An Arms Race in Northeast Asia?

AN ARMS RACE IN NORTHEAST ASIA? John Feffer In the early 1990s, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse , the world was anticipating a “peace dividend” from the end of the cold war. In one part of the world, however, military spending was not slowing down. “Asia is in the midst of its most peaceful period of the 20th century,” The Economist editorialized in 1993, “yet its nations are continuing to arm themselves at an alarming rate.”1 A similar assessment came from Newsweek: “East Asia’s arms race already makes it one of the few places where defense budgets are rising—and the current drive to modernize local navies and air forces will look tame if North Korea is permitted to develop nuclear weapons.”2 The arms spending in Asia attracted media attention in the early 1990s in large part because it was seemingly anomalous. The rest of the world was scaling back or, at least, considering doing so. In Northeast Asia, between 1989 and 1994, both South Korea and China increased their military spending by double digits—19 percent—while Japan increased expenditures by a more modest 9 percent. The countries of Southeast Asia—Thailand , Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore—were on a spending spree. In contrast, Russia decreased spending during that period rather dramatically (because of the collapse of its economy). 1. “Asia’s Arms Race,” The Economist, February 20, 1993. 2. Steven Strasser, “What Asia Wants from America,” Newsweek, July 12, 1993. ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 33, No. 4, 2009, pp. 5-15. Introduction to the Special Issue And the United States, a Pacific power tied to Northeast Asia through bilateral alliances, reduced spending by 21 percent.3 Jump forward to a comparable five-year period between 2001 and 2006. During those years, no major periodicals proclaimed an arms race in Asia. Most news coverage of security issues focused on North Korea’s nuclear program and the difficulties in the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Yet, for Northeast Asia at least, the military budget increases were more dramatic at that time than in the early 1990s. South Korea increased spending by 20 percent and was prepared to make even larger increases as part of its Defense 2020 program. China increased spending by 85 percent, Russia by 47 percent, and the United States by 48 percent. Of the participants in the Six Party Talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program and building a regional security system, only Japan showed any restraint during this period. Tokyo shrunk its military budget by 1 percent. One major reason that these military budget increases in Northeast Asia were not headline-worthy in the first decade of the 21st century—even though these increases surpassed those of a comparable period in the 1990s—is that this time they were not anomalous. Global military expenditures were rising rapidly as part of an overall 45 percent increase in the decade between 1999 and 2008. Recovery from the global financial crisis of the late 1990s, the impact of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion, the uptick in military exports, and the surge in military spending after September 11, 2001 have all contributed to making the last decade a boom time for military contractors . Northeast Asian countries were simply doing what virtually all other countries were doing: spending more on their militaries under the innocuous label of “modernization.” The increased military spending in Northeast Asia is unarguable . But does it constitute an arms race in the region? This special issue of Asian Perspective brings together scholars from China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States to scrutinize 6 John Feffer 3. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database,” at www.sipri.com. the reasons for the upward trajectory of military spending in the region, its implications for Asian security, and whether the region is on the brink of an arms race, a new era of peace and stability, or some ambiguous state in between. Great Power Rivalry The United States was responsible for 42 percent of all global military spending in 2008. It was also the chief driver of global military spending, accounting for 58 percent of the growth between 1999...