Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday revived the controversial phrase “axis of evil” to describe growing worldwide dangers to the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) partners.
Mitch McConnell, leader of the minority in the Senate, on Capitol Hill (Source: AP News)
McConnell Revives the “Axis of Evil”
McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, made the remarks during appearances with Fox News and CBS News. During his presentations, he emphasized the threat that Russia, China, and Iran represent to Western nations, the latter of which has earned fresh global attention because it supported Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamist group that conducted a historically lethal strike against Israel on October 7. Russia has been embroiled in a prolonged and violent struggle with Ukraine after invading the neighboring country in February 2022. President Joe Biden has regularly reaffirmed the support of the U.S. for Ukraine and recently called on Congress to authorize additional billions in military help for the struggling country, alongside support for Israel. China, however, has in recent years become increasingly aggressive towards Taiwan, causing many experts to foresee a clash between the two nations shortly.
“You have to respond to conditions that exist that are a threat to the United States,” McConnell told Fox News Sunday presenter Shannon Bream. “The Iranians are a menace to us as well. And so, this is an emergency. It’s imperative that we step up and deal with this axis of evil—China, Russia, Iran—because it’s an urgent threat to the United States. In many ways, the earth is more imperiled today than it has been throughout my lifetime. Later on CBS News’s Face the Nation, the senator said that the world has an axis of evil: China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran and that we must stand up to the axis of evil rather than do business with it.
Former President George W. Bush famously used the phrase “axis of evil” in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, alluding to North Korea, Iran, and Iraq at the time. The speech has subsequently become infamous as a pretext for the global “War on Terror” and the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter of which the United States has only recently withdrawn from, and both of which have proved increasingly costly and pointless over the years. On Fox News, McConnell criticized the Biden administration for botching the Afghanistan departure. Defenders of the president have always claimed that former President Donald Trump facilitated the departure. He praised the president for linking aid to Ukraine and Israel in his most recent congressional request, saying he and the president see the issues as interconnected.
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