The United States is contending with the most challenging international environment it has faced since at least the Cold War and perhaps since World War II. One of the most disconcerting features of this environment is the burgeoning cooperation among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Some policymakers and commentators see in this cooperation the beginnings of a twenty-first-century axis, one that, like the German-Italian-Japanese axis of the twentieth century, will plunge the world into a global war. Others foresee not World War III but a slew of separate conflicts scattered around the globe. Either way, the result is a world at war—the situation is that serious.
What should be done about this cooperation is another matter. Some strategists argue for ruthless prioritization, focusing on the members of the axis that represent the greatest threats. Others believe that only a comprehensive effort will succeed. But the best strategy would borrow elements of both approaches, acknowledging that China is the primary long-term concern for U.S. national security strategy—“the pacing threat,” in the U.S. Defense Department’s framing—but also a different kind of global actor than its rogue-state partners. Accordingly, Washington’s aim should be to make clear to Chinese President Xi Jinping how counterproductive and costly to Beijing’s interests these new relationships will turn out to be. That means effectively countering Iran, North Korea, and Russia in their own regions, thereby demonstrating to China that tethering itself to a bunch of losers is hardly a path to global influence.
BROTHERS IN ARMS
Cooperation among the members of this twenty-first-century axis has been heavily centered on military, industrial, and economic support for Russia in its war on Ukraine, which could not be sustained without such help. The resulting defense industrial cooperation and incipient integration is likely to go well beyond what existed among the twentieth-century axis partners. North Korea is providing artillery shells, other munitions, military personnel, and industrial workers to Russia and getting oil and missile and space technology in return. Iran is providing missiles and drones produced in its defense plants as well helping build such plants in Russia itself, and getting assistance with its own missile, drone, and space programs and perhaps with civil nuclear power as well. China is so far providing everything short of actual weapons: dramatically increased trade and purchases of oil, gas, and other natural resources; dual-use technology that is being integrated into Russian air-defense, electronic-warfare, drone, and other weapons and communications systems; and as of recently, actual components for Russian weapons. There is even talk of producing drone and weapons systems for Russia in Chinese factories. What China is getting in return is not fully clear at this point, aside from discounted energy—and potentially unrivaled influence over Russia. Beyond the war in Ukraine, China and Russia and their axis partners have increased joint training and operations, including with bombers, ships, and even ground forces.
The axis partners have also accelerated their diplomatic coordination, with Beijing and Moscow using their veto power in the UN Security Council to protect each other and Tehran and Pyongyang from adverse resolutions. Reciprocal high-level visits by leaders and top officials have yielded a series of agreements to cooperate in economic, technological, and other fields
This twenty-first-century axis may not be a formal alliance, but it nonetheless represents an increasingly close, highly functional, and flexible alignment of interests that does not need to become an alliance to advance its members’ aims or undermine the interests of the United States and its allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Even without real ideological affinity, there is a shared anti-Westernism, opposition to democracy, and embrace of authoritarian alternatives. What truly binds the axis is not ideology but a common opposition to U.S. power and the international system it sustains—fueled by a belief that this power represents a mortal threat to their regimes’ interests, aspirations, and even survival.
The link between China and Russia is especially important. It is built on the strong personal relationship between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, forged in more than 60 meetings during their time in office. There are, of course, both historical and contemporary sources of tension between China and Russia: a long common border with lots of empty space on the Russian side and a large population on the Chinese side; Beijing’s suspicion of Moscow’s revived relationship with North Korea, and Moscow’s suspicion of Beijing’s growing economic influence in Central Asia; and considerable xenophobia in both countries. But these tensions, although real, are unlikely to be allowed to disrupt the relationship between the two governments as long as Putin and Xi are in charge
THE CHINA CARD
Although some commentators have recommended trying to pull the members of the axis apart, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leans in the opposite direction, proposing that policymakers seek to “slam them together and make them deal with the consequences of the fact they don’t actually have all that much in common.” There is much to be said for this approach. Any effort to pry Putin away from the axis will most certainly fail; he is too dependent on these partners for support in Ukraine. To try to separate North Korea or Iran from the axis would require concessions that no U.S. administration is likely to be willing to make.
But China may be a different matter. Unlike its axis partners, China is integrated into the global economy. The prospect of broad secondary sanctions—which have been limited and targeted to date—in the event that China crosses Western redlines by providing weapons to Russia could threaten to exact real economic costs. Meanwhile, the war on Israel being waged by Iran and its proxies threatens to disrupt China’s critical oil supplies and other trade with the Middle East. And North Korea’s increasingly bellicose attitude toward its neighbors has roiled China’s diplomatic and economic relations with South Korea and Japan.
More fundamentally, China has made its prestige hostage to the success of its axis partners. If they should be seen to be failing in their respective efforts to impose their will on their neighbors by force, it would become clear to the world that Beijing has cast its lot with losers. That would not only undermine China’s effort to project itself as the global leader of a new kind of international order; it would also damage Xi’s personal standing, at home and abroad.
Washington should demonstrate to China that tethering itself to a bunch of losers is hardly a path to global influence.
How might this goal be accomplished? With respect to Russia, it means preventing Putin from achieving his strategic objectives in Ukraine. This will require enough sustained Western diplomatic, economic, and military support to enable Ukrainian forces to stop the current Russian advance and, if not win back occupied territory, at least establish a stable line of contact between Ukrainian and Russian forces. Such an outcome would allow Kyiv to get on with the job of building a sovereign, prosperous, noncorrupt, and democratic state increasingly integrated with European economic and security institutions.
With respect to Iran, it means quashing Tehran’s hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East. In part, this can be done by supporting Israel in delivering strong blows against both Iran and its proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and more—to reestablish deterrence and open the way to a more stable Middle East. Stability will allow continued reconciliation between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the beginning of a more promising future for the Palestinians, and the chance for the people of Lebanon to free their country from domination by Hezbollah.
And with respect to North Korea, it means demonstrating that Pyongyang’s fixation on nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them will not bring the country security or leverage over its neighbors. That will require strengthening the diplomatic, economic, and military capabilities of Australia, Japan, South Korea, and other regional allies and partners to work with the United States to deter North Korea and defend against any military action it might undertake—all with the aim of continued progress toward a free, open, and peaceful Indo-Pacific.
EXISTENTIAL RECONSIDERATIONS
Each of these steps would advance the interests of the United States and its friends and allies, leaving aside the message they would send China. But if pursued successfully, they could cause Beijing to limit and ultimately reduce its commitment to the failing adventurism of its renegade partners.
There is good reason to think such a reconsideration is possible, since Xi has adjusted course under pressure before. Faced with street demonstrations and other clear expressions of public dissatisfaction, he abruptly abandoned his “zero COVID” policy. In response to the China strategy forged over the course of the Trump and Biden administrations, he changed his approach to the United States. Early in his tenure, Xi seemed to have concluded that the United States and the West more generally were in terminal decline, presenting an opportunity for China to assert itself on the global stage; a strong U.S. response backed by a clear bipartisan consensus, real strategic investment, and a common front with friends and allies prompted Xi to reconsider. The result was a decision to reengage with the United States, including by meeting with President Joe Biden in San Francisco last November, in an attempt to arrest the decline in U.S.-Chinese relations.
By decisively curbing the adventurism of Xi’s axis partners, Washington could cause him to change course once again. It would surely be in his interest to do so. For if the recklessness of his partners brings sustained global instability and conflict, Xi himself would bear much of the blame for preventing the Communist Party from fulfilling its pledges to make China a “moderately developed economy” by 2035 and a “strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and modern socialist country” by 2049. The right U.S. strategy could make Xi understand that he can best serve his own interests by breaking with the axis of losers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
STEPHEN HADLEY is a Principal at the international consulting firm Rice, Hadley, Gates, & Manuel and served as U.S. National Security Adviser from 2005 to 2009.
