Growing incidences of conflicts globally raise questions about the effects on Asia, which has some of the world’s most significant geopolitical hotspots. Below, we examine how dynamics in East and Southeast Asia are being influenced by broader global events, for worse or (sometimes) better. The basic takeaway is that there is no near-term prospect of conflict in the region, but global shifts are raising tensions in several cases and increasing the likelihood of longer-term instability.
North Korea has been taking advantage of diverted global attention to ramp up missile testing and boost ties with Russia, helping drive South Korea closer to Western partners. In Southeast Asia, there is a higher risk for miscalculation involving one of the smaller countries—notably in the Philippines/China maritime stand-offs—than a conflict between major powers.
For Japan, its territorial dispute with Russia has become more tense but is stable; its dispute with China continues much as before; and that with South Korea has improved due to broader geopolitical shifts. In the Taiwan Strait, Beijing’s calculus has been largely unaffected so far by conflicts like Ukraine and Israel/Hamas, but any decline in Washington's aid to Kyiv may shift future thinking.
Growing incidences of conflicts globally raise questions about the effects on Asia, which has some of the world’s most significant geopolitical hotspots. Below, we examine how dynamics in East and Southeast Asia are being influenced by broader global events, for worse or (sometimes) better. The basic takeaway is that there is no near-term prospect of conflict in the region, but global shifts are raising tensions in several cases and increasing the likelihood of longer-term instability.
Korean Peninsula
North Korea has been taking advantage of the global preoccupation with Ukraine and greater polarization between Russia and the G7 bloc to ramp up its long-standing missile program and seek closer ties with Russia. Pyongyang acts with the knowledge that Moscow will shield it from potential sanctions for breaches of UN Security Resolutions. What began as informal mutual diplomatic support after Russia’s February 2022 Ukraine invasion has in recent months become much deeper economic and military-industrial cooperation.
Following the recent Putin-Kim summit, commercial satellite images show that railroad traffic from North Korea to Russia is now at its highest level in at least four years, while the US government recently tracked a shipment of 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions from the DPRK to Russian forces in Ukraine. In return, the Kim regime will receive badly need economic inputs and—it hopes—more advanced military technologies, including for its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and perhaps eventually its submarines. With Beijing likely to want to counterbalance Moscow’s growing influence over Pyongyang, closer China-North Korea ties now look possible, which would further buttress the Kim regime.
South Korea is deeply concerned by the prospect of a more heavily armed North Korea with stronger backing from Russia and China. Since taking office in May 2022, President Yoon Suk-yeol has shifted Seoul’s diplomatic course dramatically in favor of the United States and has also repaired relations with Japan, paving the way for August’s trilateral Camp David deal for joint military exercises and data sharing, security consultations, and a plethora of annual ministerial meetings. Seoul could eventually seek to join the Quad or Aukus and wants to become a more prominent player in the defense-industrial exports sector, with Poland and Australia among its biggest recent customers.
Southeast Asia
Over the past few years, the US has successfully reengaged with Southeast Asia, taking advantage of a favorable swing in political sentiment in the Philippines, Vietnam’s ongoing efforts at foreign policy rebalancing, and China’s isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. But while Washington has become more categorical in its support for regional allies and partners as part of its efforts to counter Beijing, the near-term risk of conflict may not be between the two major powers but instead come from the regular grind of small-scale frictions in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
Specifically, Beijing's continued use of gray-zone tactics—slow, incremental actions in liminal geographies to intimidate rival claimants and raise the costs of resistance—may result in a confrontation with Philippine forces that now seem more willing to go toe-to-toe with China’s maritime militia. Manila’s elites and media often cheer such actions, a clear contrast to Vietnam’s more calculated approach towards China. Though Beijing maintains its longer-term conviction that “the East is rising and the West is declining” and its ultimate goal seems to be hegemonic influence in East Asia, we do not believe that Chinese leaders seek conflict with the West.
Amid rising global frictions, the reduced ability of multilateral agencies to respond cohesively to regional crises could result in more violence and larger humanitarian disasters. An important case in Southeast Asia is that of Myanmar, which has continued its under-the-radar slide further into dictatorship and violence.
Japan
The most noticeable impact on Japan’s three territorial disputes—with Russia, China, and South Korea—has come in relation to the southernmost Kuril Islands, claimed as the Northern Territories by Japan but administered as the Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. Fumio Kishida has been a harsh critic of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, seeing direct parallels with East Asia’s regional security environment, and has kept Japan largely in step with G7 peers in areas like sanctions on Russia and providing (non-lethal) aid and financial support to Ukraine. In response, Russia has adopted a much harsher attitude regarding the four disputed islands and undone previous concessions by banning Japanese fishermen from the adjacent waters, revoking visa-free travel status for Japanese former residents of the islands, and installing more advanced anti-aircraft missile batteries there. Such developments raise tensions, but given that the status quo favors Russia while Japan opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo by force, there is no reason to expect the conflict to escalate.
A second dispute over the Senkaku Islands—administered by Japan but claimed as the Diaoyu Islands by China—has not changed much. As part of its gray-zone activities there, China’s heavily armed coast guard cutters often spend days at a time in Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) waters, in effect asserting a sovereign right to police the waters. The Japanese coast guard makes verbal protests, but its physical responses remain circumscribed to avoid any action that Beijing might use as justification for escalation. The danger here remains as before—that one of these tense encounters could unintentionally flare into something bigger, as happened in 2010—but recent global events have not amplified that risk.
Japan’s third territorial dispute—over the Liancourt Rocks, administered by South Korea as Dokdo and claimed as Takeshima by Japan—has paradoxically improved due to the deteriorating global security environment. Shared concerns about North Korea, China, and Russia have helped bring Tokyo and Seoul strategically closer, both bilaterally and also trilaterally with Washington. Though views on the disputed rocks remain polarized, there is no desire on either side to raise tensions.
Taiwan
Recent global developments are unlikely to shift the mainland Chinese leadership's strategic calculation on Taiwan. As previously noted, China's top leadership recognizes that an attack on Taiwan would come at a catastrophic cost to the government's other domestic and international objectives. Russia's weaker-than-expected military performance in Ukraine and the relatively unified Western response there may have further increased Beijing's caution towards the Taiwan Strait. However, if Washington’s assistance to Kyiv declines and Moscow achieves substantial new military gains as a result, this would likely signal to Beijing that Western governments and voters lack the will to sustain a costly, long-term struggle in support of a faraway place.
