Meet the New Axis of Evil

I n former president George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, he introduced to the world a new concept: the “axis of evil.” The phrase, coined by Bush speechwriter David Frum, referred to an unholy trinity of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, states that sponsored terrorism and sought the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. Frum writes in his book, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, that the phrase was inspired by former president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address to Congress after Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor — the famous “Day of Infamy” speech.

Frum recalled the acrimony and suspicion between Germany, Italy, and Japan during the war — to the extent that, in Frum’s estimation, the three would have ultimately cannibalized each other had the Axis prevailed — and the parallel goals the powers shared that drove them to form an alliance. Thinking of Iran, Iraq, and the terror groups al-Qaeda and Hezbollah (North Korea would be added to the list before Bush delivered the speech), Frum found an analogous dynamic: Despite the internecine conflicts between those entities, they had a common enemy in the United States.

Now, the U.S. faces yet another array of adversaries, but there is a twist this time: Rather than a relatively loose grouping predicated on a shared enmity toward the West and its foremost superpower, America’s antagonists are working together to further their strategic interests and displace the U.S.-led international order. A meeting this week between Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un demonstrates as much. At the summit, Kim proclaimed “full and unconditional support” for Putin and his war on Ukraine, edging close to a deal that would see North Korea supply Russia with ammunition to be used in the war.

Though in recent decades China has taken on the role of the Kim regime’s benefactor, cooperation between Russia and North Korea is not a new phenomenon, as the director of the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education, William Inboden, told National Review.

“One reason why this Putin–Kim meeting is so fascinating and troubling is that we might call it a return to the Cold War, because the Soviet Union was the main patron and really the creator of the Kim regime,” said Inboden, who previously served as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council. “In a lot of ways, it is of a piece with Putin’s geopolitical vision to re-create the borders and broader empire of the Soviet Union.”

The war in Ukraine has been a catalyst for the warming relations between Russia and North Korea, and between those two nations and two others seeking dominance in their respective areas of the globe: China and Iran. Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger distinguished professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told NR that the conflict has provided opportunities for the four countries to conspire to decrease U.S. influence on the international stage.

“The Ukraine war has promoted greater convergence between China and Russia in some ways — a much more robust Russia–Iran defense partnership, the North Korea–Russia partnership,” Brands said. “It’s obvious what Russia needs from this, because it was going from being a provider of military equipment in a lot of these cases to a taker of military equipment.” As the international system becomes more fragmented, Brands believes, it’s natural that the West’s opponents will work together more often. North Korea’s sharing of nuclear technology with Iran is just one example of how this quadripartite alliance might function.

The Russia–Iran courtship is a development Brands said could fundamentally change the current state of geopolitics. As NR has previously detailed, Iran has sent Russia drones for use on Ukrainian battlefields and looks to be moving toward shipping the Kremlin ballistic missiles for the same purpose. The other side of that deal has the potential to be monumental for the Middle East.

“If the ‘quo’ for the ‘quid’ of Iranian support to Russia was that Russia provides Iran with more advanced weapons and weapons technology,” Brands said, “that could have an impact on the balance of power.”

The Biden administration has, for the most part, been astonishingly negligent in the face of these unholy new alliances. While Inboden credited some around the president with having a sense of the dangers the renewed Sino–Russian relationship poses to global stability, he said the White House did not seem alarmed enough by the degree to which the anti-American coalition has strengthened.

“With this appeasement they’ve been doing with Iran — the $6 billion in hostage diplomacy, the desperation to get some sort of return to whatever the new phase of the JCPOA is — I think they’ve been completely disregarding both Iran’s ties to North Korea and Iran’s support for Russia,” Inboden said.

Much has been written about the Biden administration’s undercutting its own policy toward Ukraine through its rapprochement with Iran, but Inboden sees the effects of Iran’s increased military power — which it has achieved with North Korea’s help and Russia’s backing — as a deterrent to cooperation with the U.S. on the part of more naturally friendly countries.

“If we want the Saudis to be more helpful with us on Russia–Ukraine and on China — as the Saudis are hedging right now — we need to be tougher on Iran,” Inboden said. “If the Saudis see us in an appeasement posture toward Iran, they will not want to be as helpful to us on the other big questions.”

A world in which China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia can act together to influence events — in opposition to American interests — is a dangerous world indeed. The Biden administration should take the interconnected nature of America’s adversaries more seriously.