As US and China limber up for strategic contest, which Asia battles will they pick to fight?

A sharp increase in US-China rivalry has shifted the focus of geopolitical competition to Asia, where new proxy conflicts could now erupt

The most likely locus of direct confrontation is in the South China Sea, says Michael Vatikiotis, though a Mekong River clash could be more worrying

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American and Chinese flags pictured in Beijing. Armed confrontation between the two powers looks increasingly likely. Photo: AP

Published: 9:00am, 31 Jul 2020Updated: 9:02am, 31 Jul 2020

There no longer seems any doubt that the United States and China have embarked on a period of aggressive confrontation. A brisk war of words has quickly escalated to tit-for-tat consulate closures, and now Chinese sources say a US warplane has flown close to Shanghai: these are initial skirmishes in a much more serious conflict that is likely to worsen at least until the US elections in November, and probably beyond. The question is, how will this confrontation play out in the rest of Asia?

Three decades have passed since the end of the nuclear-tipped Cold War between the US and Soviet Union. We tend to look back with relief that nuclear conflict was avoided. That did not mean the two powers avoided war. Starting in Korea in 1950, then in Indochina soon afterwards, more than 6 million people perished in wars in which the US and its allies battled forces backed by communist China and the Soviet Union.

Set against these direct confrontations, there were myriad proxy wars – fought within and between smaller countries, that each represented the interests of larger powers. When Soviet Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 1970s, the US armed an Islamic insurgency that forced the Soviets to withdraw a decade later – after which these mujahideen insurgents turned against their American backers.

Great power rivalry, especially in the nuclear age, has tended to manifest itself in proxy warfare, which selfishly commits others to fight for you and avoids mutually assured nuclear annihilation. In the 21st century, proxy warfare has been further elaborated as the tool of mid-sized powers with regional ambitions, as seen in the Middle East: namely Turkey and the Gulf States in Libya; Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, and almost everyone who wants to be anyone in Syria.

A Sea Hawk helicopter takes off from the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in the South China Sea earlier this month. The disputed waterway is seen as a likely flashpoint. Photo: Handout via Reuters

A sharp increase in US-China rivalry has shifted the focus of geopolitical competition eastward to Asia, which begs the question: what are the chances of a war between the US and China? And if not between them directly, then which low-level conflicts in the region will these two great powers devise as proxy battlefields to avoid a costly head-on confrontation that would threaten their economies and have far higher political costs?

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