In the spirit of the season, the Washington Examiner has identified 12 issues we believe will shape and influence 2025 and beyond. The incoming Trump administration has made the fight against illegal immigration and the use of tariffs its flagship policy items. The United States will also possibly undergo a health revolution, while very real questions need to be answered on everything from Social Security reform to the military to the changing landscape of the energy sector. Part 6 is on the foreign threats confronting the U.S.
EXCLUSIVE — From the front lines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to Chinese intelligence operations off the coast of Cuba, a new coalition of powers is emerging on the international stage to challenge United States hegemony.
Following his November victory, President-elect Donald Trump has preached a platform of peace through tough negotiation. He promises to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine as soon as possible, says he will be able to temper the violence raging across the Middle East, and is confident he will be able to negotiate peaceful cooperation with China.
But the influence of America’s rivals is expanding.
Established regional powers such as Russia, China, and Iran have recruited smaller nations such as Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, and others seeking an alternative center of gravity away from the U.S., the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton sat down with the Washington Examiner to discuss this emerging coalition of anti-U.S. partners and how the incoming administration can keep America ahead of its enemies.
“Look at Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea just to get started — and you could name others … Belarus, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela,” Bolton said. “It’s geographically a coherent whole. They’ve got interior lines of communication, transportation, … oil and gas from Russia to China, that kind of thing.”
“The big danger of the incoming Trump administration is that he doesn’t have a philosophy, but his neuron flashes tend to be isolationist — and that’s something to worry about, I think,” Bolton told the Washington Examiner.
Bolton served as national security adviser for two years in Trump’s first administration.
It was not a partnership destined to last — Bolton’s signature peace-through-strength diplomatic strategy clashed with Trump’s propensity for avoiding foreign entanglements at all costs.
The gap between their worldviews has only widened in the subsequent years. Bolton is concerned the president-elect is returning to office without understanding.
Back to the 1800s
“This axis is not perfectly formed,” Bolton continued. “It’s still got problems. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s moving along pretty quickly and they’re going to find ways to try and make their interests align because they see themselves in a hostile world.”
The manifestations of these loose partnerships can be seen across the globe — Chinese components used to manufacture Russian weapons fired by North Korean soldiers in Ukraine, North Korean state newspapers denouncing Israeli operations against Iran-aligned terrorist groups, Russian warships docked in South Africa harbors, and Chinese-Russian joint patrols in the Arctic Circle.
Bolton told the Washington Examiner that this growing network of influence is “more of a 19th-century power bloc than what we’ve seen in the 20th century.”
The ambassador specifically compared the situation to the politics of Prince Otto von Bismarck — noting the German statesman’s talent for balancing global powers through layers of imperial alliances and isolation of outside rivals.
In such an arrangement, there is no need for ideological agreement or geographic proximity. The vast differences between Islamism, socialism, Russian neoimperialism, North Korean juche, and other ideologies are vast but ultimately unimportant — the goal is cobbling together enough allies in various regions to form a functioning global system.
The rogues’ gallery
The most powerful among this rogues gallery is undoubtedly China, which boasts a population of almost 1.5 billion people, a $17.79 trillion gross domestic product, nuclear weapons capability, and the world’s largest standing military.
Russia, a fellow nuclear power, is the second-most imposing of the lineup — but the Kremlin is not quite willing to acknowledge its silver medal.
“I had said to Russians back when I was in the government and … after, ‘You’re in a very dangerous position here with the Chinese,'” Bolton told the Washington Examiner. “‘I mean, you may still be a nuclear power, but population size, economy, you name it — this is very different than in the 1950s and ’60s.’ And the Russians just didn’t seem to get the point. They didn’t seem concerned. They thought they had it under control.”
Between these two titans, North Korea has surged back onto the main stage of international politics after signing military defense agreements with Russia and deploying soldiers to the front lines in Kursk.
Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is often derided in the U.S. media for his state-mandated cult of personality, but his skillful resurgence as a key ally of Beijing and the Kremlin shows he is not a world leader to be ignored.
“I think Kim Jong Un is channeling his grandfather, who very successfully played Stalin and Mao Zedong against each other,” Bolton said. “What Kim Jong Un is doing by balancing them off is, he’s increased his relative power and his bargaining room. That alone is a big thing for him.”
Iran, once infamous for its “ring of fire” control over swaths of the Middle East through Islamic militia and terrorist groups, has been weakened in recent months. Israeli military campaigns following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks obliterated Hamas leadership and crippled Hezbollah operations in Lebanon.
With the fall of President Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, elderly Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei now clings to the nation’s increasingly underdefended nuclear programs and relies on the aid of China and Russia.
“At a time when you’ve got an 85-year-old supreme leader who’s not in good health, that’s how a regime like that controls and fragments at the top,” Bolton said. “You have military commanders fighting over personal ambition or grievances or whatever the case may be.”
Global empires on the rise
This spider web of influence and collaboration continues to expand and intertwine across continents.
Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Waltraud Martinez announced on Dec. 19 that his nation promoted its relationship with Russia to a “strategic alliance.”
“Nicaragua has always enjoyed the support and solidarity of the Soviet Union,” Martinez said. “These historical relations between brotherly nations and states have reached the level of a strategic alliance under the leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin and our Commander Daniel Ortega Saavedra.”
Earlier in the same week, Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel celebrated the “extreme significance” of a visit from Chinese Central Military Commission Vice Chairman He Weidong.
Díaz-Canel called the bilateral relationship between the two countries, which facilitates the sharing of intelligence and espionage capabilities, an “important bastion in socialist construction.”
Bolton suggested that the U.S. will need to globalize its NATO alliance further to counter the rise of this new power bloc.
“You need a global strategy,” the former ambassador said. “I think one thing that flows from the geographical contiguity of the Russia-China axis is that the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, the Chinese threat in the Indo-Pacific — now they’re all connected. South Korea, Japan, Thailand — they are all helping Ukraine now because they’re worried that if we don’t resist aggression in Ukraine, others will [believe] that we’re not going to resist aggression in East Asia.”
Keeping enemies close
Bolton is greatly concerned that Trump fails to appreciate the extent of Russian and Chinese machinations, warning that the president-elect may see them in a more positive light than they see him.
Trump’s rhetoric about his relationships with the leaders of rival nations has fluctuated greatly over the past four years, but the president-elect has always maintained that friendliness is a virtue in negotiation.
“If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing and not a bad thing in terms of a country,” Trump said in an October interview at the Economic Club of Chicago. “Look, I had a very good relationship with President Xi, and a very good relationship with Putin, and a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”
This friendliness is often tempered by threats of economic or military action if one of the leaders makes a move against American interests. It is a rhetorical balancing act many attribute to Trump’s experience as a business executive.
But Bolton is not convinced the art of the deal will work against autocrats such as Putin and Xi.
“I think they’re trying to assess what he’s going to do, but I think in the case of both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, they think they know him very well,” Bolton told the Washington Examiner. “Trump thinks he’s a friend of theirs — that’s not what they think. They think they know how to play him, they know how to flatter him, they know how to get what they want from him.”
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Putin and Xi are both prepared to meet with Trump soon after his inauguration in January 2025.
Those highly anticipated meetings — negotiating peace in Ukraine, economic imbalances with China, and greater respect for U.S. and NATO interests abroad — will be the first test of just how unfriendly Trump is willing to be with his old rivals.