Why the West's Enemies Are Finally Working Together

The Axis of Resentment:

One of the big mistakes people make when trying to understand geopolitics right not is to assume that everybody wants the same thing.

They don’t.

The second mistake is assuming foreign governments think the way we do.

They don’t do that either.

Westerners tend to imagine every country ultimately wants what we want …

More democracy. More prosperity. More freedom. More international cooperation. A nice seat at the United Nations. Perhaps a climate summit or two where important people fly private jets to discuss reducing emissions.

It’s a comforting belief. It’s also nonsense.

Some countries don’t want to join the Western-led order. They want to replace it.

That’s an important distinction.

For years we’ve been told the world was becoming one giant global village. Borders would matter less. National identities would soften. Trade would bring harmony. Economic integration would make war obsolete.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine.

China began openly preparing for a confrontation over Taiwan.

Iran armed proxy groups across the Middle East.

North Korea resumed threatening everybody within missile range.

And suddenly the global village started looking less like a village and more like a bar fight.

What we’re witnessing is not a collection of isolated events. It’s the emergence of a loose coalition of countries that share a common objective.

Not a formal alliance.

Not a secret conspiracy.

Something far simpler.

A collection of regimes that would very much like to see American power diminished and Western influence reduced.

At the centre of this grouping sit Russia and China.

Russia wants to recover the prestige and influence it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Kremlin never truly accepted the outcome of the Cold War. It accepted reality because it had no choice. There’s a difference.

China’s ambitions are even larger.

The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t merely want respect. It wants primacy. It sees the twenty-first century as China’s century and believes history has unfairly delayed its rightful place atop the international order.

Around these two powers orbit a collection of smaller but significant partners.

Iran, North Korea, and Qatar.

Together, they share one conviction … the West is the problem.

That’s the glue.

Not shared values. Not shared traditions.

Shared resentment.

And resentment can be a remarkably effective organising principle.

Take a moment to consider how strange some of these partnerships actually are.

Russia spent years flattening Muslim-majority Chechnya.

China has been accused of widespread repression of Uyghur Muslims.

Iran’s regime persecutes religious minorities and treats conversion from Islam as a crime.

If a Martian landed tomorrow and examined these countries independently, he would assume they had very little in common.

Yet there they are. Standing together.

Why?

Because nations don’t build alliances around friendship. They build them around interests.

The old saying is that politics makes strange bedfellows. International politics practically specialises in it.

These countries don’t necessarily trust one another. They don’t have to. They simply recognise they share a common obstacle.

Western power. The United States. Liberal democracy. Christianity. NATO. The broader Western alliance. The rules-based order.

Call it what you like.

The labels don’t really matter.

What matters is that these countries believe the current system limits their ambitions.

And they are correct.

The existing order does make it harder for powerful countries to bully weaker neighbours. That’s precisely why it was built.

Naturally, those who wish to bully weaker neighbours are not enormous fans.

This brings us to one of the most influential thinkers you’ve probably never heard of.

Alexander Dugin.

Now, whenever Dugin’s name appears, half the internet immediately declares him the evil genius behind Russian foreign policy while the other half insists he’s an irrelevant crank. The truth, as usual, sits somewhere in the middle.

But his ideas matter.

Because they articulate a worldview increasingly attractive to governments that feel constrained by Western influence.

In 2012, Dugin published The Theory of a Multipolar World.

The title sounds like something assigned to first-year political science students to ensure they never speak to another human being again.

But the core idea is surprisingly straightforward.

The world should not be dominated by a single superpower. Instead, it should be divided into spheres of influence controlled by major civilisations.

Russia would dominate its region. China would dominate Asia. America would retreat to the Western Hemisphere. And everybody would stay in their lane.

Peace would flourish. Birds would sing. Children would laugh. The end.

At least, that’s the sales pitch. The reality is somewhat different.

Because multipolarity sounds a lot less appealing when you’re the country being absorbed into somebody else’s sphere of influence.

The theory is essentially empire dressed up in academic language.

Russia doesn’t object to domination. It objects to being dominated.

China doesn’t oppose regional hegemony. It simply wants to be the hegemon.

It’s remarkable how often political philosophies boil down to that.

For all the lofty rhetoric about balance and harmony, the practical outcome would be straightforward.

The strong would enjoy greater freedom to pressure the weak. The powerful would acquire more room to manoeuvre. And America would get out of the way.

Conveniently enough, that’s exactly what the advocates of multipolarity want.

What makes the concept politically useful is that it provides a shared ideological framework for countries with otherwise conflicting interests.

Russia doesn’t care much about China’s disputes in the South China Sea.

China doesn’t lose sleep over Iranian influence in Lebanon.

Iran isn’t particularly invested in Russian ambitions in Eastern Europe.

But all of them benefit from weakening the Western alliance system.

All of them benefit from convincing Western citizens that their own civilisation is uniquely evil.

All of them benefit when Americans become reluctant to project power abroad.

All of them benefit when Europeans become divided and distracted.

Suddenly very different interests start pointing in the same direction.

And once you understand that, many of the seemingly disconnected events of the past decade begin to look rather different.

Because modern conflict isn’t always fought with tanks. Sometimes it’s fought with narratives. Sometimes it’s fought with money. Sometimes it’s fought with social media.

And sometimes it’s fought by persuading your opponent to dismantle his own confidence while you quietly strengthen yours.

The great irony is that the West’s greatest strength - its openness - has become one of its greatest vulnerabilities.

Free societies allow criticism. Open societies encourage debate. Liberal democracies tolerate dissent.

These are virtues.

But virtues can become weaknesses when your adversaries don’t play by the same rules.

And that is where the story of what is happening right now really begins …