Ribbons wishing for peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula hang on a military fence at the Imjingak peace park near the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas in Paju on Jan. 1. (Photo: Jung Yeon-je / AFP)
Asia, the world’s largest continent, became the hotbed of conflicts this year with questionable military and trade alliances among nations following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
The Russian invasion of the neighboring state added salt to the wounds of war in Syria, Yemen and Palestine in West Asia and to flare-ups in Taiwan and the Korean peninsula in the East.
Perhaps, the most direct fallout of this year’s Ukraine war in Asia is the sharp deterioration in Japan’s ties with its maritime neighbor. Japan now openly blames Russia for the “occupation” of the Kuril Islands – something it hasn’t done in the past. Moscow, in turn, has designated Japan as an “unfriendly” nation.
As of Dec. 19, North Korea conducted 65 ballistic missile tests, which also have something to do with the war in Ukraine. After the rare record this year, which proved the North is maturing as a nuclear state, a North Korean nuclear test is now more a matter of “when” than “if.”
This year was a game-changing year for South Korea as Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative leader, replaced Moon Jae-in who tried to mend ties with Pyongyang. Yoon, on the other, has prioritized strengthening the alliance with the US to take on the North.
Next year is important for the Korean peninsula, as it marks the 75th anniversary of North Korea’s founding and the 70th anniversary of the Korean War.
Regarding East Asia, the broad-based resistance to the February 2021 coup in Myanmar will continue to exact a terrible human toll next year as the crackdown by the country’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, has already turned the civil unrest into a bloody civil war.
Though violence in Afghanistan has sharply dropped since the Taliban seized power in August last year, starvation caused mostly by Western sanctions is leaving more Afghans dead – including millions of children – compared with the US occupation days. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for children and women in the landlocked Central Asian nation.
After a tumultuous year, nuclear-armed Pakistan is passing through a relative calm these days under a caretaker government. But that is the lull before the storm as everything is not fine in the Islamic country’s ties with India, with who it has fought two wars.
Adding to the Asian woes is the ongoing power rivalry between the US, the world’s largest arms spender, and China, Asia’s largest economy, which is now fought on the economic front, forcing many Asian nations to pick and choose their allies.
When US and Chinese planes collided in 2001, it took months of diplomacy to resolve the row despite a period of reasonable calm between the world’s two superpowers. Today, it would be harder as competition with China has become an ordering principle of US policy.
For the US, China has turned an existential threat so the parallels between Ukraine and Taiwan were always drawn not to negotiate with Russia and to keep China under check.
Though a China-US clash over Taiwan is unlikely in 2023, the military build-up is high around the island and in the South China Sea.
The US had enough reasons to increase its hostility towards China, starting with the Trump administration. The US is slipping in many ways when it comes to economics and finance, and diplomacy. But it does mean that the world’s biggest arms spender will leave the fray without fighting.
As the US wasted many decades fighting costly conflicts in the Middle East to secure fossil fuel which is currently destined to end up in the dustbin of history, China built industries and infrastructure that would make it the world’s workshop.
China today is not a US-compliant client state and can challenge US global power in Africa and South America. Forget about Asia.
With this larger aim in mind, the US has unveiled a whopping $858 billion defense budget for next year – $45 billion more than President Joe Biden asked for.
This will force some of Washington’s trusted allies in Asia like South Korea, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines to follow suit with their military budgets next year as the future of conflict is increasingly shaped by developments in cyberspace rather than on traditional battlefields.
The future of conflict will not be about oil but about microchips, a crucial component of the digital economy. Asian nations like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan excel in their production.
Together with the US, they account for 80 percent of global microchip production. These Asian nations will be brought under a common platform by the US to take on China, which is making efforts to increase its 15 percent global production share to gain greater control over this crucial commodity in the digital economy.
On his maiden trip to Asia in May this year, US president Joe Biden visited the semiconductor plant of Samsung, the Korean chaebol that is also the largest chipmaker in the world.
“These little chips, only a few nanometers thick, are the key to propelling us into the next era of humanity’s technological development,” Biden said during his Asian trip.
The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), a US-led economic grouping started by Biden during his Asia visit, comprises 12 countries, including Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It is aimed at isolating China.
Washington has proposed a “Chip 4” pact with South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, all powerhouses in the semiconductor supply chain.
Semiconductors are a key part of cooperation among the QUAD nations, which include the US, India, Japan and Australia.
Thus, the war in Asia has taken the trade route to disrupt the pandemic-hit Asian economy further next year.
China, at the same time, has become a warring party in an armed conflict since May 2020 with Indian soldiers. A consensus for disengagement and dialogue has not emerged. Fighting took place this month also.
India and China fought a full-fledged war in 1962 over border disputes which have proved a Himalayan task for nuclear-powered Asian superpowers which at times cover a nuclear Pakistan.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
