With Russian and Ukrainian forces now facing off across the Dnipro, tensions are building across Korea’s DMZ.

(Originally published Nov. 14 in “What in the World“) Pundits say North Korea is indeed using the new Cold War as an opportunity to demonstrate its fealty to to China and Russia, The New York Times writes. Hence its strenuous efforts to antagonize Washington and its neighbors with a record number of missile tests this year. North Korea has even been supplying Russia with artillery for the war in Ukraine. Pyongyang’s hope is that Beijing and Moscow will reward it with greater financial assistance. What the article doesn’t tell us is whether those efforts show any signs of succeeding.

Resurgent tensions between the U.S., China, North Korea, and Russia have stoked Japan’s desire to build the military muscle necessary to better defend itself. Since its defeat in World War II and U.S. occupation, Japan has become so comfortably dependent on Washington for external security that the U.S. has been nudging it to do a bit more. Now, Tokyo is making moves to expand its military budget beyond what the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe achieved and develop a more assertive posture that doesn’t violate its pacifist constitution.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met Sunday with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the one-day East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh and vowed a unified response to Pyongyang’s provocations. The Summit was being held as leaders make their way to Bali for the G20 Summit this week, and where Biden is scheduled to meet China’s President Xi Jinping today.

The other member of the China-Russia Axis is, of course, Iran. The Pentagon is still warning that Tehran is poised to launch a strike on Saudi Arabia, probably on its energy industry. Last week the U.S. flew two B-52s over the Middle East as a warning. Flying bombers, whether over South Korea or to a base in Australia, appears to be one of Biden’s preferred ways to draw a line in the sand. The U.S. also accuses Tehran of supplying Moscow with drones and says it is in talks to provide Russia with ballistic missiles.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is determined to press its advantage after liberating Kherson from Russian forces. Kyiv hopes to regain further territory despite the onset of winter and calls from Washington to come to the negotiating table. But Kherson lies on the western side of the Dnipro River. Kyiv now faces entrenched Russian forces on the east bank determined to hold the land bridge to Crimea and still in control of Zaporizhzhia and its nuclear power plant.

To maintain Ukraine’s advantage, the Biden Administration is sending $400 million in new weapons to Kyiv before Congress even has a chance to tally up the midterm results and take its seats to vote on a new, $740 billion spending budget aimed at preparing the Pentagon for the new Cold War. The latest batch includes Boeing’s Avenger air defense systems, which fire Raytheon’s popular Stinger surface-to-air missiles.