A Sea of Uncertainty: Reflections from the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue

Lindsay: This summer, the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation hosted the 36th Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, or NEACD. Since its inception in 1993, this forum has been a place for discussion between scholars and government officials (acting in an unofficial capacity) from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United States, and in some years, North Korea. The goal is to build trust and reduce the likelihood of conflict in one of the world’s most important and volatile regions.

With so much changing in the international system—the rise of China; new U.S. leadership; and wars being fought in Europe, the Middle East and beyond—we wanted to check in with participants from this year’s NEACD, to see where they think the region is heading. 

A focal point of the discussions, which took place over the course of three hot and humid days in Seoul at the end of July, was the relationship between the two most influential countries in the region: China and the U.S., and concerns that two rival blocs may be forming in Northeast Asia, with China, Russia and North Korea on one side and the U.S., Japan and South Korea on the other.

I spoke to Da Wei, director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and asked him what a, quote, “decent peace” between China and the U.S. might look like, and whether future cooperation with the United States seems possible from a Chinese perspective.

Da Wei: Decent peace means, first, it’s a peace, but it need[s] to be decent for both side[s]. I think the two sides [are] trying to work out an order or a system that neither side feel very comfortable, but both side feel acceptable. 

If one party feel[s] extremely satisfied, probably the other side will be angry about that, right? So a decent peace means both side[s] feel it’s acceptable, but not completely satisfactory. Put it in a more concrete way, I always say with my colleagues in East Asia, the U.S. need[s] to give China room, China need to give U.S. face. 

In the past, the U.S. was a predominant power in the region, and the strongest country in East Asia. China is rising now, and China, of course, want[s] its own influence, and also China have its own interest in Taiwan and also in South China Sea, and maybe other issues.

So if China’s core interests cannot be achieved, China may feel that we have not been respected. For instance, if the U.S. supported Taiwan independence, encourage them to go towards that direction, we think this peace is not acceptable.

At the same time, for example, the U.S. have its own federal interest in the region. For instance, the U.S. have two allies in Northeast Asia, that’s Japan and Korea. In our NEACD discussion, Korean and the Japanese colleagues are here. These are the allies of the United States. So [to] give U.S. face, that means China should not force the U.S. to leave the region or destroy the alliance system in the region. For me, this is something I will say it’s a decent peace.

Of course, decent peace actually is not only limited to security or military side. On [the] economic side, it’s true that if the U.S. try to strangle China’s high-tech industry, for example, make China’s economy lose the future. then that’s not something acceptable from Chinese side. Actually, what the American government has done in past 10 years cause Chinese very angry. For example, restrict the exportation of the high-tech production, like the semiconductor. We think this is really damage China’s economic prospect.

So I hope we can at least mitigate this dispute. I think we need to draw a boundary of our behavior. What can we do and what can’t we do, both on economic and the security side? If we have a clear boundary, a border, then we have chance to achieve a decent peace. This border need[s] to be accepted by both parties, both China and the United States.

Lindsay: For an American perspective, I spoke with Sheena Chestnut Greitens, an associate professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin. She had this to say about the evolving nature of the U.S.-China relationship under the current U.S. presidential administration.

Sheena: I actually think we’re still kind of seeing the Trump administration exploring how it’s going to approach its relationship with China. And the reality is there’s a wide range of views among the president’s team, and the president has his own particular approach to China that’s very focused on trade and making deals that he believes benefit the United States, and on economic security, which I think he’s really moved to the center of the American national security strategy in a way that I don’t remember a president doing in my lifetime.

And that’s been sort of mirrored on the Chinese side by a Chinese approach to security that is very expansive and also includes a lot of concern about technology, economic competitiveness, and economic security for China and for the Chinese political system.

President Trump visited Beijing earlier this year. He met with Xi Jinping. There’s a lot of discussion right now about the concept of constructive strategic stability, which both sides have used to describe kind of the core concept of the relationship under this U.S. administration. Now we’re in a period of fleshing out, I think, what that concept means, how that actually translates into specific policy, and in particular, how that will help or not help the two sides deal with some of the perennial tension points in the U.S.-China relationship.

What I’ve heard from Chinese interlocutors is there remains a real sense that American arms sales to Taiwan are unacceptable, and the president just in, I believe it was December, signed off on the biggest arms sale to Taiwan that the United States has done. And so there’s a tension here. I think the other thing is just that American allies and partners have their own relationships with Beijing. Some of those have flashpoints and tensions, and so the ability of third parties and external events to put pressure on the bilateral relationship, because it exists in a multilateral and global world, is not small.

Lindsay: As Sheena suggested, American allies and partners in northeast Asia are closely watching as U.S.-China relations evolve. I asked Kazuto Suzuki, a professor at the University of Tokyo, what he thinks are the strengths of the U.S. alliance with Japan, and what is at stake given the fluid nature of relations between China and the U.S. His answer, which raised the issue of the impact of the war in Ukraine, was revealing.

Kazuto: I think what happened in Europe is demonstrating an uncertainty of the future of the alliance. The United States claiming to buy out Greenland, or the Trump administration’s policy towards Ukraine and Russia are flip-flopping, and it is often different from the European allies. And sometimes the U.S. administration threatens that [the] U.S. may leave NATO. So I think these are very much of the case that we are looking at, as an ally, that it might happen to Japan. But so far, the Japanese government see[s] that it is less likely that [the] United States will apply the same principle to Japan. 

One of the major reason[s] is the geography. We are next to China, and I think from a United States point of view, the deterrence of Chinese military activities is one of the key question[s] of American strategy.

But so far, we are always being aware of these uncertainties and a possible change of course of the actions of the United States toward China. I mean, if you look at President Trump’s visit to Beijing, the United States and China is certainly seeking [a] stable relationship. That means the United States is changing their attitude towards China and probably, if [the] United States prioritize[s] the stability, then the U.S. posture in [the] Western Pacific, and especially in Japan, may change, if China demands [the] United States to retreat from its engagement in East Asia.

So this is something we [are] concern[ed] that it might be possible. Because for [the] United States, the economic/military relationship, diplomatic relationship with China is so important. We may be a sort of a victim of that stability.

Lindsay: South Korea, our host for this year’s NEACD, is another strong ally of the United States, but also relies heavily on its economic ties to China. I asked Chung-In Moon, Professor Emeritus at Yonsei University in Seoul, how South Korea is maintaining a diplomatic balance between the two countries.

Chung-In: It’s getting harder. It is more because of the United States.

If [the] United States take[s] a harder position on China, we’ll be sandwiched. If [the] United States take[s] a soft position on China, and if Washington-Beijing relations are good, we’ll find some leeway to play with it. If Washington-Beijing relation[s] get worsened, then it will be very difficult for us to muddle through the two competing rivals.

There’s a trend toward bipolar competition between China and the U.S. At the same time, we are witnessing [the] rise of multiple poles of power, and there is also great call for decentralized, global governance. Therefore, all these elements [are] creating [a] sense of uncertainty and confusion on the world stage. It is more so because [the] United States is willing to give up its unipolar moment. America itself is now trying to tear down multilateral regimes in the world, trying to undermine [the] United Nations.

And therefore a lot of so-called middle powers are now talking about how to come up with mutual cooperation concepts to deal with this growing uncertainty [in the] international order.

Lindsay: Another key question coloring the NEACD discussions is whether the region is hardening into two rival blocs. I asked Da Wei what he thinks.

Da Wei: If we look back to [the] past 10 years, I will say it’s becoming more and more serious. But surprisingly, I will say I think [the] situation in my view is getting better, a little bit better than two years ago.

The very simple way to understand it is there are two triangles. The southern triangle is the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. Japan and Korea are allies of the United States. Then the northern triangle is China, DPRK/North Korea, and Russia. The three countries are not trilateral or bilateral allies, but they are close. 

Interestingly, in [the] past two years, the U.S. relations with China and Russia are stabilizing. And if we don’t talk to each other, if we view the other side as enemy, then we’ll have bloc politics. But now, since China-U.S. and Russia-U.S. [relations] is stabilizing, I think it’s better than two years ago.

I don’t know [if] the American or Western audience understand China’s view or maybe DPRK’s view or Russia’s view. After the end of the Cold War, China of course diplomatically we always recognized DPRK/North Korea, but after the end of the Cold War, we also recognized South Korea. We set up diplomatic relations with South Korea, and the Russians did the same thing. At that time, we have an understanding that the U.S. and Japan will do the same thing to DPRK. So we recognize South Korea, you need to recognize DPRK. But still today, the U.S. and Japan has no relations with DPRK. And also the Korean War has not been legally terminated. It’s just a truce there. So, from China’s perspective, if we want to avoid this bloc politics, the U.S., Japan, and maybe South Korea need to normalize their relationship with DPRK. Then that will reduce the sense of insecurity of the North.

Lindsay: Sheena highlighted two potential reasons that these rival blocs may be forming…

Sheena: I think what we’re seeing in the region are the function of two intersecting trends, one that is situated within the region itself and one that lies partly outside the region. And the one that lies partly outside the region is probably the one that listeners are most familiar with, which is Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine in February of 2022, and then its decision to intensify its relationship with North Korea in the prosecution of its invasion over the subsequent years. We have some evidence to believe that 10-12 years ago, Kim Jong Un was actually seeking to reduce dependence on China on North Korea’s part, and Russia was the obvious alternative, but there wasn’t a ton that North Korea could offer Russia until Russia needed certain things in the war in Ukraine: munitions, manpower, people to throw into the meat grinder, to put a sort of brutally blunt turn on it. And so what we’ve seen is a real sort of intensification of the Russia-North Korea relationship and the signing of a significant defense partnership agreement. I think that had a number of reverberating effects, but it intersected with a sort of internal development in North Korea, which was the decision to essentially sort of drop the pursuit of unification as a principal objective for the North Korean state, and to name South Korea as its number one enemy. 

And so there’s lots of debate over how comfortable or not China is with the sort of renewed partnership between North Korea and Russia, to the extent that that empowers North Korea to do things that are destabilizing vis-a-vis South Korea on China’s doorstep, bordering northeast China. That’s maybe not a great development for China at a time when it probably doesn’t want to deal with that. And at the same time, support for North Korea at times has been something that China has calibrated based on whether it likes what the U.S. is doing with Taiwan. 

This really puts South Korea in a very difficult position. South Korea has its own domestic politics around how to approach the inter-Korean relationship and how to pursue unification and to what degree that should be a political priority, with what trade-offs should a South Korean president make in trying to pursue rapprochement or peace with the North Korean regime.

But I think it’s really the future of this Russia-North Korea relationship on the one hand, and these changes on the Korean Peninsula within the region itself, that have made for a much more challenging security environment that seem to have closed off certain avenues, particularly for inter-Korean rapprochement, and give Russia a bigger and less positive role from the U.S. standpoint and the standpoint of U.S. allies and partners, Japan and South Korea, in terms of the role that it’s playing in peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.

Lindsay: To get an insider perspective from Moscow, I asked Vasily Kashin, a senior fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences, about his view of the relationship between North Korea and Russia…

Vasily: I believe it’s a long-term relationship which has [a] very deep basis in the strategic position of both countries. If we look at the North Korean foreign policy, North Korea is a very special kind of political regime for a small or middle power, which has one sole priority which stands above everything else, and that one sole priority is independence, complete sovereignty. And that means that first of all, they need to have as a partner, a bigger power which would never be able and would never have an intention and even capability to question their absolute sovereignty and independence in any case, and Russia is that country because we are culturally different. We are a kind of outside newcomer with very limited ambitions compared to the Chinese and to the Japanese, historically. 

At the same time, we need to have strong military political partners because, for example, in Ukraine, we are fighting not just against Ukraine, but against a coalition of 50 countries controlling more than half of the global GDP, which are supplying Ukraine with finances, with innovations, with drones, weapons, technology, advice, everything, and we are just alone. Of course, we have Belarus as our closest partner, but it’s a very small country. So having North Korea on board is beneficial, and North Korea is a country which has huge potential in a number of traditional areas of defense industry, including artillery, some types of air defense systems, explosives, et cetera. So they are valuable. They can produce in some sectors more than, for example, any European country. They have skilled workforce, and Russia has been importer of North Korean workforce for many years.

This all forms a very strong basis for relationship. In the future, I believe once the need in defense cooperation is not as acute as it is now, still there will be basis for relations because we’ll be interested in the manpower in some civilian industrial capacity. So why should we neglect such a valuable partner? It’s not making us weaker, it’s making us much, much stronger.

Lindsay: In addition to the war in Ukraine, Iran was another focal point of discussions. I asked Da Wei to provide some insights into China’s perspective on the ongoing American military intervention in the Middle East. 

Da Wei: First, we believe [the Iran war] is a major mistake of [the] Trump administration. Iran is not a region that [the] U.S. should spend more money and send the troops in, but for whatever reason—I think Israel played a key role there—the U.S. is now trapped in the war. So it shows the lack of discipline of this administration in Washington, D.C. I think this is one thing people are talking about in Beijing on this war.

The other thing is the capability of the U.S. to fight a major war. Iran, of course, [is] a middle power, but it’s not a country like Russia [or] China. The U.S., after five months, the war is still there, and the U.S. does not want to pay [the] price for the war, but cannot win the war, in short. So if the U.S. cannot achieve a victory in Iran, and already spent more than 70 billion U.S. dollars in that war, how can the U.S. win a war in [the] East Asia region, if we have to face a war in the future? So that drive[s] people to reassess the capability of the U.S.

After [the] Trump administration’s action in Venezuela, there’s a round of reassessment in China about U.S. strength. People [felt] that, wow, the U.S. is very powerful. That action in Venezuela, at least militarily, was very successful. But the war in Iran shows the limit of the U.S. strength.

Some people in China say, “Let’s utilize this because it can weaken the U.S.,” but [the] Chinese government so far not only has not utilized the war to give [the] U.S. more trouble, actually China helped a lot to try to facilitate the negotiation. China supported Pakistan to facilitate the talks, and also encourage[d] Iranians to talk to America. 

So I appreciate my government’s effort very much on this issue. I think that’s a smart decision not to make the war worse, because actually it will sooner or later hurt ourself. But try to facilitate the negotiation, the peace talk. That’s the most effective way [for] China to become a major player or a leader in the world.

Lindsay: For many countries, the war against Iran is a stark emblem of the power of war to disrupt economies far and wide. Kazuto Suzuki explained how the war reflects the changing nature of conflict, and is causing the Japanese government to reassess its security posture…

Kazuto: What happened in the Middle East—the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran—has a significant impact on the Japanese economy, because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

[The] Strait of Hormuz is the situation where states can use not only kinetic military actions, but economic coercions to that extent. [The] closure of the Strait of Hormuz against international law would have a certain impact on the global economy and also the state, like Iran, using those tactic[s] as the tools of war. So the war is no longer fighting between the military against military.

And also what we see in [the] war in Ukraine is the way in which the Ukrainians are fighting are quite different. Using drones, AI, Starlink… all these new technologies are now introducing the different landscape of the battlefield.

So Japan, which is traditionally holding this idea of exclusively self-defense forces, is trying to revise the existing national security strategy, and there’ll be new concepts like the new way of defending Japan using drones–or countermeasures of drones–using AI, and also using economic coercions or protecting our warfighting capabilities by maintaining the supply chain, et cetera, so that we won’t be intimidated by the economic coercion. 

Lindsay: One of the goals of NEACD when it was founded in 1993 was to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. Today, the country possesses an estimated 60 nuclear warheads, and enough fissile material to produce at least 30 more. I asked my colleagues whether they think, given these realities, it is time to forgo denuclearization in favor of imposing other, more modest limitations on Pyongyang.

Da Wei: Traditionally, China’s official position actually advocated for two things. One is peace and stability on Korean Peninsula. So actually not only DPRK, but also South Korea. The other is denuclearization, or non-proliferation. 

Now, we all know that North Korea already have their nuclear capability, and it’s hard to try to persuade them to denuclearize. I think it’s hard. So of course, China, I don’t think China abandoned the goal of denuclearization. It’s still there. It’s still China’s policy or China’s goal, but if it’s not very realistic, at least in the short run, then of course, we want to still maintain peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula.

At the same time, I think a new direction is happening. That is maybe try to help North Korea to develop their own economy, to share the prosperity of the region. If a government or nation really believe that economic prosperity and development is their top priority, I don’t think they will use nuclear weapon to threaten others. I will say, again, this is my personal view, I don’t know.

To be honest, I want to be very honest, I don’t know any realistic solution to achieve denuclearization in the short run. And I haven’t heard anybody from any country give me a roadmap that we can go along that roadmap to achieve that goal. But the goal is the goal. We don’t have any change of that, but before we can reach that goal, let’s do something in [the] short and midterm to make the region safer. 

Sheena: My own take is that we need to deal with North Korea in the immediate term as it is. You don’t necessarily have to drop this as a goal in the long-term vision, but we need some short-term coping mechanisms that may become more long-term if denuclearization is not something that everyone can agree to move toward, particularly the Kim regime, honestly.

There are other important questions about the North Korean nuclear arsenal: use cases, strategy, doctrine, that are very important to stability and nuclear deterrence in the region that do have an effect on, for example, U.S. nuclear posture, on how China views what the United States is doing on the peninsula with allies extended deterrence, so the U.S. sort of extending its deterrent, to allies and partners in the region, which it’s typically done through the mutual defense treaties. My sense is that we kind of need both. The NPT lays out the idea that eventually the states that had nuclear weapons at the time the NPT was negotiated and agreed to are also supposed to reduce and then eventually eliminate nuclear weapons. But it also put in a framework for trying to manage and limit the negative effects of nuclear proliferation, both vertical and horizontal, in the shorter term, the more near future.

They’re often framed as an either/or. Like, either we do [an] arms control type pursuit of a discussion with North Korea, or we stick with complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization, CVID as it used to be called, and my sense is that that’s an unnecessary binary.

Chung-In: North Korea has declared that it is not giving up nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Then what options do you have? Are you going to take military action against North Korea? In the past, the U.S. tried. That didn’t work it out. You want to change regime in North Korea? You know how hard it is to change regime in North Korea.

As a member of NPT, Non-Proliferation Treaty, we cannot recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapon state. However, we should be aware of North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability and engage in negotiation with North Korea on that assumption. Therefore, our immediate goal is not denuclearization, [it] is freezing their nuclear activities and reducing their nuclear arsenal. We’ll place denuclearization at the exit of our negotiation. But in the beginning, at the entrance, let us talk about freezing and reduction.

It has something to do with lack of strategic empathy. I see the reflection of narcissism. North Korea changed. Now, North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons. That’s a fact. You seek truth from the facts—not from your ideology or your dream or your wishful thinking. That is not [a] good approach. North Korea has been changing. Then we should try to grasp the changing nature of North Korean reality.

Lindsay: Wondering if a close ally might be able to influence North Korea, I asked Vasily whether Russia might be able to act as a sort of bridge-builder towards nuclear stability on the Korean peninsula.

Vasily: Well, I think it could be a very positive element in the future development of this situation. It should be understood that Russia is not a neutral party, but Russia is friend and ally of North Korea. But Russia still, if North Korea is ready to negotiate, Russia would be happy to facilitate that, to provide some services in this field to help set up communication, to be part of any agreement, to help provide economic incentives.

At the same time, Russia will not pressure North Koreans and try to force them to do anything they don’t want to do. That should be understood. We are on their side. 

Lindsay: The new U.S. National Security Strategy, which was released in November 2025, says that the U.S. should stop taking responsibility for the management of the global system. It also finds no area where the U.S. will actually retreat. I asked Da Wei what he thinks about this apparent disconnect…

Da Wei: I think the vision that the Trump administration proposed is a self-contradictory one. I understand the U.S. want[s] to step back from global leadership and want[s] other partners and allies to share the burden. But this is a dilemma. It’s very costly to be a leader. You need to provide public goods to others, then others follow you. If you don’t want to provide the public goods—I think the U.S. now does not want to provide public goods—then you won’t be a leader.

[The] Trump administration seems to believe that the U.S. can maintain its leadership without spending or providing the public good[s] it used to provide. So then the Trump administration believed that the U.S. can use strength or can make other people scared by using force. For example, in Venezuela or [a] country like Iran, the Trump administration like to say “peace through strength.” Using strength to achieve leadership. My personal view is this is not very effective, and also it’s also costly to the U.S. reputation. 

No country want[s] to abandon leadership. I think that’s quite natural. I don’t think the U.S. want[s] to. And if China is in that position, I don’t think China [would] want to abandon that. But being a hegemony, being a leader, it’s a very costly thing. I think the U.S. is facing this challenge now.

Lindsay: With a wide range of competing interests and complex alliances, one thing that remains clear is that the future of Northeast Asia is in flux. The dialogue in Seoul this summer is merely one channel of communication, but one that IGCC hopes will help to encourage peace and cooperation over conflict and competition, which could have drastic impacts that reverberate not only throughout northeast Asia, but around the globe.