For two decades, the promise of abundant liquefied natural gas shaped the growth ambitions of developing Asia — a clean bridge fuel, affordable and globally available, that would carry nations from coal toward prosperity. Five months of war in the Middle East have not merely disrupted shipping lanes; they have exposed the quiet fragility beneath that promise, forcing governments across South and Southeast Asia to confront how deeply they had entrusted their futures to a market they cannot control. The recalibration now underway is less a policy shift than a philosophical one: a turn from the f