Fueling wars and terror attacks. Illegally making nukes. Aggressively bullying nearby nations. And trying to bludgeon a neighboring country into bloody submission.
These incidents over the past few weeks highlight how US rivals and foes are increasingly challenging the American-led global order as threats multiply worldwide.
Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea have deepened their security ties as they simultaneously present Washington and its allies with new dilemmas that strain the US military.
“They have nowhere else to turn, so they turn to each other,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and the director of research in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.
“So it’s partly out of necessity, if not desperation, on their part,” he told Business Insider.
Growing challenges to the world order
A big muscle flex came streaking across much of the Pacific this week when China fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean in decades. Its flight path carried it as far as Hawaii.
The very public display, which was different from past testing, comes as China continues to strengthen and modernize its military and build up its growing nuclear force, of which its ICBMs are an important element.
The test also comes amid Chinese aggression and provocations against US allies like Japan and the Philippines, the latter of which has been in a months-long stand-off with China in the South China Sea.
China has also been running large-scale air and naval drills with Russia in the Western Pacific that Russian President Vladimir Putin has characterized as a challenge to the US-led world order.
“We pay special attention to strengthening military cooperation with friendly states,” Putin said at the start of the drills.
“Today, in the context of growing geopolitical tensions in the world, this is especially important,” he added. “We see that the United States of America is trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost.”
The joint military drills in the Pacific were part of a larger series of naval exercises that Moscow held worldwide, including in the Arctic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, as Russia sought to flex its maritime power, which remains strong.
Fueling conflicts
The biggest challenge to the rules-based global order remains Russia’s devastating and brutal war against Ukraine. The US and its allies have sent billions of dollars in security assistance to Kyiv, leading the West to receive a plethora of threats from Moscow, which routinely rattles the so-called nuclear saber.
Throughout the conflict, Russia’s war machine has received considerable support from Iran, which has provided Moscow with one-way attack drones and, as of earlier this month, short-range ballistic missiles.
US officials have denounced the deepening ties between Iran and Russia and expressed concern that Moscow has helped Tehran by sharing nuclear technology and space-related information.
“This is obviously deeply concerning,” John Kirby, a White House National Security Council spokesperson, said this month about their connection.
“It certainly speaks to the manner in which this partnership threatens European security and how it illustrates Iran’s destabilizing influence now reaches well beyond the Middle East,” he added.
Iran has also fueled conflicts in the volatile Middle East by arming and supporting proxy groups across the region, including Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are fighting Israel, and the Houthis, who continue to relentlessly attack merchant shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Tehran and its militant proxies have criticized Israel’s highly destructive retaliatory attacks, using them as justification for further aggression. The US, a key Israeli partner, has attempted to rein in Israel’s military response to curb the devastation in Gaza and prevent war with Hezbollah, but Washington primarily blames Iran and its affiliates for the chaos in the region.
Iran is reportedly trying to help the Houthis obtain anti-ship missiles from Russia, weapons that increase the dangers to defenseless commercial ships and their crews.
Iran and its network of proxies have effectively pinned down a tremendous amount of US naval firepower, which was moved into the Middle East to defend Israel and American forces in the region and counter the Houthis and other Tehran-backed threats.
Responding to Middle Eastern threats, the US has been cycling carrier strike groups into the region, with two on patrol at one point in a rare show of force. That display of power, though, came at the cost of the US carrier presence in the Pacific.
Meanwhile, North Korea, another isolated pariah state, gave the world a rare look at its nuclear weapons program earlier this month by publishing photos of a uranium enrichment site, sending a blunt signal to its foes.
The photos showed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visiting the facility in what was a clear message aimed at countries like the US that hope to restrict Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. North Korea has remained firmly committed to maintaining its nuclear status and strengthening its arsenal despite intense international pressure.
North Korea, like Iran, is also fueling conflicts and has given weapons to Russia, which started the war in Ukraine in 2022, to use against Kyiv’s armed forces. Much to the frustration of the US and its Western allies, North Korea has provided artillery and missiles.
How the West is responding to these growing threats
“We’re seeing this new axis — Russia, Iran, North Korea; we urge China not to throw their lot in with this group of renegades, renegades in the end that are costing lives here in Ukraine,” UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said during a visit to Kyiv earlier this month. There have long been concerns about China’s support for Russia, though.
Western officials have repeatedly raised concerns about Chinese activities, and this past summer, NATO labeled China a “decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
The relationships between Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea — and their behaviors — have stirred fears that the US could be headed for a great power conflict in Europe or the Pacific or, at the very least, swamped by more problems than it can handle as top rivals and foes team up.
The potential for a large-scale conflict between the US and Russia or China, for instance, has triggered warnings from experts and former officials that Washington is not ready.
Robert Gates, who served as defense secretary under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, argued in a recent op-ed that the US military is either stagnating in size or shrinking, with force readiness out of step with the rising threats.
“The defense-industrial base, after decades of neglect, cannot produce major weapons systems in the numbers we need in a timely way nor — as we have seen in Ukraine — can it produce the vast quantity of munitions required for a great-power conflict,” he wrote in a Tuesday Washington Post op-ed.
“Despite these realities, it is largely business as usual in Washington,” he said. “Dramatic change is needed to convert rhetoric into ensuring and sustaining long-term military superiority.”
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