The most dangerous impact of North Korea’s long-range missile test this past week may not have been the one in the Sea of Japan, felt in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. It was in Moscow where Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin locked arms in a united front on how to respond to the growing North Korea crisis. The target of this front was not, however, North Korea. It was the United States, who the Sino-Russian axis accused of pursuing a military “buildup” in the region.

The future of ASEAN is necessarily unknown. Its futures, however, can be guessed with less risk of being wrong. My purpose here is not to predict with confidence but to “pandict” with reticence—not to choose one assured future but to scan several that could conceivably occur. Also, what follows is merely a range, not the range.  The five different ASEANs of the future all too briefly sketched below are meant to be suggestive, but they are neither fully exclusive nor jointly exhaustive. Potentiality outruns imagination. My hope is that by doing the easy thing—opening a few doors on paper—I may tempt analysts more knowledgeable than I to do the hard thing. That truly difficult challenge is to pick the one doorway through which ASEAN is most likely to walk or be pushed through—and to warrant that choice with the comprehensive evidence and thorough reasoning that, for lack of space and expertise, are not found here. That said, this pandiction does start with a prediction, and thereafter as well the line between speculation and expectation—the possible and the probable—will occasionally be crossed. In addition, by way of self-critique: my guessings and imaginings may overestimate the importance of China in ASEAN’s futures.

In the days leading up to the Washington summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump, the tension in Seoul was hard to escape. Fears of an open clash between the two leaders, of a handshake that went on too long, or of a hostile early morning tweet directed at Moon were widespread. But when a senior national security advisor to Moon met a group of American visitors after the first day of talks, he was visibly relieved. The dinner between Moon and U.S. President Donald Trump went so well, he recounted with a slight smile, that it was extended 35 minutes.

President Donald Trump ascended to office with an estimated $3.5 billion of personal wealth tied up in his global real estate empire. This has raised a variety of concerns about conflicts of interest, particularly the potential for cronyism and corruption. But the greatest danger is that U.S. foreign policy will be fundamentally distorted by the president’s business interests. We face what might be dubbed a “nepotist peace”: The United States will avoid any conflict that puts a Trump Tower, the embodiment of his familial business empire, at risk.