From evil to upheaval and beyond: How the ‘axis’ metaphor shaped modern geopolitics

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Andrew Latham , Macalester College

(THE CONVERSATION) The plural of “axis” is “axes,” apparently. And foreign policy types with axes to grind have been making good use of this other meaning, too.

Earlier this year, academic Walter Russell Mead warned in his Wall Street Journal column of the threat from the “axis of revisionist powers” – namely China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

The same grouping has gone by other names, too: the “ axis of upheaval ” and “ axis of autocracies ” among them.

As a scholar of international relations , I know that framing any coalition or grouping as an “axis” does more than merely describe — it does some serious geopolitical work. T