How long will Asia’s ‘long peace’ last?
It has largely avoided a major interstate war for several decades but that could change given new geopolitical dynamics and legacies of unfinished history.
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The maintenance of peace in East Asia depends in large part on how leaders manage the legacies of unfinished history.
PHOTO: AFP
Ng Chee Khern
From Europe to the Middle East, wars have come back in a big way across much of the world. Will Asia, no stranger to chaos and conflict in its history, be able to hold the line against that resurgence?
The Conflict Trends report released in June by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) makes for grim reading. It counts 65 state-based conflicts worldwide in 2025 – the highest since records began in 1946 – with 245,000 battle-related deaths, making it the third-deadliest year since 1989, when the Soviet bloc started to unravel.
