Cooordination without Commitment: China and the Limits of the CRINK Alignment

Another long-term research project has been published today. “Coordination without Commitment: China and the Limits of the CRINK Alignment” is part of a larger project for The Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs. Titled “Fault Lines: Exploring Mistrust and Distrust Between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” the project involves a group of specialists analyzing relations between the CRINKs, focusing on how they develop trust with each other, and what issues cause mistrust (uncertainty about another state’s intentions) and distrust (a belief that a state has intentions that are malicious, harmful, or inconsistent with the interests of one’s own) between them. It was led by Edward Lemon and Bradley Jardine of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, and we’ve all been working on it throughout 2025.

I came into the project leaning towards CRINK skepticism. At the end of the project I’m slightly less skeptical but still find it a clumsy framing. Because I spend most of my working hours thinking about Chinese foreign policy stuff, I see a lot of problems in each of these bilateral relationships with limited upside for Beijing. As for being linked with Russia, Iran and North Korea in the strategic thinking of Western policymakers, I imagine many Chinese IR profs and international affairs thinkers would be distraught - this isn’t how the international community was supposed to think of China after the Reform Era.

(Jade Gao / AFP - Getty Images)

That said, doing this project got me thinking much more deeply about the Russian and North Korea points in this quadrilateral - I already spend a lot of time on Iran - and going more deeply into the implications of the often disjointed and uncoordinated but still consequential engagement between the four of them. Even if you’re a CRINK skeptic, looking at these relationships has profound implications for whatever type of international order we’re slipping into now.

The Iran case study will be particularly useful for many of you, I suspect. It’s a pretty deep dive into the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement - the lead up, the lag in implementation, the lack of trust on both sides to really operationalize it. I think it has some useful insights that help us understand why we haven’t seen much tangible support for Iran from China since the Middle East War began on October 7, 2023.

The North Korea case study was probably the most fun for me. I lived in South Korea from 2000-2005, teaching English at universities in Jeju Island and then Seoul, and at one point I thought Korean studies was going to be my future. I loved living there, found the history and society fascinating, and Northeast Asian international relations were a bit of an obsession. Doing this gave me a chance to catch up on a lot of new literature that I’ve missed while doing Middle East stuff.

It’s a long report, around 35,000 words, and kept me very busy last autumn. Have a read, let me know what you think, and be sure to read the other contributions to the series. Lemon and Jardine have already published a lead essay as well as their report on Iran; the North Korea and Russia reports should be posted soon.