The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the president of China, Xi Jinping, at a meeting in the Kremlin, Moscow, on March 21, 2023. ALEXEY MAISHEV (AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Ukraine has one month of artillery ammunition left and the US Congress cannot agree to send it more;
the leader of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny, is dead;
In Gaza the killing continues and there is no sign of it stopping;
Yemeni Houthis attack ships in the Red Sea;
and the North Koreans test intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In normal times it may seem that pessimism is an intellectual fad;
In times like these, it becomes a starker form of realism.
The post-1945 world order—embodied in international law, ratified by the United Nations, and sustained by the balance of nuclear terror among major powers—hangs in the balance.
The United States is divided by internal strife and has reached the limits of its capabilities;
and Europe is becoming aware that perhaps in November that country will stop fulfilling its obligations for collective defense, in accordance with Article 5 of the NATO treaty.
Faced with this new uncertainty, the old continent is redoubling its efforts to produce defense materials and its politicians are gathering courage to persuade voters to allocate 2% of GDP to guarantee their own security.
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Not only does the Western alliance face the challenge of doubling down on defense spending while maintaining unity across the Atlantic, it is also now grappling with an “axis of resistance” that may be tempted to threaten Western hegemony with a simultaneous, coordinated challenge.
The fulcrum of this axis is the “unlimited” partnership between Russia and China.
In exchange for the advanced circuits that the Chinese provide for their weapons systems, Vladimir Putin sends cheap Russian oil to China.
Together they imposed autocratic rule over most of Eurasia.
If the exhausted Ukrainian defenders are forced to cede the sovereignty of Crimea and the Donbass region to Russia, the axis of Eurasian dictators will have managed to displace a European land border by force.
This would threaten absolutely all the states on the edge of Eurasia: Taiwan, the Baltic countries... and even Poland.
Both dictatorial regimes would use their veto power in the UN Security Council to ratify the conquest, which would imply throwing away the UN Charter.
This association of dictators works together with a group of renegade rights violators, led by Iran and North Korea.
The North Koreans provide artillery munitions to Putin as they plot to invade the rest of his peninsula, and the Iranians make the drones that terrorize Ukrainians in the trenches.
Meanwhile, Iran's proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—are helping Russia and China by handcuffing the U.S. and Israel.
Unless the US manages to force Israel into a prolonged ceasefire, it will have problems controlling conflicts on three fronts (Asia, Europe and the Middle East);
Not even with a defense budget double that of its rivals can it remain on a war footing on so many fronts.
The idea of the world's democracies joining the US and Europe against the authoritarian threat seems wishful thinking.
There is no sense that, rather than joining the problem-ridden Global North, the rising democracies of the Global South (Brazil, India and South Africa) are ashamed to align themselves with regimes that rely on mass repression, cantonment of entire populations (the Uyghurs in China) and outright murder (Navalni is just the most recent example).
Certainly, the cohesion of the authoritarian axis only depends on what it opposes: American power;
at the same time, its ultimate goals divide it.
For example, the Chinese are not very happy when the Houthis block cargo transport in the Red Sea;
The world's second most powerful economy does not have much in common with the impoverished Muslim resistance army or theocratic Iran.
Furthermore, both Russia and China remain in a parasitic relationship, benefiting from a global economy sustained by American alliances and deterrence.
That's why they still hesitate to challenge the hegemonic power too directly... yet, like sharks, they smell blood in the water.
They not only survived US sanctions but continued to prosper by replacing their dependence on blocked markets with new ones in Latin America, Asia and India.
Both Russia and China discovered that American control of the world economy is no longer what it was.
That weakness they discovered could tempt them to risk undertaking a joint military challenge.
As things stand, American diplomacy and deterrence managed to keep the Axis divided.
CIA Director William Burns and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have left communication channels open with China.
It seems that US retaliatory strikes against Iran convinced the theocrats to control Hezbollah and the militias in Iraq (although not the Houthis, whom no one seems able to stop).
It doesn't take a strategic genius to see the opportunity that China and Russia may be contemplating: if they decide to openly challenge the American order—for example, through a simultaneous and coordinated offensive against Ukraine and Taiwan—the United States would have a difficult time quickly send weapons and technology to those fronts.
Nuclear weapons would not necessarily deter China and Russia from risking trying to take Taiwan and the rest of Ukraine in a coordinated manner.
All sides would pay a terrible price, but Russia has shown it is willing to spend in Ukraine, and both China and Russia may believe there will never be a better time to overthrow American hegemony.
If they joined forces, we would face the most serious challenge to the world economic and strategic order since 1945.
Nobody knows what the world would be like after that confrontation.
We cannot even assume, as we have always done, that the United States would win if it had to face two formidable powers simultaneously.
If pessimists are the ones who imagine the worst to prevent it, we should all be.
The priority for the United States should be that the authoritarian axis does not become a fully developed alliance.
Michael Ignatieff
, former Canadian politician, is a professor of history and rector emeritus at the Central European University in Vienna.
He wrote
In Search of Solace.
Living with Hope in Dark Times
(Metropolitan Books, 2021) and
Isaiah Berlin, His Life
(Pushkin Press, 2023).
Spanish translation by
Ant-Translation
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
www.project-syndicate.org
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