(Bloomberg) -- For months, the US has warned Iran not to send ballistic missiles to Russia and told China not to provide military components for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
But Iran is now doing just what Washington said not to and China is pushing the line. Indeed, the US and its allies are increasingly worried by the speed and intensity with which the three, along with North Korea, are deepening ties to challenge American dominance despite facing some of the most sweeping sanctions the West has ever imposed, according to officials who asked not to be identified discussing matters that are not public.
The defiance fits a pattern of what outside experts — and increasingly, US and allied officials — see as the growing struggle Washington faces as its seeks to get what it wants around the world.
The examples, they say, are legion.
Venezuela’s authoritarian leader brushed aside a months-long US push for free and fair elections and remains in office after a vote widely seen as rigged. A Washington-led naval coalition has so far failed to lift a Houthi rebel chokehold that’s crippled shipping in the Red Sea. Washington and its allies have been pushed out of bases in Africa as China and Russia expand their reach. Beijing has only stepped up its aggression in the South China Sea.
Then there are the allies. Washington finds itself unable to cajole Israel into a cease-fire deal with Hamas.
“US influence is waning, and it’s waning rapidly,” said Martin Kimani, former Kenyan ambassador to the UN and director of NYU’s Center on International Cooperation. “There are rising powers that want to assert themselves more within the multilateral space — from China to others — and the Global South increasingly has a voice.”
That’s the reality President Joe Biden faces as joins more than 140 other world leaders in New York for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
The meeting is likely to underscore how the US often finds itself on the backfoot as other powers gain influence.
Some 40 nations that voted to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine last year decided to abstain on a similar motion in July. A majority of them are countries that have been vocal on the Palestinian cause, including Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
For its part, the Biden administration takes credit for assembling an alliance of more than two dozen nations supporting Ukraine in its efforts to turn back Russia’s invasion. In the Middle East, officials argue their efforts have helped limit the spread of a conflict that risks turning into a regional conflagration. They also blame Hamas, whose Oct. 7 terror attack triggered Israel’s invasion of Gaza, for blocking the cease-fire.
But Washington’s strong support for Israel’s war against Hamas is draining its diplomatic currency, Kimani said. US pressure for a cease-fire so far has yielded few results despite regular trips to the region by top administration officials.
Also gathering in New York this week will be officials from the Brics, which has grown to nine members, including some US allies, as well as Iran and founders Russia and China. More countries are applying to join a group that’s explicitly called for creating an alternative center of global influence, including rivals to the US dollar’s dominance.
Countries outside the orbits of the US and its rivals “are seeing this new node of power emerging. It probably contributes to them staying in between both poles, contributing to a multipolarity in the world,” said Nadia Schadlow, a former top official in the administration of Donald Trump and now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “The US now has to manage that more effectively, which is hard.”
At the same time, domestic politics in the US and Europe is pulling capitals away from international commitments, as populist leaders pushing for more isolationist policies find growing support.
Moscow, meanwhile, is deepening relationships as it shares more sensitive military knowhow with Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang in return for their war aid. That process has accelerated as the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine drags toward a fourth year.
“There is a perception in both China and Russia that the United States and the West are in inevitable decline,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former senior US intelligence official now at the Center for a New American Security. “Now they see the momentum moving in their favor and so they’re willing to lean in and take more risk in order to accelerate that decline.”
GLOBAL INSIGHT: How China’s ‘Axis’ Compares With US ‘Allies’
Former President Trump has sought to exploit the chaos, saying under his leadership Russia would have never invaded Ukraine and Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel. But experts and analysts say the problem is deeper than that.
Officially, the US adversaries deny sharing weapons and technology. But President Vladimir Putin dispatched a top aide to North Korea and Tehran - after talks in Russia with a senior Chinese official - this month and announced plans for a sweeping new strategic pact with Iran.
Wave after wave of US sanctions on all those countries haven’t stopped the trade. China is finding ways to supply Russia 90% of the chips its needs to produce missiles, tanks and aircraft, according to the Hudson Institute.
US restrictions also haven’t deterred Russia, Iran and China from attempting to the meddle in the November presidential election. American officials have accused all three of elaborate efforts to use hacking, disinformation and other means to influence the vote, although the adversaries deny those charges.
A senior US official said sanctions, while not 100% effective, have complicated the adversaries’ efforts to cooperate, adding to the economic cost of defying Washington. And for China, the official said, deeper links between Russia and North Korea are likely to spur closer ties between the US and its allies in the region, something Beijing is unlikely to welcome.
China’s deep integration into the US-dominated global financial system and reliance on international trade may also limit how far it’s willing to go in defying the US.
But even as the US has rekindled ties with allies to support Ukraine, it’s also growing increasingly hard to get European allies on board with additional sets of measures on the heavily sanctioned countries.
Italy, for instance, still hasn’t agreed to implement sanctions on Iran Air pushed for by the US in response to it sending Russia ballistic missiles, according to a senior diplomat familiar with the matter. And while Brussels has taken a sharper line on China, heavier sanctions in response to Russia aid could be challenging to agree given European companies’ deep business ties there.
Ultimately, the US and its allies hope their cooperation, rooted in shared democratic values, can still carry weight around the world.
Russia and China’s alignment with North Korea and Iran “is of a completely profoundly different quality to the type of relationship that we have,” Richard Moore, head of Britain’s MI6 Secret Intelligence Service, said in early September, speaking of British collaboration with the US and Europe.
“The thing that’s driving it - the cooperation between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea - is not based on shared values,” he said. “It’s on a sort of rather dark and more pragmatic basis.”
--With assistance from Iain Marlow, Donato Paolo Mancini and Jenny Leonard.
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