Christopher S. Chivvis
Biography
Carnegie Endowment
Publications
Cooperation Between China, Iran, North Korea, and RussiaThe idea that the United States now faces an imposing new Axis of Autocracy around which it should orient its national security strategy has caught on recently, but it risks exaggerating the degree of cooperation between these four U.S. adversaries—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Cooperation between these U.S. adversaries does present clear national security challenges in specific areas, including Ukraine, future nuclear proliferation, and what I will call opportunistic coordination in a crisis. Policymakers should be careful, however, to avoid exaggerating the overall depth of these countries’ cooperation in order not to waste precious U.S. resources or create a self-fulfilling prophesy that more deeply unifies them.