South Asia is once again at the brink. The recent military escalation between India and Pakistan — sparked by a deadly terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir — has reignited fears of a wider regional conflict. India blamed Pakistan for harboring militant groups responsible for the attack, a claim Pakistan firmly denies. Hostilities intensified with tit-for-tat operations. Although a ceasefire was brokered under US diplomatic pressure, the truce remains fragile. Should escalation resume, this could mark the fifth major war between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
While this might appear to be a localized South Asian issue, its reverberations are felt far beyond. In an interconnected Asia, regional flare-ups trigger cross-border ripples. East Asia and Southeast Asia are not immune.
For China, a close ally of Pakistan and strategic rival of India, the conflict presents a diplomatic dilemma. Stability is critical for Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, especially the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which traverses the volatile region of Gilgit-Baltistan. However, overt involvement risks entangling China in direct confrontation — something it would rather avoid. China’s carefully worded response, calling for “restraint and peaceful resolution,” while emphasizing the protection of strategic joint projects, reflects this tightrope diplomacy. Beijing refrained from blaming either side, seeking to preserve relations with both.
For Taiwan, the conflict poses indirect yet serious challenges. Chief among them is the diversion of US strategic focus — a concerning scenario as Taiwan faces sustained pressure from Beijing. A distracted Washington, preoccupied with crises elsewhere, creates strategic breathing room for China to increase coercion.
Moreover, the specter of nuclear escalation between India and Pakistan undermines regional stability and investor confidence. Taiwan’s economy, deeply tied to global supply chains, could face shocks from increased insurance premiums, trade disruptions and energy price hikes, particularly if maritime tensions affect the Indian Ocean shipping routes.
In Southeast Asia, more than 40 percent of global trade passes through the Strait of Malacca, much of it connecting ports in India, Pakistan and the Gulf. Any disruption to this flow would raise logistical costs and hit consumer prices across the region.
Diplomatically, rising India-Pakistan tensions might also reshape dynamics within ASEAN and other regional forums. Historically neutral countries could face pressure to take positions, becoming pawns in great power rivalry. This could test ASEAN’s cohesion and geopolitical relevance, especially as seen in the bloc’s divided stance on the Ukraine war. Even domestically, tensions are surfacing. In Malaysia and Singapore, digital clashes among South Asian diaspora communities — primarily Indians and Pakistanis — have been reported, raising concerns about potential social unrest.
The lesson is clear: Regional peace cannot be pursued in silos. Asia’s subregions are interlinked — strategically, economically and socially. A crisis in South Asia affects East and Southeast Asia as well.
ASEAN in particular must go beyond issuing statements of concern. It should build credible preventive diplomacy mechanisms and offer platforms for dialogue and mediation. This conflict is not a distant war story. It is a sobering reminder that stability in Asia is a fragile, collective enterprise. When nuclear-armed states exchange missiles, the world cannot afford to be a passive spectator.
Najamuddin Khairur Rijal is an associate professor in the International Relations Department of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang in Indonesia.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
On May 13, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of nuclear reactors from 40 to 60 years, thereby providing a legal basis for the extension or reactivation of nuclear power plants. On May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators used their numerical advantage to pass the TPP caucus’ proposal for a public referendum that would determine whether the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should resume operations, provided it is deemed safe by the authorities. The Central Election Commission (CEC) has
RSS