America’s foes are joining forces
Under both Donald Trump and President Biden, Washington has helped create the very anti-American partnerships it now bemoans.
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Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel (left) and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi reviewing the honour guard during a welcoming ceremony in Havana on June 15.
PHOTO: AFP
Peter Beinart
The Biden administration recently made two grim announcements: Iran is helping to manufacture drones for Russia. China operates a spy base in Cuba.
The message is clear: America’s foes are joining forces. They now constitute what Washington’s influential Centre for a New American Security recently called a new “axis of authoritarians”, which threatens United States interests from East Asia to the Caribbean and Eastern Europe to the Persian Gulf. The phrase implies that what binds the governments of Russia, China, Iran and Cuba is their common aversion to democracy. For a Washington foreign-policy class that often depicts America’s geopolitical struggles as contests between freedom and tyranny, it is an appealing narrative.
