Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ Is Now Pence’s ‘Wolf Pack of Rogue States’

(Bloomberg) -- Vice President Mike Pence has updated and expanded the “Axis of Evil.” The moniker for America’s biggest adversaries is now the “Wolf Pack of Rogue States.”

“Beyond our global competitors, the United States faces a wolf pack of rogue states,” Pence told U.S. ambassadors gathered in Washington on Wednesday for an annual conference. “No shared ideology or objective unites our competitors and adversaries except this one: They seek to overturn the international order that the United States has upheld for more that half a century.”

The Wolf Pack as defined by Pence includes Iran and North Korea -- two nations that were included in President George W. Bush’s Axis of Evil, which he announced during his State of the Union address in 2002. A third nation at the time was Iraq, now an ally of the U.S. (but also of Iran).

Pence’s updated list also includes three Western Hemisphere countries: Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, a country increasingly under U.S. scrutiny as President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition-dominated National Assembly head toward a conflict over who should be the country’s legitimate ruler.

One nation not on Pence’s list: Russia, blamed by the U.S. intelligence community for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert

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