Ian Bowers, Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Defence College, assesses the potential for nuclear war in East Asia by analysing geostrategic, operational, and technological factors.

He argues that the most dangerous threat to strategic stability is a counterforce dilemma where the US, China, and regional East Asian countries’ conventional capabilities may create strategic instability through their interaction with adversaries’ nuclear weapons.

However, the maritime nature of the geostrategic environment coupled with the lack of existential threat that the United States and China pose to the other offers fewer natural pathways to nuclear weapons use for either country than during Cold War.