BY DAVID KANG
Foreign Policy | APRIL 25, 2013
Are tensions high
in Asia? It certainly appears so. Over the last few months, North Korea has
tested missiles and threatened the United States with nuclear war. China spars regularly
with Japan over ownership of a group of disputed islands, and with several
Southeast Asian countries over other sparsely inhabited rocks in the South
China Sea. Meanwhile, the United States is in the midst of a well-publicized "pivot"
to East Asia, and continues to beef up its military deployments to the region.
Yet as of
2012, military expenditures in East and Southeast Asia are at the lowest
they've been in 25 years -- and very likely the lowest they've been in 50 years
(although data before 1988 is questionable). While it's too early to factor in
recent tensions, as China's rise has reshaped the region over the past two decades,
East and Southeast Asian states don't seem to have reacted by building up their
own militaries. If there's an arms race in the region, it's a contest with just
one participant: China.
Military
expenditures reflect states' threat perceptions, and reveal how they are
planning for both immediate and long-term contingencies. In times of external
threat, military priorities take precedence over domestic ones, like social and
economic services; in times of relative peace, countries devote a greater share
of their economy to domestic priorities. The best way to measure military
expenditures is as a percentage of total GDP, because this reflects how much a
country could potentially spend. In 1988,
as the Cold War was winding down, the six major Southeast Asian states
spent an average of almost 3.5 percent of GDP on military expenditures. (All
data comes from the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, the most dependable source for worldwide military
data, which began publishing its global military figures in 1988.)
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