BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT — Individually, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea consistently rank high on the U.S. list of global threats but national and global security experts believe that closer collaboration between these countries since Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, presents an even greater risk to future global security. Part of the approach to dealing with the power of this new alliance, according to experts, requires a shift in U.S. policies that is not without risk.
THE CONTEXT
- The term “axis” has a history of negative connotations in American foreign policy: the U.S. and its allies fought the “Axis Powers” (Germany, Italy and Japan) in World War II; and after the September 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “Axis of Evil.”
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a recent New York Times op-ed, described the four countries as “a new axis of authoritarians”
- General Jack Keane (Ret.), a Cipher Brief expert and former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, said at a recent security conference that the Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis is “a major security threat that we have yet to account for.”
- U.S. adversaries have courted the so-called “Global South” to counter the U.S. and its Western allies. This effort aims to help states like China and Russia circumvent Western sanctions and create spaces that they can expand their sphere of influence.
- China and Russia are leading members of BRICS, an intergovernmental organization that excludes the U.S. and includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
- On January 1, 2024, BRICS admitted Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates as new members. Argentina and Saudi Arabia have also been invited to join.
- Belarus has joined China and Russia’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, and Iran joined in 2023. The new members further shift the SCO from an exclusively Central Asian forum to a broader security cooperation club, which Beijing and Moscow see as an alternative to NATO.
- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called on BRICS to take on greater responsibilities and become “a new multilateral cooperation mechanism” driven by emerging markets and developing countries.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the U.N. Security Council that, “The current imbalance in the Security Council, where Western countries dominate, must be rectified.” "In order to contain Russia, China and other countries whose independent policies are seen as a challenge to its hegemony, the West is aggressively dismantling the global system that was originally built based on its models,” he added. "Rule America - that is the essence of the notorious rules-based order, which is a direct threat to multilateralism and international law.”
THE EXPERTS
The Cipher Brief spoke to former Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence Beth Sanner and Ambassador Joe Detrani - all Cipher Brief Experts - about the greater risk posed by collaboration among these countries. Our interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
The Cipher Brief: How are you thinking about the new collective alliance being referred to as the “Axis of Authoritarians”?
McLaughlin: The alignment of these countries produces something greater than the sum of the parts. They are mutually covering each other's deficits, and therefore each country in that group is becoming more uniformly capable.
I think the Ukraine war is at the heart of this, in the sense that Putin would not be visiting North Korea and hugging Kim Jong-Un if he didn't need support for the Ukraine war. He would not be entering into a major strategic military partnership with Iran, and Iran would not be rushing to build a drone plant in Russia, if it were not for the Ukraine war.
The Ukraine war breaks all the rules that we thought had been established as to how the world works, how threat is perceived, and how you respond to it.
Sanner: The idea that there is a group of countries who believe in democracy, rule of law and the way we practice democracy – all of those things are a problem for these countries. They don't like it. Our running the world order the way that we have, which we as Americans think is the right way, is in their way - and it poses a challenge to them. Noe, they're powerful enough to push back and say, ‘We don't like the world that you've created. We like the way we run it, and we think that should be the shape of the world order’.
This is a fundamental challenge. Some people call it a war of ideas, which I think is valid, but it's just a fundamental difference in the way that we want to live our lives and the way that these authoritarian leaders want to live theirs. How the world runs – is it our system or their system? And that goes to rule of law, it goes to security, and leads to the question: does might make right?
DeTrani: When we talk about the axis of authoritarian states, it is an axis, and there is a sense here that these U.S. adversaries are coming together - not only to reinforce each other - but to be opposed to something else. And that ‘something else’ is the United States and its leadership role in the world.
The collective emboldens each of these nations. It permits each in their respective areas and pursuits, to feel more confident that they will prevail because someone has their back.
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The Cipher Brief: What are the practical manifestations of this “axis,” and the threat it poses?
Sanner: There are real practical effects. Particularly China providing 90% of the microelectronics and 70% of the machine tools to Russia that provide the fodder for their war machine. And buying Russian oil and gas props them up so they can sustain themselves through sanctions. Without China, the sanctions would have largely worked. It's actually making the war last longer and it's making Russia strong enough so they can outlast us.
Iran's ability to export oil to China has allowed them to continue to build their arsenal, and the same with North Korea, with coal sales and sanctions-busting. China says outright, ‘We just don't believe in sanctions, and we're not going to uphold these anymore because these are US-led’.
Russia and China voted to constrain North Korea and Iran in the past. Those days are gone. And now, we see Russia directly engaged with them and throwing their concerns out the window. In the past, Russia has not been a country that supported proliferation. And now? It's like, well, whatever, we need the materials from these people.
Already we've heard the U.S. intelligence community say that Russia is helping North Korea on their rocket and missile program. That directly threatens us and South Korea and Japan and Guam – it's all bad. They're going to have, with Russia's help, an ability to build out their submarine launch nuclear capability, much, much faster than if they were on their own.
The Cipher Brief: In what other ways are the countries that are part of this alliance benefitting from it?
McLaughlin: China benefits from all of this because it needs Iranian oil, it needs Russian oil.
Russia? They need China's help. And they've gotten upwards of 3 million artillery shells from North Korea. They've gotten countless hundreds of drones from Iran.
And all of this increases the capability and influence of these countries in any confrontation with the U.S. For example, let's assume there is a Taiwan contingency of some sort. If we try to invoke our partners in Asia, well, by virtue of North Korea now having tightened this relationship with Russia, Russia has more of a hand in that confrontation than they would have had otherwise. And this “axis” will end up strengthening North Korea militarily, which means that North Korea can distract or can certainly tie up South Korea at a time when we might want South Korea's assistance in a Taiwan contingency.
Or in the Middle East, because of the tightening relationship between Iran and North Korea and Russia, in the event there is, as appears likely, a confrontation between Lebanon and Israel, with Lebanon housing a major Iranian proxy in the form of Hezbollah, there's no question that Russia is prepared to strengthen Iran's missile capability in one way or another. And that in turn would reflect on Iran's ability to support Hezbollah in any confrontation with Israel.
And if I were to imagine, without looking at any classified information, what are the Iranians and North Koreans getting in return for what looks like almost essential help they're providing to Russia? Well, I know what they need. The Iranians need help with their missile program because they have yet to get to the point of an ICBM capability. Russia can help them with that.
What do the North Koreans want? Well, they've demonstrated that they have a nascent intercontinental ballistic missile capability by virtue of the range they've achieved with their most robust missile. But I've yet to see anything in the public information that tells me they have the capacity to guide that missile very precisely.
Going back to Iran, they are by all accounts in possession of enough material to make a bomb. But once they do, I don't think they yet have mastered the capacity to put that into a bomb and then to miniaturize it sufficiently to put it on some of their medium range missiles. That's something Russia could help them with.
In all of these ways, this “axis” is greater than the sum of the parts.
DeTrani: North Korea is likely getting assistance (from the “axis”) for its nuclear and missile programs, but also for its conventional weapons programs and their satellite programs from the Russian Federation. That not only emboldens them, but it gives them greater capabilities. It also gives them access to more sophisticated weaponry, and capabilities that they could sell, as they did to Syria. So, there's a proliferation piece to it, there's an expansionist piece to it, and there's a threat piece to it. The Russia-North Korea piece of this “axis” looms very large.
And Iran, knowing that they have China and Russia giving them some cover and support, is very significant. Does that mean Hamas will be bolder and the Houthis will be more aggressive and Hezbollah will be more assertive in their approach to Israel? I think so. This is a very significant strategic dynamic that we're confronting in 2024.
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The Cipher Brief: How should the U.S. be thinking about future policy in the face of this new alliance?
DeTrani: I think you need to look at each of the countries individually to understand the dynamic within the country itself. The dynamic between the respective countries, and their current and past relationships with the United States.
North Korea has aspired to a normal relationship with the United States for over 30 years. And all of a sudden now they have a strategic allied comprehensive partnership with the Russian Federation. That's a reality. But does that mean we have to just live with that? That was the problem in the past – we said North Korea was on a path, we might ignore them, a little bit of strategic patience and so forth. But look what they've done: They've not been contained. They've certainly not been deterred in building more nuclear weapons and delivery systems. So now we need to work on a policy to bring them back into the fold, or if they've never been in the fold, look to moderate some of their behavior, try to get a dialogue with them, try to see if they still want that relationship with the U.S., which I believe they do.
When you look at China and Russia, those countries have a long history of tensions. So, do we just accept that they are now embracing each other, and their allies are in sync against the United States?
We have to build our nuclear deterrent. We have to build our military strength and our industrial capacity to support a robust nuclear deterrent, and a strategic deterrent to include a diplomatic and an economic deterrent – integrated deterrent, if you will.
Sanner: We've got to realize that we have a problem, and understand what it looks like as well as the fact that this problem isn't a one-off thing. The problem isn't about just China, and we can ignore the rest. There is this interlinking component, and unless you understand the linkages, you can't go after it, because where you go after it, is in the linkages, right? The U.S. must figure out whether its willing to sanction Chinese banks in order to prevent them from trading with Russia.
Taking it to the next level, we have to have a bigger conversation with America, where we say, OK, these are the problems. This is how we think about it. This is how significant of a national security issue this is, this is where this is going, and help them be OK with the risks that we will have to take as a country in dealing with it, because these are not risk-free policies.
A lot of these efforts are going to have some costs associated with them, and it will also embroil us even more in areas of the world where we're trying to get away from.
McLaughlin: I don't think we should think of this as a whole series of bilateral issues that we have to deal with. It's more than that.
The first thing that has to happen is that we need a whole-of-society approach, or a whole-of-society understanding of what we've just been talking about, and we don't have that. We've been so caught up in our own domestic drama, that looking out beyond our borders is not a focus. Our national leadership needs to lay out the fact that the world is very different than the world that most of us have integrated into our societal understanding of how the world works.
We think of it as, ‘Oh, there was the Cold War and we won that, and then we had these two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, and they didn't go very well and we’re glad they're over, and now something’s going on with China.’ We have to worry about that. But somehow national leadership needs to find a way to communicate to the American public that this is the world we're looking at now and maintaining our preeminence in it will not be easy.
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