As new strategic realities create new powers, new types of future conflicts emerge. In East Asia, these will include new forms of cyber-enabled conflicts defined through a convergence of ‘cyber-kinetic-information domains’ and their strategic interactions.

East Asia’s current strategic template hinges on a convergence of unresolved historical legacies and emerging security challenges, characterised by a mix of asymmetric threats, low-probability / high-impact risks, and a range of non-traditional security challenges. These are amplified through a perennial strategic distrust, which propels a regional “arms competition” and diffusion of advanced military technologies in nearly every combat domain.

At the same time, however, regional powers acknowledge the interlocking economic interdependencies and consequences of potential conflict escalation. Therefore, their strategic choices point toward a long-term competitive strategies, including novel ways and means of asymmetric negation short of major wars.

… Michael Raska is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.