Asia’s Flashpoints are Heating Up

Image: Harvepino / shutterstock.com

Nearly four months into what was supposed to be a short sharp incursion, there appears to be no end in sight either for the war on Iran or the opening of the Hormuz Strait. The Third Gulf War, as some commentators have called it, as well as Russia’s grinding invasion of Ukraine, underline that we are back in an era defined by hot wars and geopolitical contestation. Those conflicts may lead observers to think that the front line for global risk lies on the western rim of Eurasia. The reality is that both the Western and Eastern sides of the continent are beset with dangers that are long-lived and of rising temperature.

While they are in the shadow of the active conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, the flashpoints and faultlines in East Asia are immensely dangerous. The most likely trigger points for great power conflict remain Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula, while the East and South China Sea maritime disputes entail critical sea lanes, natural resources and are overlaid with nationalist symbolism.

They all have a long history dating to the early years of the Cold War. Taiwan’s standing has bedevilled Asia’s strategic stability since the founding of the PRC in 1949 as the Nationalist forces retreated to the island that had for decades been a Japanese colony. Korea’s hasty division in the final weeks of WWII followed by a brutal and inconclusive war in the early 1950s remains the reason why the peninsula is one of the most militarised spaces on the planet, while the status of the islands and features in the East and South China Seas is a direct legacy of the messy and unsatisfactory unpicking of colonial rule in the aftermath of the war.

While generational in their origins, the intensity of risk has waxed and waned reflecting the shifting geopolitical dynamics, military capabilities and ambitions of Asia’s states. And while the region happily lacks kinetic conflict for now, each of the flashpoints’ temperatures has increased in recent years as have the consequences if tensions boil over.

On the Korean Peninsula, Pyongyang is developing a more effective and larger missile force on the back of support from Russia. The pact it signed with Moscow in 2024 will further embolden the country and it has declared the South to be its mortal enemy and ended peaceful reunification as a long-term national goal.

Over recent years the PRC has steadily escalated pressure on Taiwan, including significantly increasing ‘grey zone’ incursions, simulating blockades and conducting major military exercises around the country’s territorial waters. At the May 2026 Xi-Trump summit, the Chinese leader took the surprising step of articulating concerns about Taiwan publicly and at the outset of the meeting underlining  that “The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China–US relations … If mishandled, the two nations could collide or even come into conflict, pushing the entire China–US relationship into a highly perilous situation.” The US Congress had approved a USD 14 billion arms deal to support the island in early 2026, seen as a precipitant to Xi’s remarks, but which has not yet been signed off by the President.

In the South China Sea, China has restarted its reclamation program and has transformed Antelope Atoll in the Paracels into a significant island with the major military capable infrastructure. It is also establishing a structure inside Scarborough Shoal, a feature close to the Philippines and continues to pressurise fishing fleets in the contested waters.

There are a number of reasons for the growing volatility of these flashpoints. At the macro level, they are the result of the breakdown of the strategic balance that had prevailed since the late 1990s. For almost two decades US primacy kept the region stable. It did so through the acceptance of the overall benefits that accrued from American dominance; strategic public goods were provided at relatively low cost to Asian states and security dilemmas were avoided. Stability was also supported by the logic of deterrence. Now, American primacy in East Asia is in steep decline. China is a genuine military competitor and it has made clear that it is no longer content to live in America’s shadow. And even though the US retains significant military capacity in the region, the logic of deterrence has weakened. Ambitious states, like the PRC, North Korea and Russia, doubt American military resolve and its domestic political frailties. That was the case prior to 28 February’s attacks on Iran which led to a significant diversion of military power out of East Asia and into the Middle East. At the micro level, tensions in the flashpoints are driven by local decisions—North Korea’s attack on the Cheonan in 2010—and the shifting impact of regional initiatives. The China–ASEAN Declaration on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea eased tensions in 2002 for more than half a decade.

East Asia has also been unsettled by the politicisation of international economic ties. The return of geopolitical competition in recent years and the scrambling of globalization caused by the pandemic have damaged economic interdependence as a force promoting stability in the region.  These factors mean that states see opportunity to advance their ambitions due to the shifting calculations of cost and benefit the changed circumstances create. This is evident in both China and North Korea as well as the long-running border dispute between Cambodia and Thailand that escalated suddenly in 2025.

It is critical that the region recognizes the heightened risk it now faces in this unstable setting and takes steps to manage these circumstances more effectively. It is notable that even though the region has numerous long-standing and high-risk flashpoints there are no credible crisis management mechanisms in place to deal these situations, find off ramps and build trust. Yes, the region has a number of multilateral mechanisms such as the ARF and EAS, but these not only do not provide crisis management, in their many decades of existence they have palpably failed to build trust among Asia’s major powers. The negotiations related to the ASEAN–China Code of Conduct on the South China Sea include these issues but they have been going on for some time and many doubt it will deliver on that front. It is critical that the region develops bilateral crisis management protocols and establishes regular channels of communication so that when the almost inevitable accident or friction point boils up, escalation is managed and conflicts are avoided.

Finally, it is clear that East Asia is in a period of flux. For a long time, there was a strategic equilibrium in place that provided one of the critical foundations for the region’s economic expansion. It is now suffering from the uncertainty and turbulence that follows from an unbalanced strategic setting. It is vital that a new equilibrium is established so that the unfinished business of the region’s economic growth can be completed to the benefit of the hundreds of millions of people in the region who remain outside the middle class.

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