Global Outlook

In January this year President Yoon Suk-yeol became the first incumbent South Korean president to raise the possibility of an indigenous bomb for South Korea. But going nuclear would likely hurt rather than enhance South Korea’s global prestige.

North Korea has continued to advance its nuclear weapons program and has launched more than 100 missiles since the beginning of 2022, some with intercontinental range. In South Korea, this is causing unrest and fears of an attack from the North. The government and a large majority of the population are uncertain about the credibility of US protection. According to polls, more than 70 percent of South Koreans are in favour of their own nuclear armament.

As the G7 prepares to meet in Hiroshima in May 2023, prospects for world order look bleaker than they have been for some time. Northeast Asia is a particular site of tensions. China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea disagree over regional order, world order, and territorial issues. Military expenditure is rising rapidly and North Korea is consolidating its status as a nuclear power. The growing US-China rivalry dominates the region.

It was pitched as the “most significant” shift in Australia’s armed forces in decades. And among the headline announcements, climate change was recognised as an issue of national security. But the strategic review of Australia’s military released yesterday doesn’t go a lot further than that when it comes to the climate crisis.

The G7 summit of foreign ministers in Japan in mid-April sought to emphasise the need for a unified China policy. However, the diplomatic pronouncements can only gloss over the internal contradictions, but not eliminate them.

The strategic landscape of the Middle East is changing rapidly, but not in favour of the United States as the traditional powerful actor in the region. Continued adversarial US–Iranian relations and regional Arab states’ growing concerns about Washington’s reliability as an ally have widened the arena for Russia and China to expand their strategic footprints in the region.