As Ukraine pleads for still more arms, tensions are rising on the other side of Eurasia

(Originally published June 7 in “What in the World“) Ukraine’s response to the United States and Great Britain arming them with long-range missile launchers? More, please. A military adviser to Ukraine’s president says the handful of launchers promised isn’t enough; the nation needs many more to turn the tide against Russia.

The U.S. and South Korea, meanwhile, responded to North Korea’s latest fusillade of missiles with a rare response-in-kind, firing eight missiles of their own. Officials in Seoul and Washington believe Pyongyang is on the verge of conducting its first nuclear test in four years.

Though Cambodia and China deny it, Western officials say Beijing is building a new naval base in the Southeast Asian nation. The base is near the port of Sihanoukville, which before the pandemic was a center of Chinese investment and immigration, becoming a virtual colony until Covid-19 rendered it a ghost town. A base there, on the Gulf of Thailand, would complement China’s facilities in Hainan and on contested atolls in the South China Sea, allowing Beijing to better defend its claims to that body of water, as well as control vital sea lanes between the Strait of Malacca and its own eastern seaboard, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.

China already has a naval base in Djibouti along the shipping routes between the Suez Canal and India. Its navy also has access to a port in southern Sri Lanka. There have long been reports that China is trying to build or gain access to ports in Myanmar. If China also secures naval access to ports in the Solomon Islands, China will not only have a necklace of naval ports defending its trade routes to Europe, but also be able to effectively ring-fence Southeast Asia.

The U.S., conversely, has bases in Japan and South Korea, but none in Southeast Asia since ceding control of Subic Bay to the Philippines in 1992. The two countries still conduct joint military exercises, though the future of those is uncertain under newly elected Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. The U.S. does, however, have a near-constant military presence in Singapore and access to ports in Thailand. It has long been reported that Vietnam was considering leasing the former U.S. naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, used after the Vietnam War by Soviet forces and now by the Vietnamese military. The U.S. has also been beefing up its military presence in Darwin, along Australia’s northern coast.