Axis of Evil, Part Two: Russia, China, North Korea and Iran

“No, I would not protect you… In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.

You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.” 

Donald Trump, to NATO nations who did not do as he demanded, literally days before Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to invade and conquer Ukraine

Just as track and field star Jesse Owens – a 4-gold-medalist Black athlete from Ohio at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, who showed up Hitler’s not-quite-so-superior Aryan Germanic race – so too have recent US elections slammed Russian and Chinese propaganda expectations as they castigated the United States as a place where African Americans were and always would be marginalized. Then Barack Obama was elected President, and now biracial Kamala Harris has become the front-runner for the November election.

China and Russia also pledged to bury the US and fly past us in economic strength and size. Yet Russia is nothing more than a one-trick economic pony, with its major manufacturing export being military hardware and the balance of its economy dependent on the oil and gas market. See my July 2nd Russia as a Banana Republic Resource Extraction Economy blog. And as for China, that centralized economic planning, usurping the hitherto successful de facto capitalist growth, was finally showing that its one-trick-economic pony, under Xi Jinping’s autocratic control, was failing at an alarming rate. See my June 13th Xi Jinping is Not a Taipei Personality blog for the details.

Those failures are profound, but they also motivate autocratic rulers in those four Axis nations to distract their populations from their economic woes by refocusing on military grandeur and successes on the battlefield. Iran, which now controls fellow Shiite Iraq even as Americans believe Baghdad is an ally, is laughing as its surrogates (including Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, etc.) hammer away at Israel and her western allies… and have convinced much of the rest of the world to look at Israel as a pariah state. With Donald Trump once the likely victor in November – given the Donald’s bromance with autocrats everywhere – policy planners in each of these enemy nations are now stumbling over each other to figure out what to make of the radical shift in US presidential politics over the last few months.

Indeed, Kamala Harris’ nomination acceptance speech was heavily laden with support against these enemy states, emphasizing NATO and building up American military capacity, followed by a pledge to support Ukraine until Russia gives up its quest to conquer that nation. Trump is/was malleable, susceptible to manipulation through flattery and his own desire to have autocratic power, and wildly predictable. That the US economy survived the pandemic to reassert her place as the best performing economy on Earth, hammered home that these toxic autocrats’ assumptions about the downfall of the United States, which they pictured as on the verge of a civil war, were simply wrong.

Yet there is so much happening that we have to ask, even as the United States has an unexpected advantage over these foes, what can we do about all these challenges? “The current moment is uniquely complicated, with multiple crises around the world increasingly interconnected. Bloody wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are showing no signs of abating, Iran is contemplating a military response against Israel, China is engaging in low-level sea clashes with the Philippines and intimidating Taiwan, and North Korea is ramping up provocations against South Korea.

“Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served in senior national-security roles in the Trump White House, compared the state of the world to a game of whack-a-mole—with all the moles now up. ‘Because the crises erupt at the same time, the capability is not there to handle all simultaneously, and it gets out of control,’ he said. ‘The ability to react is limited. You’re stretched, and you never want to be stretched.’

“Though still by far the biggest military power, the U.S. is hard-pressed to deal with the world on fire, especially as China keeps growing its military muscle, some strategists warn. While the U.S. and the European nations have moved to increase military production, including at brand-new ammunition plants, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these steps are nowhere near sufficient for the requirements of modern conflict, they say… ‘We are already involved in two wars, and we are struggling right now to keep up providing munitions and equipment to our allies. If we get involved in a global war, we would be significantly challenged to deal with our adversaries and the capabilities that they have,’ said retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff for the Army.” The Wall Street Journal, August 24th.

The falling Chinese economy is a profound embarrassment to its leadership. “Beijing’s solution to a weak Chinese economy—putting the country’s factory sector on steroids—is squeezing businesses around the world and raising the specter of a new global trade war… The European Union’s recent decision to impose tariffs on imported Chinese electric vehicles is only the latest sign of deepening tensions. The U.S. earlier this year hiked levies on Chinese steel, aluminum, EVs, solar cells and other products. Turkey has jacked up duties on Chinese EVs, while Pakistan raised tariffs on Chinese stationery and rubber.

“Other countries have opened antidumping investigations to see whether Chinese goods are being sold below fair value. India is examining Chinese pigments and chemicals. Japan is looking at electrodes. The U.K. is investigating imports of excavators and biodiesel, while Argentina and Vietnam are probing Chinese microwave ovens and wind towers.

“Behind it all is a bold but risky calculation by Beijing that investing more in manufacturing can restore the country’s economic vitality and build up its industrial resilience without triggering so much international pushback that it threatens China’s future... Interviews with policy advisers in Beijing and people who have consulted with Chinese officials show that China’s leadership faced a pivotal crossroads last year, as the country’s real-estate bust brought the economy to one of its weakest points in decades.” The Wall Street Journal, August 22nd.

But as much as China is taking on the United States, its dumping of less expensive manufactures is hurting developing nations the most. As in this example: “Thousands of miles away, in Chile, iron ore miner and steelmaker CAP is grappling with Beijing’s continued commitment to low-end commodity manufacturing, as an onslaught of cheap Chinese metal hits its shores. The firm said this month that it would shutter its giant Huachipato steel mill in central Chile indefinitely, with the loss of some 2,200 jobs. The company said it can’t compete with low-price Chinese metal even after the government raised tariffs on steel bars and other imported products.” And smaller nation do not have counter-leverage or the ability to protect themselves from China’s bully economics.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if Donald Trump’s presidential and post-2020 track record are any measure, we should realize both that Trump is the least likely leader to counter these autocratic efforts and that his stated intentions would weaken the United States both as to influence and economic power.