September 17, 2009 | Forbes.com

Axis Of Opportunism

The bad old Axis of Evil is back in the news. That's not because President Barack Obama has resurrected the label, but because he's now planning to hold direct talks with its two surviving charter members, Iran and North Korea.

It's one of many signs of change (if not hope) that the phrase itself, “axis of evil,” has become less welcome in Washington's diplomatic calculus than envoys of that axis itself. Even before Obama scrapped the entire concept, President George W. Bush during his second term had abandoned the formulation.

Yet, the phrase still hangs around in collective memory. In some cases it serves as shorthand for headline writers, in others–not mutually exclusive–as a derisive jest. And then there are those, myself included, who think it lingers for the deeper reason that it sums up the truth of the situation.

Whether you love or hate the way Bush in 2002 pegged the evil-doing trio of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, it does seem he was on to something. With Saddam Hussein gone, Iraq has moved on. But the other two member regimes–Iran and North Korea–have been thriving in their careers as two of the worst trouble makers on the planet. Between them, they are pace-setters for the global pack of rogue-regime nuclear wannabes. Undeterred by United Nations sanctions, North Korea has already run two nuclear tests. Similarly undeterred, Iran by some estimates could soon roll out its own nuclear bomb.

Is there an axis here? Hell, yes. Between Pyongyang and Tehran, there's a rich history of exchange. It goes well beyond such stuff as North Korea's official message of congratulations to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this February, hailing “the great successes” of Iran's 30-year-old Islamic revolution. It goes way beyond the floral basket laid in May at Iran's embassy in Pyongyang before the paired photos of North Korea's late Great Leader Kim Il Sung, and Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in honor of the 20th anniversary of a meeting between the two.

North Korea and Iran have spent years collaborating on such matters as missile technology and tests, as participants in a web of illicit nuclear development, and–as both have come under U.N. sanctions since 2006–as partners in sanctions-busting weapons deals. Recall, just last month, the North Korean shipment of weapons bound for Iran, confiscated by the United Arab Emirates.

Since the “axis of evil” slam seven years ago, America has become increasingly accommodating toward both of them. Bush, by his second term, had shifted from “regime change” to roadmaps, carrots, Six Party Talks, and endorsing resolutions by the same corrupt and feckless U.N. he had spurned over Iraq in 2003. Now, heading even further down the accommodation trail, Obama is looking for common ground with almost all comers.

As America heads for the negotiating tables, one of the nagging questions is, what do we now call this configuration of interconnected WMD-loving tyrannies? With talks ahead, should it be re-branded the Vector of Verbosity? The Nexus of Nigglers? Or, given America's growing search for shared interests, regardless of regime, is all this meant to lead to some all-encompassing Axis of Good and Evil?

The name matters, because–remember your Orwell–what we call a thing goes a fair distance toward shaping how we think about it. In dealing with challenges as potentially deadly as terror-based, terrorist-linked, nuclear-bomb-seeking regimes, accuracy in labeling is important.

This is a problem that since Sept. 11 has dogged America's struggle in various ways, including the difficulty of settling on the right name for the global conflict in which–whatever we call it–threats continue to multiply, people continue to die, and New Yorkers this week–following a flurry of FBI raids in Queens–are again being reminded to watch out for bombs in briefcases and backpacks.

Washington has rolled through such terminology as the Global War on Terror, abbreviated it to the GWOT, and debated whether it should be called World War IV or the Long War. Shortly after Obama took office, its identity was handed over to bureaucrats who interred the realities in the linguistic sludge of Overseas Contingency Operations.

In all that discussion, one of the most important points, made by assorted foreign policy Cassandras, was that it is wise to name your enemies. Officially, there has been growing reluctance to do anything of the kind, as America has shifted toward strategies in which the aim is to go along in hope of getting along; to somehow please all except Al-Qaida, and maybe Britain's stumbling Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The current Washington mindset posits a world in which there are few threats that cannot be palavered away with enough speeches from Cairo and Berlin, enough dialogue and “mutual respect.” The aim seems to be to parlay all that talk into some polyhedron version of Cold War nuclear détente (which–with only two major powers to balance–was far more dangerous, and on some fronts far more deadly, than some of our younger politicians tend to recall).

Not that naming is easy. As the U.S. has shrunk from its former role as “unilateral” top cop, the old axis of evil has become a moving target–a growing club of emboldened thug regimes, some fringed with a thriving collection of terrorist groups, such as Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah. Among today's tyrannies, there is an alarming degree of mutual support in efforts to face down the free world. Cuba's decrepit but apparently deathless Fidel Castro plays mentor to Venezuela's younger and globally ambitious Hugo Chavez. Russia helps Iran complete the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, while signing a deal to sell air defense missile systems to Venezuela's Chavez–who in turn has just announced jointly with Iran the intention of creating a “nuclear village.”

North Korea no longer qualifies as the Hermit Kingdom. Pyongyang may isolate its own people from the world, but its “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il holds court these days as part of a global conglomerate of evil, entwined with the proliferation-loving progeny of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan nuclear bazaar, and enlisted in recent years by Syria for clandestine nuclear projects. Zimbabwe's aging longtime despot, Robert Mugabe, may be out of fashion at New York dinner parties, but he's pals with Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, and Iran's Ahmadinejad took the time to meet with Mugabe at the U.N. General Assembly two years ago, where they called jointly for developing nations to unite against Western “domination.”

If the term “evil” has now been written out of the U.S. political dictionary, then America's leaders might at least acknowledge that we are witnessing the rise of an axis of opportunism–or, to put it another way, a network of impunity. Increasingly, control of a sovereign state translates into de facto license for almost anything a tyrannical regime might fancy and find ways to afford. Nuclear weapons? Missiles to deliver them? With the U.S. not only holstering its guns, but unilaterally deleting force as an option, the incentive is for malign regimes to arm themselves to the teeth–the better to expand influence and extract concessions at the bargaining table.

Such trends do not end well. In the gap between how we see something, and what's really going on, dangerous things take shape. That gap was filled on Sept. 11, 2001, by Al-Qaida, with the hijacking of four airliners filled with people who woke up that day planning simply to travel across a country at peace. That gap is growing again apace. Somewhere in all the talking that now lies ahead, it would be wise for Obama to bend his skill with words toward finding a phrase that reflects the awful realities.

Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.

Issues:

Issues:

Iran North Korea

Topics:

Topics:

United States Iran Syria Iraq Hamas Tehran Hezbollah Russia Barack Obama al-Qaeda Islam United Nations North Korea Ali Khamenei New York George W. Bush Saddam Hussein United Arab Emirates Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Cold War Federal Bureau of Investigation United Nations General Assembly Pyongyang Muammar Gaddafi Claudia Rosett War on terror Kim Jong-il Hugo Chávez Forbes Six-party talks Bushehr George Orwell Robert Mugabe Kim Il-sung Fidel Castro Gordon Brown Axis of evil Hermit kingdom Queens