That the post-Second World War liberal international order is unravelling is no longer in dispute. While there are ongoing issues and challenges about how and to what extent the incumbent rules-based international order that has been so beneficial to so many nations and peoples in their course of economic development can still be maintained, there is broad agreement that the international system as we know it has run its course.
What comes in its place, including who gets to make the new rules, is fiercely debated and contested with fear and apprehension. What could turn up is a prolonged and protracted state of global disorder where rule-breaking is the new norm, while rule-making is much harder to come by.
Nowhere are these trends of interstate relations more volatile and fluid than in Asia, the most consequential of regions. Facing mounting risks of tension and conflict, Asia has had to grapple with four traditional security flashpoints over the past seven decades.
In Northeast Asia, the longstanding security concern revolves around the Korean Peninsula, which technically remains at war between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The Korean civil war in the early 1950s, which drew in both China and the United States as the great powers and even included Thai troops who fought alongside South Korean counterparts, ended with a ceasefire but without a permanent peace settlement.
In the entrenched inter-Korea conflict, North Korea has alarmingly become a nuclear power. This is a big game changer for regional security in Northeast Asia. A nuclear North Korea has empowered and emboldened President Kim Jong-un to come into his own, away from traditional patronage under China, which has backed its smaller communist neighbour as a buffer against the US-supported South Korea since the 1950s. President Kim has been able to use his country's nuclear programme, including missile technology development, as a bargaining chip to demand the reduction and lifting of a US-sponsored sanctions regime.
While US President Donald Trump has dealt directly with the North Korean leader, including at the summit level, South Korea and Japan have had to recalibrate. South Korea's stakes have risen markedly, as its government of President Moon Jae-in risks more for peace with North Korea, partly through inter-Korea summits.
Japan, too, has had to play it both ways by becoming more independent in its own right while maintaining its security alliance with the US. Japan's defence budget, for example, is at a decades-high, and the country has circumvented its pacifist constitution to build up a more effective and forward-deployed military, featuring two aircraft carriers.
US unreliability under Mr Trump has transformed Asia's second security flashpoint in the East China Sea around what Japan calls the Senkaku, which the Chinese refer to as the Diaoyu Islands. These contested islands, which are under Japan's control but also claimed by the Chinese, have traditionally polarised Japan-China relations. But because of Mr Trump's trade conflict with China and unilateral impulses in disregard of allies' security concerns, Japan and China have turned towards each other in a new inchoate realignment. This Japan-China rapprochement from October 2018, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited President Xi Jinping in Beijing and signed a host of bilateral cooperative agreements, is likely to remain active as long as Mr Trump stays on the offensive on China and unreliable on Japan. The new Abe-Xi channel is already set to resume with more meetings this year, including the Chinese leader's visit to Japan.
The third old security hotspot is Taiwan. Cross-strait relations between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan (the Republic of China) are tense as President Trump has ratcheted up rhetoric and actions against China while further supporting Taiwan. The current Taiwanese government under President Tsai Ing-wen, which faces fresh elections next month, has also talked tough vis-à-vis Beijing. It is not as if Taiwan will declare independence anytime soon but its strengthened resolve and defiance irks Beijing.
To its credit, Taiwan also has shown that a society of 23 million can be Chinese and Asian, an effective parliamentary democracy, and economically successful at the same time. The Taiwan stalemate will continue to pose a security flashpoint indefinitely. Taiwan is unlikely to declare independence as much as Beijing will not invade what it sees as renegade province. But Taiwan is an inconvenient example and major nuisance to Beijing because it works well as a country.
The fourth flashpoint is the South China Sea. Here, the big change comes from China's belligerent claims and construction of a string of artificial islands, which have been built up as military bases complete with advanced weapons systems. The South China Sea is mainly contested between China on the one hand and the Philippines and Vietnam on the other, while the rest of Asean have been divided over what to do.
While China asserts itself in the South China Sea, the US has pushed back through its formidable naval power. All other major powers from Japan and Australia to the United Kingdom and France also have been involved, as more than a third of global shipping passes through this maritime domain. If push comes to shove, the South China Sea may prove most vulnerable to outright conflict due to its rich natural resources, vital sea routes, and overlapping sovereignty claims.
Two additional regional concerns across Asia are souring South Korea-Japan relations and the Mekong region where upstream and downstream riparian states and communities face growing issues of rights and resources. China's upstream dams have deprived downstream communities in Cambodia and Vietnam of livelihoods. Yet China is not the only culprit. Dam projects have also been carried out by Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. The Mekong area is in dire need of collective action and governance over what should be seen as regional commons.
The intersection of Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia is the role of the great powers, pitting China on the one hand against the US on the other. The other major and middle powers, such as Japan and Australia, are central in this mix. Both regions are poised to enter the 2020s, some 30 years after the end of the Cold War. In this post-post-Cold War period, the structure of security in both regions is fluid and changing among the fluctuating big powers but the nature of what is at stake in terms of sovereignty, land, sea, and resources in between is not.