South China Sea and Taiwan among flashpoints for armed conflict in 2019, survey warns US policymakers
- Territorial disputes in the maritime region could escalate into violence, think tank says
- Council on Foreign Relations’ Centre for Preventive Action identified hotspots to watch in year to come
Armed conflict over territorial disputes in the South China Sea could be one of the major crises for US President Donald Trump’s administration in 2019, according to an annual survey that identifies top flashpoints for US policymakers to watch in the year to come.
Besides the South China Sea pressures, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Centre for Preventive Action has for the first time ranked Taiwan as a hotspot to watch in its 2019 Prevention Priorities Survey.
The think tank also ranked renewed tensions over the failure of Washington’s talks with Pyongyang to get North Korea to remove its nuclear weapons; the potential for a “highly disruptive” cyberattack on critical US infrastructure and networks; and the prospects for hostilities between Iran and the US or its allies as other potential issues that could trigger action by the US government in the new year.
But Washington would have to juggle its responses to these potential hotspots amid its clash with Beijing over trade and other issues, according to the report, released on Monday.
Beijing and Washington are in the midst of a 90-day ceasefire in their months-old tariffs battle to allow for further talks, called when China’s president, Xi Jinping, met Trump in Argentina on December 1.
“The Donald J. Trump administration has yet to confront a serious international crisis in which the president has had to wrestle with the agonising decision over whether to commit the United States to a new and potentially costly military intervention,” the report said.