The Quartet of Chaos: Acknowledging and Countering Adversary Cooperation
by Major Michael J. Niemiec, U.S. Army, Lieutenant Colonel Richard S. Chersicla, U.S. Army, and Commander Steven Zielechowski, U.S. Navy
Editor’s note: The following submission was a JPME II Joint Research Paper for the Joint Combined Warfighting School (JCWS), and won the FAOA Award for International Affairs in November 2024. As tensions build over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, readers will find the below examination of Iran’s ties with other adversaries essential background, revealing the interconnectedness of the challenge for the United States and the West.
Speaking in Moscow in 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and we are the ones driving these changes together.”[i] This statement highlights the increasing collaboration between America’s two strongest adversaries—the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, but the problem of adversary alignment is even broader. Since the full-scale war in Ukraine began in 2022, deepening cooperation between the PRC, Russia, Iran, and North Korea has accelerated, oriented on their shared opposition to U.S. interests, U.S. influence, and the current international system. Even transactional relationships within this ‘Quartet of Chaos’ provide diplomatic, informational, military, and economic benefits to our adversaries at the cost of our Allies and interests. Russia regularly fires Iranian and North Korean munitions at Ukrainian targets, imports from China enable Russia’s massively expanded defense industry production, and trade between the four adversaries avoids U.S. sanctions while providing cheap energy for China’s massive economy. This cooperation continues to deepen and is becoming more overt with multiple high-level meetings between the adversary military and political leadership, setting the conditions for increased working-level cooperation. While a formal and integrated adversary alliance like NATO is unlikely, increasing collaboration between adversaries aligned against the United States, U.S. Allies, and current international norms creates new challenges across multiple theaters and domains.[ii] This paper explains why increasing cooperation between Russia, Iran, the PRC, and North Korea is a development that must be acknowledged and countered by the Joint Force. This paper first examines how adversary diplomatic, informational, and economic collaboration between the adversaries increases their resistance to sanctions and diplomatic isolation. It next looks at how adversary military collaboration increases the threats to Allies and the Joint Force, especially through military material support, learning from Western equipment, and creation of an adversary community of learning.
Given these unprecedented levels of adversary cooperation, this paper then argues the Joint Force can no longer plan to counter adversaries in isolation. The Joint Force must now plan and campaign to set conditions to defeat an adversary in direct conflict, while maintaining capabilities and Allies capable of deterring the other three emboldened and enabled adversaries.
Adversary Strategic Cooperation: Diplomatic, Informational, and Economic
The four main adversaries identified in the unclassified National Defense Strategy are now supporting each other across all instruments of national power—Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic (DIME). Adversary cooperation across the “D, I, and E” increases adversaries’ resilience to sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and other tools, posing new challenges for the U.S. and Allies. Deepening military collaboration is particularly relevant to the Joint Force and will be addressed separately. Although the “quartet” is unlikely to create a formal military alliance like NATO or the Warsaw Pact, there are incentives to increase cooperation when one adversary challenges the international system. Aggression by one adversary benefits the others by focusing U.S. attention and capabilities elsewhere, depleting Ally defense munition stocks, and undermining international norms. While supporting declarations of war from the other three adversaries are unlikely, it is in their interest to provide support across DIME to increase the endurance of the engaged adversary. The longer one adversary’s conflict with the West lasts, the more room the other adversaries gain to pursue their own goals in their region.
Figure1:Adversary Diplomatic, Informational, and Economic Alignment
No-Limits: Strengthening Diplomatic Ties
A February 2022 Russia-China summit made global headlines with Putin’s declaration of a “no-limits” partnership between Moscow and Beijing.[iii] This summit, just days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, is just one of many recent high level diplomatic meetings and visits that symbolize deepening diplomatic ties between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
A key part of U.S. and Allied efforts to influence the dangerous and disruptive behaviors of North Korea, Iran, and—more recently—Russia have been efforts to isolate them diplomatically, creating widespread consensus against engagement that allows sanctions to impose economic costs. By working together, the adversaries can mitigate this isolation, especially by leveraging China’s substantial economic and diplomatic heft, Russia’s position on the UN Security Council, and their own international organizations like BRICS+.[iv] One recent example is how Russia’s March 2024 veto in the UN Security Council ended the mandate for the UN Panel investigating North Korean weapons programs and sanctions evasion.[v]
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine resulted in unprecedented international sanctions, some commentators triumphally declared that Russia had become a ‘Pariah State’ that would suffer geopolitical ostracism and economic isolation like Iran and North Korea.[vi] However, the cooperation of these three ‘Pariah States,’ together with China, provides diplomatic connections that mitigate their isolation. Tehran welcomed a delegation from North Korea in the spring of 2024, a rare event for the normally hermetic regime in Pyongyang. [vii] With their broader economic and diplomatic connections, Russia and China are even harder to isolate, bringing benefits for the ‘Pariah states’ working with them. In 2023, China sought to play the role of arbiter between Iran and Saudi Arabia, facilitating talks between the two feuding Gulf states.
The Iranian foreign minister went as far as to thank China, and “expressed sincere gratitude to China for its constructive role” in seeking to normalize relations in the volatile region.[viii] To the Global South, Russia and China diplomatically portray themselves as anti-imperialist and anti- colonialist, an effort that has been successful in making some diplomatic and informational inroads.[ix] Iran and China attended the October 2024 BRICS+ summit hosted by Russia, along with leaders representing roughly half the world’s population (including India and Türkiye) and the UN Secretary General—hardly a gathering an isolated ‘Pariah State’ would be expected to host. The BRICS+ Summit statement included sections on the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, Western sanctions, and new financial systems designed to move away from Western control. These sections could be viewed as diplomatic victories, demonstrating that the ‘Pariah States’ are not as isolated as some have proclaimed.[x]
BRICS by BRICS: Building Economic Connections and Alternatives
Economically, this revisionist quartet is increasingly intertwined. While not dependent upon each other, some of the economic ties are quite strong—China, for example, remains the largest trade partner of Russia, Iran, and North Korea, despite Western sanctions. China is also the largest importer of fossil fuels from both Russia[xii] and Iran,[xiii] symbiotically fueling China’s energy-hungry economy at a discount. A deeper economic relationship appears to be one of the theocratic regime’s national aims as Iran wants expanded access to China’s market and hopes for Chinese investment. Russia has also leveraged China to offset the impact of Western sanctions, receiving technological and machine components from China to replace the lack of access to Western firms.[xiv] China has benefited as well, with Russian consumers turning towards China after losing access to imports of European goods. For example, Chinese cars have suddenly dominated the Russian auto market.[xv]
While between unequal partners, the Chinese and North Korean economic relationship is certainly beneficial for the Kim regime. The PRC long enabled North Korea’s survival despite its international isolation, facilitating the export of millions of barrels of oil to the Hermit Kingdom, as well as allowing access to the profits generated by North Korean workers in China (estimated at $500 million a year).[xvi] Russia’s growing partnership with North Korea, providing fuel, payments, and possibly technology in return for munitions and soldiers, may open a second economic lifeline for North Korea.[xvii]
These adversaries also cooperate multilaterally on economic goals. One such forum is the BRICS group--originally Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—but now including Iran, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt in its expanded form, "BRICS+.”[xviii] This bloc is increasingly both a platform for anti-Western rhetoric and the movement to displace the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.[xix] The BRICS+ group offers an alternative system that undercuts the current rules-based order and attempts to mitigate sanctions with proposals to replace the International Monetary Fund (IMF), establish new financial systems, and create conditional reserve currencies to decrease reliance on the dollar.[xx]
The Battle for the Narrative in the Information Environment
Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang also share similar goals in the information and cyber domains. With their ‘digital sovereignty’ and ‘great firewalls,’ these autocratic states exercise great control over their own peoples’ access to information to prevent internal threats to regime stability.[xxi] Meanwhile, taking advantage of the incredibly connected world of social media outside their countries, they conduct information operations to advance their goals and undermine their adversaries–generally the United States and close American Allies.[xxii] Modern technology also gives these regimes cheap ways to reach the ‘global south’ to advance their diplomatic goals and undermine American messaging.[xxiii] While coordinated messaging is difficult to prove, our adversaries are certainly conducting complementary efforts in the information domain.