Japan and South Korea must put 'Asia First' over Ukraine support

Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank based in Washington.

Despite their distance from Ukraine's battlefields, Japan and South Korea have been two of the country's most generous supporters since Russia invaded in February 2022. Echoing Washington's narrative about connections between security threats in Europe and Asia, leaders in both nations are betting that their military and economic commitments to Ukraine in the near term will serve as a down payment on security in the western Pacific over the long term.