axis of upheaval

English

This English term is a hot word. Its inclusion on Wiktionary is provisional.

Etymology

Coined by Richard Fontaine and Andrea Kendall-Taylor on 23 April 2024, by analogy with terms such as axis of evil.

Noun

axis of upheaval (uncountable)

1. The alleged antiwestern collaboration between China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.
   • 2024 May/June, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Richard Fontaine, “The Axis of Upheaval: How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order”, in Foreign Affairs, volume 103, page 50:

     The four powers increasingly identify common interests, match up their rhetoric, and coordinate their military and diplomatic activities. Their convergence is creating a new axis of upheaval—a development that is fundamentally altering the geopolitical landscape.

   • 2024 May, Ralph A Cossa, Brad Glosserman, “The ‘year of elections,’ take two!”, in Comparative Connections, volume 26, page 2:

     Washington’s efforts at strengthening its Quad relationship is being met by a new quad, the so-called “axis of upheaval” involving Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran.

   • 2024 June 3, Joseph Quinlan, “It’s a New World. Investors’ Old Rules No Longer Apply”, in Barron’s, volume 104, page 46:

     While for decades the threats to the U.S.-led economic order were limited, today China and Russia, along with North Korea and Iran, have coalesced into an "axis of upheaval" whose shared ambition is nothing short of remaking the U.S.-led global liberal economic order of the past 80 years.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see axis,‎ upheaval.
   • 2002 August 7, Howard LaFranchi, quoting Michael Shifter, “S. America reels, looks north again”, in The Christian Science Monitor, page 1:

     Argentina’s financial tremors, plus the spectacle of a near-coup in oil-rich Venezuela in April and a heating-up guerrilla war in Colombia, have drawn attention to what Mr. Shifter calls the “axis of upheaval,” and put the region as a whole on the world’s “troublespot” list.