‘Multi-headed monster’: Biden, Trump officials address China-Russia-Iran coordination

SIMI VALLEY, Calif.—China, Russia, and Iran are working closely together across the globe, which presents new threats to U.S. and allied national security, defense officials from the outgoing and incoming administrations said Saturday. But even together, those countries are not stronger than the American military and its allies, they said.  

“Autocrats resort to partnerships of convenience. But America leads partnerships of conviction. And the department’s National Defense Strategy rightly calls the U.S. network of allies and partners our ‘greatest global strategic advantage,’” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the Reagan National Security Forum here.

Austin also announced a new Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative package worth nearly $1 billion. 

“That package will provide Ukraine with more drones, more rockets for its HIMARS systems, and more support for crucial maintenance and sustainment,” he said.

Robert Wilkie, a former secretary of Veterans Affairs who is leading the Trump administration’s Pentagon transition team, said, “The killing fields of Ukraine are a warning to us all, and a warning that this is a multi-headed monster that we have to prepare for multiple theaters…Weakening the Iranians, weakening the Russians in Eastern Europe weakens China.” 

Wilkie did not address President-elect Donald Trump's statements that he might reduce or end U.S. military support for Ukraine, but did say the next administration will emphasize a return to large-scale production of key weapons to challenge increasingly coordinated adversaries. 

“We will be focusing on producing artillery shells, producing precision-guided munitions, putting more hulls in the water and making sure more ships and submarines are at sea and more aircraft are in the air,” he said, adding that he was not speaking in an official capacity for the Trump transition.

Wilkie spoke as the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria was imminent. He called the fall of Assad—a close ally of Russia and Iran—“a welcomed development,” though he noted the emergence of an extremist organization seeking to fill the power vacuum left by Assad’s departure is not. He said the events in Syria are further proof that the West has overestimated the strength of adversary states. 

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made a similar observation as he defended the Biden administration’s record.  

The partnership between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea “has not happened because these countries are so strong. It has happened out of necessity, because these countries are under pressure. Russia, under pressure in Ukraine, had to turn to Iran for munitions and North Korea for personnel. Iran, under pressure, tried to turn to Russia to get help because its attacks against Israel were defeated and its own air defenses were badly degraded. And if you look at China, when we came into this administration, the prevailing storyline was China will surpass the United States in economic strength by the end of this decade,” and that’s no longer true, Sullivan said.

In a post on Truth Social,  Trump acknowledged the difficulty the Russian regime is facing and made a connection to the collapse of the Assad regime. 

“Russia, because they are so tied up in Ukraine, and with the loss there of over 600,000 soldiers, seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years,” he wrote. “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”