April was a busy month for APLN, as we made important headway towards promoting regional dialogue and policy engagement in the Asia-Pacific, amid growing security concerns in the region. Building on our ongoing work on maritime security, we convened two back-to-back workshops in Seoul on Exploring New Maritime Confidence and Security Building Measures in the Asia-Pacific, aimed at developing practical policy recommendations for reducing tensions and building trust among maritime states in the region.

As part of our Voices from Pacific Island Countries project, we held our first-ever in-person event in Fiji. The Suva Dialogue brought together experts from across Asia and the Pacific to explore how countries can strengthen collective resilience against growing global and regional security threats. The dialogue was met with overwhelmingly positive feedback from the participants for its value in building deeper connections between Asia and the Pacific Islands. Complementing this effort, we released an infographic illustrating how nuclear risks are perceived and experienced in the different sub-regions of the Asia-Pacific.

In our publications this month, APLN Policy Fellow Joel Petersson Ivre authored a new report examining the implications of rising nuclear salience in Japan and South Korea for crisis stability, arms race dynamics, and arms control efforts in East Asia. APLN Senior Research Adviser Frank O’Donnell critiqued the contradictions in the Trump administration’s Asia strategy, urging US allies in the region to pursue greater self-reliance and multilateralism to maintain peace and stability. In the latest Korea Times column, APLN member Sarah Teo emphasised the importance of aligning diverse cooperative formats to build a more resilient and responsive regional security architecture.

We also published two commentaries by APLN members Adil Sultan and Elina Noor. Sultan advocated for regular failsafe reviews to guard against the accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons, while Noor explained how ASEAN countries, especially Malaysia, could adopt a people-oriented approach to designing, developing and deploying artificial intelligence (AI).

Taken together, our events and analyses underscore our commitment to strengthening regional cooperation on nuclear risk reduction, maritime security, and emerging technologies.

Thank you for your continued support of APLN. We are always keen to hear your thoughts. If you have any suggestions or proposals – whether for a publication, project, or funding collaboration – please share them with us.

On April 14-15, APLN hosted two workshops on Exploring New Maritime Confidence and Security Building Measures in the Asia-Pacific. The workshops separately convened experts from Northeast Asia and South Asia, to discuss opportunities and potential hurdles for new confidence and security building measures within their regions. This work builds upon APLN’s previous work on Asia-Pacific maritime security issues, and is intended to produce rigorously tested regional stability mechanisms which reflect the needs of and perspectives from the region.

On April 24-25, we hosted a meeting in Suva, Fiji, as part of our project on Voices from the Pacific Island Countries. The Suva Dialogue on Security in the Pacific and Asia brought together 20 experts from the Pacific Islands, Oceania, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and South Asia to examine the impact of great power competition, increased militarisation, nuclear risks and climate change in the Asia-Pacific, and explore how countries from the Pacific Islands and Asia can collectively future-proof the wider Asia-Pacific region against shared security risks and current and future challenges. The project is supported by the Ploughshares Fund.

The Asia-Pacific is faced with growing nuclear dangers from past and present nuclear policies and practices, the intensifying geopolitical climate and serious challenges to global disarmament efforts. These dangers are, however, viewed and experienced in many different ways by countries and communities in the Asia-Pacific, highlighting a range of concerns from the continued existence of nuclear weapons.

Based on discussions at the APLN Asia-Pacific roundtable on Nuclear Issues and Humanitarian Crises with experts and former practitioners from the region, we share a new infographic that explores how nuclear risks are perceived and experienced across the different sub-regions of the Asia-Pacific. It highlights both the convergences and divergences in regional perspectives, the transnational and humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, and the opportunities for building synergies to mitigate these risks across the region.

Joel Petersson Ivre explores how Japanese and Korean understandings of strategic stability contribute to increased nuclear salience in East Asia. While both countries seek to keep the United States involved in the region, their hedging strategies differ: Japan prioritises keeping the United States engaged, while South Korea shows greater interest in credible alternatives to a significant US presence in the region. As nuclear salience rises in both countries, driven by alliance negotiations and regional threats, it risks undermining crisis stability, arms race stability, and non-proliferation efforts in East Asia.

Adil Sultan analyses nuclear risks between India and Pakistan, highlighting the Balakot incident from 2019 and the Brahmos missile misfiring from 2022 as examples of the dangers posed by miscalculation, unauthorised actions, and the lack of crisis management mechanisms. He argues that there is an urgent need to conduct regular nuclear failsafe reviews by India and Pakistan to build confidence, reduce the risk of accidents or misjudgements, and prevent nuclear escalation during serious military crises.

Elina Noor writes on how the US’ new AI diffusion framework reflects broader US-China tech rivalry and its implications for Southeast Asia, where most ASEAN countries fall into a grey zone of conditional access. She examines how ASEAN countries are navigating this shifting terrain through strategic investments, while also questioning whether current AI strategies are sustainable or equitable in the long run. She suggests that Malaysia should consider shepherding a people-centred, people-oriented approach to designing, developing and deploying AI during its chairmanship year.