Putin pleaded for “caution” from the U.S. as he argued for delaying a military strike. He wrote: “From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law.”18 He went on to argue that it is dangerous for Americans to see themselves as exceptional.
Putin’s presentation of Russia as an honest broker was starkly at odds with the facts. Indeed, during the March 2013 chemical-weapons attack in Aleppo, when the Americans called for a UN investigation into the claims of both the government and the rebels, the Russians supported only the claims of the Assad government.19 Further, the Russian envoy to the UN openly mocked U.S. concerns by reminding the Americans of their erroneous claims about chemical weapons in Iraq a decade earlier.
Both Russia and China have vetoed proposed UN Security Council resolutions that sought to put pressure on Assad (and more recently, they helped block a Security Council resolution affirming the sovereignty and national borders of Ukraine). Russia has supplied $928 million in weapons to Syria since 1991.20 China, for its part has repeatedly said that it opposes forceful foreign intervention in Syria and has called for a political solution.21 Both Axis nations have generally been wary of what they perceive as American attempts at regime change.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration, still in “reset” mode, shows little sign that it understands the challenge the Axis poses or has any intention of addressing it. The U.S. is withdrawing from the Middle East and retreating from commitments it made to allies there and in Western and Eastern Europe. Our disengagement from the world couldn’t come at a worse time.
CYBER WARFARE
In the area of cyber warfare, America has done somewhat better. Here, at least, American officials show some recognition of the enormity of the challenge facing us. In fall 2012, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned that the U.S. could someday face a “cyber Pearl Harbor.” Panetta also said, “It’s no secret that Russia and China have advanced cyber capabilities.” That was an understatement.
In fact, Russia and China are the world’s leading practitioners of cyber warfare. They work overtime to sabotage and subvert military, economic, and infrastructure assets of nations they view as adversaries—and to loot their systems of military intelligence, diplomatic information, and corporate trade secrets. The Russians have brought down the technology infrastructure of Georgia and Estonia; Chinese hackers affiliated with the Army of the People’s Republic have infamously been identified as the culprits in massive attacks on U.S. banking, security, infrastructure, and even military systems.
In his January 2012 unclassified Worldwide Threat Assessment before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper named Russia and China as the state actors most active in stealing secrets from the United States and attacking us through cyberspace.22 If Panetta’s dreaded cyber Pearl Harbor materializes, one or both of the Axis nations will almost certainly be behind it.
In a political sense, a cyber Pearl Harbor has already happened. The leaking of national-security secrets in June 2013 by Edward Snowden, and the refuge he was given, first by the Chinese and then by the Russians, ought to remind skeptics of the potential costs and dangers we face in this area. Though both nations were careful to profess that they didn’t support Snowden’s actions, their protection of him should make clear, too, that Moscow and Beijing would take any chance available to undermine American power and international influence. And they don’t need to rely solely on their own efforts to do this.
In late September 2013, the U.S. announced that Iran had successfully hacked into unclassified Navy computers running email services and internal intranets. It showed a new sophistication from Iranian hackers, suggesting they now have the capability to break into U.S. military systems. They had previously focused their attacks on U.S. banks and other private networks, and the U.S. didn’t consider Iran a major cyber player. How did the Iranians ramp up their capabilities so quickly?
“They’re getting help from the Russians,” said cyber-security specialist and former State Department official James Lewis in a Wall Street Journal story that cited “current and former officials” who believe that the Iranians have developed “a growing partnership with Russian cybercriminals.”23
MILITARY AND NUCLEAR BUILDUPS
“What preserved peace, even in Cold War conditions,” Vladimir Putin has said, “was a balance of forces.”24
On the fundamental measure of national security—military readiness—the Axis nations are building up while the U.S. is slashing its defense budget through the imposed sequestration and other automatic cuts. While the U.S. pursues wholesale reductions, the Axis pursues wholesale augmentations; while we allow our equipment, materials, and technologies to degrade, they pursue constant upgrades. Perhaps most worryingly, while the American president advocates so-called nuclear zero—a world without nuclear weapons—the Russians and Chinese bolster their atomic arsenals.
While all signs point to a strengthening Russian-Chinese relationship and more formalized cooperation and coordination, the United States is pulling back from its commitments and leaving allies from Japan in the Far East to Poland in Eastern Europe worried and vulnerable. As we have seen in Ukraine, the Russians have already taken advantage of this vulnerability. In the Far East, it may only be a matter of time before the Chinese attempt to do the same. While the Russians and Chinese make demands, the United States makes concessions. And while the Russians and Chinese pursue what they dubiously call “a new, more just world order,” the United States backs away from world leadership, hiding behind the illusion of “leading from behind.” It all adds up to a calamitous American message: The U.S. simply has no coherent national defense strategy.
Obama’s broader disarmament agenda, both in offensive and defensive capabilities, is at odds with treaty commitments he made to our allies. His anti-nuclear ambitions are music to the ears of the Axis, but they leave the U.S. increasingly vulnerable. As former Senator John Kyl puts it: “The U.S. is now stuck with numbers and technology capable of dealing only with low-level threats.”25
On the other side, things couldn’t be more different. Putin gave Xi an honor he has allowed no other foreign leader: a visit to Russia’s strategic-defense command headquarters and “war room.” He even let Chinese media film the visit, as Xi observed giant computer screens of military intelligence.26
One key aspect of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, military exchange, involves Russian arms sales to China and high-technology sharing. China’s weapons purchases from Russia over the past 20 years account for $29 billion of its $34 billion in arms imports.27 For the Russians, this ongoing exchange has two major objectives: bolstering the former Soviet defense-industrial complex following the USSR’s collapse, and arming a country that shares the goal of weakening U.S. control in the region.
The Chinese, meanwhile, have grown their military power exponentially over the last two decades, projecting force across Asia to the borders of India, with new naval ports imposed on client countries. Some Western estimates put Chinese military spending second only to the Americans’, at $200 billion annually,28 having grown from $20 billion 10 years ago.29 The Chinese have even begun threatening stalwart Western allies in the Pacific and East Asia—warning Australia, for example, that it would be “caught in the crossfire” if the nation went ahead with plans to offer a base for U.S. Marines.30 The Chinese have bullied the Philippines over the Spratly Islands, and they are engaged in a tense provocation with Japan over the disputed Senkaku Islands (called the Diaoyu Islands by China)—an ongoing battle which has made starkly clear America’s declining power in the region. By the late 2020s—a little more than a decade from now—Chinese ships should outnumber American
