We Can’t Separate the New Axis

The Hamas invasion of Israel underlines a basic reality of the current world order that has been increasingly obvious for some time: China, Russia, and Iran have grown into a new Axis. This Axis opposes and menaces the West and the world’s liberal and/or democratic states and their allies — including Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. For that reason, it tends to draw into its orbit all of the enemies of Western liberal democracy. We need to be realistic about this fact, and about what it implies.

The new Axis is not like the Warsaw Pact, a single alliance connected by the central nerve system of a dominating empire. And despite the continued presence of the Iranian regime, it is not like the 2002 “Axis of Evil,” which comprised three rogue states on the periphery (two of them mortal enemies), who mainly shared common tactics and some connections through an underworld of terrorism. We are, instead, dealing with three large and almost geographically contiguous nations on the Asian mainland.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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The Hamas invasion of Israel underlines a basic reality of the current world order that has been increasingly obvious for some time: China, Russia, and Iran have grown into a new Axis. This Axis opposes and menaces the West and the world’s liberal and/or democratic states and their allies — including Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. For that reason, it tends to draw into its orbit all of the enemies of Western liberal democracy. We need to be realistic about this fact, and about what it implies.

The new Axis is not like the Warsaw Pact, a single alliance connected by the central nerve system of a dominating empire. And despite the continued presence of the Iranian regime, it is not like the 2002 “Axis of Evil,” which comprised three rogue states on the periphery (two of them mortal enemies), who mainly shared common tactics and some connections through an underworld of terrorism. We are, instead, dealing with three large and almost geographically contiguous nations on the Asian mainland.