This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Beijing for the city’s largest-ever military parade. At a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit a few days earlier, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called on fellow members, which include Russia and Iran, to work together to build a “more just and equitable global governance system.”
For years, China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have expanded coordination with one another with the “shared aim of weakening the United States and its leadership role,” argued Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine in a 2024 essay. These countries’ convergence has “already changed the picture of geopolitics,” they wrote. “Their combined economic and military capacity, together with their determination to change the way the world has worked since the end of the Cold War, make for a dangerous mix.”
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