Chapter 4, II. The Authoritarian Entente: Fragile but Coordinated
- john raymond
- Jul 8
- 3 min read
A Shadow Alliance, Not a True Axis
This is not an alliance of treaties, flags, and joint declarations. It is an entente in the older, looser sense: a convergence of strategic interests wrapped in a shroud of mutual suspicion.
Its members speak different languages—culturally, ideologically, and diplomatically—but they understand one another perfectly when it comes to the central, animating impulse: survival at all costs.
They do not always advertise their alignment because they don’t need to. Their enemies are the same, their incentives aligned, and their methods increasingly coordinated.
If this is a World War, it is one waged through signals, shadows, and acts of misdirection rather than countless battalions and declarations. The West looks for treaties. The entente hides behind silence, half-truths, and blatant lies.
Strategic Unity Through Shared Aims
What binds this coalition is not love, trust, or shared doctrine—but the clear understanding that each regime is existentially threatened by the success of liberal democracy and Western hegemony.
Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and their satellites or proxies understand that their hold on power is weaker than it appears. Thus, each benefits from a distracted, divided, or declining West.
Each deploys asymmetric strategies to fragment the liberal order. Disinformation, cyber warfare, election interference, assassinations, and strategic corruption are all shared tools in their repertoire.
Though their tactical goals may differ, their operational objectives converge: weaken the West, delay democratic momentum, and outlast their opponents through ambiguity and maneuver.
The Perceived Hierarchy (Not Order)
There is no formal ranking, but within the entente, a functional pecking order has emerged:
Putin remains its symbolic and strategic apex—having launched total war as well as full-spectrum hybrid warfare first, he has proved that a decaying autocracy can still outmaneuver the West.
Trump is the internal wedge—positioned within the West, he functions more as a saboteur than a partner, spreading distrust and weakening NATO from the inside. He is the traitor general whose selfishness has strategic utility for Putin.
Xi and Khamenei occupy the durable middle—strategists of delay, internal control, and long-term ideological warfare.
Netanyahu and Modi dance around alignment, extracting what they need without fully committing—exploiting the entente’s momentum while maintaining the optics of Western partnership.
Kim Jong Un and Pakistan’s military elite provide the chaos engine—unpredictable, dangerous, and invaluable for distraction or escalation.
This hierarchy is dynamic, constantly in flux. It reflects capacity, not legitimacy. It is better seen as a coordination schema than a chain of command.
Coordination Without Trust
None of these actors trust one another. In fact, most assume betrayal is inevitable. But asymmetric war doesn’t require trust—it requires timing and shared focus.
When trust fails, they coordinate through necessity, leverage, and subterfuge. Iran and Russia back opposing sides in Syria while still collaborating on sanctions evasion.
China hacks Russia’s energy infrastructure even as it quietly supports the ruble. Israel bombs Iranian targets while Netanyahu courts Putin.
Trump pretends to condemn Putin while mirroring his tactics and repeating his narratives. This is a hall of mirrors, not a war room. But mirrors can still be aimed.
Fragility and Mutual Exploitation
What makes the entente powerful also makes it brittle. It is sustained not by vision, but by fear: of collapse, of rebellion, of isolation.
Each actor exploits the others’ blind spots and uses the chaos as cover to pursue narrow objectives. But the fragility is the feature—not the bug. Because there is no central doctrine, the collapse of one does not immediately unravel the others.
The architecture is resilient through decentralization. They do not depend on each other’s health, only on each other’s ability to distract the West.
Why It Matters
The autocratic entente is real. It is the most significant strategic alignment of the 21st century. But it eludes Western detection because the West still searches for flags, uniforms, and treaties.
These regimes fight in ideas, narratives, and fractured truths. To defeat them requires a new strategic literacy: one that sees power in disruption, coordination in chaos, and war in silence and lies.
Most importantly, it requires understanding that disunity within the West—especially the betrayal of coordination by actors like Trump—is not merely unfortunate. It is the battlefield itself.
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