There Is No 'Axis of Authoritarianism'

The “allies” are on the sidelines because they were never allies.

No other governments are coming to aid Venezuela because the “axis of authoritarianism” is nonsense promoted by lazy Western analysts:

Russia, China, Cuba, Iran and other anti-American powers are offering little more than words of support for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as he faces a U.S. military buildup that President Trump has said is aimed at forcing his ouster. Like Iran when it came under military attack from Israel and the U.S., Venezuela is finding its authoritarian allies on the sidelines of conflict.

It isn’t surprising that these other states aren’t doing anything to protect Venezuela because none of these countries is allied with any of the others. Hawks have been trying to will an “axis of authoritarianism” into existence for at least twenty years so that they can use it to stoke fear and exaggerate foreign threats. For the most part, the authoritarian states haven’t obliged by creating any alliances among them. The “axis of authoritarianism” isn’t real and it never was.

These states aren’t lifting a finger to help Venezuela because they have no reason and no obligation to do so. The “allies” are on the sidelines because they were never allies. Describing them as allies was a lazy, inaccurate shorthand that many analysts and politicians have been using to make all these states appear more threatening than they are.

Venezuela obviously poses no threat to the U.S. on its own. That is why interventionists have been going out of their way to hype the connections with great power rivals. The trouble for the fearmongers is that the connections are much more tenuous and much less significant than they have claimed.

There has been increased military cooperation between some of these authoritarian states, but except for Russia and North Korea none of it comes close to a formal treaty alliance. Hawks want the public to believe that there is a grand anti-American coalition forming around the world to menace the U.S. to sell the same braindead aggressive policies they have always favored. Whenever the U.S. threatens or attacks one of these states, we see that there is no coalition. The U.S. is not facing off against a globe-spanning “axis.” It is bullying and attacking much smaller, weaker countries for no legitimate reason.

The report quotes Ryan Berg from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) saying, “The so-called axis of authoritarianism looks much stronger in peacetime.” It would be more accurate to say that Western analysts invented the imaginary axis before the wars of the 2020s started, and those wars have since exposed it as a fiction. It’s not “a little hollow in times of need,” as Berg puts it. It doesn’t exist.

Beyond demonstrating once more why hawkish foreign policy analysts are terrible at their jobs, this matters because it shows how flimsy the case for attacking Venezuela is. Venezuela is not part of a global “axis of authoritarianism” because this thing does not exist. The Venezuelan government has no real allies to speak of, and that has never been clearer than it is right now. Other U.S. adversaries do not threaten our country through Venezuela. When interventionists claim this, they are spewing falsehoods. Like everything else in the administration’s case for attacking Venezuela, it is a lie.