A U.S. defense expert says Chinese and Russian forces could seek to jointly occupy North Korea in the event the reclusive communist state collapses.

Richard Weitz, the director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, made the statement during a presentation at the Korea Economic Institute in Washington on Thursday.

Weitz said that in the event of a joint Russia-China military occupation of the North, other countries might contemplate moving military forces into North Korea to avert a humanitarian disaster and to secure the North’s nuclear explosive devices and other weapons before they could fall into the hands of terrorists, criminals, or other rogue regimes.

Weitz added that Moscow and Beijing might seek to occupy the North, should the regime collapse, to keep U.S. forces from approaching their borders.

Weitz said that Russia and China conducted a war game scenario of such a joint occupation in August 2005 near North Korea.