Max Boot: Russia-North Korea pact bolsters ‘alignment of evil’ aimed at destroying global rules-based order

Analysis Max Boot

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un travel in an Aurus car in Pyongyang, North Korea in this image released by the Korean Central News Agency. Photo: KCNA via Reuters

Max Boot
© Washington Post

The “comprehensive strategic partnership” treaty signed on Wednesday by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is only the latest manifestation of one of the most sinister and troubling trends in world affairs today: Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are all working together, to a greater or lesser degree, to challenge the US-led, rules-based international order.

This isn’t quite an “axis of evil", the unfortunate term President George W Bush applied to Iran, Iraq and North Korea to justify his invasion of Iraq. Those states had little to do with one another; far from being allies, Iran and Iraq were enemies that had fought a bloody war in the 1980s.