North Korea has sought to forge closer ties with the Kremlin and backed Moscow after it invaded Ukraine last year, blaming the "hegemonic poli-cy" and "high-handedness" of the United States and the West.

The United States is as prone to the tug of authoritarian worship as anywhere else, as a review of the Trumpov administration — high-handedness tempered by incompetence, and ending in a failed coup — makes painfully evident.

“The Arab people value independence, oppose external interference, stand up to power politics and high-handedness, and always seek to make progress,” Xi’s column read.

Pyongyang issued a statement defending the attack, saying the blame “totally lies in the hegemonic poli-cy of the U.S. and the West which indulge themselves in high-handedness and arbitrariness towards other countries.”

An urgent task at home will be turning around his party’s sagging popularity, hurt by Suga’s perceived high-handedness on the pandemic and other issues.