One of the most significant changes to the global geopolitical order since the beginning of this decade has been the formation of a new bloc of non-Western authoritarian challengers to Western or US-led hegemony. The Neo-Authoritarian Bloc (NAB) of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Venezuela, and Myanmar has collaborated militarily in Ukraine and Myanmar, and the forms of support put forward by this new grouping have led to changes in the dynamics of both conflicts significantly. The involvement of the bloc has altered the trajectory of both conflicts: the besieged junta of Min Aung Hlaing in Myanmar has survived five years of widespread armed rebellion due to the substantial level of support received from its fellow authoritarians. Similarly, Vladimir Putin’s mismanaged full-scale military invasion of Ukraine has been sustained by a consistent and high level of support from the NAB. The key types of support provided to both regimes fall into three categories: diplomatic, economic, and military. This article will discuss how global geopolitical changes, such as the formation of the bloc, have greatly affected the dynamics of these two conflicts and have also led to the thawing of previously frozen territorial disputes.

In 2022, I coined the term “Neo-Authoritarian Bloc” to refer to the consistently high level of collaboration and exchange between China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, and Myanmar since the beginning of this decade. With the abduction of Nicolás Maduro in January 2026, these are now the six core states in this bloc. There are also other authoritarian states that maintain a high level of collaboration with the bloc, but have not provided military support to these six core states. This new bloc is neither a formal alliance in the traditional sense, nor even an axis, as its members lack any unifying ideology. This grouping is a bloc, as it is a collective of states who are aligned diplomatically, economically, and militarily as a counterweight against US and Western influence. Additionally, the regimes that came to form the NAB all share the commonality of having become isolated after years of sanctions by Western states.

What unifies the bloc are the shared interests of self-preservation, the domination of their near abroad, and the creation of an assertive response to their challengers in the West. Additionally, many members of the bloc have long held ambitions that have been obstructed by the West, such as the re-acquisition of ‘lost territories’. The fact that this bloc is now an actor in international relations has become increasingly more observable since the beginning of this decade, due to the growing number of bilateral economic and defence agreements within the group. Overall, the cohesion of the NAB has led to each core member of the bloc having a greater advantage in their conflicts than in previous decades, as can be seen in Myanmar and Ukraine.

Other terms have been used to describe this new phenomenon: CRINK, has been used by Peter Van Praagh who refers to this new grouping as an ‘axis’. This term is insufficient, as it excludes Belarus, Myanmar, and Venezuela, who have also been core states in this bloc. Richard Fontaine and Andrea Kendall-Taylor have used the term ‘axis of upheaval’; Niall Ferguson has labeled this grouping the ‘axis of ill will’; while Anne Applebaum has described the NAB as a ‘network of convenience’. I do not use these terms because the NAB is strictly not an axis. A key characteristic of an axis is a common or unifying ideology. The official ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran is irreconcilable with the ideologies of the Chinese Communist Party, Russia’s hyper-nationalists or Myanmar’s militarists. The priority for the NAB is to overcome the obstructions and restrictions of their common adversaries in the West. This trumps any ideological concerns of these authoritarian states. The NAB is also a new grouping and one that did not exist a decade ago.

The Coalescence of the Bloc

The first significant challenge to NATO and US influence in the post-Cold War era was Russia’s invasion and annexation of two regions of Georgia in August 2008. Russia followed the Georgian war with the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and the invasion of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. In January 2019, President Xi Jinping announced that ‘the Taiwan issue cannot be passed down from generation to generation’, signaling a shift in Beijing’s view on the self-ruling island’s status. Tensions between the US and China had begun in 2018 over the imposition of tariffs and increased in 2019 when Trump scolded China over growing political strife in Hong Kong. The Covid-19 pandemic led to more scathing criticism from the Trump Administration which continued throughout that year. 

By 2021, Sino-American relations were at an all time low and the ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy of Chinese foreign minister Wang Li, together with clashes between China and India in 2020 and growing tensions between China and the Philippines in 2021 were further signs of changes in Beijing’s worldview. Overall, the divisions that had been established during the first Trump administration had already laid the foundations for the cohesion of the NAB during the Biden administration, which in its first weeks refused to establish a detente with either China or Russia, and also failed to obstruct the coalescence of this bloc during its early formation. 2021 and early 2022 saw members of the emerging bloc sign numerous bilateral treaties and agreements, the most significant of which was the ‘No limits’ partnership of Russia and China, signed on February 4th, 2022. This was followed by the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 22nd. China later carried out its first........

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