Axis powers, the coalition headed by Germany, Italy, and Japan that opposed the Allied powers in World War II.
Saudi Arabia has taken the lead against that "axis", by forming a Sunni coalition against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom the Kingdom's warplanes are currently bombing.
A short-lived attempt to put together a coalition around the Labour-VVD axis followed, but was doomed by the insistence of the Labour leader, Job Cohen, that the VVD water down its plans for spending cuts.
The Saudi rulers are able to strengthen their leadership of a broad Sunni coalition against an Iranian-led Shia axis at home and abroad.
An opinion piece in Russia's Pravda newspaper described the French, US and UK coalition against Assad as the Fukus axis, and claimed it was backing terrorism by recognising the Syrian opposition.
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 enabled Hitler to establish close working relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and on October 25,1936, their two countries were linked in a coalition known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.
Russia and Iran intervened in the war as allies of the regime in Damascus, in a civil war before Syria became the stage of a war on ISIS waged by the coalition comprising the United States and Arab countries without the axis of Russia, Iran, and Syria.
If such coalitions really spring forth, then American energy policy, and the Axis of Oil, would be turned on its ear.
This is despite the fact that the latter axis has benefited greatly from the war on ISIS, and is grateful for the coalition.
This unlikely axis has functioned surprisingly well yielding a new culture of pragmatic compromise and, if anything, fewer tensions than the coalition partnership at Westminster.
