear submarines. I mean, I keep thinking about a North Korean SSBN floating in the western Pacific, an incredible headache for all of us if that is what eventuates out of this.”

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D Vance (R-OH), has argued that the U.S. needs to stop supporting Ukraine and instead focus on China. Under President Xi Jinping’s orders, China could be ready to forcefully take Taiwan by 2027.

That would be a mistake, former Trump national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. H.R McMaster argued.

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“North Korean troops fighting against Ukraine further exposes the fallacy of ‘pivoting’ away from Europe and the Middle East based on a myopic view of the competition with the People’s Republic of China,” McMaster posted on X. He identified the four countries he says have coalesced into an “Axis of Aggressors.”

“Recognizing the nature of the competition with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran is vital if we are to restore peace and prevent conflicts from cascading further,” he warned.