I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we are witnessing the failure of deterrence; the “rules-based international order” that the Biden team keeps talking about is in tatters. This morning, the New York Times’ David Leonhardt writes, “The world may have fallen into a new period of disarray. Countries — and political groups like Hamas — are willing to take big risks, rather than fearing that the consequences would be too dire.”

Hamas rapes and slaughters hundreds of innocent people at the Supernova music festival in southern Israel. Russia invades Ukraine, and China is preparing for the conquest of Taiwan. No one is afraid of the West anymore; no one expects the arsenal of democracy and our allies to show up, guns blazing, in response to some outrageous provocation or massacre or invasion anymore. …

Zablotskiy called what we’re facing the “Axis of A**holes.” You may not like that particular term, but we need some label for increasing opportunistic cooperation between Russia, China, Iran, other rogue states such as North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Considering how everyone involved in this malevolent network has the resume of a demon, I’d say the “Axis of the Devils” fits. It’s been a theme in the fiction work the past few years.