A Project for a New World Order

By Richard Fontaine and Andrea Kendall-Taylor

Mr. Fontaine is a former foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain. Ms. Kendall-Taylor is a former senior intelligence officer focused on Russia.

When President Xi Jinping presided over an enormous exhibit of China’s military might in Beijing on Wednesday, there were more than fighter jets and missiles on display.

Mr. Xi, flanked by the leaders of Russia, Iran and North Korea, was signaling to the world that a viable alternative to U.S. leadership exists. That China, in alignment with these other states, could upend the existing international order and resist the current system’s chief architect, the United States.

The show of unity may have seemed remarkable to some, given that just over two months ago some observers dismissed the understanding between the four — what we have called the “axis of upheaval” — as either dead or overblown from the beginning. In June Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang had more or less stood by as Iran endured 12 days of punishing war at the hands of Israel and the United States, issuing statements condemning the attacks but little else.

But to dismiss the axis on these terms is to misunderstand what it truly is: an alignment of four countries that, despite vast differences, see a common adversary in the United States. Though they may occasionally come to one another’s aid — like the North Korean soldiers who joined their Russian allies in battle against Ukrainian forces — that is not the point.

The group has a much more ambitious objective. It seeks, like the World War II era Axis Powers of Germany, Italy and Japan, “a new order of things,” in which each country can claim “its own proper place.” Discontented with an international system they believe denies them the status and freedom of action they deserve by virtue of their power and civilizations, they are united in the desire to change it.

Already, cooperation among the four has strengthened the military capabilities of America’s adversaries while weakening the foreign policy tools that Washington can wield to confront them.

Nowhere has their impact been more apparent than in Ukraine, where China, Iran and North Korea have enabled the Kremlin to sustain its war and better withstand international pressure. The axis countries are likely to continue to cultivate their economic and technological ties to improve their ability to bypass U.S. and allied sanctions and export controls while offering third countries alternatives to dependence on America’s market, banks and currency.

It is the military impact of the ties between them that is bound to be most consequential. These countries are sharing military technology and know-how in ways that allow them to narrow America’s military edge. Their cooperation could shorten the time it would take Russia to reconstitute its conventional forces in any pause in the war in Ukraine, by supplying ammunition or the component parts Moscow needs to manufacture more weapons faster. This could create a window of vulnerability for NATO if Russia can rebuild faster than Europe can ramp up its capabilities.

Axis cooperation also complicates the picture for U.S. and allied defense planners who can no longer assume that any one of these countries would fight alone, either because one or more of these countries provides military aid and weapons or, less likely, fighters. And there is also a risk that they could initiate concurrent crises in an explicitly coordinated or opportunistic manner, overstretching U.S. bandwidth and capabilities.

Indeed, the gathering in Beijing suggests that the axis, rather than withering following the war in Iran in June, has momentum. Its members sense an opportunity. The Trump administration is riling America’s longtime allies and partners, closing off access to its market, withdrawing humanitarian aid and development assistance, ceasing international broadcasting and democracy support, and explicitly declining to play its longtime global leadership role. For Mr. Xi, Vladimir Putin of Russia and others, there may never be a better moment to challenge the U.S.-led global system and hasten American retrenchment.

That President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran was included in the gathering certainly suggests it is too soon to assume Iran is sidelined. Although it was weakened by the U.S. and Israeli strikes, China, Russia and North Korea are likely to see value in helping Tehran to reconstitute its capacity to antagonize the United States.

The Trump administration is well aware of the challenge the axis poses. Its solution, so far, has been one that aims to improve relations with Russia under the assumption that by doing so, it can draw Moscow away from its other backers. Ending the war in Ukraine in a way that allows for a better relationship with Russia would seem to be their first step.

But another attempt to reset relations with Russia is not only bound to fail — as it has before — but also exacerbate the problem. The Kremlin will not abandon its view of Washington as the key impediment to Moscow’s aims, and Mr. Putin is unlikely to believe that a single U.S. president can undo, in any long-term way, decades of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia.

Efforts to lure China are likely to be similarly futile. Certainly, the administration’s attempt to get to a trade deal with Beijing by handing out geopolitical concessions — for example, allowing advanced A.I. chips to go to China — is unlikely to succeed in pulling the axis’ most powerful member away from its partners. Russia and China are likely to simply pocket the concessions this administration is willing to make and use them to strengthen their ability to challenge the United States.

The good news is that Washington does have the necessary tools at its disposal to overcome the axis. The American economy is the world’s largest and most attractive. Its alliance system is still unparalleled, its network of overseas bases unmatched and its military might enormous.

American values — of democracy, basic rights and dignity, and of opportunity and equality — are a supreme strength, more so when we embrace them at home. America, if it chooses to, can sustain a global order that is far superior to anything the axis has to offer. The question is whether the Trump administration will choose to do so.