Depriving Hostile States of Their Enemy

If they are united by their hostility to the U.S., our government should try to deprive one or more of them of their enemy.

Hal Brands plays up the significance of ties between Russia, China, and Iran:

Washington doesn’t yet face a full-fledged alliance of hostile powers. But that’s the wrong way to think about the convergence between three countries that are increasingly united in their hostility to the US.

Brands acknowledges that “[t]ies between Iran, China and Russia are unimpressive in comparison” with U.S. alliances, but he is determined to stoke fear about them nonetheless. He admits that they are not “allies in the way that Americans typically use that term,” but that won’t stop him from advocating for policies that will drive them closer together. Instead of focusing on the weaknesses of these relationships and how they might be pulled apart, Brands wants to exaggerate the importance of their current cooperation in order to justify antagonism towards all three at the same time.