Axis of Evil, Axis of Nothing, or Pre-Axis

For students of parallelism, the fact that the current administration uses the term "Axis" when describing Islamic Iran seems odd. From a theoretical perspective, Iran is in the closing phases of Thermidor, and is on the verge of becoming a dictatorship. What this means is that the current regime in Tehran is a parallel of Weimar Germany and the First French Republic, not Nazi Germany or Bonapartist France. And as students of history know, the Axis alliance was created well after the Nazis had gained control of the state. In other words, the Bush adminstration has declared the establishment of an Axis alliance before it has been actually created.

Now many observers of the War On Terror have noted that the "Axis of Evil" is largely illusional. This is probably true since the links between the various members is weak at best. This is particularly true of the link between Iran and Saddam's former regime. This does not mean that in the future a true Axis will not be created. In fact, parallelism suggests that this is a real possibility, but this Axis would be one between member states like Iran, the Arab world and China (with Russia as a temporal ally). So it seems that the use of the term to describe rogue states is misguided. In fact, this Axis alliance of Evil is in fact an alliance of nothing, or at best a pre-Axis.

On the subject of the Axis of Evil, reference to parallelism here is of relevance. What parallelism says is that the conflict between the United States and its allies, and Islamic Iran is similar to the conflict between England and France during the Thermidorian period of that revolution (1799), or similar to the conflict between England and the allies, and Weimar Germany around 1932. The Versailles Treaty which restricted Germany's military and forced reparation payments has its parallel in the current struggle over the development of weapons of mass destruction. England's fear of France as a rising military power in 1799 is paralleled by the US's fear of Iran's growing military and nuclear ambitions.

So if you want to really understand the current conflict between the US and Iran, follow the model laid out in of "Parallelism: A Handbook of Social Analysis, and study the relationships between England and France in 1799, and England and Germany in 1932.