The Axis of Autocracies Challenge, With Jennifer Kavanagh and Andrea Kendall-Taylor (Election 2024, Episode 7)

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This is the seventh and final episode in the special 2024 U.S. Election series here on The President's Inbox. Over the past seven weeks, I have been sitting down with experts to unpack some of the most pressing challenges in the next president's foreign policy inbox. This week's topic is the "axis of autocracies" challenge.

With me to discuss the nature and significance of growing cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, among other countries are Jennifer Kavanagh and Andrea Kendall-Taylor. Jennifer is a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities. Her research focuses on U.S. military strategy, force structure and defense budgeting, the defense industrial base, and military interventions and alliances in Asia and the Middle East. She was previously a senior fellow in the American statecraft program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and she worked for more than a decade as a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. Jennifer is also an adjunct professor in the security studies program at Georgetown University. Her work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, War on the Rocks, and the Washington Quarterly, among other outlets. She is the co-author of the recent piece, "The Axis of Evil is Overhyped."

Andrea is a senior fellow and director of the transatlantic security program at the Center for a New American Security. Her work examines Russia, authoritarianism, threats to democracy, and the state of the transatlantic alliance. Andrea served for eight years as a senior intelligence officer. From 2015 to 2018 she was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, known in Washington lingo as the NIC, which is in the office of the director of national intelligence. Andrea is also a distinguished practitioner in grand strategy at Yale University, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Her work is appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly, among other publication outlets. She is the co-author of the "Axis of Upheaval: How America's Adversaries Are Igniting to Overturn The Global Order." Jennifer and Andrea, thank you very much for joining me on The President's Inbox.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
It's great to be here.

KAVANAGH:
Thanks for having me.

LINDSAY:
Housekeeping issue at the beginning, are either one of you advising either the Harris campaign or the Trump campaign?

KAVANAGH:
No.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
No.

LINDSAY:
Okay. With that housekeeping matter out of the way, Andrea, if I may, I'd like to begin with you. Obviously there's growing conversation in foreign policy circles about cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. You have called this alignment the "axis of upheaval." Other names are also being used to describe this alignment. We have the "axis of adversaries," "the axis of disorder," "the axis of the aggrieved," "the axis of evil," "the quartet of chaos," among other things that had been coined. Before we get into the question of the goals, durability and significance of this alignment, help me understand the nature of the collaboration you are seeing among these countries.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
I think at the most basic level, you've seen a very significant increase in the cooperation across all dimensions of the relationship, the military, political, diplomatic, and economic spheres. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has been I think the most important catalyst that's really seen an acceleration of this cooperation. Ultimately, I think it's the military sphere where that cooperation has been most pronounced. You can see it on the battlefield in Ukraine where the support for Russia from China, Iran and North Korea is having a very real and practical impact on battlefield dynamics. Russia has received drones from Iran, plenty of ammunition from North Korea, ballistic missiles. There's now reports that North Korean fighters are fighting inside Ukraine, but just as important as what Russia is getting is what it's also having to give away in return.

And we've heard from the U.S. intelligence community now that Russia is giving away ballistic missile and submarine technology to the Chinese. Plenty of helicopters and other air defenses to the Iranians, and of course the North Koreans have a long shopping list of military technologies they would like to access. So again, it's happening across all dimensions, but so far it's been this military cooperation that's been most consequential, both for enabling Russia to sustain its war machine in Ukraine, but also in the way that then Russia's support is amplifying the military capabilities of U.S. adversaries.

LINDSAY:
Two quick follow-ups if I may Andrea. One is on the specific issue of Russia giving technology in the military sphere to the Chinese or to the North Koreans, potentially the Iranians. What is the significance of that? I mean, help me understand why it would matter if Russia were to give technology to the Chinese in particular, given that China has a very sophisticated technological infrastructure already.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
So it is true that China with its military modernization has closed the technological gap between Beijing and Moscow, but Russia really is still ahead of China in some important areas, and I'll come back to this point of the submarine technology. So we've heard from the U.S. intelligence community now that Russia has given away the submarine technology that can make China's subs quieter and more difficult to track. That's going to be hugely problematic for the United States. It erodes America's military edge, and that would be especially problematic in any contingency or U.S. intervention in the Indo-Pacific.

I also didn't mention the military exercises. Russia and China are now exercising more frequently, and the scope of those exercises have also expanded, and that helps the PLA overcome one of their key weaknesses, which is they're not battle tested. And now Russia with its experience in Syria, but of course in Ukraine, is able to diffuse some of their know-how, including the use of drones, integrating AI onto the battlefield. That know-how then transfers from Russia to China helping the PLA overcome one of its key weaknesses.

So I think we could talk about it in the different spheres, but the bottom line is it's eroding America's military edge with China, but then also emboldening, I think, adversaries by making them more capable and stretching U.S. resources and bandwidth and attention thin across these multiple theaters.

LINDSAY:
Second follow-up question. It really pivots off of a word you used, which was "acceleration" in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Do I infer from that that these patterns of collaboration or cooperation existed before February of 2022?

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
Well, certainly in the Russia-China dyad, that cooperation pre-existed and actually it was Russia's first illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 that had been an important catalyst in deepening Russia-China relations. So in terms of Russia-China, I think that relationship was the deepest and most developed prior to the invasion. But even with Russia-North Korea, Russia-Iran, some of those relations had been warming, but really I think the key pivot point was the invasion.

LINDSAY:
Jennifer, I want to bring you into the conversation. How do you see the level and nature of the cooperation that's taking place among these countries? Andrea just sort of laid out that it's not simply military, it's economic. My sense is diplomatic cooperation as well. So as you sort of survey it, I guess part of the question is do you agree with how Andrea has laid it out? Are there issues you would want to raise?

KAVANAGH:
So I would agree with a number of Andrea's points and especially with her characterization of these dyads as accelerating, since the beginning of the Ukraine war in 2022. But I would make a number of additional points. The first is, a lot of the cooperation that we're seeing so far is dyadic, and this concept of an "axis of upheaval" or authoritarians or evil or whatever you want to call it, to me at least conveys a level of coherence that I don't think exists.

LINDSAY:
Okay. Just to be clear here, when we talk about a dyad, we mean one-on-one, bilateral relationships.

KAVANAGH:
Bilateral relationships. So we do see an acceleration in these bilateral relationships, but as of yet, we haven't really seen any sort of trilateral or certainly not all four of these countries cooperating at once. So I do think that Andrea makes some important points about the ways in which this cooperation is helping Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine. But these are again, bilateral exchanges, so it's getting ammunition and potentially some soldiers from North Korea. It's getting other types of technology from China, it's getting ballistic missiles and drones from Iran, but these are individual transactions, and at the bilateral level. And I do think that is an important distinction that I think provides some qualification and some nuance to the coherence of the cooperation that we're seeing among these four axis.

LINDSAY:
So we can say as we talk about this as an axis, if you want to use that phrase, it's not an alliance. We're not talking about something equivalent to the Warsaw Pact or NATO.

KAVANAGH:
Certainly not yet. And I would say it's even different than say the Quad, right? The Quad, we have all four parties meeting at once. We haven't seen anything like that quite yet. In fact-

LINDSAY:
The Quad referring to the United States, Australia, India and Japan.

KAVANAGH:
Exactly, those four countries meet together and they try to coordinate all four of them to varying degrees of success. We haven't seen that here, and in fact, China has pushed back on that. China has even pushed back on any sort of trilateral that would bring Russia, North Korea, and China together for reasons that we can probably get into. So that's one area where I think it's important to draw that distinction.

The second is thinking a little bit about the depth of this cooperation and its endurance is important. I think some aspects of this cooperation are likely to endure. I think some may have a shelf life that doesn't really last past the end of the Ukraine war whenever that is. I think some of the Russia-North Korea cooperation is a good example. Some of that may endure, but some of it may not. I think all of these actors are interested in pursuing their own interests, and that means that the cooperation has an end point and that is when they are no longer getting mutual gain. None of them seem willing to sacrifice their own interests to benefit the other or to benefit a third party. So I think that's one important point that I would make.

I think the other is that if we're going to talk about this axis, or all of these countries together, we have to think about the bilaterals that don't include Russia, and those are actually quite different and much weaker. They do exist. There are relationships between Iran and North Korea that go back some time. China is obviously Iran's major oil customer, buying I think about 90 percent of Iran's oil at this point. So it's been an economic lifeline for Iran, but again, that relationship hasn't yet become a military relationship in the same way that we see with Russia. So that's again, a very different type of relationship there. So are these other dyads that just aren't quite as deep and look very, very different in terms of the type of cooperation.

The final point I'll make is how worried we should be about some of the exchanges that Andrea mentioned that I do think are...Actually should be our focus. Some of these technology exchanges from Russia to China and Russia to North Korea. And I do actually think those are concerning in casting some doubt on the coherence of this concept. I don't want to suggest that I think the whole idea of the cooperation between these countries should be dismissed. There are concerning elements and that's what I would hope U.S. policymakers would focus on.

So those are the elements where I think that we should be most concerned. But even there, I think I would take issue with a little bit of the severity. Certainly Russia transferring the submarine quieting technology to China is not great from the U.S. perspective, but in reality that's something that China would get on its own in the near term, probably. Same thing with jet engines. They've gotten some help with jet engine technology, but China was almost there anyway. So these are areas where yes, it does reduce the U.S. military edge, but I think we could debate how serious that erosion is, how significant those implications are, and how long we actually had before China got there on its own.

LINDSAY:
Okay. I want to get to the question of the significance in the durability, but before we get there, Andrea, in your thinking, is this emerging alignment intentional? Is it driven by any vision by any of the leaders? Is there someone you can point to and you say this is the leader Xi or Putin who's trying to make this happen, or is this really something that is just at this point being driven by events?

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
I think from Russia's perspective and thinking back even to 2014 when it really pivoted to China in the first place, a lot of this is being driven out of necessity because Moscow understands that they don't have a viable future with the West. And so it raises the importance of partnering with other countries, China in particular, but also North Korea and Iran. And certainly the war in Ukraine has only intensified its need to pursue these relationships.

But the way I think of it is it may have happened out of necessity, but I do sense that Russia also sees China, Iran and North Korea as fellow travelers in its broader confrontation with the West. From Putin's perspective, he believes that Russia is at war with the West, and he has reoriented Russian foreign policy around this concept of confrontation. He understands that it's useful to be working with other countries that share his animosity towards the U.S. and its power and influence, and he understands that Russia will be better positioned to sustain confrontation over the long term when he has these backers in the corner. So yes, it was born out of necessity, but there also is I think a shared animosity towards the existing system, and that is very powerful glue I think amongst these four.

LINDSAY:
But it seems to be a negative glue in the sense that they are coming together as I understand your argument, because they agree on what they oppose, not on what they wish to create, which presumably could become a problem down the road. Is that a fair assessment?

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
I think it's a fair assessment for this snapshot in time, but I think we have to be asking ourselves whether it's changing. And I think if you look back at other historical periods where you have the emergence of competing alternative orders, they are defined in terms of what they oppose, and it's only over time that they can build a more affirmative vision. And I'm starting to see the contours or the outlines of areas where I think these actors would agree.

So I think that they would agree that they want a world that gives credence to spheres of influence, that they each have their own right to a sphere of influence, that there is no universality of human rights, that you have this concept of indivisible security. One country can't take an action that puts another country at risk. I think if you had asked me two to three years ago, do they agree on anything, I would've been hard-pressed. But in Central Asia, in some of these other areas, I can start to see some of these broad contours. And so that's what I think we have to be paying attention to and challenging our assumptions because that would be, I think, the glue that would make this more durable and lasting.

LINDSAY:
Jennifer, I want to bring you in on this topic. As you look at this, do you see intentionality? Do you think we may get intentionality down the road because even marriages of convenience can at least in theory prove to be enduring and lasting?

KAVANAGH:
I agree with Andrea that I do think that there is a positive vision emerging. I don't think it's a fair criticism to say that they share nothing in common. They actually do have a lot of ideological similarities in terms of what they would like to see in a future world. Some of it is descriptive, right? Multipolarity isn't an order, it's a description of a balance of power, but you could see how that could eventually develop into something more substantial. I do think though they're lacking a couple elements that would be required to get them to the next step, and I'm not sure if they could get there.

The first is that they don't trust each other, and I do think that's an obstacle. You've seen ways in which China has been much more restrained in what it's been willing to provide Iran and what it's been willing to provide Russia and even what it's been willing to provide North Korea because it fundamentally doesn't trust them. Putin is in a disadvantageous position right now in that he needs China much more. So he can't necessarily have that sort of hands-off, but a time might come when he could. So the lack of trust I think is one big factor. And we've seen plenty of alliances of convenience that looked pretty strong fall apart, over distrust and also that imbalance of power between them.

And the second goes back to a point I made earlier about the focus on their own interests. So certainly they all share a sort of anti-West attitude. They feel that the U.S.-led order is abrasive and constraining to them for various reasons. They would like something different, they would like to pursue their own interests, but I'm not sure that they're willing to sacrifice their own interests to get there. One of the reasons that the U.S.-backed order has lasted so long is that the United States has been willing to underwrite that order, and that has meant taking on burdens and costs and acting in ways that sometimes aren't in its best interests.

Now in the long run, that's paid off and it's gotten tons of advantages from that position, but I don't necessarily see China or Russia or a combination of the two being willing to kind of take that step. And I think you see that in the Red Sea, right? Of all countries in the world, China is one of the most dependent on Gulf oil, and yet they haven't shown any interest in playing sort of the role of a global partner and trying to combat the Houthi strike. So that's just one example. And so I do think that those two factors are potentially mitigating in their ability to create an order, not an order that would compete with the U.S. over the long term, but that would displace the U.S. order.

LINDSAY:
Okay. Let me just draw you out in the issue of interest, because what I'm not sure of is whether you look at the four core countries and see them as defending their interests that are aligned but don't conflict or whether you look at it and see eventually these countries are going to have problems because their interests do conflict, that for example, Iran wants to dominate the Middle East, and that creates problems for China, which is trying to cultivate Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates with which it has much bigger economic relationships. Help me understand how you think about the nature of the interests these parties have.

KAVANAGH:
I see all these parties as very self-interested actors, so I think their cooperation falls apart when their interests diverge, and I think that's likely to happen. And the example you gave is a really good one. China's willingness to act in the Middle East is limited by its own interests. It's not willing to promote Iran as sort of the regional hegemon, it's not willing to support Russia as a regional hegemon in that area. It similarly, I think, would push back on nuclear use by any one of the other countries because that would be against its interest.

LINDSAY:
And Xi has spoken out about how Russia should not use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

KAVANAGH:
Exactly. And I also see it as one of the reasons why Xi has been sort of lukewarm on the growing relationship between Russia and North Korea, because getting lumped in with Russia and North Korea isn't good for China's economic interests. China is still able to sort of skate on the edges of the Western order and benefit from it in major ways that the other three countries are not because of the sanctions and restrictions that they face in other arenas. And I think that China would like to protect that status.

So I guess I see that eventually I do think that these relationships will fall apart or at least regress back to where they were before. These are long-standing relationships. They're not a product of the current geopolitical moment, but certainly I think they could go back to where they've been historically.

LINDSAY:
Andrea, do you want to jump in here? How do you think about this issue of divergent interests among the countries in the "axis of upheaval" or "axis of autocracy"? Because one of the things that I think has been a staple through foreign policy discussions for years now is that Russia and China can't make natural allies because they're competing for influence in Central Asia and they have some big disagreements about their border. And some people in China have revanchist visions about reclaiming what they believe is rightful Chinese territory that the Russian Empire required.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
But to go back, just to a previous point though about China not willing to accept costs on behalf of its partner in Moscow, I don't know if that's the case, and I would actually argue that I've been surprised to see how much China has been willing to ruffle feathers in Europe in particular. I think as European countries have seen what a critical role, a lifeline that China has played for Russia, both with purchasing oil and gas and sending money into Russia's coffers, but also the sending of the dual-use goods to sustain Russia's war machine. It has significantly changed attitudes across Europe about their relationship with China.

Maybe not in all countries, and there are some exceptions in Germany and others, but Baltic countries and many in Central and Eastern Europe have grown much more skeptical and shifted from viewing China in that tripartite, strategic rival, but also strategic partner to seeing it much more as a rival. And so I have been surprised to see that China has been willing to jeopardize some of its relationships in Europe in order to sustain its support through the provision of dual-use goods. So that's surprising to me. And to me it speaks of the significance that Beijing places on its relationship with Russia. And I think that-

LINDSAY:
But wouldn't it also hinge on Beijing's calculations about what Europe is likely to do if China is worried that its support overt or covert for Russia will alienate Europe, but believes at the end of the day, Europe won't do anything because Europe is really interested in having access to the Chinese market. That may lead them to be much more forward leaning than we would otherwise think.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
I think that's true of some countries, Germany, I think there's been a tough case to make with its car market and talking about the tariffs on electric batteries, but I think you've seen Europe move and move out on a much more assertive stance talking about de-risking and implementing some more tough economic policies to push back on China. So I think there's been a real shift. And yes, there are still holdouts, but as a general statement, I think the mood in Europe has soured significantly on Beijing.

And I think that the thing that I, just to go back to another point that Jennifer was making about kind of wanting to stay on the margins and not wanting to upset the order too much because it benefits...I guess that's another key assumption that I would want to challenge because it seems to me that as Xi has centralized power, we've seen that accompanied by a much more aggressive, brazen actions in the South China Sea and other places. And so my worry is that there's been a fundamental change in Beijing where they're willing to take on greater risk to accelerate the move away from a U.S.-led international order. And in that regard, Russia is a really important partner because Moscow is willing to be the pointy under the sphere and break things in ways that advantages China. So in that sense, I think the relationship is a really important one from Beijing's perspective. And I would assume that the two of them will be willing to lean in and take on greater risk in order to topple and ultimately replace the U.S.

LINDSAY:
But I do want to get your answer. Whether you think the divergent interest that particularly Russia and China have will at the end limit or handicap-

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
I don't. I don't think so. And we've been saying that for a very long time and people would say, well, what about the Arctic and what about Central Asia? And we have not seen their divergent interests lead to any significant problem or friction in the relationship. It is definitely a true statement that Russia and China and the four of them are not aligned on every issue and in every region, but so far in Central Asia they've been willing to compartmentalize.

Russia I think has been fine. It's been willing to accept because it can't reverse China's growing economic influence in the region. And I would be even willing to go out on limb and say I think that Russia would even accept China's greater role in the security realm, so long as the war in Ukraine continues given the degradation of the Russian military. If something happens with a Central Asian leader or their spillover from Afghanistan, Russia won't have the bandwidth and capacity to take that on. And China very well could step in and play the role of more of a security provider. And so long as the war continues and so long as what China does is ultimately in the interest of Russia, I think they would accept it. So their imperative, whether it's in Central Asia or the Middle East or on Beijing's unhappiness about Russia's growing relationship with North Korea, the imperative is to not let friction in any part of the relationship spill over and taint their overall effort to focus their attention and their energy on confronting the U.S.

LINDSAY:
Okay. And you also think that the fact that these countries are very different, in some ways this axis bears out the old saying that politics makes for strange bedfellows because China's a Marxist-Leninist state; Russia is a personalistic dictatorship that sees itself as defending Orthodox Christianity; Iran is a militant Shia theocracy; North Korea has been described as a family mafia state. So you don't think those sort of differences in regime type as they would say in political science are obstacles to cooperation?

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
Well, they share authoritarianism, so that in itself I think fuels and facilitates the relationship. It would be different if one was a democracy, so that that shared regime type is at least close enough. But I think if you look back at the stories of at least these individual leaders, they bring over time this kind of the same shared discontent and dissatisfaction with the United States.

LINDSAY:
Hence the "axis of the aggrieved" to some people.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
And so I agree with that. So even, yes, the different histories and different kind of ideologies, they are driven together by this shared and common discontent. And the key question, as Jennifer was saying also is whether they can take the additional step and find a more positive common vision for the future. I think that's what we're all watching.

LINDSAY:
Jennifer, I want to draw you out in a point that Andrea raised. And that is Chinese ambitions to unseat the United States. And you alluded to that as well. As we sort of look at this cooperation, is it possible that from the vantage point of Beijing, what they see each of these relationships bilaterally as you point to as opportunities to test, to stretch American power around the world, maybe to make the United States bleed as one metaphor would have it, so that for China moving ahead, there's a real reason to want to sustain cooperation and grow it because they see it as a way of eroding American power, which they already believe is in terminal decline. Xi has made that point over and over again. How do you think about that?

KAVANAGH:
I do think that China first and foremost cares about its own interests. So it wouldn't necessarily pursue this cooperation just to get at the United States. But the fact that these relationships provide it some sort of mutual benefits, which I think we've laid out in the conversation, makes it all the more advantageous that it also puts pressure on the United States. But to me, the problem there is not Chinese strategy, that's just smart politics. It's China pursuing its own interests, like we should expect any state to do. The problem there is the way the United States defines its interests, which in my view, and I think this is probably one place where I may differ from Andrea, is my view is that the United States defines its interest way too broadly. When your goal is to remain preeminent across the globe, then you are in all the theaters and all the threats have effects on you.

So it's easy to see these threats coming from everywhere when you have this sort of worldview that is so encompassing. And so to me, the answer to China's strategy to put pressure on the U.S. in all these different regions isn't to try to contain those. It's to figure out where do core U.S. interests lie and can we prioritize? And that's why I go back to this idea that these relationships are number one, bilateral, and number two, not even all the bilateral exchanges are things that we should be all that concerned about. And so I would focus in on a couple, I think Andrea has rightly pointed out that the Russia-China dyad is the most concerning. It has the most long-term potential, and the United States should be the most focused on that one. And the second is exchanges that dramatically change the long-term balance of power.

So I'm less concerned about Iran providing Russia, low-cost drones. That's a low-tech solution to a near-term problem. It doesn't change the balance of power in a long way. It may affect things on the battlefield in Ukraine a little bit, but I don't think it changes the ultimate trajectory or outcome of the war in Ukraine, which I think is limited by other factors. But that's not the topic for today. But I am concerned about, as we talked about before, the sub-technology, the transfer of satellite technology to North Korea. These are things that do shift the long-term balance of power. So to me, rather than trying to contain all four of these countries at once, the reaction to China's approach is to say, "We can't be everywhere." It is not sustainable anymore, and we need to prioritize.

LINDSAY:
Okay, well let me draw you out next. I think it's a fair point to make. I mean, as you sort of think about this question of how should the United States respond to the trends it's witnessing, even putting aside the questions of whether you call it an axis or not, whether you think it is limiting its growth or has a great deal of potential to expand, it does get tied up with what the United States sees as its interests. So I take the argument the United States should prioritize. I've heard people say that for a very long time, and the obvious question is, where would you prioritize? Where is it that we are acting that you would think in this particular case would be helpful to be doing less of?

KAVANAGH:
My view is that the core U.S. interests or the most important U.S. interests really lie in Asia. It's also the region where I think our allies and partners are the least able to protect themselves against the challenges that China poses because of its rapid military acceleration. I do think that that should be the U.S. priority, not the sole priority. We should care about things that happen in other theaters. We should be concerned about transfers of military technology no matter who's transferring them.

China doesn't just transfer military technology to Russia. It also transfers military technology to countries in the Middle East and in South America. So we should be thinking about those long-term shifts and balance of power, but we can probably afford to do a lot less than the other theaters. So I come back to how would I define U.S. interests? And I would say there's two main things. The first is defend the homeland. The second is prevent the rise of a regional hegemon in Eurasia. And that's why I keep coming back to these balances of power. What are the main threats that would directly threaten the U.S. homeland? The U.S. is blessed with wonderful geography and is-

LINDSAY:
Oceans are good buffers.

KAVANAGH:
Right. It's pretty defensible. So we should be prepared to defend the homeland, but I feel that we have many advantages there. So then the bigger question is where is there the risk of a regional hegemon? I don't see a risk in the Middle East. It's too divided. There's no real challenger for that role. In Europe, some people argue that the Russia could make a play for regional hegemony given their struggles that they've had in Ukraine, at least at this point I don't see that. I don't really see them as being a threat to take over all of Europe, especially given the capabilities that Europe could have should it choose to invest. So I think that's an area where the U.S. should be pushing allies to take on the burden, not burden sharing, but burden shifting.
 
That leaves Asia. That's the greatest threat of a potential regional hegemon coming from China. I don't necessarily agree that China is aiming at global hegemony, but they certainly would like to be the dominant power in Asia. And so the U.S. should in my view, acknowledge that retaining preeminence in Asia, especially in the military side, is not feasible anymore. It's not sustainable, but balancing Chinese power is certainly attainable. That requires that you keep Japan, South Korea and India fortified and out of Chinese hands. That is something that I do think is an attainable goal for the United States. And so that's where I would focus our energy, our military energy, our economic energy. And then diplomatic resources I think is a separate question.

LINDSAY:
Andrea, I want to ask you this question about how you think the United States should respond to the "axis of upheaval" or the "axis of autocracies," given that you are greatly concerned that this alignment has the potential not only to sort of stick but to grow. And again, I don't know whether you think something like the BRICS, which recently held a meeting is sort of a precursor to a true anti-Western bloc or maybe the beginning of a Chinese hegemony because China is so economically powerful that everybody else in the alignment sort of becomes a sort of tributary states, if I can use that phrase. But how do you see how the United States should respond? What are the right things to do? What are the steps that we should avoid?

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
Well, I definitely agree with Jennifer that China is the predominant threat, but I think it's really critically important that the United States not ignore a revisionist and aggressive Russia because it is the key catalyst that is really breathing life into this "axis of upheaval." So for me, first and foremost, I think Ukraine is critical to dealing with the "axis of upheaval." If we can help Ukraine to end the conflict on Kyiv's terms, I think that is a critical step in both deterring China and also isolating Iran. I think that if we get Ukraine right, we seriously take the wind out of the sails of this "axis of upheaval." And so first and foremost, it would be to significantly step up what we're doing for Ukraine to help them at least put more pressure on the battlefield so that they are in a stronger position at the negotiating table.

LINDSAY:
And that is because doing so demonstrates the West is unified, powerful, resilient-

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
You can't lead us out, that we have allies and alliances that are resolved, we uphold our commitments, et cetera. You know, I think what China right now is looking very carefully and learning important lessons about weaknesses in the United States in our allied network. And so ensuring that we get that right, I mean it doesn't mean, and again, I wouldn't ever say that if Russia is successful in Ukraine, then China and Xi's going to invade Taiwan. It's not a one for one. And lots of other factors like the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific are all going to be more important in shaping Xi's calculus. But I do think at least it plays a role.

LINDSAY:
Also how things are at home, I would imagine as well.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
Exactly. Lots of other factors, but I think it plays a role and it would create a context and an environment that would be more conducive to take those actions should he believe that he could do it and get away with it. So for me, Ukraine first and foremost, that's going to be the thing that takes the wind out of the sails. And I do think a lot of the strategy will also have to be about how we approach what I would call the so-called swing states, and I don't mean Georgia or other in the U.S.

LINDSAY:
Swing states in the international realm.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
Given that we're just ahead of the U.S. election. Yes, the international swing states, meaning the Brazils and the Indias and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and Turkey and South Africa. I think that those countries are going to play a really important role in determining the scope and extent of the threat that the axis poses. And the United States has all sorts of tools in its arsenal that it can use. I mean, we have trade incentives and military engagement and foreign aid and diplomacy.

I think we have to figure out what we want those countries to do. What are the actions and the decisions that we would like those countries to make that would be most conducive in upholding the current system in the current order, and then working on a pragmatic basis for each individual country to figure out how we can incentivize those decisions. So for example, not allowing Chinese basing, not allowing China to access technology in these countries. There's...I think we could come up with a list of things that we really need these swing states to do, and then it's figuring out how to incentivize them to take those actions. So I think that those countries are really important.

And then one thing that's on my mind a lot these days is then preparing for opportunistic aggression. So what happens if there were a conflict in the Indo-Pacific? What does that mean for European deterrence? Can Europe uphold deterrence if the U.S. is deploying vast amounts of resources to the Indo-Pacific? The answer right now is no. I mean, because NATO really relies quite heavily the U.S. is central to deterrence and NATO's ability to fight.

LINDSAY:
And this gets back to Jennifer's point about the United States having a lot of commitments. In some sense, you could say we have a solvency problem in foreign policy, the gap between what we say we're going to do and what our capabilities allow us to do. There's a famous article by Walter Lippmann sometimes refer as the Lippmann gap on just this problem, which I think the United States is now, it's maybe the third or fourth time in my lifetime, becoming aware exists.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
And I totally agree with Jennifer that we need allies to do more. I mean, I think at this point that's a non-controversial fact that given the plethora of threats, we need Europe to be able to do more to provide for its own security and defense. So what you would want to see then is European allies thinking through, well, what is it that the United States can't bring to reinforce Europe? And let's invest now in those capabilities so that we can ensure that we can uphold our conventional deterrence if that moment were to come.

So I mean, I guess you're talking about what should the United States do to address this "axis of upheaval"? It's the United States plus our tremendous network of allies. We're not doing this alone. We do have the Europeans and our Indo-Pacific allies, and together we do have a tremendous amount of resources and bandwidth, but we do need our European allies in particular to do more. And they're moving in that direction, not as quickly as you would've hoped, almost three years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but they are moving in that direction.

LINDSAY:
One of the interesting things about the conversation is to this point, what hasn't come up is the strategy that I've heard invoked the most, which is that the United States should pursue a wedge strategy, basically try to split particularly China from Russia, and it often is invoked that Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon pulled off this great geopolitical maneuver about wooing China away from Russia back in the 1970s. Now, I should note that as good as that diplomacy was, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did not create the split between Russia and China. They took advantage of it, which I think is a significant difference.

But beyond that, there's really the question of if you were to try to do a wedge strategy, how you would make it work, given that part of the reason these countries have come together is precisely because of American policy. We, in the case of the Russians and the Ukraine war, lots of sanctions, very little diplomatic contact. In the case of the Chinese, lots of export controls, we're trying to limit technology, which means if you want to create a wedge, unless it organically happens between them, you're going to have to give up something in U.S. policy that you have imposed for a very good reason. I'm just curious about how you both think about the wedge strategy beginning with you, Jennifer.

KAVANAGH:
I think the idea of driving wedges between these countries is pretty unrealistic and unlikely to work in most circumstances, certainly between Russia and China. That's not the strategy I would pursue to try to weaken their alignment. I would phrase it a little differently with Iran and North Korea, I think there are opportunities to provide them with alternatives. So one of the reasons why these countries are cooperating with Russia and China, as you said, is they don't have a lot of other alternatives. They don't have a lot of countries that will trade with them or that will even work with them diplomatically.

So I think there are potentially opportunities to open the door to make them feel like they do have alternatives. So one would be to offering some sanctions relief for certain actions that they could take or weakening alignments or not transferring certain technologies. For North Korea, we know they need food, so food aid and other types of humanitarian assistance, civilian tech transfer, better internet and digital access, that would be aligned with U.S. broader foreign policy goals. I know that these options aren't going to be popular in Washington right now because it would be seen as appeasement or accommodation or rewarding them.

But, and this goes a little bit back to this idea that Andrea raised about the swing states, I think that one of the keys for the U.S. to navigating this challenge and for the next president to navigate this challenge is acknowledging the world looks radically different now than it did in the immediate post-Cold War era. The world is maybe not multipolar, but it certainly is moving in that direction. And countries do have more alternatives. I don't think appealing to swing states even with incentives is necessarily going to work because they don't want to choose and they don't have to.

LINDSAY:
Well, they could play one side off against the other. I mean, they also pursue their own interests and can pursue them strategically.

KAVANAGH:
Exactly. And they're looking for multi-aligned strategies. They want as much as they can get from all of these different partners. And so I think that that acknowledgement that the world does look different means that the U.S. is going to have to think about working with even countries that it thinks about as adversaries in a different way, and that's going to mean trying to provide them alternatives. I even think that there's potentially room for thinking about alternatives with Russia and China. With Russia, and it's like almost blasphemous to suggest this in Washington right now. But I do think there has to be a path for what is a post-Ukraine Russia with the rest of the world relationship look like? There's no North Korea model for Russia where it's ostracized from the rest of the world. So what does that look like? I think we have to think about that and give them a path. This is what you could have if you move in a different direction.

With China, the United States in the past few years has pursued a ton of these mini-laterals, but all of them cut China out. What about mini-laterals that include China? New organizations where China has a decision-making stake. So it feels like the U.S. is acknowledging it as a co-equal power. I just think there are more opportunities for thinking about how we could work not just with our allies and not just with the swing states, but also with our adversaries that would help to open the option space for dealing with this really tricky challenge of these countries that are collaborating in ways that do impinge on U.S. interests.

LINDSAY:
Those are all big questions that I could do a whole special series on them alone. But Andrea, I want to give you a chance in closing to just address this question of how you assess the wedge strategy.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
Yeah, I mean, to go back to what Jennifer said, it's totally unviable in my view. And Russia and China in particular are really aligned in terms of what they're trying to accomplish, and so there isn't any really daylight to be able to exploit. And I think the ultimate issue is, Jim, as you were alluding to the list of things that I think that we would have to offer in exchange to repair relations or allow them to believe that they could have more fruitful relations and therefore we're less reliant on each other, the costs of those would be too significant. So Jennifer was suggesting giving Russia a pathway back to a better relationship. I do think that policymakers can think through what it is that we would need to see Russia do in exchange for a better relationship, but it would include things like reparations for the war, accountability for war crimes, stopping its sabotage campaign and assassination campaign on European-

LINDSAY:
None of those things interest Mr. Putin who I think intends to win the war.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
Nor do I think that they will be interested to a successor of Putin either because then they would open themselves up to being a "puppet of the West" and other things. So I think we certainly could make a list of what we would need to see from Russia in exchange for a better relationship. But my assumption is they wouldn't take us up on the deal. And so the things that we would have to give away in order to drive a wedge between them just are not palatable for policymakers and therefore not a fruitful strategy. So it has to come down much more to growing the headwinds that the "axis of upheaval" faces by strengthening our relations with allies and partners working hard to work with the swing states. And I didn't mean to suggest that we were going to somehow compel them to pick a side because I fully agree that they quite like being able to extract concessions from both sides.

LINDSAY:
You want to seduce rather than compel.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
But we want them to-

LINDSAY:
...Attract rather than compel.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
...Make decisions that uphold certain principles and norms. And then at the end of the day, I mean, I fully agree with Jennifer that the world is very different today, and so I think the United States and policymakers need to have an honest think about what parts of this international order are must haves, and what can we concede or be flexible on, because we can't deny that there is significant discontent and frustration in large swaths of the world. And if we want to at least uphold parts of this order that are important and valuable to us, then we have to hold firm on those things. But probably think about where we're willing to make some concessions because I guess I worry if we keep pushing and wanting to uphold it exactly as it is, eventually it's just going to break. So we would rather control and shape and have some agency over how things develop, and that would leave us in a better position.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up this special election 2024 episode of The President's Inbox. My guests have been Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior fellow and director of the transatlantic security program at the Center for a New American Security. Jennifer and Andrea, thank you very much for a very rich conversation.

KENDALL-TAYLOR:
Thanks so much. Thanks for having us.

LINDSAY:
This special election 2024 series is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at Carnegie.org. If you would like to learn more about what the candidates have said about foreign policy, please visit the Council's 2024 election central site. You can find it at CFR.org/election2024. Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you listen. And leave us a review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. This is Jim Lindsay, thanks for listening.