Note: This article is part two of a series. Read part one here.

This is part two of a duology. In part one, I discussed the broad strokes of an adversarial coalition underpinned by Sino-Russian cooperation, seeking to destroy U.S. influence and the liberal world order through likely military action. I then summarized many events and phenomena in American history that have contributed to the inadequate defense industrial and fiscal strength that would prevent our country from winning a multi-front conflict.

The War

Our adversaries’ strategic goal is to destroy the West as a political and economic bloc, and by extension the liberal world order. They have two broad aims: destroy the global U.S. military presence through numerous diversions and destroy the West’s economic power. Building on the last section, the adversarial entente is counting on us not having the manufacturing capacity or human labor needed to sustain a global war effort. 

With our military being the smallest it has been in decades (sitting at 2.1 million active duty and reserve personnel across all United States Armed Forces branches as of late 2025; all of our major adversaries will have equal or more troops in much smaller geographical areas while we have to cover the entire world), the axis will launch a coordinated, global attack. A strategic countervalue attack on the continental United States and a simultaneous invasion of our allies would not only divide U.S. and allied military power to prevent a coordinated defense, it would also destroy any semblance of economic power in our nation. Especially with the advent of long-range missiles, artificial satellites, and cyberweapons, adversarial state actors do not need to physically invade us to inflict catastrophic damage.

Controlling the Narrative and Cementing Economic Influence

Our adversaries are not just using military means to attack us. The information war is just as, if not more, important. With the consent of the local autocracies, the Axis has flooded the developing world with all manner of disinformation using its cheap-to-stream media organizations, from big-name outlets like RT, Xinhua and PressTV to obscure front companies such as Yala News (a Damascus-based Russian propaganda mill). Such outlets expose Western internet users to propaganda via bot farms and doppelganger websites pretending to be legitimate media. 

Russia and China amplify each other’s disinformation efforts. For example, in March 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and state media repeated Russian claims of U.S. biolabs in Ukraine. Alongside providing credence to Russia’s lies, this undermined speculation on COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to journalist Anne Applebaum’s book Autocracy, Inc., China has sought to weaken the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights by working to shift language among diplomats and UN documents, from universal human rights to “win-win cooperation,” “mutual respect,” and opposition to “intervening in a country’s internal affairs.” These moves and others by U.S. adversaries are intended to silence criticism of their internal abuses and stonewall broader international response to military aggression. 

Russian disinformation networks parrot a “multipolar” future in the Global South while Putin has defined “sovereignty” as being limited to only a handful of countries: those with coercive power. The information war is assisted by the dismantling of USAID, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, and the overall decline of U.S. soft power. 

China has gained influence in the Global South via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI has devolved into modern-day economic imperialism and has become little more than a venue for exporting Chinese jobs. Much of the roughly $1 trillion China has allocated for the BRI has either been embezzled or not resulted in sufficient-quality construction. In February 2023, former Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno was charged with taking $76 million in bribes from the Chinese state-owned company Sinohydro. Meanwhile, a troubled Chinese-built railroad stretching from Djibouti to Ethiopia has cost the Chinese government itself over $1 billion. The PRC has invested loans and bribed officials in many countries with the intent of taking ownership of local properties, such as mines, in order to feed natural resources to the burgeoning Chinese nation. In Zambia, half of the mining industry’s copper proceeds go to China. As of 2023, 60% of all BRI members have debt crises related to China. Said countries are also heavily reliant on China for tax revenues. In December 2025, Zambia became the first African country to accept tax filings in yuan. 

Chinese surplus goods and workers have flooded local markets. The use of product overcapacity to flood global markets with Chinese goods can force economic reliance on China by other countries, which can not only be used as a weapon such as against Europe’s economies, but works alongside the previously mentioned information campaigns to ensure diplomatic complacency, especially in the event of acts of aggression.

A Rundown of Conflict if it Occurred in the Next Few Years

None of our adversaries are capable of launching offensive operations against the U.S. and its allies yet. A leading example is American quantitative and qualitative superiority in its fast-attack submarine arsenal, with 71 nuclear-powered submarines vs. China’s 32. China needs at least two more years to prepare. The axis will attack kinetically no later than 2030 if possible, as the U.S., its allies and India are beginning to build up their military capabilities. For example, Raytheon is entering an agreement with the Pentagon to produce 1,000 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles a year by 2033, and India, China’s Himalayan rival and a valuable partner in interdicting the Strait of Malacca, plans to begin serial production of its AMCA stealth fighter among other indigenous capabilities by 2035. Russia wants to wrap up in Ukraine by 2027 before it launches the offensive against NATO, both by grinding down Ukrainian resources plus morale and wearing us down towards agreeing to an effective surrender, a strategy it has followed since the failure of the initial February 2022 assault. At the same time, Xi has directed the PLA to be capable of invading Taiwan by the end of 2027. Regardless of when, the opening day(s) of the war will likely involve one massive, rapid assault on us and our allies spanning strategic and industrial weak points.

Trade Weaponization

Cutting off of refined rare-earth minerals, other materials and manufactured goods to America from China and other partnered and allied nations, such as 20% of United States uranium-235 coming from the Russian Federation as of 2025. This could starve the American economy and military stockpile without firing a single shot, as nearly all of the U.S.’ rare earth mineral refinement is outsourced to China given America’s lack of processing infrastructure. Combined with manufactured products such as lithium ion batteries, strategically cutting off trade to us and our allies before or during the commencement of military operations will deliver a devastating economic shock. The Chinese also expect the destruction of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company fabrication facilities by the U.S., which they have worked to blunt by building up their own chip industry for personal supply, alongside serving as a node for domestic and Western chips bound for Russia and North Korea. Per Bloomberg in 2024, a military invasion of Taiwan may cost the global economy over $10 trillion. To ensure semiconductor security, China seeks to have a working extreme ultraviolet lithography machine for making sub-10 nanometer chips by 2028, and is employing a variety of measures to defeat Western semiconductor export controls in the near term.

Internationalizing the Renminbi or dealing through China’s Cross-border Interbank Payment System can help China and other U.S. adversaries mitigate the damage of being severed from the dollar-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) messaging system, as well as the accompanying Clearing House Interbank Payments System. Xi has also directed China’s government to commence a sell-off of its U.S. Treasury bonds. While our adversaries’ economies are being hardened, we have done little to nothing to withstand the fiscal and trade shock of global armed conflict.

To be clear, our adversaries do have economic weaknesses. However, they are not as severe as ours. Besides the former buying oil from Iran, Central Asia, and temporarily Venezuela and the Arab countries, plus developing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor from Xinjiang to the port of Gwadar to bypass the Strait of Malacca, the only indispensable economic reliance China and Russia have is on each other. Moscow needs Beijing for advanced microelectronics, engines and machining tools for weapons. Per former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, around 90% and 70% of such imports in 2023 came from China. Russia has progressively begun to shift from Western components for its weapons to Chinese ones, as evidenced by the Banderol drone-launched cruise missile. 

Moreover, China depends on Russia as its only truly reliable exporter of hydrocarbons both now and during the war, and also sources gold from Moscow. It is working to ease the need to import fossil fuels by transitioning to renewable energy and electric vehicles. On top of increasing the import volume of oil for its own wartime reserves via discounted prices, it is in China’s interest to buy Russian fuel in great quantities to generate Moscow revenues to ensure the livelihood of the Russian war economy. Sakhalin and a Siberian-Central Asian trade network including pipelines will be used to counter moves by the United States Navy and allied fleets to blockade the Suez Canal and Strait of Malacca. Whether the adversarial coalition will attack before the completion of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline is uncertain, but is certainly likely. 

Also in the realm of self-sufficiency, China is pushing for food security, stockpiling soybeans and shifting sourcing from the U.S. and Brazil to domestic farms, breeding corn and soybeans with high protein composition and resistance to pests. As of 2025, soybean meal now comprises only 13.4% of grain products consumed by livestock in the PRC, while only 2.65 million metric tons of corn was imported in 2025 vs. ~30 million in 2023.

Digital Infrastructure Disruptions

Another front will be cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, supervisory control, data acquisition architecture, and digital cellular, cloud, and network providers such as Amazon Web Services. Intended to non-kinetically bring the American economy and military to a halt, this could cripple U.S. military installations and communications, traffic lights, sewage, water treatment plants, factories, extra-high voltage transformers, dams and other power stations, gas station pumps, oil/natural gas facilities, internet broadband, data centers, cloud software, railways, etc. Volt Typhoon (China), Sandworm (Russia) and other illicit cyberwarfare units will carry out this branch of the attack. Said cyber-units, especially those in China, have spent years prepositioning themselves in the U.S. critical infrastructure grid to ensure effectiveness. 

The SIM farm network around the UN headquarters in New York in September 2025, which was capable of overloading NYC’s entire cellular grid, is one example of physical intrusions in U.S. critical infrastructure to be used in the operation, as were the strange modules found on Chinese-made cranes in U.S. ports. Outdated telecommunications infrastructure has also enabled mass cyber backdooring without the need for infected hardware, and is the reason China’s Salt Typhoon was so successful in penetrating U.S. telecommunication companies for information. Who knows what backdoors the Chinese government has put inside widely used indigenous platforms such as Douyin/TikTok; malware can be added into such applications in any routine update. Such platforms are also vulnerable to influence operations. Even after the sale of TikTok to U.S. shareholders, ByteDance still owns a 19.9% stake, and the algorithm source code is unchanged.

Naval and paramilitary vessels, manned and unmanned, could also sever undersea data/internet cables. As of 2023, 99% of the world’s digital traffic was carried through undersea cables. The Chinese and Russians have used all manner of ships, most often research vessels, to map undersea terrain and infrastructure in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic Oceans, as well as the South China, Mediterranean, Baltic, and other smaller seas, all for global undersea military advantage in the coming conflict. According to Supreme Allied Commander Europe Alexis Grynkewich, Russia and China have conducted joint bathymetric surveys in the Arctic Ocean for this purpose.

Adversaries could deploy anti-satellite weaponry against Western commercial and military constellations. Lasers, signal jammers such as the Krasukha-4, shrapnel dispensers, missile systems like the A-235 PL-19 Nudol, cyberattacks, and potentially even orbital nuclear weapons could be used to rapidly destroy our satellite grids, alongside an engineered satellite cascade. This will have similar effects on U.S. digital infrastructure as the previously mentioned cyberattacks and will also destroy almost all Western reconnaissance capabilities. Who knows what capabilities the adversarial coalition will have in orbit by the opening hours of war, or perhaps already has deployed in space. During the January 2026 mass protests, Iran was able to jam GPS and Starlink internet satellites using Russian and Chinese electronic warfare equipment and deep packet inspection architecture.

China could use VLS and UAV-equipped freighters, submarines such as the Type 093B and Yasen-class SSGNs (nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines), and truck-mounted missile launchers of varying loads, aircraft, and drone swarms, to strike American military installations across the globe, including in the continental United States. Most Pacific and domestic U.S. Air Force installations lack hardened aircraft shelters, making them juicy targets for cruise and ballistic missiles. Military installations in the continental U.S. can also be struck with smuggled commercial off-the-shelf drone swarms, such as those hidden in consumer trucks. First priority targets for conventional strike could be the strategic bomber facilities of Air Force Global Strike Command. For example, in March 2026, intruding drones of advanced sophistication reportedly flew over Barksdale Air Force Base, which houses B-52H bombers that have taken part in Operation Epic Fury. The United States’ Solid State Phased Array Radar Systems such as at Pituffik Space Base in Greenland are currently not capable of detecting maneuverable hypersonic munitions, a glaring vulnerability in U.S. missile defenses. The Golden Dome missile defense shield is not projected to be operational any time soon, with costs potentially reaching $3.6 trillion.

Combine this strategic attack with tactical offensives by the axis against our allies in Asia and Europe. Drones, ground pounders, electronic warfare systems, surface combatant ships and submarines, howitzers, rockets and missiles, armor, airborne units, manned aircraft, non-nuclear WMDs, etc. Nuclear weapons will be used to intimidate us and our allies into holding back any forceful responses to the aggression, while the entire economies and societies of the aggressor countries will be mobilized to fight in prolonged hostility. The arsenal of autocracy has dramatically accelerated in growth, especially since 2022, and it will not stop until victory.

Russia

The Russian Federation seeks to dominate the European continent as a new Russian empire, and under Putin is for now content being a junior ally to the Chinese hegemon. Kyrylo Budanov, then-head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, said the Russians plan to spend $1.1 trillion on their armed forces by 2036, the vast majority by 2030 for war with NATO. Russia will work to slow the eastward movement of OPLAN-DEU’s 800,000 NATO troops by striking transportation and military infrastructure using both its conventional military and asymmetric assets, as well as use “illegal” sleeper agents and contract labor to attempt assassinations of high value targets. 

Its Northern Fleet submarines based in the Kola Peninsula will attempt to penetrate the GIUK gap in the North Atlantic. In 2012, a Shchuka-B SSN (nuclear-powered attack submarine), an older Soviet design from the early 1980s, swam in the Gulf of Mexico for weeks undetected by the U.S. Navy, a capability threatening both to NATO and the U.S. The Russian Armed Forces will use nuclear-armed units, such as Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles and Topol-M/Yars ICBMs, for psychological intimidation. 

Russia has sought to militarily push to the Dnipro river and establish a land corridor on the shore of the Black Sea to Odessa. Moscow seeks for the United States to agree to Ukrainian territorial concessions and a troop limit on Kyiv’s armed forces, which will help to turn Ukraine into an emasculated rump state that represents a smaller obstacle during a war with NATO or future conquest. The focus of the wider war with NATO itself will likely be on ground invasions of the Baltic republics, Finland, northern Norway, and the Swedish island of Gotland. Paramount goals are likely to be the taking of the Swedish-owned Baltic island of Gotland and the geographic securing of the Northern Fleet’s nuclear weapons. These invasions will launch from Kaliningrad, Belarus (leaked papers reportedly detail plans to de facto annex Belarus by 2030), and Russia proper. At the same time, Russia will strike Poland, Germany, France, Britain, and other Western European areas. These strikes will use longer-range missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, gas and data cable cutting, electronic warfare, and cyberattacks. 

Meanwhile, neutral Ireland relies on the Royal Navy, currently with only three Astute-class SSNs ready for deployment, to defend undersea cables from Russian submarines. To prevent resource overlap between operations in Ukraine and preparation for war with NATO, Russia has reestablished the Leningrad Military District separate from the Western MD and begun a major facility buildup on its borders with Finland and the Baltics. The new infrastructure will enable the forward deployment of new forces in the near future. Russia is utilizing underequipped kontraktniki, prisoners, and cheap drones in Ukraine to save expensive kit, politically-draining conscription, and ~4.5 million reservists for NATO. Tactically, Russia seeks to seize the Suwalki Gap and cut the Baltics from the rest of NATO, strategically placing S-400 SAMs and nuclear-armed Iskander-M SRBMs in Kaliningrad and Belarus to blunt and deter NATO airpower. Political destabilization in the Baltics as in Narva will assist a ground offensive. 

Moscow’s “phase zero” campaign, as coined by the Institute for the Study of War, is shaping war plans for probing critical infrastructure plus NATO capabilities, and creating optimal psychological conditions and political narratives among the European population and body politic. One narrative being used to justify future Baltic operations is the pretense of NATO preparing to seize Kaliningrad Oblast. In all contingencies, they are preparing to use attrition warfare supported by the total mobilization of society to grind NATO, whose European militaries were hit even harder by the peace dividend than us, to defeat. With upwards of 40,000 new recruits per month, Russia is currently on track to induct 1.5 million active duty soldiers into its armed forces, placing it as the second-largest in the world, and troop numbers will swell into the multi-millions once war with NATO kicks off. Conscription is now year-round instead of bi-annual. 

Among other actions to prepare for mobilization, the Kremlin has based its primary and secondary schooling around a military curriculum. This includes discipline and a class, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, called “Foundations of Security and Defense of the Motherland.” The class trains Russian children in psychological warfare, “unity of command,” the use of first-person-view drones, Kalashnikov assault rifles, Dragunov sniper rifles, and RPGs. Students are also taught with revisionist history textbooks. This mobilization effort will create a force similar in depth to the old Soviet Armed Forces. 

Russia’s industry backed by China’s provision of domestic and Western microelectronics and machine tools alongside nitrocellulose and other propellants is surging. Per Frontelligence Insight, 1,118 T-90M/M2 MBTs are to be produced from 2027 to 2029, predominantly from construction but also modernisation from older tank variants. Meanwhile, approximately 7 million howitzer and mortar shells and rockets were produced in 2025, a number of which could be saved given the Ukraine operation’s access to North Korean munitions. In order to dedicate Russia’s native population to the domestic war effort and broader economy, Putin has since 2022 dramatically increased the allowance of Chinese enterprises to develop land in the Far East, establishing five International Advanced Development Zones for China’s own wartime resource extraction powered by Chinese labor. China in February 2023 began to refer on its official maps to Russian territories like Vladivostok in their Chinese names, possibly to appease hardline nationalists and/or exaggerate the impact of historical tensions on the alliance.

China

The People’s Republic of China under Xi Jinping seeks to supplant the United States as the world’s hegemonic power, and is the economic backbone of the alliance. Tactically, its goal is to break through the U.S. military alliance containment network in the First Island Chain and evict the U.S. military from the Indo-Pacific. In Taiwan, the Kuomintang opposition party’s obstruction of a special $40 billion defense stimulus in the KMT-controlled Legislative Yuan will inevitably assist any PLA attempt at forced absorption of the island, and it is uncertain whether the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party will keep the presidency in the January 2028 election. 

For years, Xi has publicly drilled into the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese public a sense of urgency in preparing for war, invoking such while inspecting a PLA Rocket Force brigade in October 2024. A March 2023 CCP essay read, “In the face of wars that may be imposed on us, we must speak to enemies in a language they understand and use victory to win peace and respect.” 

Chinese military strategy centers around the concept of “national total war,” utilizing all of society to win a defined objective military conflict against a “strong enemy.” In 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission, the State Council’s macroeconomic planning organ, was given broad authority to mobilize society and national resources in support of PLA objectives; National Defense Mobilization Offices began opening in provinces nationwide from Tibet to Inner Mongolia starting in December 2022. According to U.S. intelligence and the American Enterprise Institute, Chinese annual defense spending was in the range of $700 billion in 2022, representing a rapid military buildup for war. China’s war effort will be directed from a vast underground complex southwest of Beijing at least 10 times larger than the Pentagon, due for operational status by 2027. 

Continuing, the PLA Air Force’s (PLAAF) aircraft are to be protected from drones and dumb munitions by over 3,000 hardened aircraft shelters. Alongside asymmetric tactics such as those described in the Russia section, China will launch countervalue strikes against Taiwanese and allied territory. These attacks will focus on political targets and defense industrial infrastructure, as well as regional American and allied military assets, which are too concentrated in Okinawa and Guam. China will use cyberweapons, aerial and underwater drones, and Dongfeng, Yingji, and Chang Jian series missiles. In sufficient numbers, these weapons can overwhelm the American Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, MIM-104 Patriot, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, and Short-Range Air Defense systems. 

Type 093 and 095 SSNs plus diesel-electric attack submarines and drone swarms will be used to also attack American ships in the West Pacific. For years, China has pursued an extensive campaign of oceanographic mapping and sensor placing in the Pacific, Indian and Arctic Oceans, intended to help Chinese and Russian submarines operate in deep water and track American and allied submarines. Above the surface, limited stockpiles of TLAMs and SM-6s nullify the lethality of the Typhon Mid-Range Capability. At the same time, Zhongnanhai is fueling the Russian war economy, with Chinese enterprises buying precious metals and hydrocarbons in enormous quantities, the latter above the price cap placed by Western sanctions. 

All of this will be on top of China’s amphibious and airborne invasions of the Senkaku Islands and Taiwan, which Russia is reportedly training them for in paratrooper training and system supply. A number of civilian ferries have been adapted for armored vehicle carry in the event PLA amphibious forces capture beaches on Taiwan’s coast, and the PLAAF intends to exhaust Taiwan and friendly air defenses with vintage unmanned-converted J-6W fighters stationed at airbases in the Fujian and Guangdong Provinces. Last November, China began sea trials of its new Sichuan Type 076 electromagnetic catapult amphibious assault drone carrier, a critical capability for a blockade and invasion of Taiwan. Meanwhile, the Type 055 guided missile cruiser has been regarded as one of the world’s most capable naval surface combatants, with hypersonic strike missile capability in its YJ-21 ASMs and a radar cross section designed for stealth, unlike our Arleigh Burke and Ticonderoga-class DDGs and CGs. 

In practically every area, China is already equal or superior to us. Sheer numbers are the most obvious. There are around 3,500 Dongfeng series missiles and counting that we know of. For every five American vessels built, there are 1,700 Chinese ships. By 2030, China is projected by the Royal United Services Institute to field 1,000 Chengdu J-20A/S stealth fighters. China has two million troops within its sovereign borders right now, not counting for any increases in conscription during wartime. Innovation-wise, they are close to or equal to us, investing heavily in “intelligentizing” the PLA (despite the inferior sophistication of their indigenous semiconductors) and networking unmanned systems. Their only disadvantages are a total lack of combat experience since their loss against Vietnam in 1979, inferior chip production capabilities, and a rigid top-down command structure, which the RAND Corporation warns may be replaced with decentralized mission command. 

In order to make the military more effective and reliable in preparation for the war, Xi has since 2023 conducted purges of PLA officers deemed corrupt and/or not in sync with the Chairman’s directives, specifically regarding force preparation on the 2027 timeline. This most notably includes former defense minister Li Shangfu and Vice Chairmen of the Central Military Commission He Weidong and Zhang Youxia. Vacant CMC and military positions will probably be filled in by a younger, more hardline officer corps loyal to Xi. Defense industry executives have also been purged.

Iran

After the 12-Day War, Iran was rebuilding its forces with allied assistance to launch a far more devastating attack on Israel, USCENTCOM installations, and potentially America’s Arab partners. On December 28, 2025, President Masoud Pezeshkian presented a budget proposal to the Iranian Parliament’s budget oversight committee, which advocated for a whopping 62% tax increase to address debt and paying for ballistic missiles. This is even as the nation suffers from a 42.2% inflation rate and oil export revenues decrease. Embracing self-reliance for kinetic firepower given proxy degradation, Tehran sought to be capable of firing 2,000 ballistic missiles in a single strike by the next war to overcome Iron Dome, Arrow 3, David’s Sling, and other air defenses. 

Even if Iran decided not to close the Strait of Hormuz and attack the Gulf oil fields, the mere threat of doing so may have coerced the Arab states into not intervening, fearing the collapse of their economies. This planned attack was intended to sync with the greater global conflict, as evidenced by China’s supply of planetary mixers and the sodium perchlorate missile propellant precursor to grow Iran’s solid-fueled ballistic missile arsenal. Said arsenal was per the FDD once again on trajectory to number around 10,000 in 2028, comprising both liquid and solid-fueled missiles. Accompanying this was a production rate of roughly 34 transporter erector launchers per month, the stockpile increasing from ~200 to ~470 between June 2025 and March 2026.

As of April 2, 2026, roughly half of Tehran’s ballistic missile launchers were confirmed to still be operational after one month of U.S. and Israeli strikes, with most missiles and launchers merely buried. As a stopgap deterrent to Israeli strikes accounting for the country’s lack of nuclear weapons, Iran is developing ballistic missile-carryable chemical and biological payloads. In October 2025, then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei reportedly approved the designing of compact nuclear warheads, holding off on uranium-235 enrichment to 90% purity only to avoid provoking Israeli and American strikes. To resist Israeli and American airpower, Tehran has been in the process of acquiring 48 Su-35 fighters from Russia, and per the most recent reporting was in talks with China to obtain J-10Cs. Per the Middle East Eye, Iran has in exchange for oil acquired HQ-16 and HQ-17AE air defense batteries from China since the immediate aftermath of the June war, and in December 2025 committed to buying 500 9K333 Verba MANPADS launchers and 2,500 9M336 missiles from Russia, to be delivered between 2027 and 2029. 

Domestically, Iran has made heavy use of EW systems like the Russian Murmansk-BN and deep packet inspection architecture to jam Starlink, specifically during the January 2026 internet blackout. All of this said, there are caveats. We do not have information on the status of advanced foreign equipment in light of Operation Epic Fury. 

But our other adversaries view Iran as expendable even if Tehran provides oil to China and is a fellow autocratic partner, as indicated by Russia’s unwillingness to add a mutual defense clause to the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategy. Iran and its proxies have experienced a series of losses after the strategic blunder that was Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has fallen, Hezbollah’s leadership has been gutted by Mossad’s explosive pager operation and IDF airstrikes, and Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan among other nuclear program targets were heavily damaged by American TLAMs and GBU-57 bunker busters. Despite the IRGC’s patronage network and the volunteer Basij militia force, the Revolutionary regime is fragile given the outward look of the Iranian citizenry, exemplified by mass protests in the wake of the killing of Mahsa Amini. 

Despite these setbacks, powering Iran’s military and security forces and stoking hostilities between the Israelis, Arabs, and Iranians and their proxies, and by necessity preserving Tehran’s regime, remains a strategic move the other players greatly benefit from, as a way of keeping a bulk of U.S. military force pinned down in the Central Command area of responsibility. It is why the Russians and Chinese have attempted to delay UN Security Council snapback sanctions, invest in Iranian nuclear weapons through assistance in laser technologies that validate nuclear warhead designs, and build conventional military capabilities following the country’s humiliation in Operation Rising Lion. 

For many years, Iran has supplied Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and the former Assad regime with missiles and weapons parts. This includes (usually through intermediaries such as the Assad regime supplied during the Syrian civil war) the Russian Kornet and North Korean F-7 anti-tank weapons, supersonic P-800 Oniks ramjet antiship weapon and other munitions, intelligence, and technical advice. Russian GRU advisors and Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company imagery helped the Houthis in striking vessels in the Red Sea, which coaxed the U.S. Navy into using Standard Missiles already in shortage for ensuring freedom of navigation. In the current war, Russian synthetic aperture radar satellites provided GEOINT for Iranian strikes, while the BeiDou-3 satellite cluster guides Iranian weapons and Chinese satellite imagery distributor MizarVision posts detailed analyses of U.S. and allied military positions on social media. 

Overall, using Iran and its proxies as a resource drain for the U.S. military has proven fruitful. During the 12-Day War, the U.S. used around 25% of its THAAD interceptors to defend Israel from Iranian missiles. On March 27, 2026, a Russian-enabled Iranian precision strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia destroyed an E-3 Sentry AWACS. Within the first 100 hours of Epic Fury, roughly 2,000 munitions were used, a number of which were precision guided weapons that are difficult to replenish. 

All of this said, China and Russia do not need a Middle East diversion to sufficiently dilute U.S. military force across the Earth’s surface, even if the current war is critically straining U.S. military assets. As such, Iran’s contribution to a multi-front war by the Axis of Upheaval mainly lies in the years before, where the Axis of Resistance’s hostilities with Iran’s neighbors and the U.S. serves to drain American munitions and political capital. Domestically, the Iranian regime’s survival hinges on the IRGC’s patronage network and the violence the security apparatus can inflict on dissenters, as seen with the slaughter of over 30,000 protestors in January 2026 with automatic rifles and, allegedly, chemical agents. 

North Korea

North Korea has formally abandoned peaceful reunification efforts with the South, calling Seoul “the most hostile state” and its “principal enemy.” This portrays South Koreans as a hostile and alien people, justifying interstate war and weakening South Korean cultural contagion (and by extent preventing unification by absorption under Seoul). Since January 2024, the DPRK’s constitution now calls for subjugating the South in its entirety in the event of a war. Continuing, an August 2023 Navy Day speech by Kim Jong Un called for “preparations for a revolutionary war for accomplishing national reunification,” and another speech per state media called for “strategic cooperation with the anti-imperialist independent countries.” 

Kim may seek to invade South Korea with allied backing, using his increasingly diverse arsenal of nuclear warheads and delivery systems to deter ROK and U.S. counteroffensive and decapitation maneuvers under the Combined Forces Command’s OPLAN 5022. He may be interested in pushing at least as far as the Han River and past the Northern Limit Line, de facto dominating the Peninsula by seizing political and industrial targets within the Seoul-Incheon-Gyeonggi Metropolitan Area, supported by mass sabotage in the South’s rear. The goal would be to create a fait accompli and force maximalist, perhaps vassalizing demands upon the South in peace negotiations, such as financial reparations or the eviction of the U.S. military. This must be done while withstanding and defeating the ROK Strategic Command’s Three-Axis system (Kill Chain, Korea Air and Missile Defense, and Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation). He has turned to other states to provide the diversion, auxiliary/logistical personnel, technical capabilities, intelligence, and economic means to do so. 

Beijing in May 2022 vetoed new UNSC sanctions in response to a launch of the Hwasong-17 ICBM that March, and abstained in 2024 when Russia vetoed an extension of the UN Panel of Experts that monitored the enforcement of UN sanctions on the DPRK. Chinese ships run commerce out of DPRK ports, and Chinese front companies hide North Korean cyberthieves harvesting funds for the Korean People’s Army from Western technology companies. As of December 2025, a manufacturer in Jiangsu province is reportedly producing drone assembly lines for export to the DPRK, while the Shenyang Machine Tool Company supplies CNC machines. This UNSC sanctions-busting commerce is not possible without state direction, and the supply of machinery and raw materials is essential for North Korea’s 20×10 macroeconomic development initiative, which may actually be a way of deconcentrating industry and food storage in the event of war. Most importantly, Beijing since May 2024 has not mentioned or committed to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as a goal in any press releases or public diplomatic exchanges. 

Meanwhile, Russia has less incentive to keep its collaboration subtle. Per U.S. intelligence, it was Kim’s idea, not Putin’s, for North Korea to support Russian operations in and around Ukraine with troops. Pyongyang has supplied rockets and millions of artillery shells to lessen Russian ammunition expenditure by as much as half while it stockpiles for the wider war. The sale of old munitions from the 1970s and 80s has enabled the KPA to refill its storage depots with millions of new, more reliable rounds. The Korean People’s Army’s Storm Corps acts as auxiliaries and even saw frontline combat in Kursk, while tens of thousands of workers are toiling in Russian drone factories in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, facilities which are the epicenter of the Axis’ drone innovation per the ISW. 

The North Koreans are making many gains from the sale of weapons and troop deployments and in compensation Russian assistance: as much as $14 billion in revenue for military research programs, technological/weapons design solutions taken from Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates to components of the Yars and Sarmat ICBMs, crude oil, combat testing for weapons, hands-on production training on Shahed UAVs for localization, food, and modern high-intensity warfare experience for the troops. With allied help, North Korea hopes to create a modern drone-augmented force that can offset the Kill Chain and KAMD, plus the South’s superiority in mechanized forces. This is supported by the DPRK’s cybertheft of foreign companies for funds and intellectual property. Other tools include North Korea’s massive Kill Chain-resistant volume of shell artillery, rockets, and quick-to-launch solid-fueled missiles. The acquisition of Shahed attack UAVs, new 240mm MLRS and the KN-25 600mm GMLRS offsets the vulnerability of hardened artillery sites near the DMZ to the KTSSM-1 corps-use bunker buster. 

Second, Pyongyang has the world’s largest network of underground military facilities and factories, whose scale provides the leadership, industry, and armed forces with strategic depth and dense granite protection against the ROK’s nine-ton warhead Hyunmoo-V intermediate-range ballistic missile, and other bunker busters for use by the greater KMPR plan. A massive cannon-fodder manpower pool of over a million conscripts, conditioned through propaganda and fear of shame and punishment to die for the Supreme Commander, as indicated in Kursk, also bolsters its strength. The 20×10 factory initiative aims to turn counties into self-sufficient dual-use light manufacturing and food reserve nodes, combined with the expansion of specialized heavy industry facilities like the Ryongsong Machine Complex where Hwasong-11 SRBMs are produced. 

The gradual deployment of new technology with outside assistance further enhances capabilities, such as Pantsir-S1 SHORADS, Garpiya and Shahed-136/Geran-2 UAVs, second-hand MiG-29 and Su-27 fourth-generation fighters, reconnaissance satellites, AI-targeting, hypersonic glide vehicles, nuclear submarine propulsion, and fiber optic top-attack ATGMs like the Bulsae-4. Pyongyang’s forces have trained in battle with night vision and modern equipment, such as the AK-12 assault rifle and Vepr-12 semi-automatic shotgun for antidrone use. The DPRK is also mimicking proven Western kit, with the Saetbyol-9 UAV borrowing the airframe of the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper. Seoul is within range of North Korean hardened artillery sites in the mountains north of the Demilitarized Zone. The KN-25, which is nuclear-capable, is set to become the core of the nation’s land attack capabilities. Pyongyang holds an extensive chemical weapon stockpile comprising up to around 5,000 tons including the sarin and VX nerve agents. The DPRK drone and missile arsenal, advancing with SRBMs like the Hwasong-11Ma and future Shahed UAVs, is increasingly capable of overcoming KAMD. Without U.S. SM-3 interceptors, the ROK’s Sejong the Great-class Aegis-equipped DDGs currently cannot intercept ballistic missiles beyond 20 kilometers. 

With these factors in mind, the South would face devastation from war regardless of the outcome, its Kill Chain and KAMD doctrines ineffective in stopping a Northern attack. The United States’ wartime operational control of the ROK/U.S. CFC and by extent the Republic of Korea Armed Forces may paralyze the South’s response to a Northern invasion given our engagements elsewhere. The opening of a Korean front will be of critical use to China in the Asia-Pacific theatre, counting for the strategy of diluting U.S. and allied forces and limiting their ability to intervene in the First Island Chain, a benefit which far outweighs uncontrolled migration into Manchuria. This also supersedes the peacetime concerns of peninsular stability and keeping U.S. forces away from China’s borders. On the other hand, the DPRK cannot successfully invade en-masse the Seoul-Incheon-Gyeonggi area without PLA support, particularly in satellite reconnaissance, rear logistics and strikes against USFK facilities like at Camp Humphreys and the Osan and Kunsan Air Bases. 

Pakistan

The Pakistan Armed Forces have always viewed India as the nation’s pacing rival, and have become a strategic partner of China for this reason. Since the 2016 skirmishes at the Kashmir Line of Control, the military has turned to road-mobile fission warhead ballistic missiles to restrain the conventionally superior Indian Armed Forces. With Chinese military and surveillance equipment and intelligence support, the former comprising 81% of Pakistani weapon imports between 2020 and 2024, as well as the use of nuclear weapons and future ICBMs as a deterrent against India and America, the Pakistan Armed Forces under hardliner Asim Munir may hope in the event of war deliver a knockout blow that will deal India considerable damage and enable them and proxy militant cells to take Jammu and Kashmir, which under the war framework China could have dangled as a carrot. Islamabad’s accusations of India supporting the Baloch Liberation Army shows it views its security affairs as interconnected issues. A conflict may also strengthen their political power internally, a goal made more urgent in light of the visible cracks formed by the political revolt of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Even if Pakistan does not start a full-scale Kashmir war concurrent with an Indo-Pacific conflict, it is likely to at minimum mobilize its forces, diverting Indian ground and air resources.

Reliance on Chinese weaponry and satellite intelligence (per Indian Deputy Chief of the Army Staff Rahul Singh) so far seems to be credible in light of the reportedly successful performance of the PL-15 air-to-air missile and J-10C’s EW capabilities against French-made Indian Dassault Rafale and Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft in May 2025, and Beijing reportedly offered fifth-generation Shenyang J-35 fighters and HQ-19 ABM batteries to Islamabad following the 2025 war with India. Capitalizing on his surge in popularity after Operation Sindoor, Munir has rammed through a constitutional amendment to designate himself Chief of Defense Forces and make the military chain of command subordinate only to him, with a new Federal Constitutional Court handpicked by the figurehead civilian leadership. Whether he intends to use this increased political power to ensure personal control of any attack on India concurrent with the global war is not clear at this time.

India has a major vulnerability in its reliance on Russian weaponry, such as the S-400 air defense system, as well as its reliance on Russia for crude oil. Moscow accounted for as much as 40% of New Delhi’s crude imports in 2024. China can have Russia cut off the supply of all fossil fuels to India at any moment. On the other hand, it may develop Pakistan’s offshore hydrocarbon facilities, which among the littorals off Karachi and Gwadar could be protected via anti-access/area-denial by Hangor-class air-independent propulsion attack submarines against Indian naval forces, including the Kalvari-class submarine. Russia likely intends for India to increase discounted crude oil purchases, and therefore reliance on them rather than the Middle East for nonrenewables, to increase the potency of a refined oil shock concurrent with a Pakistani attack, while using them to evade sanctions, procure explosive materials, and generate war economy profits in the short term. Out of a desire to diplomatically retaliate against U.S. sanctions and tariffs over its purchases of Russian crude oil, as well as its desire to hedge against a Pakistan-supporting China, India may be manipulated into inking new Russian weapon contracts which will never yield equipment given the cost and non-Russian parts needed for said systems. Russia can stall Indian procurement of its advanced weaponry as well as sabotage or cut technical support, joint production agreements bureaucratically preventing India from switching to other countries’ kit. 

With the U.S. viewing India as a potential tool for attacking China from the south and blockading the Strait of Malacca, Beijing views the Pakistan Armed Forces as a long-term strategic asset against India augmented by improving ties with Bangladesh since 2024. Pakistan could also divert Indian focus and joint military forces to the west in the event of a war between Beijing and India. Most importantly, the destruction Pakistan may bring to bear on India combined with an oil shock can also negate the latter’s potential as a great power rival to China in the years ahead. Pakistan’s naval forces may also menace U.S. and Australian forces in the Indian Ocean. Of note, as of February 2026, India is seemingly cutting back its oil purchases in light of a supposed trade deal with the U.S. The March 2026 disruption of trade through the Strait of Hormuz may reverse this, however.

To be clear, this analysis does not suggest that China seeks a conflict along the Line of Actual Control during an Indo-Pacific conflict. Because of India’s role as a strategic regional rival to China, Beijing’s policy toward New Delhi must be discussed.

Synthesis

To emphasize, adversarial attacks will broadly occur at the same time around the world. The effort must be coordinated to succeed, dilution of American force is the central strategy at play. Our military forces will be stretched so much that we will be incapable of focusing on any one theatre of combat.

Of course, no plan survives the initiation of combat, and our regional allies will not crack immediately. However, the U.S.’s adversaries anticipate this, and will use their superior industrial base as well as the political and societal will to expend copious levels of blood and treasure to nullify mistakes, setbacks, or inferior quality of training, logistics, discipline and technological sophistication among their forces. With respect to the skill and technical capabilities of the U.S. and allied armed forces, even we will find it hard-pressed for our attacks to not be absorbed. Per Congress’ 2024 Report on the Commission of the National Defense Strategy, the U.S. military would “largely exhaust its munitions inventories in as little as three or four weeks” in a war only with China. Meanwhile, Russia alone seeks to produce enough Shahed family drones to use 1,000 a day in combat by the end of 2026.

Conclusion

In March 2022, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, spoke of the greater invasion of Ukraine at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. Very early on in the speech was a quote that, while spoken in a monologue more broadly parroting Russian narratives, was in this case quite transparent. In Lavrov’s words, “The current developments in the world are not so much about Ukraine as about attempts to shape a new international order.”

The expectations powering the rules-based international order have become meaningless. As our President risks splintering U.S. alliances over the Iran war and his desire to dominate the Western Hemisphere as a strongman, our autocratic adversaries are ever more unified and brazen in their warfare against us and our allies, and many political entities around the world seek to overcome outside expectations on their conduct. 

No single foe or group of them has ever before had the capability to strike the American homeland without nuclear-armed ICBMs. They are a collective that cannot be defeated purely through any number of sanctions, tariffs or trade route interdictions, for their economies have strength of coordination and coercing a change in their behavior is impossible. Their only real economic weakness is China and North Korea’s lack of sufficient extraction of crude oil to outpace their energy consumption rate, and the U.S. will militarily exhaust itself before it can capitalize on this vulnerability. 

Our adversaries cannot be militarily countered entirely through novel initiatives such as the Pentagon’s Replicator and Silicon Valley innovation, for they, powered by the Chinese industrial titan, have the sheer mass of arms both cheap and sophisticated plus the manpower and research and development base to overcome any tactical obstacles. Nor are they a foe that can be split apart in mistrust; they have worked to lull us into a sense we could do so. 

Without evoking a manichean good vs. evil worldview, the leaders of these countries and their compatriots are wicked men who subjugate and steal from others, whether Ukrainian, Uyghur, Russian, Han Chinese, or anyone else. Their collective goals are to destroy all threats to their power, internal and external, and carve up the world amongst themselves and their countries, and they have no qualms with killing untold numbers of men, women and children in order to do so.

And worst of all? They’re winning.