Northeast Asia on the Path to Regional War - Assessing the Risk of War and Use of Nuclear Weapon in the New Geopolitical Era

Bong-geun Jun

Professor at Korea National Diplomatic Academy 

jun2030@mofa.or.kr​​​​

Since its incorporation into the modern international system, Northeast Asia has become a geopolitical danger zone where great power continuously compete and continental and maritime powers clash. While there was a temporal period of peace and cooperation during the post-Cold War era, the rise of China and the end of the U.S. hegemonic era in the 2010s brought back the era of Power Politics and geopolitical competition. China's GDP was only 10% of the U.S. GDP in 1996, but it has continued to grow rapidly, reaching 50% in 2012 and 70% in 2020. In anticipation of the imminent reversal of economic power between the U.S. and China, political realism theorists and geopoliticians alike warned of a great war between the U.S. and China, a so-called "Thucydides' trap" or "tragedy of power politics" in which an established hegemon and a challenger enter into a competition for hegemony.