Is There An Arms Race In Asia?

A Looming Arms Race In East Asia? -- David C. Kang, National Interest

The annual SIPRI and IISS reports about military spending have recently been published, and it appears there is an emerging consensus that East Asian countries are engaged in a massive arms buildup and an increasingly volatile arms race, with war increasingly likely. For example, last year, Reuters announced that Asian defense spending had exceeded Europe’s for the first time in modern history. While true, the real cause was that European spending had declined more quickly than East Asian spending, although that headline would not have been nearly as provocative. The Financial Times recently claimed that Asian defense spending was a worrisome $332 billion—but without defining which countries were included, whether comparisons to earlier years were adjusted for inflation, and lacking any comparison to other regions.

However, these are headlines, designed to shock and awe. A closer inspection reveals that East Asian regional military expenditures are at a twenty-five year low when measured as a proportion of GDP, and are almost half of what countries spent during the Cold War. The major East Asian countries have increased their spending about 50 percent less on average than Latin American countries since 2002. The country most actively increasing its military spending is China.

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My Comment: If one looks over a period of years one can say that defense spending has not grown spectacularly in Asia as some have claimed. But Asia has changed dramatically in the past few years. Case in point .... when I was in China 4 years ago they and everyone else were focused on growing their economies. When I was in China a year and a half ago .... there were anti-Japanese demonstrations on the street and calls among Chinese pundits to be more aggressive against their neighbors on border disputes. Today .... if I was to go there I would see direct confrontations between Chinese and Vietnamese naval boats and dire warnings of war. Defense spending always follows tensions and unresolved disputes .... and in Asia today "tensions and disputes" have now quickly become the norm and not the exception.