SHANGRI-LA has lots of pleasant fantasies associated with it, but the eponymous security dialogue that took place from Friday to Sunday in Singapore was a reminder of dangerous things to come.
The spectre of World War 3 was raised at least once by China's Defence Minister Li Shangfu in his speech on Sunday there, which was also attended by his United States counterpart, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.
His veiled message to the US: stop North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato)-like pacts if it doesn't want to turn the Asia-Pacific region into a whirlpool of conflict. The world is big enough for the US and China, Li said.
But that sure didn't come out right. The world is big enough for two superpowers to divide and rule? We will give that reading a pass. But still, both are behaving like the world is big enough for just one global hegemony.
Start with the US. One day before Li took to the podium in Singapore, news agency AFP reported a US destroyer from the 7th Fleet along with a Canadian naval vessel sailing through the Taiwan Strait.
China is said to have responded with one of its own naval ships, sailing as close as 137m in front of the US destroyer, USS Chung-Hoon. If Austin is right, the world may have witnessed an "extremely dangerous" situation in the Taiwan Strait on Saturday.
Perhaps the US was responding to China's fighter jet manoeuvre near its surveillance plane over the South China Sea last week. But it is near misses like the two, especially between nuclear powers, that will cause World War 3. But let's not be fooled. The Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea aren't the only hotspots.
Ukraine, where an invasion is into its 468th day, is in a clear and present danger of triggering a world war. Ukraine is not a Nato member, yet the 30-country security alliance is supplying arms and more to Kyiv. In Li's language, the Ukraine-Nato alliance is a "dangerous" precedent.
We agree. Do not get us wrong. There was no justification for Russia to invade Ukraine. Period. Be that as it may, the US must remember this. Russia is in possession of thousands of nuclear weapons, more than enough to wipe out humanity from the face of the Earth.
Under what circumstances will Moscow use nuclear weapons? Direct confrontation between the US and Russia is one. Not as Washington sees it, but as Moscow does.
Now for China. Like in tango, it takes two to go to war. Consider Li's speech in Singapore again. He said the onus was on the US to pull its military presence away from areas near China. Fair point. But what are "areas near China"? Li is certainly not just referring to the Taiwan Strait. He has the South China Sea in mind, too.
Here, China lays claim to almost all of it through what it calls the nine-dash line. This is rightly disputed by many Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia. There is an international legal mechanism called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that China and others must submit to.
Show of might by China or others will lead to war. The US is right in asking China to play by the rules the international community has accepted. So must the US.