U.S. officials are becoming increasingly concerned about the emerging partnership among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – a bloc being talked about by some in Washington as a new “axis of evil.”
Those worries got a major boost on Wednesday with confirmation by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a trip to Rome that North Korean troops are now present in Russia, presumably preparing to participate in Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
Just days earlier, Russia was a participant in naval drills hosted by Iran.
China, North Korea and Iran all have supported Russia’s war machine in different ways during its war on Ukraine. Iran has provided missiles and drones. North Korea has sent artillery shells. And China has provided dual-use technology and industrial products, including semiconductors and drone engines.
“We’ve seen the emergence of Axis of Evil back in the late 1930s, 1938, 1939. We saw what the world did at that particular point to come together,” said Republican congressman Rob Wittman, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee during an online discussion last month hosted by the Center for a New American Security.
“We find ourselves at that same crossroads today where we have nations that do not believe in the same things that we believe in, do not believe in the rule of law, do not believe in protecting the rights and dignity of human beings.”
In 2002, former U.S. President George W. Bush used the term “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address to describe countries supporting terrorism, such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. More recently, it is being applied in Washington to describe China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken describes these four countries as revisionist powers. He wrote that a fierce competition to define a new era of international affairs is under way, and a few countries are determined to change the basic principles of the international system.
“While these countries are not an axis, and the administration has been clear that it does not seek bloc confrontation, choices these revisionist powers are making mean we need to act decisively to prevent that outcome,” Blinken wrote in the November/December issue of the publication Foreign Affairs.
Wittman does use the term “Axis of Evil” and said the countries involved are more capable of destabilizing the world than were Nazi Germany and its allies in 1939, especially as they cooperate and share technology at all levels.
“So, as you look at drones that have been taken out in Ukraine, you find Chinese printed circuit boards in there, Chinese systems on board those drones,” Wittman told VOA.
“You also see the arms that are being fired into Ukraine from Russian artillery pieces are being manufactured in North Korea. You see the drones that are being used by Russians in the battle space there are being manufactured by Iran.”
He also said the new partnership is learning from the Ukrainian war at a rate that keeps pace with the times, gaining capabilities that cannot be achieved in normal testing and development processes in a peaceful environment.
“The biggest difference in the 2024 Axis of Evil is that at least three of the four countries are in expansionist mode,” wrote Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation earlier this year. “They want much more land and power. And they are coordinating their efforts to benefit each country’s goals. It’s a very dangerous development.”
Matthews told VOA this group is working to create a largely self-sufficient economic zone — out of both necessity and desire — that does not rely on Western economies for survival.
Christopher S. Chivvis, a senior fellow and director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told VOA that China is key to the strength of the four-way relationship.
“If China were not part of this four, it would look like three countries that are highly isolated from the world cooperating with each other. We would have much less to worry about. It’s China’s participation in this grouping that is really has the potential to make it very problematic for the United States,” he said.
Chivvis added that the four countries can use a crisis in one region to launch a war, coordinate actions, or create chaos in another.
For example, Chivvis lays out a more extreme version of this scenario in his recent report — were China to attempt a military operation against Taiwan, Russia might seek to take advantage of the strain on U.S. resources with an even more aggressive military campaign in Ukraine or even with an incursion into NATO territory.
Similarly, a major escalation with Iran in the Middle East that draws in more U.S. naval and air forces could also embolden China to take a more aggressive approach to Taiwan.
“It would be difficult for these four countries to sign a formal treaty that would commit them to doing that kind of thing, but you can see it emerging spontaneously or organically out of a crisis situation,” Chivvis said.
And a crisis in one region can spill over to another part of the world.
“If you look at, for example, the Gulf Arab states, they’re critical energy suppliers to both China and Taiwan,” said Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“If you look at Iran, Iran has the capabilities we’ve seen through proxies like the Houthis to disrupt international waterways. So, to think that a conflict over Taiwan will be restricted to the Indo-Pacific is, I think at this stage, simply naive and ignoring.”
Blinken describes the relationship among the four countries as “largely transactional,” adding that their cooperation “entails tradeoffs and risks that each may find more distasteful over time.”
“And yet all four revisionists share an abiding commitment to the overarching objective of challenging the United States and the international system,” Blinken wrote. “That will continue to drive their cooperation, especially as the United States and other countries stand up to their revisionism.”
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
