Rise of the CRINK?
The Reframer | No. 05.2024
‘We’re confronted by a “deadly quartet” of nations increasingly working together.’ So declared Lord Robertson, Head of His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s Strategic Defence Review, on launching the reappraisal of Britain’s defences on 16th July 2024. The idea that the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran and North Korea might be colluding has been dismissed for years as a fantasy. But the evidence is mounting that this ‘deadly quartet’ – or ‘CRINK’ as it is being called among the British intelligence community – is colluding to usurp and even replace the prevailing international order. Here, we attempt to ‘disrupt’ orthodoxy and ‘reframe’ outmoded thinking in relation to the CRINK.
Isn’t the idea of the PRC, Russia, Iran and North Korea working together just hysteria?
It has been, but it might not be now. For years, certain analysts have forewarned of the emergence of a so-called ‘DragonBear’ or the BRICS to describe the growing alignment of Russia and the PRC, along with their associates, namely Iran and North Korea. Often, these warnings have been premature. Although the four countries are autocratic, their interests have not always been in direct alignment and they have often looked at one another with caution and suspicion. In particular, Russia and the PRC have often competed in Central Asia, especially as Chinese power has grown across the region and Russia’s economic reach has gone into sharp decline, but even there they have begun to see things similarly.
Over the past two years, a genuine CRINK has started to take shape. The summer of 2024 – and October 2024 especially – has been particularly revealing: Iran has delivered missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine; Russia has helped Iran to develop its military ambitions, even in relation to its nuclear programme; the PRC’s support for Russia has become more apparent; and North Korea has sent troops to help Russia in Ukraine. In effect, a country in the Indo-Pacific is now at war with a country in the Euro-Atlantic. Whether these developments can be considered hysteria, they are a marked difference to cooperation between the four powers in previous years.
Fair enough, but isn’t the CRINK simply a consequence of Russia’s desperation?
Yes, to an extent. As Russia has depleted its stockpile or armoured vehicles, ordnance and personnel in Ukraine, it has looked to the PRC, Iran and even the pathetic regime in North Korea for support. While those countries may not feel a particularly strong attachment to the Kremlin, they understand geopolitics well: a weak Russia would leave the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (US) and their allies and partners freer to constrain Chinese, Iranian and North Korean ambitions in the South China Sea and the Arabian Gulf, on the Korean peninsula, and elsewhere.
The very fact that each of the four authoritarian powers is drawn to geographic regions of less interest to the others may be what is drawing them together. What they share in common is their desire to make the world safer for their own political systems. Thus, each of the four regimes – the kleptocracy in Moscow, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing, the Iranian theocracy in Tehran, and the Workers’ Party in Pyongyang – seeks to degrade the power and authority of the liberal democracies, which they see as a threat to their own survival.
Right, so the CRINK will crystallise into a new powerbloc?
Possibly. Although the CRINK may have been born of Russian desperation, cooperation between Moscow, Beijing, Theran and Pyongyang is unlikely to dissipate. Countries do not cooperate because they are friends; they cooperate because they are desperate, or because they have common interests. For the CCP, the CRINK serves as a useful vessel to secure its interests, one of the most important of which is to prevent European powers – Britain and France chief among them – from becoming more involved in the Indo-Pacific. It also serves as a useful tool to strengthen Iran in the Middle East – keeping the US busy – and as a mechanism to prevent the Korean peninsula from being reunified under the flourishing and democratic South Korea.
Whatever; but surely the leading democracies can contain the CRINK?
That remains unclear. True, the leading democracies have inordinate resources at their disposal. The economic might and military strength of the US alone provides them with the means to take on any rival. But they lack strategic vision and remain clouded by outmoded thinking from the post-Cold War era. Throughout the 2010s, wherever the CRINK countries have challenged the leading democracies, the democracies have demurred. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the leading Euro-Atlantic powers did nothing. In fact, France and Germany lent Russia indirect support through the ill-conceived Minsk process, just as Germany did little to reduce its dependency on Russian oil and gas, transferring over €1 trillion into the Kremlin’s coffers. When the PRC seized control of several islands and low-tide elevations in the South China Sea, the democracies did little other than appeal to international law or send the occasional warship to undertake freedom of navigation operations.
Add to this inadequate defence spending and the political leaders in Moscow and Beijing can only conclude that the major democracies are not serious. This encourages them to work together to secure their common objectives. Unless the leading democracies, particularly Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Japan and South Korea, among others, boost investment in their armed forces, and embrace a more forceful and strategic approach to international relations, it is highly likely that the CRINK will continue to grow in strength. And, make no mistake, Moscow and Beijing, and their friends in Tehran and Pyongyang, will not give up or relent.
James Rogers is Co-founder and Director of Research at the Council on Geostrategy.
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