With emergent strategic cooperation between China, North Korea, and Russia, Northeast Asia now faces the most acute alignment of these revisionist states since the outset of the Cold War. From February 19–20, 2025, the author attended the workshop, “A New Axis? Bloc Rivalry and the Future of Conflict,” at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research (CGSR). At that event, discussants offered new interpretations of these countries’—as well as Iran’s—interests in and contributions to one another’s security objectives, as well as implications for U.S. national security. This piece aims to expand on themes of that discussion and offer the author’s reflections on how East Asian democracies can respond.
The Bloc: What It Is and What It Is Not
Whether dubbed the “Axis of Autocracy,” “Axis of Upheaval,” “Axis of Aggressors,” or simply “CRINK,” the strategic alignment among the authoritarian states of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is a broadly accepted threat to global peace and stability. Put succinctly, these countries are bound through their common adversary, the United States. Moreover, they share the ideological objective of revising the international rules-based order and benefit from the comparative advantages that collaboration offers. While benefits of this cooperation vary by scenario and state, each member offers the others strategic depth in defense materiel, technical assistance in critical technologies, an economic ballast to resist coercion, political support to legitimize aggression, and potential geopolitical distractions that can pin down U.S. resources elsewhere on the globe.
Still, the current and prospective degree of this bloc’s alignment remains a point of contestation among practitioners and academics alike. Deliberations at CGSR’s workshop led to several points of consensus on the boundaries of cooperation.
First, the bloc is unlikely to formalize like NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The informal, ad hoc nature of these states’ alignment provides them with significant strategic benefit at low transactional and reputational cost. This is particularly the case for China whose economy, military, and diplomatic clout eclipse the other three. As the “greatest” power in the bloc, China would gain the least from an institutionalized defense pact and suffer the greatest reputational costs were it to officially attach itself to its junior partners’ internationally condemnable behavior.
Second—and as a result of the first—we should set different expectations for what cooperation among bloc members looks like in practice. Two discussants offered complementary proposals for the indicators of security alignment and prospective domains of aggressive security cooperation. The former suggested that given the bloc’s structure, we should discard traditional alignment indicators like troop collocation and diplomatic exchanges and instead watch for technical assistance in arms development and agreements for preferential access to defense materiel. The latter discussant proposed that the prospect of joint war was unlikely, but we could plausibly expect bloc countries to employ short-of-war grey zone activities to support or distract from each other’s aggression when it is in their mutual interests. And even when such cooperation is untenable, they could provide each other with militarily consequential assistance in the cyber, space, and information domains.
Lastly, while these states share common enemies and overarching objectives, their specific goals—such as territorial revision and regional realignment—are “complementary rather than identical.” Still, even though affinity helps to grease the wheels of transactional diplomacy among the bloc, it is unlikely to override concrete national interests. Friction is most likely to arise when one country’s prerogatives impinge on those of the others. China would be unlikely to support Iranian brinkmanship that blocks the flow of critical petroleum through the Strait of Hormuz. Nor would Russia’s nationalist leadership necessarily be able to stomach becoming China’s junior partner were Beijing to make significant headway toward achieving regional hegemony. Moreover, bloc members might be hesitant to transfer sensitive defense technologies that could be captured and reverse engineered by the United States, or even one day turned back against them.
Taken together, the bloc represents a novelly aligned and dangerous—though not necessarily cohesive, committed, nor enduring—front of nations who can empower one another to bully East Asian democracies and resist retaliation.
Challenges and Recommendations for East Asian Democracies
In light of Russian support, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea will need to readjust their expectations for China and North Korea’s risk tolerance, vulnerability to coercion, and military synergy.
The bloc will particularly embolden the isolated Kim Regime. As the bloc grows closer, Japan, South Korea, and the West’s coercive leverage over the DPRK will weaken. On one hand, Moscow has thrown Pyongyang an economic lifeline for food, energy, and currency blocked by international sanctions, thereby relieving some pressure for the DPRK to negotiate with its neighbors. On the other hand, Russia is also sharing advanced satellite technology, air defense systems, and battlefield experience that will progressively improve North Korea’s conventional balance of power versus its neighbors. And even as China’s policy of keeping Pyongyang just stable enough remains unchanged amid warming Russo-Korean relations, China’s legacy support for the DPRK meshes well with the bloc’s emergence. As such, Seoul and Tokyo will need to adjust their expectations to meet a less patient, less punishable, and less fearful Kim.
As previously noted, China is likely to gain the least and risk the most by partnering too closely with the axis. All the same, closer alignment with Russia and the DPRK does offer meaningful strategic advantages to Beijing. For one, despite China’s overall growth in military capabilities, Russia still retains advantages in key aerospace and submarine technologies could be shared with the PRC. Moreover, even though petroleum and gas from Russia could only substitute a fraction of the mostly seaborne fuel that China would lose in a naval blockade, further collaboration with Moscow could have a meaningful effect on Beijing’s military planning. Continued joint investment in Siberian pipelines and the North Sea Route could enable Russia to provide China with a critical few extra months of fuel during what Beijing would hope to be a quick war to annex Taiwan. As for Pyongyang, many analysts have suggested a plausible—if remote—scenario in which during a cross-strait invasion, Beijing convinces the DPRK to take provocative action that forces the United States and its allies to dedicate resources to deterring North Korea rather than engaging the PLA. Taken together, East Asia’s democracies will have to contend with how the bloc may be strengthening China’s risk tolerance.
To respond to the bloc’s challenges, East Asia’s democracies should continue on their current paths of self-strengthening and cooperation but pursue them with greater intensity. As support from Russia improves Pyongyang and Beijing’s risk tolerance, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan should further invest in military capabilities to shore up deterrence and mitigate their adversaries’ growing confidence. Moreover, in order to facilitate these investments and rebuild societal resilience, South Korea and Taiwan should prioritize mending bridges at home as Seoul recovers from its democratic crisis and Taipei struggles to resolve partisan disagreements over defense priorities. Lastly, where feasible, East Asia’s democracies should continue to deepen ties with each other and strengthen their defense industrial cooperation with Europe. Especially now that Europe appears poised to rearm, Japan and South Korea can reinforce their own defense by shoring up NATO’s, which would force Moscow to direct resources toward its Western flank rather than supporting Beijing and Pyongyang. In doing so, East Asia’s democracies can work to progressively buttress the region’s balance of power, even as a more closely coordinated China, North Korea, and Russia seek to upset it.
Cameron Waltz is a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Asia Program and a Pacific Forum Young Leader. His research interests include U.S.-China strategic competition, cross-strait deterrence, inter-Korean affairs, and China’s conception of international security.
Disclaimer: All opinions in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent any organization.
Photo: The flags of Russia, China, and North Korea (from left to right) displayed on a viewing tower at the border of the three countries in Hunchun, Jilin province, northeastern China, on June 25, 2015. Source: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
