On July 17, an Iranian missile struck the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, leaving three American soldiers dead and four others wounded. The attack was characterized by an unusual and alarming degree of precision. In the weeks that followed, U.S. intelligence and military officials made a critical discovery: prior to the launch, Tehran had acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, granting the operational clarity necessary to effectively hone its targeting. In the aftermath of the strike, Iran obtained additional imagery, potentially allowing its military planners to assess the damage and refine vectors for future assaults. These high-grade images, investigators found, originated from Chinese commercial or state-backed entities.
China, however, is not acting in isolation when it comes to assisting Iran’s military apparatus. Moscow has similarly played a pivotal role in helping Tehran locate and strike American and allied positions across the Middle East. Just two days before a March 27 attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia—an incident that wounded 12 American service members—14 Russian spy satellites tracked overhead. U.S. officials later concluded that Moscow had funneled critical satellite intelligence directly to Iran, facilitating the precision strikes. Beyond reconnaissance, Moscow has supplied Tehran with advanced weaponry and military expertise, including upgraded variations of Iranian drones that had been battle-tested and refined on the front lines in Ukraine. Furthermore, Russian engineers are actively assisting Iran in the development of sophisticated supersonic cruise missiles designed to evade both U.S. and Israeli air defense systems.
Neither Russia nor China has directly entered the armed conflict between Iran and the United States. Crucially, they have found that they do not need to. By providing vital intelligence on American targets, delivering critical military technology and components, and offering unwavering economic and diplomatic support, these powers can supply Iran with everything it requires to sustain its military campaigns without formally joining its wars.
When the United States entered these interconnected conflicts, it did so with structural advantages that its adversaries historically lacked: a vast network of formal allies, established overseas military bases, deep intelligence-sharing arrangements, institutional defense partnerships, and highly interoperable forces spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Yet, as the conflict has worn on, many of Washington’s traditional partners have shown a distinct reluctance to closely associate themselves with current military campaigns. Some allies have denied the United States specific forms of military access, at least temporarily, while others have publicly resisted American calls to help secure vital maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz.
This dynamic illustrates a striking geopolitical shift since researchers first characterized Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as an "axis of upheaval" in the pages of Foreign Affairs two years ago. Washington’s adversaries initially entered this era of friction with a comparatively weak and fragmented network, while the United States commanded a far stronger one. Yet, after spending the past few years helping Russia sustain its war effort in Ukraine, members of this revisionist axis have figured out how to make their cooperative network function seamlessly in a new theater. They have fine-tuned their collaboration to render their individual partners more resilient—and considerably more dangerous to the United States—while successfully containing their own costs and risks. Washington, conversely, risks creating friction across many of its traditional partnerships rather than deepening them, threatening to squander its network advantages just as its adversaries are learning to maximize theirs.
Sources of Upheaval
The global security landscape has shifted dramatically since 2024. Most visibly, the United States itself has increasingly become a primary source of disruption within the international system. The Trump administration has openly challenged established international institutions, placed severe strains on traditional alliances, and embraced a heavily transactional approach to foreign policy. By upending long-standing trade agreements, threatening the sovereignty of traditional allies such as Canada and Denmark, and intentionally projecting policy unpredictability, Washington has altered the diplomatic terrain. At the same time, the administration has pursued improved relations with China, North Korea, and Russia while simultaneously seeking to isolate and weaken Iran. Yet, none of these diplomatic maneuvers have loosened the strategic ties binding America’s primary adversaries together.
Early in the Trump administration, optimistic U.S. officials expressed hope that normalizing diplomatic relations with Moscow might drive a wedge between Russia and the broader axis. However, President Donald Trump’s frequently expressed bonhomie toward the Kremlin has failed to open any meaningful gaps among the remaining three nations. From Moscow’s perspective, the administration has proven incapable of delivering a durable settlement on Ukraine. Furthermore, any rapprochement driven by the White House is viewed in Moscow as inherently temporary, given ongoing congressional pressure against Russia and the likelihood that a future U.S. administration might pivot back to a much tougher stance.
More fundamentally, attempts to peel members away from the axis misunderstand the core grievances that hold the coalition together. Its member states share a deep-seated objection to an international order that they view as permanently enshrining Western dominance at their own expense. More pointedly, they fiercely oppose the extraordinary unilateral power the United States wields to constrain, isolate, and punish them, and ultimately to threaten the survival of their regimes. Recent aggressive U.S. actions have only rekindled these existential concerns. The American capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and the targeted killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have reinforced long-standing fears in Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran regarding unilateral U.S. military intervention and regime security.
While axis nations may moderate their anti-American rhetoric when it serves a tactical purpose, their core motivation to reduce their vulnerability to American power remains entirely intact. The Trump administration’s open skepticism toward the post-war international order will do nothing to ease the minds of leaders in axis capitals. On the contrary, Washington’s push for a more transactional and coercive global environment may actually increase the pragmatic value of their mutual partnerships. As international rules and institutions constrain nations less and brute power matters more, countries will inevitably seek reliable partners to help them blunt economic sanctions, secure access to critical technologies, compensate for individual military weaknesses, expand their diplomatic room for maneuver, and resist international isolation. Axis cooperation is rapidly evolving to meet this operational moment.
New Regions, New Problems
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, cooperation among the four axis nations was relatively compartmentalized and straightforward to map. Iran provided Russia with loitering munitions, while North Korea supplied artillery ammunition, ballistic missiles, and eventually combat troops. China quickly emerged as Moscow’s most critical economic lifeline, buying discounted Russian oil while supplying the machine tools, microelectronics, and dual-use components required to sustain and expand Russian military manufacturing. In return, Moscow began transferring increasingly sophisticated military technology to its partners.
Although these initial exchanges were highly consequential, they could largely be understood as a series of bilateral transactions focused narrowly on Russia’s war in Ukraine. That is increasingly no longer the case. Cooperation has become thoroughly networked, flexible, and geared toward solving complex strategic problems across multiple new geographic regions.
Russia’s domestic drone program illustrates this evolutionary shift. Iran initially sold its Shahed-series drones to Moscow and subsequently helped Russian defense industries establish domestic manufacturing lines. Rather than simply replicating the foreign technology, Russia incorporated advanced Chinese electronic components and continually modified the drones’ navigation systems, communications equipment, payloads, propulsion, and operational tactics based on real-time feedback from Ukrainian battlefield defenses. Newly established military units—such as the Unmanned Systems Forces, a dedicated drone-and-robotics branch of the Russian armed forces—helped institutionalize this rapid adaptation cycle.
The combination of domestic industrial adaptation and axis-wide technological sharing has proven remarkably effective. Russia’s latest jet-powered Geran drones, for instance, are significantly faster, carry larger explosive payloads, and are much harder for Ukrainian air defense forces to intercept than earlier propeller-driven variants.
Crucially, these Russian military improvements do not remain confined within Russia; they circulate back through the broader axis network. For Iran, the military technology that originally flowed north to Russia is now returning in an upgraded form, accompanied by hard-won tactical advice drawn from Russia’s extensive combat experience in Ukraine. As these advanced jet-powered drones inevitably appear in the Middle East, Iranian attacks on U.S. military forces and regional energy infrastructure will become considerably more difficult and costly to defend against.
North Korea and China are also reaping significant benefits from this collaborative loop. According to intelligence reports from Ukraine, Russia has brokered deals to help Pyongyang expand its own production of Shahed-type drones. North Korean engineers have gained vital technical expertise while working inside Russia’s massive Yelabuga drone manufacturing facility, and North Korean troops deployed alongside Russian forces have acquired firsthand experience in integrating uncrewed systems into modern, high-intensity combat. Similarly, Chinese military personnel have received specialized training in drone warfare from Russian forces, while Chinese component suppliers are gaining invaluable real-world data on how their electronics perform in combat environments. Beijing is thus deriving substantial strategic insights from an evolution in drone warfare that initially began with Iranian technology and was subsequently refined on Ukrainian battlefields.
The Model Can Travel
Just two years ago, it remained an open question whether the partnerships binding the four members of the axis could outlast the specific war that accelerated their formation. Analysts questioned whether the relationships would lose momentum if the conflict in Ukraine eventually ended and Moscow no longer relied heavily on Iranian drones, North Korean munitions, or Chinese economic and technological backing.
However, the war has done more than simply create an immediate, desperate need for cooperation; it has provided a concrete proof of concept for what these partnerships can accomplish collectively, far surpassing what any single nation could achieve on its own. Ukrainian defenses, sweeping Western sanctions, Western military supplies, and diplomatic isolation have all proved markedly less effective than they would have been had Russia been forced to operate in total isolation. By helping one another withstand intense external pressure, the axis countries have collectively diminished the ability of the United States and its allies to compel them to change their strategic behavior.
Iran is now demonstrating that this collaborative model is portable and can be exported to other theaters. Russia’s support for Tehran has been operationally meaningful while remaining carefully bounded. Even while fighting its own high-intensity war in Ukraine, Moscow has consistently found ways to help Iran strike American targets and sustain its regional campaigns through diplomatic cover and targeted material support, while deftly stopping short of actions that could drag Russia into a direct military conflict with the United States. China has maintained an even more cautious public posture, but its steady supply of dual-use electronics and continuous purchases of sanctioned Iranian oil have similarly enhanced Tehran’s capacity to withstand sustained U.S. economic and military pressure.
Such diplomatic and operational restraint is not evidence of a weakening axis; rather, it is a defining operational feature of how these partnerships function. With the notable exception of North Korean combat troops deployed directly on Russia’s behalf, axis nations have largely avoided fighting one another’s direct wars. Instead, they provide low-profile political backing, critical economic support, intelligence, advanced technology, and limited military assistance whenever doing so advances their own national interests at a manageable level of risk.
Furthermore, the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have taught the axis another valuable lesson: supporting a fellow member does not merely strengthen the direct recipient. Conflict in one theater can inadvertently create strategic opportunities for partners elsewhere. For instance, Iranian disruptions and threats surrounding the Strait of Hormuz sent global oil prices soaring, delivering an unexpected financial windfall to Russia while prompting Washington to temporarily ease certain restrictions on Russian oil exports. Iran’s regional war thus generated vital economic resources that Moscow could redirect to sustain its own military machine.
Similarly, prior to launching major escalations against Iran, the United States was forced to redeploy key military assets, including vital air and missile defense systems, away from the Indo-Pacific and into the Middle East. As fighting persisted, the U.S. military was compelled to position two aircraft carriers in the region simultaneously, leaving zero carriers stationed in the Indo-Pacific. This reallocation granted China immediate operational freedom resulting from a thinned U.S. military presence in the western Pacific, while leaving Beijing less vulnerable as American strategic munitions stockpiles were drawn down. If Washington settles into a prolonged, open-ended strategy of containing Iran—reminiscent of its containment policy toward Iraq during the 1990s—Beijing stands to enjoy the strategic advantages of those military diversions for years to come.
Do No Further Harm
The ongoing experience with the axis of upheaval demonstrates that the sheer size and nominal strength of an alliance network matter little if its members fail to translate their individual capabilities into effective collective power. The United States and its allies start from a position of considerable structural advantage: possessing far greater economic and technological resources, more capable professional militaries, and a vastly larger network of international allies and partners. The central question facing Washington is which network can ultimately make better, more cohesive use of its available assets.
That strategic challenge starts squarely at the level of leadership. For decades, U.S. foreign policy championed an international order that explicitly forbade wars of conquest, upheld the freedom of the seas, maintained a generally open global economy, and permitted populations to exercise democratic rights, even where autocracies persisted. Washington coupled this sweeping vision with an implicit, foundational bargain: any sovereign nation that wished to join the rules-based order could do so, and upholding the order’s basic principles conferred tangible benefits from the United States, including preferential trade relations, diplomatic backing, and, in many cases, formal military alliances.
For countries that outright rejected the open international order, as the axis nations do today, the material benefits were far fewer and the punitive penalties considerable. The United States routinely used economic sanctions, political pressure, and sometimes direct military force against rogue states, while actively resisting the establishment of competing geopolitical orders like the communist bloc of the Cold War. U.S. foreign policy operated from the seemingly uncontroversial premise that Washington should steadfastly befriend like-minded nations and treat them demonstrably better than rejectionist regimes.
By contrast, the Trump administration has frequently demonstrated inclinations that point in the exact opposite direction. The U.S. ambassador to China recently revealed that President Trump offered to sell advanced weaponry to Beijing while simultaneously stalling crucial arms sales to democratic Taiwan. The president has repeatedly expressed greater personal interest in and affection for North Korea’s authoritarian dictator, Kim Jong Un, than for South Korea’s democratically elected leader. The administration has also intermittently pressured Ukraine to cave in its existential war of survival against Russian aggression, while making abrupt threats against longstanding regional partners like Oman. Such erratic moves simultaneously strengthen the resolve of axis countries while undercutting the internal cohesion of the very network best positioned to confront them.
Stopping further self-inflicted wounds would represent a constructive baseline in dealing with the broader axis. Beyond merely halting damaging policies, Washington must actively help its partners grow stronger. Just as the axis countries are actively assisting one another in working around economic sanctions, preserving access to critical technologies and components, and sustaining their national economies under pressure, the United States should deliberately aid its own network. This requires strengthening supply chains that run through trusted allies, sharing advanced technology safely, and encouraging partners to take on greater regional security burdens.
However, Washington must proceed with caution, ensuring it does not transfer defense responsibilities faster than allies can develop the domestic military capabilities to absorb them—and avoiding moves that erode mutual trust, operational interoperability, and strategic coordination. Otherwise, the United States and its individual allies risk becoming locally more capable while remaining collectively less effective.
The United States should also reverse policy measures that directly undercut its own alliance network. Imposing aggressive tariffs and other protectionist measures harms allied economies and damages their industrial defense bases. Expressing a desire to acquire allied territory or attempting to publicly undermine friendly political leaders does not foster a capable international network. Instead, Washington must project clear strategic vision and reliable leadership to its friends, avoiding jarring uncertainty and coercive transactionalism.
Even if the United States successfully changes course, American and allied policymakers must prepare themselves for a long-term strategic struggle. As demonstrated by the complex, unsuccessful regime-change efforts involving Iran, there are no simple shortcuts to besting revisionist axis countries, whether acting together or individually. This ongoing contest of rival networks will be nearly global in scope, waged across multiple operational domains, with enormous geopolitical stakes riding on the outcome. The United States and its allies retain the underlying capacity to prevail—they must now demonstrate the sustained political will to do so.
