What Era Are We In? Notes from the 35th Meeting of NEACD
“What era are we living in?” The man asking was seated in the far corner of the conference room and had to raise his voice over the hum of the air conditioning to be heard. It was a blistering morning in early September in Singapore and the first day of the Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), a track 1.5 dialogue created to share national security perspectives in one of the most contested regions in the world. The intent of the question was clear. Are we entering a new Cold War? Are we stumbling into outright military conflict? Or are other directions possible?
The gathering of diplomats, military personnel, and scholars from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States has met 35 times since 1993; North Korea, too, has attended on occasion. NEACD was conceived as a way to build trust, bridge Cold War animosities, and get the countries in the region to consider a new security architecture. Over the years, meetings have been held in Moscow and Beijing, and NEACD founder Susan Shirk even led an experts trip to Pyongyang in 2006.
The timing this year was far from auspicious. As welcoming remarks were being made, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops were marching through Tiananmen Square to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Victory over Japan with ample new military hardware on display. The Trump administration’s trade war was generating uncertainty not only among adversaries but allies as well. Russia and the West continue to square off over Ukraine, and North Korea continues to advance its nuclear and missile programs. One of the speakers, who was discreetly watching a livestream of the parade in Beijing on his iPad, acknowledged in a whisper what many in the room may have been thinking: that at an event designed to promote dialogue, the region had never looked closer to open conflict.
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NEACD is a multi-day affair, punctuated by ample relaxed side conversations over meals and drinks among participants who have built personal relationships and trust over multiple meetings. Into this mix came officials who had not attended before, but demonstrated commitment to multilateral dialogue: Robert Koepcke, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, was in attendance, as was Oleg Burmistrov, the ambassador-at-large at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Yong-jin Baek, Director General for the Korean Peninsula Policy Bureau in the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Kadowaki Jinichi, deputy director-general for foreign policy at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Jing Zhu, Chargé d’Affaires of the People’s Republic of China Embassy in Singapore.
The dialogue’s founding goal was to prevent Northeast Asia from sliding back into rival blocs. But a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization the weekend before NEACD, together with the military parade and the impressive array of world leaders these events attracted—including both Vladimir Putin and reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-un—led many to wonder if just such an eventuality was afoot. Would Northeast Asia ultimately divide into a “northern triangle” of China, North Korea, and Russia, and a democratic “southern triangle” of Japan, South Korea, and the United States?
In 2027, the PLA will celebrate its centenary, a date by which Xi Jinping has promised that the PLA will have significantly increased its strategic defense and deterrence capabilities. From the Shangri-La Hotel where the meeting was held, there was intense debate about China’s strategic ambitions. Is 2027 the year China plans to attack Taiwan, or simply an internal benchmark year for military modernization? Do Beijing’s global initiatives represent a roadmap for Chinese-led global governance at a time when the United States is reducing its commitments abroad?
Answers proved elusive, but Chinese participants pushed back against the idea that China is seeking to displace the United States as a provider of global public goods for security and commerce. “China’s economic growth is based on the status quo,” one Chinese participant said, “and China is happy to be in the shadow of U.S. global leadership.” Taking aim at growing trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Japan and Korea, one Chinese participant noted that building an alternative alliance structure would be more trouble to China than it’s worth—after all, “allies are, like stray cats, difficult to herd.”
But across the table, interlocutors from democratic nations expressed skepticism. They accused China of trying to have it both ways: profiting off a rules-based order that allowed it to dominate global trade in many manufactures, while also using the United States as a foil to gain influence in the Global South: the crucial swing states that constitute a majority of the world’s population. “I’m stunned by how we can interpret reality so differently—Northeast Asia is the most stable region, and also the most strained,” one participant remarked. “Can we be both right?”
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If discussants could not agree on whether China is stepping into a global superpower role, neither could they determine whether the United States is retreating from its own.
In the first Trump administration, doubts about U.S. global leadership grew, and comments about U.S. alliances often veered from historic precedent. But those alliances did not weaken materially, as military as well as diplomatic ties proved enduring. Biden sought to reassure allies and reassert America’s continuing role in the region.
But now, in Trump 2.0, the world—and Northeast Asia in particular—is grappling with more significant and lasting changes in U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the economic domain. Trade policy was a central point of contention. On April 2—“Liberation Day”—President Trump announced so-called reciprocal tariffs on all of America’s trading partners. In the months since, tariffs have been delayed, reduced, and renegotiated, leaving NEACD participants at odds over their true objective. The risks for the world of a decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies—which account for nearly a quarter of global trade—was recognized by both parties. But trade friction could lead to wider conflicts with China. And if the United States challenges the premises of trade with its allies, could its role as security guarantor come into doubt as well?
The United States remains committed to the security of its allies in the region, even as it seeks to shore up its own defense commitments. Nonetheless, the logic of extended deterrence—the idea that the U.S. nuclear umbrella will protect allies abroad—has always been contentious. Would the United States really respond like-for-like to a nuclear attack on Berlin or Tokyo if that meant putting Los Angeles or New York at risk? During the Cold War, this dilemma led the United States to station nuclear weapons in Europe to assure allies, and to France and the United Kingdom developing their own. In East Asia, these concerns have only risen as a result of North Korea’s capability to strike at the American homeland. As the United States has consistently argued, solving the North Korean nuclear issue is not a sideshow but crucial for peace and security in the region as a whole.
One South Korean participant cited a domestic poll finding that 75 percent of the public in his country supported acquisition of nuclear weapons. A Japanese participant suggested that if South Korea went nuclear, Japan would follow.
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Despite the gravity of the questions on the table, as the meetings wound down the strengths of the dialogue shone through. Away from military parades or state visits, the talks illuminated the inner thought processes of the regional powers: what informed analysts want, what they fear, and what they know and don’t know about their rivals.
“The annals of history are full of examples of mistrust and misperception among and between states, often leading to conflict or even war,” wrote Tai Ming Cheung and Patrick Hulme in 2021. “Political scientists have shown, however, that mutual mistrust and security competition are not inevitable. Confidence building measures—specifically the availability of information—can help to prevent conflict.” To the surprise of participants, one of the more hopeful discussions of the meeting revisited the idea of how such confidence-building measures might be affected in the current period.
This year’s NEACD talks were more somber than the year prior in Tokyo, but the momentum behind the dialogue is strong and the development of personal trust among former officials and academics lightens the tone. Organizers are working to get North Korea—always invited but absent since 2016—back to the table. The South Korean and Japanese delegations are taking on a bigger role. And Russian and Chinese participants remain commited to the forum despite the strains in official relations. The next stop: Seoul 2026.