The potential threat arising from an “anti-Western alliance” is reaching unsettling levels, according to a top security expert — with analysts warning Washington and its allies should not underestimate the significance of warming relations between China, North Korea, India and Russia.
Speaking to CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti forum in Cernobbio, Italy on Friday, Wolfgang Ischinger, president of the Munich Security Conference Foundation Council, labeled a recent convening of world leaders in China “worrisome.”
Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted more than two dozen foreign leaders at a military parade in Beijing. Among them was North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Xi was also pictured laughing with Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in China.
“I’m worried about these pictures,” Ischinger told CNBC. “We know that there is not total harmony between India and China … but the world is moving in the wrong direction here.”
Ischinger holds a number of foreign policy-focused posts, including positions at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., and was formerly the German ambassador to the United States.
