The Anti-US Axis Isn’t Dead, Just Resting
Russia, China and North Korea failed to help Iran when it was getting bombed by the US. And yet their four-way coalition lives on and will become more ominous.
To a new axial age.
Photographer: Pavel Byrkin/AFP via Getty Images
June was a bad month for the theocrats in Tehran, what with all those Israeli and American bombs falling on them. It also seemed — at least superficially — to be a setback for a larger constellation that has concerned strategists in the US for the past two years: the formation of an anti-American and anti-Western “axis” among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Since Russia’s full-bore invasion of Ukraine, these CRINKs, as they’re also called in Washington, seemed to be coalescing into a coordinated, if not united, front against the US and its partners. But when America dropped its bunker busters on the I, the C, R and NK notably failed to lift a finger.