Today’s Axis of Evil is bigger and more dangerous than ever 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently expressed mild but potentially consequential confusion regarding the nature and scope of America’s proclaimed enemies.  

His most recent article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs states: “A small number of countries — principally Russia, with the partnership of Iran and North Korea, as well as China — are determined to alter the foundational 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.”

But when Blinken was asked to address the volatile situation in the Middle East during his press conference in Laos last week, he said, “Unfortunately, what we have is, among other things, a so-called axis of resistance led by Iran that looks to create other fronts in different places.”  

The “different places” he was referring to are Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, the Red Sea and Israel itself. They are all locations where Iran and its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — are wreaking havoc. 

But the axis of latent hostility toward, and active subversion of, the U.S.-led international order extends far beyond the Middle East and involves dangerous parties more powerful than Iran and its proxies — that is, those nuclear-armed states mentioned in Blinken’s article: Russia, China and North Korea.

Congressional leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Mike Johnson and former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are not reluctant to revive George W. Bush’s original “axis of evil” label and expand it beyond Iran, Iraq, North Korea “and their terrorist allies” to include the two most critical partners and sponsors, Russia and China. 

Hamas leaders, when they unleashed their long-prepared October 7 massacre, were surely aware that it was Vladimir Putin’s birthday. While carrying out their murderous rampage against innocent Israelis, Americans and others, they were delivering a gift to Putin.

The devastating attack on Israel served as a welcome diversion for the Russian leader. He was struggling to cope with Ukraine’s valiant resistance — with limited Western aid — to Russia’s second invasion of the country since its 2014 seizure of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea during the Obama-Biden administration.

Conversely, Hamas’s atrocity was deeply unwelcome for the Biden-Harris administration, whose attention was focused on threading a geopolitical needle: helping Ukraine survive without provoking Putin into further escalation, all the while keeping a wary eye on China’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan and North Korea’s continued menacing of South Korea. 

Last week, on the anniversary of October 7, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un extended his own birthday greetings to Putin, his “closest comrade,” as Moscow and Pyongyang deepened the strategic relationship affirmed during their June summit.  

Simultaneously, on this tragic date, reports emanated from South Korea and Ukraine that North Korean soldiers, probably military engineers, had been killed there, the first instance of a third country sending uniformed military personnel to participate directly in Putin’s invasion. North Korea had already been supplying Russia with massive quantities of ammunition shells, missiles and other material used to strike Ukraine. In return, Moscow has given Pyongyang vitally needed technical assistance, as well as diplomatic and economic support, by blocking further United Nations sanctions.

Kim openly declared that he is joining China and Russia in a common struggle against “western hegemony and imperialism,” an unsurprising development given that North Korea is already dependent on China for economic, diplomatic and security support. Pyongyang’s declaration places it squarely in tandem with the “no-limits strategic partnership” that Putin and Xi Jinping proclaimed in February 2022, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when they jointly pledged their opposition to “certain states” that pursue “hegemony” and “unilateral military advantage.” China voiced its support for Russia’s position on Ukraine, and Putin reciprocated by endorsing Beijing’s hostile intentions toward Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.  

Although Iran is certainly at the evil center of the destructive events in the Middle East, it is also doing its part to support Russia’s aggression with military drones to kill Ukrainians and destroy Ukraine’s cites and vital infrastructure. 

All these lethal interactions and collaborative efforts are operationalizing the mutual diplomatic and ideological declarations of a joint anti-U.S., anti-Western strategy.

The Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis of hostility can fairly be called the early, limited phase of World War III, fear of which has seriously restrained the Biden-Harris policy on Ukraine and the Middle East, just as it paralyzed the Obama administration regarding Russian moves in Ukraine and Syria and rationalized Donald Trump’s indulgence of Putin and Xi. Trump shudders about nuclear Armageddon as much as President Biden does, without understanding that accommodating the dictators only makes a fatal miscalculation more likely.

Beijing is betting that the West’s exaggerated fear of the Apocalypse will similarly hold back a vigorous U.S. response — whether under Biden, Trump or Kamala Harris — to an attack on Taiwan or the Philippines. And North Korea recklessly believes the same U.S. dread of global escalation in so many “other fronts in different places” will serve its own regional ambitions against South Korea and Japan. Pyongyang and its totalitarian accomplices hope America will be pulled in competing directions and unable to cope with the multiplicity of security challenges.

Although Blinken says the administration “does not seek bloc confrontation,” U.S. policymakers may have to rely on the Cold War prospect of mutually assured destruction to deter rash actions by members of the malevolent authoritarian axis. 

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.