The Revival of Frozen Conflicts Amid Authoritarian Coalescence
Gerard McDermott
The revival of territorial disputes and the de-thawing of conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guyana, Taiwan, and the Korean Peninsula have drifted closer to armed conflict in recent years due to changes in the global geopolitical order and the emboldening effect created by the coalescence of the Neo-Authoritarian Bloc (NAB) and its apparent military successes to date. I use the term NAB to refer to the collective of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Venezuela, and Myanmar. As I argued in 2023, this bloc has altered the trajectory of global conflicts, emboldened revisionism and opportunistic territorial aggression, and has established means to bypass Western sanctions. Unlike the ideological uniformity of the Cold War's Warsaw Pact, the NAB is not restricted by traditional alliances or treaties. Instead, ‘the strengths of the bloc are that it is amorphous, its arrangements are flexible, and the roles played by members are optional' – with the three main pillars of support provided by the bloc being military collaboration, economic cooperation and diplomatic shielding.
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Following the ‘Unipolar moment’ of the 1990s and the early-2000s, the steady erosion of Western dominance began with Russia's invasions of Georgia (2008) and then Ukraine (2014), followed by China’s intensifying claims over Taiwan throughout the second half of the 2010s. Growing Sino-American friction during the first Trump administration laid the groundwork for the authoritarian alignment seen during the Biden administration, when this collective of sanctioned and ostracised authoritarian states coalesced into the NAB through a matrix of bi-lateral agreements and a growing level of cooperation most clearly expressed in the February 2022 Sino-Russian 'No limits' partnership. This period of growing cohesion also saw the revival of dormant territorial disputes and irredentist claims, such as Venezuela's claims over Guyana’s Essequibo region and a revival in Bosnian-Serb secessionist rhetoric. The bloc also empowered sub-state proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, triggering a regional Middle East war that led to joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran in 2025 and 2026. Yet, despite this unprecedented level of coordination, the NAB has struggled with the most important aim of all: regime survival, as can be seen by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in late 2024, the abduction of Venezuela's Maduro in January 2026, and Iran's failure to repel US-Israeli airstrikes using Chinese and Russian military technology in both 2025 and 2026.
Although the four case studies discussed below are different conflicts with separate histories, all have experienced the same pattern of revival or de-thawing in recent years due to changes at the top of the global geopolitical order and the coalescence of the NAB. In all four examples, one of the opposing sides is a recipient of support from the bloc, which has led this party to develop a stronger position vis-a-vis its long-term rival. None of these four conflicts has led to a resumption of armed conflict, but all four regions have begun to drift further toward crisis. All four have seen constitutional or legal changes aimed at legitimising aggression in the near future, a shift in rhetoric and a re-framing of historical events, rearmament initiatives, and an increasing number of military drills and displays of strength near the areas under dispute. Historical revisionism has been a common feature that can be observed across the bloc. The endurance of both Vladimir Putin’s War in Ukraine and of the junta in Myanmar has had an emboldening effect on the other members of the bloc; as I previously argued. These two military campaigns, together with the high level of cooperation and support provided by the bloc in general, has had an emboldening effect on the Russian-backed Bosnian-Serb leadership, the Chávista regime in Venezuela, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un concerning their own ambitions for their near abroad.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Following the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH) underwent two decades of peace and reconstruction, without achieving reconciliation or developing a new political culture. Political development has not been a success in the country and some have argued that it has been the DPA itself which has soldified divisions within BiH and restricted the emergence of a new political culture, as the DPA separated the country into two autonomous political entities. Others have argued that political reform from within has always been unwanted by the country’s ethno-nationalist leaders. From 2010 to 2025, populist leader Milorad Dodik dominated Bosnian-Serb politics. Using Montenegro’s independence from Serbia (2006) as a precedent, Dodik asserted that Republika Srpska (RS) should also have the right to hold a referendum on secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina and that the statelet should be united with neighbouring Serbia in the future. Ostracised by Western leaders, Dodik cultivated allies in Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in the 2010s.
The emergence of the NAB since the beginning of this decade has undermined progress made in the first twenty years following the 1992–95 Bosnian War. A key form of support for Dodik has been diplomatic support from Russia at the United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC), where Russia, supported by China, has consistently vetoed moves against RS by the council for over the last decade. In 2021, Russia put forward a proposal at the UN to close the Office of the High Representative (OHR), the body established to oversee the implementation of the DPA. This was rejected by the other members of the security council. Recent years have also seen a growing economic partnership between RS and Beijing, in addition to closer economic cooperation with Minsk. Support related to military and psi-ops has also been provided by Russia and Belarus. This has included training in the use of disinformation, cyber attacks, and the weaponization of energy supplies to undermine NATO and EU influence in BiH. Russia has also sold weapons to the police of RS. In recent years, rumours have also circulated that Bosnian-Serb paramilitaries are being trained at Russia’s military base in the south of Serbia.
The growing level of Russian patronage in the second half of the 2010s had an emboldening effect upon the Bosnian-Serb leadership, whose opposition to the DPA and Western states intensified in the early years of this decade. This was first seen in the rejection of a United Nations’ General Assembly resolution in 2021 commemorating the killings in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. Dodik responded to the resolution publicly stating that: this was ‘the final nail in the coffin of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina… the RS has no choice but to launch the process of dissolution’. In 2022, Dodik put forward a proposal for the peaceful dissolution of the country, or a return to the terms of the original agreement of 1995.
In 2023, the OHR drafted a new law making it illegal for officials in BiH to fail to implement the decisions of the office. In February 2025, a court in Sarajevo issued an arrest warrant for Dodik after he was sentenced to one year in prison and a six-year ban from politics for defying the rulings of the OHR. An attempt to arrest Dodik failed the following month, when his armed guards obstructed the BiH police. At a meeting in Moscow in May 2025, Dodik displayed an intensified sense of defiance and stated that the DPA ‘had lost its meaning’ and that Russia’s war in Ukraine was for ‘the sake of the free world’. Overall, events during the Spring and Summer of 2025 led BiH to its greatest crisis since the mid-1990s, after three decades of avoiding conflict and confrontation. Dodik was removed in August 2025 and was later replaced by Siniša Karan, a Dodik-loyalist. Since that time, Dodik has continued his political campaigning more covertly. In response to Dodik's provocations, EU officials re-started negotiations concerning the future membership of BiH in 2024. There was also an expansion of EUFOR numbers in BiH in 2025. Yet overall, the state of post-conflict peace-building and reconciliation in BiH is at its lowest ebb since the mid-1990s, as discussions concerning the secession of RS have continued following Dodik’s departure.
Guyana
After decades of dormancy, Venezuela’s claim over Guyana’s Essequibo region resurfaced in 2015 and then intensified at the beginning of this decade. A referendum concerning the future annexation of this resource-rich region was held in Venezuela in December 2023. The Essequibo region comprises two-thirds of Guyana. Venezuela’s claim is based on Spanish colonial boundaries that existed prior to Venezuelan independence in 1830. In 1899, an international tribunal awarded the territory to Britain. This was rejected by Venezuela as fraudulent in 1962, which led to skirmishes and armed confrontation between the two states until 1969. After the 1960s, the conflict remained frozen for decades. Relations between the two states improved and became stable during the Hugo Chávez years (1999–2013).
In 2015, ExxonMobil discovered substantial oil reserves off Guyana’s coast. This discovery came soon after the Venezuelan economy had started to collapse under Nicolás Maduro, who had came to power in 2013. Following ExxonMobil’s discovery, the Maduro government passed Decree 1787 outlining a new naval defence zone where the oil had been found. In 2018, the dispute was referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), despite protests from Venezuela. In 2021, the Maduro government outlined its plan for a ‘Strategic Zone for National Development’ in the disputed waters. To further legitimise their claim, a referendum was held in Venezuela in December 2023. Officially, 95% of voters approved this territorial claim. This planned annexation of a neighbouring country’s territory is consistent with the recent foreign policies of Russia and China. The referendum led to the creation of a ‘Guayana Esequiba’ state, a new province of Venezuela.
Shortly before the referendum, Beijing had elevated its bilateral relationship with Venezuela in September 2023. Diplomatic support has also been provided by Venezuela’s partners in the bloc at the UN and other international forums. Russia and China have also become key economic partners over the last decade and together have kept Venezuela’s ailing economy afloat. More significantly, a substantial amount of military support has been received by Maduro’s regime: Russian and Iranian military hardware and consultancy have modernised the Venezuelan military over the last decade. Additionally, Both Russia and Hezbollah established military bases in Venezuela in the late-2010s and are rumoured to have provided training to the Venezuelan armed forces. In addition to this external military assistance, Venezuela has one hundred times more military and paramilitary personnel than Guyana in total. Overall, Venezuela has received a high level of diplomatic, economic, and military support from the NAB which both assisted Maduro’s regime with its survival and has had an emboldening effect on the geopolitical ambitions of the Chávista regime in its near abroad.
In recent years, Venezuela has built a runway and other dual-use infrastructure near its border with Guyana. There have also been numerous incidents along the border. These confrontations continued after the capture of Maduro in January 2026. In May 2026, a Guyanese soldier was wounded after an exchange of gunfire with Venezuelan troops. Since November 2023, Guyana has accused Venezuela of amassing troops near the Essequibo region. In January 2018, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres determined that the dispute should be referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Despite ICJ orders to preserve the status quo based on the 1899 boundary agreement, Venezuela has continued to assert that Essequibo has always been its territory. In May 2026, the Venezuelan government stated that it rejected the jurisdiction of the ICJ over the boundary dispute.
Despite the empowering effect of Venezuela’s integration into the NAB, Guyana has not become isolated internationally, in the same way that Taiwan has; Guyana has developed a defence strategy based on collaboration with its long term security partners: the UK, the US, and Brazil. This has acted as a deterrent against Venezuela. Although the abduction of Nicolas Maduro in January 2026 has led to internal changes within the regime, Venezuela’s ambitions over the Essequibo region remain.
Taiwan
Following the Chinese Civil War, the Chiang Kai-shek government retreated to Taiwan in 1949, while the People's Republic of China (PRC) was established on the mainland under Mao Zedong. Both governments claimed to represent all of China. The First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises (1954/1955 and 1958/1959) involved military confrontation over offshore islands which prompted US intervention in support of Taiwan. The PRC gained China's seat at the UN in 1971. This was followed by US recognition of the PRC in 1979. The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis (1995/1996) saw China conduct missile tests near Taiwan, which again prompted the United States to intervene and deploy aircraft carriers nearby. From 2008 to 2016, a period of stability emerged between the two sides which saw extensive economic cooperation and regular official dialogue, even though the underlying dispute over Taiwan’s status remained unresolved. 2010 saw the signing of the landmark Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement between the two sides. In 2015, Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping met in Singapore. This was the first meeting between leaders from the two sides since 1949. Thus, by the mid-2010s, cross-Strait relations were at their best since 1949.
A turning point was the election of Tsai Ing-wen in 2016 which led to a sharp downturn in relations between the two sides. Tsai’s rejection of the ‘1992 Consensus’, an ambiguous political framework used for cross strait relations, was responded to by Beijing with a sharp increase in diplomatic, economic, and military pressure. In 2019, a significant change was also seen in Xi Jinping’s public statements concerning Taiwan; previous references to cooperation were replaced with references to the ‘historic duty’ of the mainland to ‘reunify’ with Taiwan and that such a responsibility should ‘not be passed down from one generation to the next’. Another notable statement by XI was that the Chinese military should be ‘ready’ by 2027. March 2018 also saw the passing of the ‘Taiwan Travel Act’ by the US which incensed Beijing and despite warnings from the Chinese leadership, Washington continued to sell arms sales to Taipei.
Live military drills over Taiwan began in the summer of 2022, less than six months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since then, military drills carried out by China over Taiwan have increased in scale and frequency. Additionally, Beijing has greatly expanded its navy since the 2010s and now has the largest navy in the world. Recent years have also seen spectacular military parades in Beijing, often visited by heads of bloc states. China serves as the economic and technological hub of the NAB and receives strong diplomatic and narrational support from other bloc members concerning its confrontation with Taiwan, particularly from Russia. Additionally, Beijing has attempted to become ‘sanctions proof’ by accelerating its efforts to decouple from Western financial systems and establish NAB-centric supply chains through newly established economic communities, such as the SCO and BRICS. These alternative economic communities would assist in circumventing potential future sanctions in the event of military action against Taiwan.
The two sides are uneven in terms of military strength, however the key difference between Guyana and Taiwan is that the UN and regional bodies have been completely sidelined in the Taiwan Strait. China has blocked Taiwan’s participation in global forums for decades, has slowly replaced Taiwan’s embassies with its own, has outmaneuvered international organisations by using its veto power, and has used its economic leverage to enforce the ‘One China’ policy at international level. Receiving substantial support from the bloc at a diplomatic level, China has been highly effective in isolating Taiwan. However, the failures of Chinese military technologies in Venezuela and Iran, in addition to a plethora of scandals and purges within the Chinese military in recent years, have led to scepticism concerning Beijing’s military competence. Despite this, I contend that the successes of Russia and Myanmar in their military campaigns, with the support of the NAB, has had an emboldening effect on China concerning its own ambitions in its near abroad. Beijing is observing the bloc's successes and failures so far in Ukraine, Myanmar, and Iran, to prepare for a potential conflict or maritime blockade of Taiwan. Regardless of the way in which cross-Strait relations may deteriorate in the future, Beijing is likely to receive a substantial amount of support from its partners in the bloc.
The Korean Peninsula
Although more volatile when compared to the previous three examples, the Korean Peninsula saw a period of detente between 2018 and 2020, which was seen by some analysts as the beginning of a change of course for North Korea. This peace process collapsed in 2020; Since that time, the Korean Peninsula has seen an escalation in tensions directly connected to North Korea's evolving role within the NAB. This escalation culminated in Kim Jong Un’s December 2023 announcement formally abandoning the goal of peaceful reunification with the South. In 1972, the July 4th North–South Joint Statement was issued, where both sides formally agreed that reunification should be achieved ‘independently, peacefully, and without external interference’ in the future. In 1980, North Korea expanded their framework for reunification, referring to the possibility of a ‘Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo’. Despite skirmishes, infiltration attempts, and flare-ups for the next four decades, peaceful reunification had remained the stated long-term aim of Pyongyang.
The 2018–2020 peace process, strongly supported and facilitated by U.S. President Donald Trump, was an unprecedented diplomatic effort in reducing tensions between the two states. Arranged through South Korea, the June 2018 Singapore Summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un led to both sides signing an ambiguously worded agreement committing to new relations, a ‘lasting peace regime’ on the Korean Peninsula, and denuclearisation, with Trump agreeing to provide security guarantees including the suspension of military exercises. A second summit in Hanoi ended without any agreement and despite another meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un, the initiative began to fade in early-2020. With the demolition of the Kaesong liaison office by North Korea in June 2020 and with Trump’s term nearly at its end, it had become clear by the summer of 2020 that the ‘peace process’ had ended.
This decade has seen a renewed attempt by Pyongyang at developing their hypersonic missiles, MIRV warheads, ICBMs, and nuclear submarines. After the launch of a spy satellite in November 2023, both states suspended the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement. In December 2023, the same month as the referendum on the Essequibo region, Pyongyang formally abandoned peaceful unification as the regime’s long term goal, ordering the North Korean military to prepare to ‘subdue South Korea’ in the future and referring to relations on the peninsula as a ‘hostile relationship between two states at war’. Since this time, North Korea has removed infrastructure connecting the two states and has initiated ‘navy nuclearisation’.
China and North Korea have maintained a ‘mutual assistance’ treaty since 1961. Russia and North Korea signed a landmark mutual defense treaty in Pyongyang in June 2024, a further development in their military collaboration that then intensified later in 2024 with the deployment of over 10,000 North Korean soldiers to Russia and Ukraine. To counter Moscow’s influence over Pyongyang, the second Trump administration expressed interest in a summit with North Korea and offered sanctions relief. Yet the regime, emboldened and protected by the bloc, is significantly less interested in talks with the US than it was a decade ago. The boldness of the military coup in Myanmar in 2021, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the October 2023 attack on Israel by Iranian proxies, and Venezuela’s aforementioned 2023 referendum have collectively had an emboldening effect on members of the NAB. The emergence of a new found boldness by Pyongyang since 2021 is concurrent with these events and has been inspired by them and by North Korea’s further integration into the NAB in recent years.
Less isolated than in the past, North Korea has developed new ambitions in its near abroad. Similar to Bosnia and Herzegovina, diplomatic shielding by the bloc has led to the breakdown of the UN sanctions regime against North Korea, allowing Pyongyang to accelerate its nuclear and ICBM programs. Additionally, North Korea has provided arms and ammunition to Russia, Myanmar, and Iran in recent years, in return for food and energy. Essentially, through its integration into the NAB, North Korea is no longer a pariah state and has become more emboldened in its stance toward the South, Japan, and the US. As the bloc continues to coalesce, it seems unlikely that Pyongyang will alter its current trajectory.
Conclusion
All four of the case studies above are long running disputes that, although experiencing a period of dormancy or attempts at resolution, have recently been revived by ambitious authoritarian actors who have coalesced in recent years to form a mutually-supportive bloc. One of the outcomes of this authoritarian coalescence has been a new found boldness and a desire to reverse historical losses and settle outstanding scores: Historical revisionism or irredentism have been key characteristics of the rhetoric of all states within the bloc. Bloc states have also provided each other with narrational support, creating an authoritarian echo-chamber.
One similarity between the first three case studies is the time in which the three disputes began to drift from frozen or dormant, toward some form of revival. In the second half of the 2010s. the first three disputes began to revive, and then all three experienced a further escalation in the first half of this decade. Although North Korea engaged with its adversaries during the second half of the 2010s, it not only resumed its hostile posturing in the early-2020s, but intensified its rhetoric to a level of hostility not seen since the mid twentieth century. Both Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Taiwan Strait have not seen such hostility and militarisation since the 1990s, and the conflict over the Essequibo region had been dormant since the late-1960s. All four conflicts have revived simultaneously and all four have escalated to a level of hostility not seen in decades. In all four case studies, the NAB has been an enabler by providing diplomatic, economic, and military support to its members or clients: The Bosnian-Serb leadership in BiH, Venezuela, China, and North Korea. Additionally, the military campaigns of Russia in Ukraine and of the junta in Myanmar have been of inspiration to bloc members, as both belligerents have fared better than they would have in previous decades, due to support from the NAB. Although the Bosnian Serb leadership are sub-state actors, the similarities between them and the other three case studies are clear. The removal of Dodik in late-2025 and then Maduro in early-2026 have not led to a significant change in the trajectory of the conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina or the Essequibo region.
Despite scepticism surrounding China’s military capabilities, or North Korea’s bellicose rhetoric, both disputes in the Pacific region have recently become more aggravated than they have been in decades. In January 2026, Xi Jinping described China’s future unification with Taiwan as consistent with the ‘trend of the times’. Thus, for the authoritarian states discussed above, we do not live in a time of backsliding toward conflict, but in an era where perceived historical injustices can be corrected, lost territories can be recovered, and where borders can be re-drawn. For the members of the NAB, the revival of these conflicts are not examples of peace processes disintegrating, but of the beginnings of the correction of four great historical injustices.
Gerard McDermott is a graduate of the doctoral program in Public and International Affairs at City University Hong Kong. He has published in Peace Review, The Diplomat, and The Kyoto Review among others.
I just listened all these 4 case studies literally so informative