The Axis of Ill Will

Everyone agrees that nature abhors a vacuum. At least, I imagine that such is the case.

In the world of politics, we should also agree that weakness invites aggression. Present yourself as weak and ineffectual and someone will almost assuredly try to take advantage.

Speaking of weakness, we currently have the case of our president Joe Biden. As you know the nation is currently embroiled in an absurd debate about video tape editing. Biden’s supporters insist that the tapes showing the president as old, frail and feeble, are cheap or deep fakes. Actually, the correct phrase is “deep fakes.” Apparently, some idiot did not know it and invented the phrase “cheap fakes.”

So, the G7 leaders met in Italy and we all saw the prime minister of Italy, one Georgia Meloni gently lead Biden back into the scrum, into the group. Apparently, feeble Joe had been distracted by the presence of some  paratroopers.

Of course, we could argue that Biden was not distracted; he was just looking at the troopers who had landed to his left.

On the other side, the Italian prime minister seemed to feel that Joe had gotten lost. 

Similarly, when Biden attended a fundraising event with Barack Obama, among others, and when he froze before the audience, Obama took him by the hand and led him off the stage. Again, Obama believed that Biden needed a slight push in the right direction. You may believe that Biden was perfectly compos mentis, but Barack Obama did not think so. Surely, Obama’s views have more validity than yours.

If we are too sophisticated to ponder such presumed facts, we can turn to policy. In conducting foreign policy, has Biden shown himself to be strong and in control? Do world leaders respect him or do they think of new ways to take advantage of his weakness? 

Every time Biden declared that his message to foreign actors was “Don’t”-- they did. No one cares what Joe Biden thinks. When Putin invaded Ukraine he did not worry about Joe Biden. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, it did not fear the wrath of Biden.

Now the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has traveled to North Korea to forge an alliance with Kim Jong Un. Along with China and Iran, these countries are forming what Niall Ferguson calls an axis of ill will.

To me the phrasing feels infelicitous. This axis does not involve ill will. It involves taking certain actions in order to replace America and the West as world leading powers. See also the advent of the BRICS consortium.

Niall Ferguson explains his concept:

But what all four Axis members can agree on — despite their many differences — is that the era of American primacy needs to be terminated.

What’s more, they are doing a good job of persuading many developing countries in the so-called “Global South” to take their side, blaming the war in Ukraine on NATO expansion and now claiming — as Xi told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last year — that Washington is trying to goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan.

Given the challenge of China and Co. the two political parties have staked out two different approaches. Ferguson explains:

The new Republican line — which is markedly different from the Russophile isolationism of Tucker Carlson — is that it is time for America to get tough with the Axis.

“The United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it,” Pottinger and Gallagher opined in a recent article for Foreign Affairs.

“A cold war is already being waged against the United States by China’s leaders. . . . Victory requires openly admitting that a totalitarian regime that commits genocide, fuels conflict, and threatens war will never be a reliable partner.”

One can question this caricature, or one can ask whether it is a caricature? Besides, if we continue to talk trash about China, threatening its face, then surely it is not going to be willing to cooperate.

Life, even political life, is not a one-way street.

Ferguson argues that however much we want to improve our military readiness, we do not have the cash to do so.

While it is quite easy for Republican hawks to call for increased spending on weapons and defense research, it is much harder to say where the money will come from.

According to the latest report of the Congressional Budget Office, the US budget deficit will be around $1.9 trillion this year — a whopping 6.9% of GDP, compared with the 5.6% it forecast in February.

That’s an astounding number at a time of near-full employment, reflecting the fact that the Biden administration just keeps overspending on everything from foreign aid to student-loan forgiveness.

At this point, Ferguson tosses in a concept that he developed himself. When a nation spends more on servicing its debt than it does on its armed forces, it is not going to stay great for very long:

According to the only law of history I have ever discovered, any great power that spends more on debt service than on its armed services doesn’t stay great for long.

What is the alternative to the Republican plan to amp up defense spending? Why, it involves sanctioning Chinese business and breaking its economy. 

Now, you can believe — as Jake Sullivan evidently does — that economic measures will suffice to rein in the Axis of Ill Will, and that Americans themselves will be able to avoid fighting wars.

Protectionist tariffs and export controls have their uses, no doubt.

But — as with sanctions, which have conspicuously failed to cripple Russia’s war economy — those should not be exaggerated.

How is the sanctions regime working? Not very well, Ferguson explains:

China suffers setbacks when the US restricts its access to the most sophisticated semiconductors, but it is not clear that the setbacks are more than temporary.

As the former Google chair Eric Schmidt has said: “For now, the United States remains in the lead [in artificial intelligence]. But China is catching up in many areas and has already surged ahead in others.”

According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Critical Technology Tracker, “China’s global lead extends to 37 out of 44 technologies that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range of crucial technology fields spanning defense, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, and key quantum technology areas.”

In the past five years, to give just one example, China generated just under half of the world’s high-impact research papers on advanced aircraft engines, including hypersonics.

This should make all sentient Americans pay attention.

For, if China is not merely catching up but has actually overtaken the United States in certain key fields of defense technology, nothing could be more dangerous than a hot war with China any time soon.

It is a harsh reality, exposed in multiple war games, that in such a war the United States would run out of key weapons, such as long-range anti-ship missiles, in about a week.

Not many wars are over in a week.

So, the Biden administration position invites more aggression, at a time and place of Xi Jinping’s wish. There is very little we can do about it, for now.

And we ought to understand that the Middle Kingdom is not taking it all passively. One might even imagine that the Chinese effort to flood our market with poison, as in, fentanyl, has something to do with the fact that we are trying to undermine its prosperity.

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