US vs China, Israel vs Iran, India vs Pakistan: Asia plays with fire as nuclear war safety net frays

From the Korean peninsula to the Middle East, a string of nuclear flashpoints has emerged with the unravelling of the global post-Cold War detente

Amid arms races, sky-high tensions – and the removal of guardrails to avert danger – proliferation ‘threatens to destabilise everywhere’, experts warn

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North Korea fires a ballistic missile carrying a mock nuclear warhead last year in what state media described as military drills “simulating a nuclear counterattack”. Photo: KCNA via KNS/AFP

Published: 1:00pm, 28 Apr 2024

A high-stakes game of geopolitical brinkmanship is playing out across the Middle East and Asia, with Israel and Iran trading missile strikes; India and Pakistan locked in a multi-headed rocket arms race; and power struggles on the Korean peninsula and in the South China Sea combining to create a perilous chain of potential nuclear-conflict zones.

In the past couple of weeks alone, Iran and Israel’s tit-for-tat exchanges amid the war in Gaza have highlighted their ability to target each other’s uranium-enrichment facilities, while the US has deployed mid-range ballistic missiles to the Philippines for the first time since the Cold War.

Manila also took delivery of its first batch of Indian-made Brahmos anti-shipping missiles last week, hot on the heels of India’s first successful test of a variant of its Agni-5 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that’s theoretically capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads to any target New Delhi chooses within China.

The March 11 test of the Agni-5’s MIRV (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle) variant is seen as a response to China’s earlier deployment of MIRV-capable DF-5 ICBMs, according to the Federation of American Scientists think tank.

Pakistan first test launched its MIRV-capable Ababeel medium-range ballistic missile in 2017. It is awaiting delivery of eight Chinese-designed Hangor-class submarines thought to be capable of carrying Babur-3 nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

“There exists in South Asia what some have called a ‘strategic chain’, marked by the interconnectedness of strategic competition and downwind effects at the regional and subregional levels,” said Wilfred Wan, director of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme. “The emphasis on MIRVs reflects this.”