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CRINK'S ALL-FRONTS WAR: NOW GLOBAL AND KINETIC By Mark Anderson ______ Why Read: As our members are aware, SNS was the first to detect and describe China's shift to what we call the InfoMercantile national business model, intended to damage and then dominate inventing nations of the West; we subsequently briefed the top intel officers of the Five Eyes nations and Europe. Later, SNS was also the first to have discovered and publicly discussed the CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, N. Korea) alliance, announcing it at the Aspen Global Security Forum in London in 2015 and first publishing the CRINK acronym in the Global Report in 2017. (See "Upgrades.") These two geopolitical discoveries - of China's parasitic InfoMerc model and of the CRINK all-fronts-war alliance - could well be the most important of our time. Unfortunately, this story is still in its early chapters. In this week's issue, we will examine what just changed in Beijing vis--vis the Chinese Communist Party's plans for CRINK and what it means for the security and economic interests of the US and other Inventing Nations. - mra ______ For those unfamiliar with the term "all-fronts war," I strongly recommend reading the two Global Report issues by Evan Anderson named in the top of our "Quotes of the Week" section; they provide an excellent review of our work to date and a foundation for today's discussion.
There are a few simplifications that make this complex story much easier to understand, so let's begin there:
If we go back a few years, China, under its military doctrine of Unrestricted Warfare, clearly wanted to use an "anything but military" conflict approach to attacking its adversaries. This closely followed Sun Tzu's doctrines of not attacking a superior force, subordinating such high-risk behavior with every other kind of attack: economic, political, and mis- and dis-information; sowing division; manipulating currency; providing drug-addiction supplies; engaging in biowarfare; and others. Over the last decade or so, as CRINK was formed and matured, this approach was modified to include the collective idea that each member wanted to expand, and each for its own reasons and in its own way. This helped to enable the rather obvious problem for Iran that, for example, China detains and makes Uighur Muslims into slaves in concentration / re-education camps; and that Russia's Putin has probably killed more Muslims than any other international leader in modern times. Even so, the move from being against the US to adding the carrot of territorial expansion by three of the four members - and nuclear weapons and missile programs expansion by NK - has been a strong, attractive force that has helped strengthen CRINK. As we discussed in public with past MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove at FiRe 2025, we also should not refrain from noting our proposal that Iran's step-function improvements in both nuclear weapons and missile development are most likely the product of serving as a proving ground for Iran in both categories - something Iran, for political reasons, has avoided to date. (Israel has promised to destroy Iran before it gets these weapons and technologies.) In these senses, we have moved from the somewhat tentative early days of the alliance into fully formed weapons-development and technology-sharing agreements, with deep military consequences, incented by the promise of expansion or growth for each partner. As this has progressed, the geographic reach (beyond the first four) and the expansion of shared goals and programs (beyond the original China-only efforts) has created what can be called at least a moderately successful result. Even so, critics of CRINK are not wrong in pointing out that China is an economic parasite, dependent on theft from the West, and with its domestic economy in a shambles; that Russia is a nuclear strongman, but with an embarrassingly inept military on display in Ukraine and a dependency on natural resources that is a true Achilles' heel, now leading it into a near-abject dependence on China buying oil and gas; that Iran's policy of proxy killing around the world is being defanged and physically rolled back by Israel and the US on a weekly basis; and that North Korea, always China's puppet, has little to show for its newfound alliance with Russia other than yet more weapons tech. And yet - A more forward-looking view might benefit from the old adage "Never underestimate your enemy." There should be no doubt in Western minds - because there is no doubt in Chinese minds and publications (if you read Mandarin) - that China, and therefore CRINK, is indeed what Western military leaders have said publicly for several years now: the West's primary threat and global strategic adversary. As we bring this view into the present, we see that Russia continues to expand its territorial military takeover of Ukraine, with threats of more to come, and China continues its military expansion in the South Sea, with growing threats to attack Taiwan. Iran continues to attack Israel through its proxies, while dreaming of an Islamic empire throughout Europe and the Middle East and stretching to Africa and perhaps even the US, and North Korea launches ICBMs capable of carrying MIRV'd nuclear weapons to California and beyond. It is evident that CRINK has moved from a time of avoiding direct kinetic war while building up to something both kinetic and much more dangerous. And to finish this section off - that was the true meaning of China's "kiss the ring" strategy and message to its own alliance members and to the world: China is the leader, and the time for kinetic war is anytime it chooses. If a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the picture:
And here, CRINK having a rollicking good time at the military review:
No question who is in charge here, is there?
And, for fans of history ca. 1939 - what they were looking at:
While press messaging of this event was to celebrate China's escape from Japan's cruel grasp during WWII (with help from the US), the actual dual-messaging is clear: China - and CRINK - are ready to fight Inventing Nations of both the East and the West.
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