North Korea’s Kim expected to cling to nuclear security blanket after Venezuela operation

The United States’ decapitation operation against Venezuela will reinforce North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, an aspiration that will continue to draw China’s “tacit tolerance”, according to analysts.

After the US military abducted Nicolas Maduro during an attack on Venezuela on Saturday, Pyongyang criticised Washington’s actions as “wildly” violating the sovereignty of Caracas. It was one of a slew of countries that issued swift criticism of the US move.

In a statement on Sunday, the North Korean foreign ministry said Pyongyang was monitoring the Venezuelan situation caused by Washington’s “high-handed act”, describing the military operation as a further example of the “rogue and brutal nature of the US”.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo, an international relations professor at King’s College London, said the events in Venezuela would further increase North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s “anxiety about the same potentially happening to him”.

“Even though North Korea is a harder target, the same could happen to his government,” Pacheco Pardo said. “Plus, the US has had plans to strike North Korea in the past, and Kim knows this.”

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North Korea and Venezuela have separately had decades of friction with the US – the former over its nuclear weapons programme and the latter because of disputed oil interests and US President Donald Trump’s accusation that the country engages in narcoterrorism.

South China Morning Post