The Asian Arms Race

__"East Asia’s Arms Races" and "East Asia’s Militaries Muscle Up" by Michael Klare, in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (Jan.–Feb. 1997), 6042 S. Kimbark Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60637.__

With the decline and fall of the Soviet empire, global military spending has plunged, from $1.3 trillion in 1987 to $840 billion in 1994. But in East Asia, military expenditures have climbed—from $126 billion (in constant 1994 dollars) annually during the 1984–88 period to $142 billion between 1992 and ’94. This trend, warns Klare, who heads the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies in Amherst, Massachusetts, could lead to war.

China began to transform its military in 1985, when it shifted its strategic focus from an all-out "people’s war" with the Soviet Union or another invading power to smaller regional conflicts. It has reduced its ground force from four million to three million active-duty troops—still the world’s largest army—while beefing up its air and naval arms. Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore have been taking similar steps.

The East Asian nations have become "avid consumers" of sophisticated military gear produced in the United States, France, Russia, and elsewhere. Between 1985 and 1994, they spent about $67 billion on imported arms, including air-to-air and air-toground missiles and other high-tech weapons. Taiwan now has 60 Mirage-2000-5 and 150 F-16 jet fighters, and even Malaysia, though not yet in the same league, has 20 MiG-29 and eight F-18 jet fighters.

This binge is partly a product of affluence, Klare points out. Chronic regional disputes, including those between China and Taiwan and between South Korea and North Korea, along with more recent quarrels (such as that among China, Taiwan, and Vietnam over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea), have also whetted the appetite for arms.

With the chief exception of China, East Asia’s arms industries "are still embryonic," Klare says. As long as that remains true, the East Asian nations "will be subject to some degree to the political wishes of their principal suppliers." But as they become more selfsufficient, Klare fears, the threat to peace in the region could grow.