The deadline set by President Donald Trump for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or risk further escalation of its conflict with the United States and Israel coincided precisely with the start of the 2026 Asan Plenum, the premier annual policy gathering of experts and senior officials in Seoul, South Korea.
By the time the conference started, a two-week ceasefire went into effect.
While the timing was coincidental, the escalation of major global conflicts intentionally dominated this year’s plenum agenda. In addition to the Iran conflict and the Russia’s war against Ukraine, the forum delved more broadly into the emerging global alliance between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, or CRINK, the greatest threat to the U.S.-built post-World War II international system, and how to counter it.
The conference’s formal theme was “Modernizing Alliances,” an appropriate concern in an era in which key alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are being seriously tested amid conflicts in the Middle East and in Europe, particularly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
After the second World War, the United States built a security system that encompassed not only NATO, but also the so-called hub-and-spokes alliance structure in East Asia with allies like South Korea and Japan. This structure was meant to deter the Soviet threat and to keep these allies bound to Washington.
The threat of war is now back – and U.S. allies in the region need reassurance. As former Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who delivered one of the keynotes at this year’s plenum, said: “Today’s Ukraine can be the East Asia of tomorrow.”
The good news is our allies are not only a great strategic boon, but also a good bargain. Today, the United States has over 80,000 troops stationed in Japan and South Korea, costing around $8.5 billion annually to maintain. In comparison, Operation Epic Fury – the U.S.-Israeli joint military operations against Iran – cost U.S. taxpayers $16.5 billion just 12 days in.
CRINK is nothing like NATO, or even the BRICS, a flexible grouping of countries making sovereign decisions about their place and partnerships in the world. CRINK has no formal bureaucratic structure, it does not (yet) hold summits, coordinate economic policy, or hold joint multilateral exercises. CRINK nations do engage in all of these activities bilaterally to various extents, including the recent explosion in Russia-China and Russia-North Korea ties.
What the nations comprising CRINK all share is a repressive domestic form of government and the burning desire to end the U.S.-led liberal global order. And they will use every opportunity to achieve these goals.
So what can the United States and our allies do to deter CRINK? The first step should be the realization in Washington and other democratic capitals that CRINK represents a clear and present danger to freedom and liberty worldwide. As George Orwell once said: “To see what is front of one’s nose takes a constant struggle.”
Second, we should employ all “hard” as well as “soft” tools of U.S. power to counter CRINK. Prominent among these should be the strong U.S. support for dissidents and human rights defenders that can change these regimes from the inside. We must remember that dissidents like Andrei Sakharov or Natan Sharansky were just as vital to ending the Soviet regime as was President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars”, also known as the Strategic Defense Initiative.
As President John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
This should hold as true in 2026 as it did in 1961, because the systemic threat from CRINK to liberty is just as high.
