“Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America”: Such was President Donald Trump’s entirely accurate message Tuesday to Xi Jinping in advance of Beijing’s elaborate military parade through Tiananmen Square.
That’s what it is: an Axis of Anti-Americanism, with Iran’s rulers serving as a junior partner — an alliance based on a shared interest in destroying any and all norms of global civilization that might get in its members’ way.
That doesn’t mean they’ll always ride to each others’ rescue: None of them had Tehran’s back in June, for example, when Israel and America devastated Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.
But Monday’s big, warm Xi-Putin hugs should again debunk all those voices on the American right who keep imagining Russia can be peeled off from this alliance.
Yes, China is the greater threat, and the president again rightly saw that Wednesday’s parade was a bid to intimidate him.
But that’s no grounds for appeasing Putin in some vain hope that he’d actively side with Washington against Beijing in any major faceoff.
Vlad’s certainly not going to cut off energy sales to China: They earn him far too much hard cash.
So it doesn’t make the least sense to sell out Ukraine in some vain hope of winning Putin’s lasting love — especially now that the Europeans are buying US weapons to keep Kyiv in the fight.
And the simple fact is that standing with Ukraine weakens not just Russia but the entire “Axis of Upheaval.”
Putin’s failure to break through despite all the help he’s gotten from Iran, North Korea and China not only exposes Russia’s fundamental limits, it’s a warning that the entire alliance is less capable than it had hoped — even as the conflict has strengthened Western resolve.
Abandoning Ukraine, by contrast, would weaken the Western alliance right as Trump has finally convinced Europe to start paying its fair share for defense: It would make Washington look like an ally no one can rely on.
Forget about the collapse in value of our word; who would respect a country that pursued a policy not of self-interest but self-delusion by telling our natural partners to kick rocks while we try to remake the world order with Putin as the moral center.
Standing by Kyiv tells Xi he’ll get no free pass for seizing Taiwan.
Continuing to bleed Moscow weakens its allies, too — Beijing included.
Venturing off into some baroque bank shot of a power play is too clever by half; stay on a steady course, and the rest will sort itself out.