Are America’s four main adversaries really in cahoots?

Editor’s note, September 2, 12:10 pm ET: This week, the leaders of Iran, North Korea, and Russia, along with around two dozen other heads of state, are in China for a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, which doubles as an advertisement for China’s bid for global leadership^[1]. In February, Vox reported on how American policymakers and scholars are increasingly looking at these four countries as a cohesive unit, brought together by a mutual interest in overturning a US-led international order.

Since then, the limitations of this alliance have been illustrated: Iran’s allies notably did not provide much aid when it came under Israeli and US airstrikes in June. The Trump administration has also been far less interested than Biden’s in isolating and pushing back against these regimes, as shown by President Donald Trump’s recent summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. But this week’s festivities in Beijing also make clear that these countries continue to work closely together and that others — perhaps India^[2] — may be falling into their orbit in the face of an increasingly erratic US foreign policy^[3]. The story below was originally published on February 3.

Hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, China’s Xi Jinping made a call to Russian President Vladimir Putin^[4] in which, according to the Chinese foreign ministry’s readout, the two leaders pledged to deepen their “strategic coordination” and “practical cooperation” and “firmly support each other.”

Just a few days earlier on January 17, Putin and his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, signed a 20-year strategic partnership agreement^[5], pledging a wide range of military cooperation.

Meanwhile, North Korea is pledging to send more troops to Russia^[6], where they have been fighting alongside Russian forces against Ukraine since last October, taking shockingly high losses^[7].

It’s clear that America’s principal global adversaries are increasingly cooperating, and policymakers and experts are increasingly treating these four countries in particular — China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — as a cohesive unit. They’ve been called the “axis of upheaval^[8],” the “quartet of chaos^[9],” or simply the “CRINKs.^[10]”

The cooperation between the four is hard to deny, and while some of these countries have been erstwhile friends since the Cold War, the relationship has certainly deepened since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But what does this “axis” actually stand for? Is it just an alliance of convenience or something deeper? And how will a new US administration, one that takes a much more transactional approach to foreign policy and is far less invested in promoting democracy abroad, deal with the quartet?

What do these strange allies have in common?

The four members of this group are all autocracies, but they don’t share an official ideology. China is a one-party communist party state with capitalist characteristics. Russia is a conservative, nationalist oligarchy. Iran is a Shiite Islamic theocracy, and North Korea is a hybrid of state communism, radical self-reliance, and racial supremacism^[11].

Nor do they have much in common economically: China is the world’s second-largest economy, largest exporter, and an inextricable centerpiece of the global economy, while North Korea is basically an economic nonentity (unless you count cybercrime^[12]).

But as Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New America Security (CNAS) argued in an influential article for Foreign Affairs^[13] last year, the four countries “are united in their opposition to the prevailing world order and its US leadership.” What Western countries see as the “rules based international order” established out of the ashes of World War II, these countries see as a cloak for American power.

There are other commonalities.

“They share a belief in state-based political rights rather than any kind of individual rights or human rights,” Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at CNAS, said. “They share a vision of spheres of influence.” In other words, it’s countries’ interests on the world stage that have to be respected, not those of their citizens.

Or as Xi and Putin put it in their joint communique^[14] issued shortly after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, they “stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions.”

All four also view themselves as the inheritors of important historical civilizations. Putin’s arguments for the invasion of Ukraine^[15] at times seem to refer more often to events in the ninth century than to recent grievances. North Koreans are taught that their country is one of the cradles of world civilization^[16]. And China has sought to promote^[17] an “Ancient Civilizations Forum,” composed of countries deemed to have inherited “great ancient civilizations” — one of which is Iran.

Kendall-Taylor and Fontaine have dubbed the alliance the “axis of upheaval” — a term that brings to mind the “axis of evil” — referred to by President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address^[18], where he built a case for the war in Iraq. That “axis” of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea never made much sense. For one thing, at the time, the Iranian and Iraqi governments were mortal enemies, and only became much closer as a result^[19] of the American invasion of Iraq.

By contrast, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea actually are working together. But the “axis of evil” association is one reason why Peter Van Praagh^[20], founder and president of the Halifax Security Forum, a high-profile annual national security gathering, prefers “CRINKs,” an acronym he coined in 2023.

Van Praagh contrasts the term to BRICS (the economic grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), which he told Vox “evokes strength and sort of the action of building something, whereas CRINK has a certain stench to it.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helped cement the alliance

Iran and North Korea are generally viewed as the junior partners in the quartet, due to their relative size and economic clout. China is undoubtedly the most powerful and influential of the four, as reflected in America’s most recent National Defense Strategy^[21], which defined the People’s Republic of China as the “pacing challenge” for American national security.

But Russia is in many ways the catalyst driving the group forward and bringing it together. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine accelerated the deepening of ties that had already been developing for years.

Shortly after Russia’s invasion, Putin and Xi meant to proclaim a friendship with “no limits,” including Russia affirming its support for Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China^[22]. Though China is not believed to have directly provided weapons to Russia since the war began, trade between the two countries has grown dramatically^[23] over the course of the war as Western countries have imposed increasingly draconian sanctions on the Russian economy.

China is now Russia’s key supplier of civilian consumer goods like cars and clothing as well as “dual use” materials, like the microchips and machine parts that Russia uses to sustain its war machine. China, in return, has been buying massive amounts of Russian oil^[24] at a discount — thanks to sanctions. According to US officials, China has been receiving Russian technical help with its submarine and missile programs^[25] as well.

In September 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rode his private train^[26] to Russia for talks with Putin amid reports that the Russians were buying millions of North Korean artillery shells and rockets^[27]. North Korea and Russia signed a mutual defense treaty last summer^[28], and last October, thousands of North Korean troops were sent to Russia^[29] to help retake territory in the Kursk region which is currently occupied by Ukrainian forces.

Russia and Iran were the principal backers of Bashar al-Assad’s now-toppled regime in Syria^[30]. Iran has also long been a customer of Russian military hardware^[31], notably including several S-300 air defense missile systems as well as tanks and submarines. Since the invasion, however, Russia has been the customer^[32], particularly of Iran’s Shahed “kamikaze” drones. According to the Ukrainian government, Russia has launched more than 8,000 Iranian drones^[33] since the start of the war. The US also says Iran has been sending Russia short-range ballistic missiles^[34].

At times, the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have seemed increasingly intertwined. Russia was reportedly in talks last year to send missiles to the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen^[35], while Ukraine provided aid to the rebels fighting Assad^[36] in Syria. In 2023, Iran was invited, along with several other countries, to join the BRICS^[37], which Russia in particular has sought to promote an alternative to Western-led groupings like the G7.

To explain the alliance that has developed since the war in Ukraine, Yun Sun^[38], a senior fellow and director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center, said Chinese commentators often use the phrase: “They form a circle and they keep each other warm in a harsh winter. That’s the mentality. They’re looking for someone to have their back when they’re in this strategic competition with the United States.”

Is this just a coalition of the sanctioned?

One other thing these countries have in common is that they’re all the target of a US-led economic sanctions regime, and extremely eager to find ways to overturn that regime. Putin, in particular, has been keen to develop a global payment system as an alternative to the dollar, which he argues the US uses as a political weapon.

Some experts argue that it’s actually US economic pressure that has created the axis.

“This is an alliance of United States’ making,” says Vali Nasr^[39], professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “It’s not that these countries have natural affinities or strategic convergence. But going back several presidents, the US has basically followed the same strategy against all these countries at the same time in a way that brings them together.”

For example, a so-called “shadow fleet” of opaquely registered and insured oil tankers^[40] that has emerged to transport Russian and Iranian oil around the world, including to China, effectively creating a parallel global oil market.

Others question whether the four countries should really be grouped together this way. “I don’t think it’s a useful construct, because our relationship with Russia is very different from our relationship with China,” said Eugene Rumer^[41], director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment and a critic of the axis concept^[42]. “In order to deal with these countries effectively, the threats that they pose to us, I think we need to look at them in a more disaggregated manner.”

Framing global politics as a competition between ideologically opposed blocs also risks raising the ire of non-Western democracies such as India, Brazil, and South Africa, all of whom have also sought to maintain good relations with Washington.

Some would say that’s the point: a country like South Africa can’t claim to uphold international law when it comes to Gaza^[43] while also effectively helping to enable Russia’s invasion^[44] of Ukraine.

But leaders of these countries, suffice it to say, don’t see it that way. “Many insist on dividing the world into friends and enemies. But the most vulnerable are not interested in simplistic dichotomies,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said at a recent BRICS summit.

Kendall-Taylor acknowledged that US economic pressure and other pressures may have deepened ties between the axis countries, but asked, “What would have been the alternatives to the US policies that were pursued? When Russia invades Ukraine, should we not sanction them?”

Trump vs. CRINKs?

Even if these countries form a coherent grouping today, many don’t expect it to last.

Rumer points at the Russian-Iran relationship as an example of the fragility of ties between these countries. The recently signed partnership between the two countries is notably not a mutual defense agreement^[45] — they’re under no obligation to help each other if they come under attack. In fact, it’s more or less an open secret that Russia, which operated air defense systems in Syria, tolerated Israeli air strikes against Iranian assets^[46] and proxies in that country for years.

“If I were Iran, I certainly wouldn’t count on Russia to be a reliable protector if, say, the United States and Israel decide it’s time to strike Iranian nuclear facilities,” Rumer said.

Complicating the discussion of the future of the CRINKs axis is the arrival of a new US president with a very different approach. In the last weeks of his presidency, President Joe Biden approved a classified national security memorandum^[47], which reportedly lays out the threat posed by cooperation between the four countries — including efforts to interfere in America’s elections^[48] — and proposed measures to combat them.

Critics of the Biden administration often argued that for all the former president’s invocations of a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and upholding international law, it often fell short of those ideals in, for example, its support of the war in Gaza or its relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Trump, on the other hand, is unlikely to refer to these ideals at all. Noting the administration’s early decisions to pull out of the Paris climate agreements and the World Health Organization, Kendall-Taylor said that during Trump’s first term, “we really didn’t have people present in the UN and a lot of the committees where a lot of important business is done. And we ceded a lot of that space to China and other countries that might be sympathetic to their vision for the future.”

Some of Trump’s advisers are also inherently skeptical of taking on all four of these countries at once. Sometimes referred to as “prioritizers,”^[49] they argue that the US needs to extract itself from conflicts with Russia in Europe and Iran in the Middle East to focus on the real threat: China.

“Is it in America’s interest, are we going to put in the time, the treasure, the resources that we need in the Pacific right now badly?” national security adviser Mike Waltz said^[50] at a recent event, referring to US support for Ukraine.

During his first term, Trump famously “fell in love^[51]” with Kim during their unusual nuclear diplomacy, and for all his China-bashing rhetoric, often touted his good working relationship with Xi and pushed for a trade deal with Beijing^[52]. As he enters his second, he’s seeking a deal with Russia and Ukraine^[53] to end the war, and hasn’t ruled^[54] out seeking a new nuclear deal with Iran, despite the fact that he pulled out of the last nuclear deal during his first term.

Nasr, who served as a senior adviser on Afghanistan in President Barack Obama’s State Department, pointed to Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon’s outreach to China during the Cold War as an example of how the US could seek to divide its adversaries rather than continuing to unite them.

“We’ve been following a kind of a moralistic, simplistic view that is based on casting your enemies sort of in the most negative light, which they may deserve, but that’s not strategy,” he said. “The clever strategy would be to say, ‘Okay, what incentive could get Iran to separate itself from Russia?’”

There are certainly fissures within the group. The Chinese-North Korean relationship — so close it’s been traditionally referred to as like “lips and teeth^[55],” has reportedly been strained by the North Koreans’ deepening relations with Russia; Russian leaders are clearly uneasy^[56] about their growing economic reliance on China, but don’t have much choice in the matter as long as they keep pursuing the costly war in Ukraine. Exploiting those fissures to the US’s benefit is another matter.

Van Praagh is skeptical. “There’s not going to be any separating Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China,” he said. “And there’s not going to be any separating Russia from Iran and North Korea, because it needs their material support right now.”

Rather than compromising on Ukraine to focus on China, he argues that the outcome of the Ukraine war is what will determine whether China feels it can have its way in Taiwan. “We really have to achieve Ukrainian victory, and that means pushing Russia out of Ukraine, and that, in and of itself, is going to provide incredible opportunities to the whole world,” he said.

Of course, Trump has also expressed some sympathy^[57] toward Russia’s position that NATO was encroaching on its sphere of influence in Ukraine. And his position on the importance of defending Taiwan’s sovereignty has been pretty noncommittal^[58]. His rhetoric on Greenland^[59] and Panama^[60] and extreme hardball approach^[61] to an immigration dispute with Colombia suggests his views of spheres of influence might parallel Russia and China’s in some ways. As Yaroslav Trofimov of the Wall Street Journal^[62] wrote in a recent essay, “Today the concept of a rules-based international order looks more and more utopian.” We may instead be returning to a 19th-century style global order in which “empires recognized each other’s spheres of influence worldwide, including the right to oppress and dominate less powerful countries and peoples within those spheres.”

In other words, failing to defeat the axis, or divide it, the US may simply end up joining it.