China and Russia: The New Axis of Evil

by Con Coughlin  •  September 25, 2023 at 5:00 am

  • Xi has been eyeing the South and East China Seas, coopting the Solomon Islands, building and militarizing his own artificial islands, and threatening not only Taiwan, but neighbours such as Australia, India and Japan.

  • Putin seized and occupied territory in Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014 (Crimea) and 2023, not to mention his relentless bellicosity towards the Baltic states and eastern Europe.

  • There are mounting concerns... in Western security circles that in return for providing any uplift in military support for Russia, Kim wants Moscow to provide technical assistance for his missile and satellite programmes, which would seriously enhance North Korea's ability to threaten the West with its nuclear arsenal.

  • Any attempt by Russia to help improve North Korea's military strength will also benefit China's Communist rulers: it will provide North Korea with the ability to intensify the threat that all three countries pose to the US and its allies -- and to global security.

Following the recent summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, home to Moscow's space programme, in Russia's far east, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin are clearly emerging as the ringleaders of a new axis of evil comprising China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Pictured: Putin speaks with Kim at the Vostochny Cosmodrome on September 13, 2023. (Photo by Artem Geodakyan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

It is more than twenty years since then US President George W. Bush first identified an "axis of evil" of rogue states that threatened global security, and now a new alliance of malign states is taking shape with Russia and China acting as its new lynchpins.

Back in 2002, when Bush first articulated his notion of rogue nations in his State of the Union address made in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he identified Iraq, Iran and North Korea as states that, together with their terrorist allies, "constitute an axis of evil...by seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger."

At the time, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose regime had actively sought to acquire an arsenal of nuclear and biological weapons, was seen as posing the gravest threat to Western democracy, a threat which was finally nullified in 2003 after the US-led coalition succeeded in overthrowing his regime.

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