Whoever is elected US commander-in-chief this week will have a daunting inbox. However, none of the challenges will be of greater significance than deciding what to do about what former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, in a new essay in Foreign Affairs, calls the “Axis of Losers.”
Less colorfully, he explains that this refers to “the burgeoning cooperation among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia,” a challenge serious enough that experts fear it could plunge the world into either World War III or “a slew of separate conflicts scattered around the globe.”
At the Atlantic Council, where Hadley serves as the chair of our International Advisory Board and an executive vice chair of the Board of Directors, we’ve been debating what to call this quartet of autocrats, which some compare in its potential to the German-Italian-Japanese axis of World War II, or worse.
“Axis of Evil” already has been used. “Axis of Chaos” understates their common cause. “Axis of Autocrats” suggests all authoritarian leaders agree with them (and they certainly don’t). “Tryst of Tyrants” alliterates but trivializes. In my own writings, I’ve chosen “Axis of Aggressors,” so Hadley’s new entry in the naming stakes intrigued me.
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