Axis of evil. It's just three words, right? But
they have this incredible weight. You hear them
and you're instantly taken back to the early
2000s. Oh, absolutely. That, you know, grainy
news footage, the constant tension of that whole
post 9 -11 world. It sounds less like foreign
policy and more like the title of a summer blockbuster.
It does. It has a very cinematic quality. It's
dramatic. It's memorable. And it's absolute.
But as we were digging through the sources for
today, you know, the memoirs, the diplomatic
cables, what really jumps out is that those three
words weren't just some catchy soundbite. They
were a pivot point. They fundamentally rewired
American foreign policy. And I'd argue they kind
of froze our diplomatic imagination for a generation.
That's exactly. what we're getting into today.
We're not just, you know, recounting the speech.
We're trying to unpack the black box of how this
very specific phrase was engineered. And why
those countries. Exactly. Why those wildly different
countries got glued together and the huge diplomatic
fallout that was happening behind the scenes.
Stuff the public really didn't see for years.
We're going to look at how a speechwriter trying
to channel FDR, of all people, ended up, maybe
accidentally, sabotaging a secret back channel
with Iran. And how the term has sort of zombie
walked its way back into politics today in 2024
with a whole new cast of characters. The mission
here really is to move beyond the slogan. Right.
We all know the phrase, but the logic they use
to justify linking Iran, Iraq and North Korea
was actually quite specific. And it was highly
controversial, even inside the White House itself.
So let's set the scene. It's January 29, 2002.
The State of the Union address. And context is
everything here. We are less than five months
out from the September 11th attacks. The rubble
at ground zero is arguably still smoldering in
the national psyche. The war in Afghanistan is
underway. The Taliban's on the run. And President
George W. Bush steps up to the podium to basically
define the next phase of the war on terror. The
atmosphere in that room and in the country was
just electric. You have to remember, the nation
was unified in this mix of fear and resolve.
And Bush needed to explain that the threat wasn't
just a stateless group like al -Qaeda hiding
out in caves. He wanted to pivot. To pivot the
focus to state sponsors. Exactly. And he names
names. He specifically calls out North Korea,
Iran, and Iraq. He accuses them of seeking weapons
of mass destruction, of threatening world peace.
And then he drops the hammer. States like these
and their terrorist allies constitute an axis
of evil. It was a thunderclap. But this is where
the research gets so fascinating because we assume
this phrase came from, I don't know, a room full
of generals looking at a map. But it didn't.
Not at all. It came from a laptop in a speechwriter's
office. This is the David Frum story. And I was
reading his memoirs on this. He was a speechwriter
for Bush. And he gets this assignment from the
head speechwriter, Michael Gerson. So it sounds
almost impossible. Right. Gerson tells him, make
the case for removing Saddam Hussein, but do
it in like two sentences. So where does he go
for inspiration? He goes back to FDR. He starts
rereading the date, which will live in infamy
speech. Pearl Harbor speech. Yeah. From 1941,
he was looking for a historical template, a way
to rally a nation against a threat that came
from multiple directions. But that comparison,
I mean, it's pretty fraught with problems, isn't
it? In 1941, you had Germany and Japan. These
were industrial giants, global military powers.
Right. In 2002, you have Iraq, which was sanctioned
and contained. And Iran. Regional power, sure,
but not exactly the Third Reich. It feels like
a huge stretch. It was a massive rhetorical leap,
no question. He latched onto this really specific
psychological detail from the World War II dynamic.
He realized that the original Axis powers, Germany,
Japan, Italy, they didn't actually like each
other. They didn't really trust each other or
coordinate strategy. Berlin and Tokyo weren't,
you know, syncing up their invasions. It was
a total marriage of convenience. So the lack
of trust between them was the feature, not the
bug of the analogy. Precisely. That was Frum's
whole point. His argument was that even if Iran,
Iraq and North Korea weren't allies, in fact,
even if they hated each other, they shared this
resentment of the West and a desire to disrupt
the global order. And in the first draft, he
called it the axis of hatred. Axis of hatred.
It lands so differently, doesn't it? It sounds.
emotional yeah almost manageable and that is
the crucial distinction because you can negotiate
with hatred hatred is a human feeling it can
cool down you can manage it with diplomacy yeah
but when President Bush changed it to axis of
evil to make it sound more resolute more theological,
he changed the entire strategic landscape. Because
you can't negotiate with evil. Exactly. Or rather,
you shouldn't. Evil is an absolute. You have
to destroy evil or contain it until it collapses
on itself. By shifting the language from, say,
political opposition to moral theology, the administration
basically signaled that diplomacy was off the
table. It kind of cornered them, didn't it? It
did, into a stance of permanent confrontation.
And the grouping itself, I mean the actual members
of this club, drew immediate fire from foreign
policy realists. Gripping Iran and Iraq together.
Well, yeah. They had just spent the entire 1980s
killing each other. Yeah. In one of the most
brutal wars of the 20th century. Saddam and the
Ayatollahs were mortal enemies. That was the
big enemy of my enemy criticism. It confused
everyone in the region. To the Iranians, being
lumped in with Saddam Hussein was just, it was
insulting. And then you throw in North Korea,
a hermit kingdom in East Asia with zero connection
to the other two. Right. And it just looked like
a grab bag of bad act. not a coherent alliance.
Plus, the 9 -11 connection was so thin, none
of the hijackers were from these countries. Al
-Qaeda was Sunni extremist. Iran is a Shia theocracy
that saw Al -Qaeda as a direct threat. All that
nuance just got completely flattened. Flattened
is the perfect word. But the tragedy of this
flattening isn't just academic. And this, for
me, this brings us to the most heartbreaking
part of the entire research file. The story of
Ryan Crocker. This part. This just blew my mind.
So Ryan Crocker is a senior State Department
official. And the sources show that right after
9 -11, while the dust is still settling, he's
on a plane to Geneva for secret meetings. And
who is he meeting with? Iranian diplomats. This
is the great sliding doors moment of modern history.
For months, the U .S. and Iran were cooperating.
They had a shared enemy in the Taliban. Iran
hated the Taliban. Of course. So in Geneva, you
have... Iranian diplomats sitting across from
Crocker, literally spreading out maps, pointing
out Taliban positions, sharing intelligence.
The sources even say the Iranians offered to
rescue downed American pilots if it came to that.
This wasn't just talk. This is real operational
support. It was real politic inaction, a convergence
of interests. And then. The State of the Union
happens. Crocker's in Geneva. He's building this
fragile trust. And suddenly the president goes
on global television and declares Iran part of
the axis of evil. And the door just slams shut
instantly. The Iranian diplomats were humiliated.
Oh, I can't imagine. They'd gone out on a limb
with their own hardliners in Tehran to engage
with the great Satan, hoping for a real thaw.
And they just got slapped in the face. The hardliners
back in Tehran, the guys who chant death to America,
they basically got to turn to the moderates and
say. We told you so. We told. you so you can't
trust them they think we're evil it completely
killed the reformist movement in iran for that
entire cycle president katami who's a moderate
he expressed sympathy for 9 11 victims there
were actual candlelight vigils in tehran wow
and this speech just validated the hardliner
narrative and from that point on iran accelerates
its nuclear program and its support for proxies
It became a self -fulfilling prophecy. We called
them an enemy, so they started acting like one.
And the term didn't even stop there. It sort
of became a franchise, didn't it? A few months
later, you have John Bolton giving a speech called
Beyond the Axis of Evil. Oh, yeah. Adding Libya,
Syria, and Cuba to the list. It's like they were
expanding the cinematic universe of rogue states.
And in response, the quote unquote villains organized.
Iran eventually formalized its own network of
proxies. Hezbollah, Hamas, militias in Iraq and
Syria. And they explicitly called it the axis
of resistance. They just took the rhetoric and
flipped it right back. You're going to call us
an axis. We'll be an axis. They lean into it.
Which brings us to today. Yeah. Because the phrase
just refuses to die. We're seeing it resurrected
now in 2024. But the cast of characters has changed
a lot. This is the new axis of evil. You hear
it from figures like Senator Mitch McConnell,
Speaker Mike Johnson. They're using it to describe
the alignment of China, Russia, Iran and North
Korea. But this is where we really have to slow
down and analyze the structure. Right. The original
axis was defined by weakness and isolation. Yes.
Iran and Iraq were contained. This new axis,
though. China is an economic superpower. Russia
is a nuclear giant. This isn't just a list of
countries we don't like. This feels like a genuine
rival bloc. That's the critical difference. The
new axis argument suggests a level of interdependence
that just didn't exist in 2002. I mean, look
at the war in Ukraine. You have Iranian drones
being used by the Russian military. You have
North Korea shipping artillery shells to the
front lines. You have China providing the economic
lifeline that's keeping the Russian economy afloat
despite all the sanctions. So unlike that marriage
of convenience from described, where Germany
and Japan barely talked, these guys are actually
trading hardware. They're keeping each other's
economies alive. It's become transactional. And
it's strategic. British General Sir Patrick Sanders
just made this point in July of 2024, arguing
this new quartet is actually more interdependent
and more aligned than the original Axis powers
of World War II ever were. That is, that is a
terrifying thought. The idea that we've gone
from containing isolated rogue states to facing
a coordinated nuclear armed flock. But we have
to be careful with the label. Are they an Axis
in an ideological sense? Does China really share
a worldview with the theocracy in Tehran? Probably
not. No. China wants global stability for trade.
Iran often thrives on asymmetric chaos. Russia
wants to rebuild an empire. North Korea just
wants regime survival. So it's still a marriage
of convenience, just a much more dangerous one.
They're united by what they're against American
power, not what they're for. Exactly. But the
danger of using the axis of evil term again is
that it might have the exact same effect it had
in 2002. It groups them together. If we treat
them as a monolith, we might just push them closer
together. It's that self -fulfilling prophecy
all over again. You tell four guys in a bar that
they're a gang, you're going to fight. Well,
they're probably going to start acting like a
gang. And that overlooks the opportunities to
split them apart. I mean, real politic would
suggest you try to peel China away from Russia,
not lump them together. But the Axis rhetoric,
it just flattens all that nuance. It demands
a crusade. OK, before we get too heavy on the...
impending geopolitical doom. Right. We have to
talk about how the phrase didn't just stay in
the Situation Room. It bled into pop culture
in some really weird and interesting ways. It
became a punchline almost instantly. When you
use language that's that high drama, comedians
are just going to feast on it. The Axis of Evil
comedy tour was huge. Yeah. Mosh Dobrani. Ahmed
Ahmed. Yeah. They took this terrifying label
and just defanged it through humor. It was a
way for Middle Eastern communities to sort of
process the demonization. But there was also
a softer side to the cultural reaction. There
was that Norwegian music project. Lullabies from
the axis of evil. Right. In 2003. They recorded
women from Iran, Iraq and North Korea singing
traditional lullabies to their babies. It was
such a simple, subversive idea. You have the
president saying these nations are evil with
a capital E. And then you just hear a mother
in Baghdad singing to her child. It forces you
to remember a nation isn't just its regime. It
puts the humanity back. Exactly. And of course,
the axis of weasels. The axis of weasels. That
was aimed at France and Germany for not supporting
the Iraq invasion. It just shows how that grammatical
structure. axis of blank became the template
for anything we didn't like. So to bring it all
back, we started with the speechwriter in 2001
trying to solve a puzzle. How to convince Americans
to worry about Iraq. He reaches for a WWII analogy.
He swaps hatred for evil. And in doing so, he
defines a decade of war and completely unintentionally
torpedoes this incredible moment of potential
peace with Iran. It's a profound lesson in the...
I guess the lethality of language. Words and
foreign policy aren't just descriptions, they're
actions. Calling a country evil isn't just name
-calling, it's a policy decision. It sets a trajectory
that's incredibly hard to reverse. It really
is. And now, as we hear new axes of evil being
thrown around about China and Russia, we have
to ask ourselves, Are we describing a reality
or are we creating one? That's the question,
isn't it? Are we seeing a genuine coordination
of evil or are we using a lazy historical analogy
that blinds us to the very different motivations
of each of those countries? Because if we treat
them like a single monster. You might just ensure
they become one. It's a lot to think about. The
next time you hear a politician drop a catchy
historical phrase, maybe check the footnotes.
Thanks for diving in with us today. Always a
pleasure.