China, Russia, Iran and North Korea Sense Their Moment

Opinion|The ‘Axis of Upheaval’ Senses Its Moment

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.