My Take | Just who are the real members of the new ‘axis of evil’?

From Brussels to Washington, if you can trust Western politicians, a new “axis of evil” is emerging. It refers to the increasingly aligned interests of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

It would be hard to find a more heterodox grouping of countries that have so little in common. But they are all responding to Western, especially American pressure, and in the case of China, outright containment. So Washington can hardly complain when it has been their matchmaker.

Here’s a typical way in which this new axis is being presented in the Western press. According to a recent Globe and Mail op-ed: “Nowhere is this more evident than in the Middle East, where Iran has emerged as a central figure in what can only be described as a modern-day axis of evil … through its alliances with Russia and China.”

There are many other such media examples, but you get the idea.

However, there is another axis that is even more dangerous and destabilising. It’s this one, I argue, that the rest of the world should be much more alarmed by. But first, a word about the phrase and the power of its word association.

The infamous phrase was first used by former US president George W. Bush to include Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein and North Korea. It was meant to invoke the old Axis powers of imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. It was part of Bush’s propaganda campaign to justify the coming US invasion of Iraq after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, ostensibly to destroy nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, end the dictatorship of Saddam and bring democracy to the Iraqi people. In the event, the invasion and occupation completely destroyed Iraqi society, from which it has yet to recover.