Australia exposed to growing risk from deepening China-Russia-North Korea alliance

Australia is exposed to a deepening military alliance between Russia, China and North Korea as the three partners work together in the war on Ukraine, prompting experts to warn of the risks to security in Asia.

Former CIA director David Petraeus warned that China was proving its capacity to design new weaponry and manufacture it in large volumes for Russia, heightening concerns for all Western nations.

Political leaders and experts also pointed to the Kremlin’s reliance on North Korea as a rising threat to Asia, given that the rogue state is supplying Russia with scores of missiles in an expanding weapons trade.

General Petraeus, who served 37 years in the US Army, told this masthead that China was innovating rapidly to supply Russia and apply lessons from the war in Ukraine.

“We should be very concerned that China is learning assiduously from what Russia and Ukraine are doing,” he said on the sidelines of a security conference in Kyiv.

“It’s providing the bulk of the components for the Russian military-industrial complex, and it is a leader in the world in robotic systems and drones and so forth.

“And it has an ability to do something that is hugely important in this war, which is not just to innovate but to scale the production of those weapons.”

Petraeus, an influential voice in defence investment as chairman of the KKR Global Institute, forecast a total shift in military doctrine due to the changing nature of war in Ukraine and argued that China was a key force in the conflict.

As the “manufacturing capital” of the world, he said, China was gaining expertise in the mass production of drones and other weapons.

“We should obviously be very keenly aware of that,” he said. “We should be very keenly aware of what is being developed here on this battlefield because it is the future of war, and it’s changing quite rapidly.

“And that should lead us, all Western countries, to develop a new concept of war that can drive, urgently, revolutionary institutional change.”

One of the most influential investors in new drones, former Google chairman Eric Schmidt, said he saw the impact of Russia’s partnership with North Korea during a previous visit to the Ukrainian capital.

“The North Koreans are giving the Russians the KN-25, which is a major ballistic missile – it’s an enormous size and does enormous damage,” he told this masthead.

“I was here when it was shot at Kyiv. I know it to be true. That’s very, very worrisome. So the connection between China and North Korea and Russia is a great concern.”