Quo Vadis? The Balance of Power

There is much unknown and unclear in the days ahead since both Israel and Iran agreed to end what U.S. President Donald Trump has dubbed “the 12-Day War.” But one thing was glaringly obvious: As Israeli and U.S. ordnance was striking multiple Iranian nuclear, military and economic targets, the inaction of Tehran’s so-called friends and allies stood was palpable.

To many foreign policy analysts, armchair strategists, pundits, ‘experts,’ officials and in many of the world’s capitals this might have been a surprise. Indeed, over the last several years, there has been a veritable cottage industry hawking the in-vogue assumption that the U.S.’s most significant competitors/enemies — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are not only collaborating to complicate American (and by extension, ‘Western’) foreign policy goals and undermine their influence but to shift the global balance in a much more authoritarian direction. The word “axis” — as in “New Axis of Evil,” “Axis of Upheaval,” “Axis of Autocracies” or “Axis of Aggressors” — has been flung as easily as confetti at a wedding.

These were probably the same folks who predicted (on either or both occasions) that Donald Trump could not possibly win the presidency.

Recent events in Iran are indeed a potential viper’s nest of dangerous possibilities (the Middle East is after all, the proverbial graveyard of peaceful and predictable aspirations) — potentially leading the U.S. to make questionable decisions that, ironically, could create the very axis the bipartisan foreign policy blob so many fabulists sometimes hyperventilate about. By lumping all four countries together into one unified generic bloc, Washington could risk papering over the considerable differences that exist between them (besides being marriages of convenience against a common foe) and could dilute the strategic imperative for focused action in order to exploit those differences. Diplomacy and strategy call for cool heads, dispassionate analysis, historical knowledge and as much ‘absolute’ objectivity as flawed human minds can summon.

There’s can be no dispute that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have lately increased their cooperation. The Islamic Republic, for instance, has provided Vladimir Putin with significant military assistance for its sputtering war in Ukraine by sharing the designs of its Fateh drones as well as the technology required to produce them. The North Korean Hermit Kingdom has gone even further, dispatching to Moscow ballistic missiles, massive quantities of ammunition and thousands of North Korean troops to help the Russian army. Reportedly, Putin has reportedly the favor by assisting Kim Jong-un with air defenses, the provision of a new air-to-air missile for the dilapidated North Korean air force and diplomatic support at the United Nations Security Council.

One cannot also ignore the deepening relationship between China and Russia. While Chinese officials make it plainly clear they aren’t supporting Putin’s war in Ukraine with weapons shipments, Beijing has provided the Russian leader with an alternative market to sell his crude oil and natural gas at a time when Moscow is ringfenced by U.S. and European sanctions and mostly cut off from Europe, once its biggest customer for natural gas. China has purchased more than $184 billion USD worth of crude oil from the Russians since the war in Ukraine began. Beijing is also serving as Russia’s ex officio supplier for critical components needed for Russian weapons systems, circumventing Western export controls.

The term “Axis,” though, suggests that all four powers actually have a unified view of what they want the global order to look like and have some kind of grand plan to get there. While this would be certainly mischievous and conspiratorial, and it’s likely to also be inaccurate. All of these actions are less a strong, cohesive grouping bounded by ideology and long-term considerations and more of a collection of bilateral relationships whose interests sometimes converge — until they don’t. Ergo, a shotgun marriage of convenience among the nefarious.

For example, let’s examine Russia-North Korea ties. While the two countries have strengthened relations considerably, culminating in a defense agreement ratified in November 2024 that technically mandates mutual military assistance to the other in the event of a national security crisis (like a US invasion, however unlikely that would be), we should be under no illusions that Putin and Kim are reaching out to each other because of kinship, loyalty or even ideological ambitions. Given the parlous condition of their war machine as exposed by the relentless war, the Russians, frankly, need all the outside aid they can get, whether in the form of men, materiel or munitions. North Korea is one of the few states willing to provide it at a cost, for to them, human life is less than cheap. Kim, in turn, is happy to accede to Putin’s requests but only if the terms are advantageous to his own regime. The North Koreans aren’t so much bailing the Russians out as they are exploiting Russia’s desperation. Kim is squeezing Putin as much as he can, betting that North Korean armor will be compensated with increased food and energy from Moscow and Russian defense systems that will allow Pyongyang to modernize its antiquated military.

The same dynamic is at play between China and Russia. Some prominent U.S. foreign policy experts have described Russia-China ties as a kind of “quasi-alliance” or coalition designed to erode U.S. power and influence around the world and weaken — if not eventually destroy — the system of alliances the United States built since World War II. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that Beijing and Moscow are at the very least trying to rejigger the U.S.-led world order to their advantage and at most establish an entirely new one based on a spheres-of-influence model, whereby the U.S. is eventually compelled to vacate Europe and East Asia in deference to the big powers in the regions.

It is therefore important that Washington does not minimize a key ingredient driving the Russia-China relationship: mutual convenience. Moscow and Beijing are willing to greet one another with open arms when there is some benefit to doing so but remain wary of placing all their chips in each other’s baskets. Despite Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s effusive pronouncements of “no limits” amity between their countries, there are actually plenty of limits built into the partnership. Suspicion, if not distrust, is embedded in segments of their respective national security agencies, so much so that Russian counterintelligence is trying to root out Chinese spying inside Russia. The Chinese are savvy negotiators on energy contracts and continue to press Moscow for cheaper terms to the point where Russia’s Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline, meant to serve the Chinese market, is essentially stalled. At the end of the day, Russia isn’t going to sacrifice too much for China because, despite its aging arsenal of nuclear weapons, it simply can’t afford to.

The feeling is mutual on the Chinese side; Xi may be willing to purchase cheap Russian oil and gas when it suits him, but he hasn’t shown an inclination to sacrifice Beijing’s relations with the West, particularly now when his negotiators are attempting to hammer out a new trade deal with the mercurial Trump.

Iranian relations with Russia, China and North Korea are no exception. If the Iranian Supreme Leader or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps anticipated some degree of meaningful support from their Russian, Chinese and North Korean partners during their battle with Israel, then they were likely disappointed. It turns out that the strategic partnership agreement Tehran signed with Moscow in January was as effective as the paper it was written on for its ability to resist Washington’s 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators or the Israeli air force, which shredded Iran’s air defense network. While Iran is a valuable friend for Russia and China these pragmatic powers see neither a point or any profit in getting involved in a conflict which at best could a secondary distraction or at worst, put them on the bad side of the man in the White House (who views loyalty towards himself as unworthy of reciprocation). Both also have mutually profitable relationships with the Gulf Arab states to maintain as well, and those states didn’t want to see Moscow or Beijing contributing to a longer war in its neighborhood while they are indulging Donald Trump.

Somewhat tellingly, the most Moscow was willing to offer Iran was supportive rhetoric. On June 2th1, the day the U.S. struck the Iranian nuclear program, Putin argued there was no evidence that Tehran was seeking to build a nuclear weapon. Two days later, Putin hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, where he claimed the Russian government was “making efforts…to provide support to the Iranian people” and referred to the attacks on Iran as “absolutely unprovoked aggression” without a legitimate basis. Strong words, but hardly an obstacle to a U.S. B-2 bomber. The Iranian foreign minister left Russia with nothing more than a condescending pat on the back.

China voiced equally strong condemnation on Iran’s behalf, calling the U.S. strike a violation of the U.N. Charter and used a U.N. Security Council meeting on June 24th to allege that Washington was manufacturing a crisis over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program as cover to justify military action. But much like their neighbouring Russians, the Chinese didn’t offer Tehran a lick of concrete support lest the West starts to draw comparisons with its own belligerent actions against Taiwan. If anything, China was likely just rooting for an early end to hostilities. Given the fact that nearly half of Beijing’s oil comes from the Persian Gulf, the last thing China wanted was higher oil prices or a disruption to supplies, nor would they like to see the American military seize or take out Iran’s crude producing capability.

Moreover, both China and Russia are practiced enough in the realities of realpolitik to understand that the U.S. and its ally Israel have seized the opportunity to live test their weaponry. In a very real sense as well, Trump does not need to empirically show that he has “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear program (however overwrought that rhetorical flourish may be). The fact that he could strike with relative impunity is enough to make the point: Don’t make me come after you. The president is a creature of the jungle, and he understands its laws all too well, and knows that Xi and Putin do too.

While Trump’s teams spend time on their bomb damage assessments of its strikes, agencies across the federal government focusing on longer-term grand strategy should take the 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel as a case study for how fickle international relations can be, even amongst a small group of strongmen who often talk a big game but are concerned first and foremost with safeguarding their own power — partners be damned.

A failure to account for this essential dynamic creates a number of problems for U.S. foreign policy. First, elevating the “axis” framing will likely result in the U.S. spreading its resources too thin in an effort to thwart these sprawling adversaries when what Washington truly needs is a hard-nosed, honest assessment of which threats truly require U.S. attention and which should be left to its allies to manage (the Bosnian conflict and Ukraine are but the two most recent examples which come to mind about the Europeans needing to be masters in their own house). Second, the United States risks fuelling a self-fulfilling prophecy, as punitive U.S. actions — sanctions, export controls and more military deployments in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia, to name a few — incentivize Russia, China, Iran and North Korea to consolidate their relations in an attempt to counter U.S. power.

Strategically, the U.S. will make it harder on itself to explore a necessary and pragmatic détente with any (or all) of these four states in the future if it is stuck in a George W. Bush-styled black-and-white “Axis” mindset. While such an outcome may seem implausible today, the reality of international politics is always malleable, and new developments can often spark new opportunities between previously hostile states. Overly generalizing now can produce more aggravation later.