The start of the expected US military assault on Afghanistan is set to dramatically reshape the political map and the balance of power in South and Central Asia.
The aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and the war being waged by the West on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organisation, may lead to changes in regional alliances.
The US has been warned about taking action without having a strategic and political plan for the region, and of falling into traps that defeated the Soviet Union.
However, the US took all the diplomatic steps it believed it could before sanctioning the first attack on Afghanistan on Sunday night.
The US managed to get all the main players in Asia, including China, and more importantly Pakistan, on side before it began its assault on Afghanistan. The risks of the current action are huge, but there are also potential positives.
One of the downsides could be that, as the US offensive continues, Pakistan could collapse in chaos with Islamic militants taking to the streets, under pressure from Islamic fundamentalists, a growing force in the country.
More positively, the current action could result in Pakistan finally cutting itself off from Islamic fundamentalists and the growing culture of the so-called jihad or holy war.
The crisis could also spur Pakistan into rebuilding its ties with the West and improving relations with its bitter enemy, India.
Apart from Afghanistan, there is no doubt that Pakistan has most to win, or lose, of the Asian countries at the centre of the current drama.
For 20 years the Pakistan military has encouraged Islamic groups to fight its proxy wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir. This support has rapidly spread the culture of jihad that now poses such a threat to its own national security.
Thousands of Pakistan Islamic militants are fighting alongside the Taliban and train for the war in Kashmir.
But Pakistan's support of US military action in effect amounts to a reversal of that policy, and the Pakistan President, General Perez Musharraf, has spent the weeks since the September 11th attacks trying to woo politicians, religious leaders, and a sceptical public.
He needs to crack down on the Islamic extremists in Pakistan who provide bin Ladens's al-Qaeda organisation with logistics, communications and other types of support. He will have to ban Pakistani groups that could pose a threat to the US forces.
The effect of the international crisis is being felt in Pakistan's already fragile economy.
With the temporary closure of markets, and the rupee falling in value as banks buys dollars, the country will soon need emergency financial support form abroad.
In contrast to Pakistan, India's support for the US has been unambiguous from the start.
That is because along with the US and Israel, India is also a target for militants pushing a global jihad, namely in Kashmir.
India wants Pakistan to stop helping the groups that cross into Kashmir and carry out attacks there. Its main goal is to keep the pressure on Pakistan.
Russia, Iran and India have stepped up their military support for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, or United Front as they insist on being called.
Meanwhile, China has backed the American-led war on terror, despite a history of condemning US incursions abroad, and a fear of being surrounded.
But like Russia, it has practical reasons for supporting a campaign against violent Islamic fundamentalists.
China fears the emergence of its own militant threat at home, in the largely Muslim province of Xinjiang in the north-west, which borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This is the motivation for China's interest in seeing the defeat of the hardline Taliban Islamic regime, even if it means allowing the
US to launch military strikes on a country which borders its own.
Uighur militants in Xinjiang have been blamed for sporadic attacks in China, including bus bombs in the provincial capital, Urumqi that killed nine people in 1997.
China has failed in the past to persuade the ruling Taliban to stop training Muslims from Xinjiang. Beijing fears that the military training and religious zeal acquired by Uighurs in Afghanistan will provide backbone to what is a fragmented independence movement back in Xinjiang.
China has relied on Pakistan to press the Taliban to bar Uighurs from its forces. And in the past two years, Beijing has reached out on its own to the Taliban.
The culmination of China's efforts to engage the Taliban was a meeting in Kandahar in December last year between Beijing's ambassador to Pakistan, Lu Shulin, and the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, who usually refuses to meet non-Muslims.
China is a major force behind the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, whose aim is to counter independence movements and Islamic insurgents.
The group, comprised of Beijing, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is a permanent regional security and economic forum.
The Chinese leaders also see an opportunity in the current crisis to meet a broader goal, to forge improved relations with the US and other Western countries.
They are watching warily to see how the geopolitics of Central Asia plays out during the confrontation with the Taliban, and are worried about the fate of their nuclear armed ally Pakistan, which could be torn apart.
But it does not relish seeing a new western military alliance so near its homeland.
According to Professor of International Relations at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing, Dr Brendan Smith, the question has to be asked what opportunities a US engaged in a long-term conflict against terrorism stretching from the Middle East to Central Asia would offer to rising powers such as China.
"The general response within China, both among elites and the public, immediately after the terrorist attacks in the US was one of measured sympathy.
" The sympathy was measured because for many the US was reaping what it had sowed, the inevitable negative consequences of an intrusive and hegemonic foreign policy," he told The Irish Times.
The Chinese, he said, have been cautious in their support for a global fight against terrorism, stressing the importance of using international institutions such as the United Nations. "Any long-term extension of American power into Central Asia with the possibility of China being surrounded by the US military in the Pacific Ocean and to west of its northern borders leaves the Chinese uneasy."