We are accustomed to viewing wars in the Middle East from the West — through the lens of Washington, Brussels, or Jerusalem. Seen from the Indo-Pacific, the picture looks different. The U.S.–Israel war with Iran is being assessed across Asia not primarily as a regional confrontation, but as a strategic event with global implications — affecting energy markets, revealing the operational depth of American alliances, and informing China’s assessment of U.S. military reach in a period of intensifying great-power rivalry.
Over the past weeks I have been in the Indo-Pacific — traveling from Tokyo to Seoul to Manila and now to New Delhi for policy discussions as the war unfolded. In each capital the conflict surfaced quickly in conversation. Officials, analysts, and journalists are asking many of the same questions: What does this war reveal about American power? What does it demonstrate about alliance coordination? And what might it mean for the stability of global energy supplies?
I am writing these lines from the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, one of the Indo-Pacific’s major policy conferences. Even here, thousands of kilometers from the battlefield, the effects of the war are visible. Organizers report that roughly 1,200 of the expected participants had to cancel their attendance as the conflict disrupted aviation routes across the Gulf. With airspace around major regional hubs such as Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi closed or restricted following Iranian missile strikes, flights across the region have been rerouted or suspended. What appears geographically distant quickly becomes logistically immediate.
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