Multilateral institutions like the United Nations and regional organizations like the African Union are contested terrain in the growing competition between democracies and authoritarian powers.
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – the loose alignment known as CRINK – increasingly recognize that shaping international organizations to drive their preferred outcomes is as important as deploying military power or expanding economic influence.
Despite their flaws, international institutions help shape consensus on norms, can put a spotlight on human rights abuses, and influence how governments and the global community respond to crises. However, at their weakest, international institutions merit criticism when they fail to meet global expectations, with debates often centering on their political biases, structural gridlock, platforming of autocrats and ineffectiveness at credible action to maintaining peace.
For autocracies, particularly, international institutions open a window of opportunity to erode the rules-based international order to pursue their own gains. For the United Sates and our allies, these institutions, many of which we helped create, should be the bulwark against the weakening of the standards that shaped our post-World War II norms.
The United States and its democratic allies cannot afford to cede this space. Together, they can and should engage more effectively within multilateral institutions. That means treating diplomacy as a genuine strategic priority by competing for leadership positions, increasing transparency with and respect to allies, coordinating democratic voting coalitions, strengthening relationships with developing countries through respectful partnerships, genuine and ensuring America’s traditional role of leadership whenever and wherever international norms are negotiated.
CRINK isn’t a formal alliance, but these countries are increasingly finding common cause in multilateral institutions as they each pursue their respective strategic objectives – most especially regime preservation. In international forums, CRINK countries seek to blunt criticism of their authoritarian behavior, soften longstanding international norms, and make it difficult for democratic nations to oppose them.
Importantly, CRINK nations don’t need to dominate organizations to influence direction. This loose grouping can – through sustained and persistent engagement, coordinated voting, and strategic placement of aligned personnel in institutional leadership – gradually nudge norms on what these international organizations are willing and able to defend, including freedom of navigation, protection of civilians, respect for humanitarian access, treatment of prisoners, and accountability for atrocities.
The United Nations remains the most important arena for this competition. With near-universal membership, the highest of visibility, and a broad mandate to shape international standards, the U.N. can (and has) provide a wedge for authoritarian governments to shift both policy and perception.
Russia has repeatedly used its Security Council veto to block action condemning its illegal war on Ukraine, shielding itself from any meaningful U.N. action. China – which also has veto power on the Security Council – often votes with Russia on issues of human rights, including minority rights, state sovereignty and international intervention while also leveraging its growing diplomatic influence throughout the U.N. system to advance its own preferences.
As non-Security Council members, Iran and North Korea play different but complementary roles. Iran routinely uses the U.N., including at the Human Rights Council, to grandstand and defend both its nuclear program and abysmal human rights record, while North Korea benefits from both Chinese and Russian efforts to veto sanctions packages and international scrutiny.
Although the four countries don’t vote together on every issue, they consistently link up against proposed country-specific human rights resolutions and against holding governments accountable for abuses.
It’s not just the United Nations. Regional organizations have also become key pressure points in the CRINK strategy.
- Asia: Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, China’s dominance in trade and infrastructure investment give Beijing extraordinary leverage against members. And because ASEAN operates by consensus, member states frequently struggle to reach agreement on sensitive geopolitical issues such as the South China Sea.
- Western Hemisphere: In the Western Hemisphere, organizations such as the Organization of American States are battlegrounds for defending norms and advancing the ideals of democratic governance. China has significantly expanded its economic footprint throughout the hemisphere.
- Africa: The African Union is a significant arena for CRINK to attempt to manipulate. The Africa voting bloc in the U.N. is powerful, providing momentum for key resolutions, tipping elections for senior U.N. leadership positions, and reinforcing international norms. China knows this and has put in the work to cultivate this important group of nations both at the U.N. and at the AU. China financed and built the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and continues to offer funding and promises of cooperation and partnership in science and technology. It’s important to note that neither China nor Russia controls the African Union, nor do African governments always vote as a bloc. But as competition for influence intensifies, the African Union is critical now and will be increasingly important as the organization shapes consensus on international norms among its 55 member states.
- Europe: In the heart of the continent at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Russia, as a member, uses the OSCE’s consensus rule to veto critical functions, as they did in refusing to extend the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia routinely slows and blocks decision-making, including the adoption of the organization’s budget and, in 2024, Estonia’s assumption of the rotation chairmanship role. OSCE itself, which frequently highlights the issue of transnational repression by CRINK nations, has also been the target of Russia’s aggression, including the unlawful detention of three Ukrainian OSCE personnel currently held by Russia since 2022.
For each of these organizations, as well as key groupings like the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and looser alignments such as BRICS – emerging powerhouses that include Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – the risk is not institutional capture but the gradual, insidious effort to tilt international consensus away from accountability.
None of these institutions is controlled by CRINK; the vast majority of individual member states pursue their own national sovereign policies, as they should. However, CRINK’s authoritarian governments have demonstrated that sustained engagement can produce incremental gains, making it more difficult for democracies to defend the principles that have underpinned the international order.
The United States and its allies were the driving force behind the creation of the U.N. and many of these organizations. It doesn’t make us safer, stronger or more prosperous to cede the influence these organizations have to our adversaries.
