Asks Daniel Drezner (at Politico).
This nascent alliance feeds into an American predilection for lumping all U.S. adversaries into the same basket. During the heyday of the Cold War many U.S. policymakers assumed that the communist bloc was monolithic. In this century, parts of the foreign policy community have frequently posited that the United States faces an Axis of Something.
In January 2002, George W. Bush called out Iran, Iraq, and North Korea in his State of the Union address, warning that “states like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” While none of these countries were paragons of virtue, neither were they cooperating with each other or with Al Qaeda.
A decade later during the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy warned about an emerging axis of authoritarianism. Romney’s warning was dismissed at the time, but over the past year observers from across the political spectrum have wholeheartedly embraced the idea....
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48 comments:
An China-Russian-Iran axis? Now this headline from Zero Hedge "Saudi King Invites Iranian President To Visit For 1st Time In 25 Years".
You have to hand to the Bidet foreign policy team, they are one befuddled gang.
"Romney’s warning was dismissed at the time..."
Smugly and derisively so. And they all sniggered and high-fived each other at the putdown. Another example of the hubris that the Greeks said is always followed by Nemesis.
China-Russia-Iran-India-South America-Africa... We are making an incredible mistake, and we are going to end up with hegemony over Europe and nothing else.
As all previous dominant global empires have done, the USA is working assiduously (through our bully boy approach to the rest of the world) to bring about our own inevitable loss of dominance, and possibly even our collapse. Also as has been true of all previous empires, we are not able to admit to ourselves or even see that is what we are doing.
Gotta have enemies. The economy depends on it.
Mitt Romney’s foreign policy warned about an emerging axis of authoritarianism.
What Romney failed to predict was that our own liberal Federal and State Governments, along with activist courts, would become the United States' internal Legion of Doom.
Our country and Blue States are run by corrupt idiots. mRNA shot mandates, Global Warming bullshit, printing money, inflation, destruction of the nuclear family, false accusations of racism, never ending proxy war$$$$, creating gender confusion for children.
The SuperFriends feared the the Legion of Doom's army of college educated white women more than any individual Supervillain.
Bottom story of the day.
It’s the Axis of Weevils against the Mean Girlz.
Another giant fuckup by Biden.
Dan Drezner is part of the establishment that has gotten us to this exact point. He's been cheering it on for years.
The legion of doom is creating itself to exert authoritarian power over as many people as possible.
More brilliant diplomacy from Team Smilin' Joe. If he were your financial advisor, you would fire him. Why? Because he lies, he makes foolish decisions, he blames you for his mistakes, and his performance is terrible.
How does Smilin' Joe make us a small fortune? He starts with our large fortune.
Fucking NeoCon Democrats.
If you were trying to destroy the power of the United States globally what would the Biden Regime do differently?
If you were trying to reduce the wealth and prosperity of the working/middle class in this country what would the Biden Regime do differently that it is currently doing?
Joe Biden is a traitor, he is corrupt and obviously bought and paid for by our enemies.
The reason they are threatening to arrest Trump now is to hide the fact that direct bank payments have been released from the CCP to Biden family members.
The corruption is no longer deniable.
If you support the Regime you are evil.
If you do not fight the Regime you are a coward.
The inevitable result of the idiocy of the dems embracing the neocon global project, aligned with the Davos set, which so many morons in the GOPe Forever War Brigade support for the graft possibilities.
The 'United States' is not creating it, a small subset of the population is.
Be honest with yourself. What did you think would happen? Aren't what we are witnessing the end result of progressivism? The world did not have to be like this. Two years ago it wasn't.
The U.S. has already kowtowed to China, which has already fortified its position in the South China Sea. No "option" there.
The U.S. is already weakening itself by expending arms and munitions in its Ukraine proxy war, making any forceful response to China's move on Taiwan less likely. Limited "options" there.
The U.S. has already burned all its bridges to Russia, driving it closer to China, thus helping to create a new "axis," even though in the long run China is the main adversary and strategic calculation suggests that the third-ranked power should be more on our side. No "option" there, at least not anytime soon.
The U.S. is already alienating potential allies elsewhere, leading more of them to become "nonaligned" once more.
The United States is self destructing with its massive illegal immigration.
Nothing else matters.
"Legion of Doom"
Is that like Cobra? Honestly, Putin did always strike me as a "Destro". If Putin is Destro, than Kim Yo-Jong must be The Baroness. You could assume Xi is the Cobra Commander, but the Cobra Commander has pitifully few Winnie the Pooh characteristics.
So, Dull Dan Drezner speaks up and give us the DC Establishment conventional wisdom. I first heard this guy on BHTV about 15 years ago and he's never said ANYTHING that is interesting, cutting edge, or insightful. Imagine quoting Mitt Romney as some sort of oracle of wisdom!
Drezner should be upset about CHAT AI because an AI program could write his column without anyone noticing. And of course, he's supported every war and military action our DC Foreign policy elite has gotten us into, screeched about J6 and how terrible Trump was, and sneered at and insulted anyone whose disagreed with him.
As for China, Russia, Iran. Which of these three is NOT like the other? We may have a great power rivalry with China and Russia, but IRan is ZERO threat to us. Its a small, poor Middle East country 6000 miles away.
Personally, I hope the Russians give them a few nukes, so we can stop with the endless "OMG, Iran is going to have nukes - we need to attack them!" crap that has been endless for 20 years. The Pakistanis have nukes. THe Israelis have nukes. No one cares. If Iran gets nukes, it will change nothnig. And it will serve the Neo-cons right, because of their prolonging a bloody War in Ukraine which has killed tens of thousands for no reason other than "We need to wear down the Russian Bear".
Notice how the headline carefully asks if "the United States" did this, rather than "the Biden administration."
We certainly accelerated it when we started using the petrodollar as a weapon. What in the world does anyone think will happen when you exile someone from a banking system. They will find another partner. It's completely asinine.
And our instigation of wars all over the world for the last two decades, not even including the current Ukraine war that we also instigated. We are no longer the "good" guys.
Better not forget Brazil and India
Biden is like Obama's World War Springs, catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform, disastrous Iraq withdrawal, and shared responsibility through redistributive change through progressive prices.
Well, if we're really concerned, perhap ae could stop funding China's military buildup. Also, Democrats and their idiot child corps could note Israel's strategic value as a counter to Iran.
Trump tried to reverse course and align Russia against China.
CRTL-F Trump returned nothing.
Gee, Russia, China and Iran. If only we had a large, modern air base somewhere in reach of all of those bad actors. Like northern Afghanistan, maybe.
I didn't know Drizzler was still around.
Go read J H Kunstler at Clusterfuck Nation for some plain talk.
I read the article and the best I can say is it finally gets around to answering the question. However, I found Drezner’s options and analysis stale and mired in the past. The gist of Drezner’s piece is that the US, by opposing Russia, China, and Iran simultaneously is pushing those countries into an alliance which, in his analysis, isn’t an ideal alliance for any of those countries. So he senses opportunity.
But his analysis makes a myriad of flaws, one of the biggest is a parenthetical comment that “MAGA crowd” opposition to supporting Ukraine over Russia is because it is a waste of time and China is a bigger threat. That’s not the opposition I’ve heard. The opposition to supporting Ukraine is that the problem is the threat to Europe, and that Europe therefore needs to do the heavy lifting in defending themselves. US involvement only strengthens Putin’s point about western aggression to Russia and increases the chances of a third World War. None of this has to do with China or Iran. (A reminder that Trump sold Poland missile defense technology in 2017 and Ukraine anti-tank missiles in 2019. Both annoyed Putin but kept him contained.)
Drezner also suggest the solution to China, that he claims a bigger threat, is “positive outreach”. The US had a policy of positive outreach to China going back to Clinton giving them “favored nation” trade status. The result has been a more powerful China with more will to act defiantly against the West. That is the reason Trump changed policy and his policy contained China for 3 years, until the pandemic broke out, and the left said we could say nothing bad about China.
As for Iran, Drezner literally just lumps them into the conversation in the manner he claims US policy does. He doesn’t back up that claim, and instead just lumps in North Korea too. I suspect a word count would find North Korea used as much as Iran. For both, the discussion is both do bad things and are aligning with China, but what to do about it? I guess go back to positive outreach to China? Don’t know, because Drezner doesn’t say other than “soften our approach” to China and other countries. Word to Drezner, the bad things you note that North Korea and Iran are doing; China does the same. We just are too late to stop China for developing its nuclear weapon capability. That is what happens when you just soften your approach with bad actors without demanding reform. Trump tried with North Korea, but Trump both tried being nice to Kim while demanding reform that Kim wouldn’t commit.
Amadeus 48 said...How does Smilin' Joe make us a small fortune? He starts with our large fortune.
Smilin' Joe makes a small fortune by making his family kick back 10% for selling access to him.
As I'm sure the bulk on the commentors are going to say, Biden is notorious awful at foreign policy. He's been consistently wrong about every major topic since he has entered politics. The only question is whether he selects these positions because he is stupid or because he has been sufficiently paid to adopt them. The latter is not out of the question, given his political positions are completely malleable and he will adopt any position, even if it is opposite of what he believed before, if he thinks it is to his advantage.
Do remember that this situation started because he made the United States look weak, then seemed to decide he was fine with Russia invading Ukraine, then when the European powers suddenly grew a backbone he suddenly was all-in for Ukraine. It reflects a man of low intellect, low morals, and/or severe greed. Doesn't help that he's senile.
Brandon has a unique ability to alienate every country but our enemies. I assume the grift was worth it but holy shit !
Notice Dan's framing of the problem: somehow America created this alliance. Zero free will on foreigner's part. We could patch things up - just a misunderstanding!
First of all, Russia we made a massive enemy. The US media literally said Trump was a Russian agent. So...what do you think Putin thinks about Hillary and Americans who used him for domestic political purposes?
Iran, we tried being super nice to and it still didn't work out well, and they don't seem to care.
China...they want to be top dog. They will look for allies that are un-democracies, LIKE THEY ARE. Its natural.
I read the middle book of Stephen Kotkin's bio of Stalin. Stalin applied to join the original and still the best Axis of Evil. As his price for admission, Stalin wanted a free hand in Eastern Europe. Hitler offered him instead some of southern Europe and northern Iran. Stalin turned down the counter offer.....Stalin did eventually gain control of Eastern Europe so I guess you can say that he was a better diplomat than Hitler. Some 26 or 27 million of USSR citizens died in the war with Germany, but the squeeze was worth the juice as Stalin would say.
it's important to have a war to fight.
3 years ago.
Biden pissing off the Saudis and forcing them to work with our rivals is going to haunt the US for decades.
At least Trump understood that the preening EUniks were largely irrelevant and could be safely ignored. And he focused our efforts where it really mattered.
Did you say legion of doom?
https://twitter.com/gc22gc/status/1637824340522860548
Biden pissing off the Saudis and forcing them to work with our rivals is going to haunt the US for decades.
I expected some mention of this, but it wasn’t.
I doubt very much that the US is 'creating a legion of doom' Remarkable as some may find it, countries every now and again do what they think is in their best interests without regard to what they think about the current US administration. The Saudi/Iran dealings may or may not indicate a change of substance. If it does, the first place it will show up is their proxy war in Yemen. And it's going to be hard getting past their dispute over who's the top-dog in the Persian Gulf, or whether Shia or Sunni should be in the lead going forward. But it strikes me as very simplistic to think that this is happening because Biden dissed the Sheik.
Iran and Russia are doing a dance of convenience, in that for the short-term both need each other. The Iranians are concerned about a possible Israeli strike against their nuke infrastructure, and want Russian SAMs. The Russians need Iranian weapons. Doesn't change the fact that the Iranian theocrats are unlikely to be all the committed to the Russians more generally.
As for China, it's making lots of enemies in SE Asia, not only by its threats of military action against Taiwan but also its efforts at bullying Vietnam and the Philippines about their respective interests in the South China Sea, and India along their poorly marked border in the mountains, and on and on. Lots of those nations are banding together with the US, Japan and Australia to push back. So where's Comrade Xi going to turn?
Maybe the US and NATO are the Legion of Doom.
Romney was wrong. Russia is our rival, but the rivalry was manageable. We weren't in a battle to the death with them.
I recall Romney's 2012 debate answer that Russia was our greatest enemy. Knowing that Mitt was a reliable spokesman for the foreign policy blob I kept asking,Why Russia?
It makes no sense. Russia is not the Soviet Union. They are no strategic threat to the USA. They should be a strategic ally as we seek to contain China. Instead we seemed to have fostered a closer Putin-Xi relationship, which has the potential to draw the BRICS into closer cooperation.
I'm not quite sure my government knows what it is doing.
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"Be honest with yourself. What did you think would happen? Aren't what we are witnessing the end result of progressivism? The world did not have to be like this. Two years ago it wasn't."
OMG! The "end result of progressivism," you say? The world "did not have to be this way" and was not like this two years ago? Of course it was this way two years ago! Beneath the blush of (apparent) health the rot has been growing for decades. You're correct that the world did not have to be this way, but we chose the too-oft traveled road...to domination and wealth and then to eventual ruin.
We are seeing the culmination of bipartisan US policy stemming back to the end of WWII. The US was the dominant world power at the end of the war, and the only one entirely free of any devastation by bombs and other weapons of war to our cities, factories or other infrastructure. We decided to capitalize on our blessed situation and make ourselves the dominant nation in the world, the rulers of the world either in fact to the degree possible and by proxy otherwise. We followed the practice of all empires historically, and as with all previous empires, ours, already in decline, will end, either abruptly through sudden events or gradually through natural dissolution.
Slow Joe playing 1-dimensional chess.
You voted for this Cookie. Don't try and paint it any other way. And I corrected myself and said three years ago. You and your friends got us here.
"You voted for this Cookie. Don't try and paint it any other way. And I corrected myself and said three years ago. You and your friends got us here."
Nope! Anyone who voted for any Republicans or Democrats running for the Office of the Presidency in the last half century voted for this.
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