Southeast Asia

September 2026

SecurityPoliticsEconomySociety

Strategic theaters involving Southeast Asia

Editorially curated conflicts and rivalries Southeast Asia is party to. Open a panel to see the specific friction points inside it.

Friction Point

Myanmar civil conflict

Myanmar has been in political and armed conflict since the military removed the elected government in February 2021. The armed forces, organised politically around the Union Solidarity and Development Party, hold central power; a parallel National Unity Government, allied People's Defence Forces and long-established ethnic armed organisations contest military control across much of the country. In elections held under military administration the military-aligned bloc won most seats, and former State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi remains in detention. Fighting includes airstrikes, ground offensives and clashes near the borders with Thailand, China and India. The border regions host large scam-compound and human-trafficking operations whose victims and proceeds cross the wider region, prompting Chinese prosecutions and cross-border enforcement. China, Russia, India and ASEAN states maintain varying degrees of engagement with the authorities in Naypyidaw.

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Friction Point

South China Sea territorial and maritime disputes

China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Taiwan hold overlapping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea. China's claim, drawn as the nine-dash line, covers most of the sea and overlaps exclusive economic zones claimed by the other parties. An arbitral tribunal constituted under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled in 2016 that the line has no legal basis; China does not recognise the ruling. Several claimants occupy features in the Spratly and Paracel groups, and some have built installations on them. Coast guard, naval, militia and fishing vessels operate in contested waters, and encounters occur around features including Scarborough Shoal, Second Thomas Shoal and Reed Bank. The United States and other states outside the dispute conduct naval and air operations in the sea and hold exercises with claimant states. China and ASEAN have negotiated a code of conduct for the sea since 2002. Roughly a third of global shipping transits the sea, and the seabed holds oil, gas and fishing grounds.

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Friction Point

Thailand–Cambodia border conflict

Thailand and Cambodia contest their shared 817-kilometre land border and an overlapping maritime zone in the Gulf of Thailand. The land dispute centres on 11th-century Khmer temples and their surrounding ground -- Preah Vihear, awarded to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice in 1962 and again in 2013, and the Ta Moan and Ta Krabey complexes and the tri-border "Emerald Triangle", which remain undemarcated. Boundary work proceeds under a 2000 memorandum (MOU 43) through a Joint Boundary Committee; a separate 2001 memorandum (MOU 44) governs talks on the overlapping maritime claims area, where the island of Koh Kood and seabed oil and gas are at stake. Armed clashes along the frontier in 2025 killed soldiers and civilians and displaced tens of thousands before a ceasefire brokered with outside mediation. Since then the border crossings have been closed at times, both armies have traded accusations of truce violations and troop build-ups, and Cambodia has moved parts of the maritime question toward the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Malaysia, the Philippines as ASEAN chair, China and the United States have all been involved in de-escalation.

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