T N Ninan: Guns in the east

It has gone mostly unnoticed in India, but East Asia is witnessing its biggest arms build-up since presumably World War II

It has gone mostly unnoticed in India, which focuses almost exclusively on defence issues in the country’s immediate neighbourhood. But East Asia is witnessing its biggest arms build-up since presumably World War II. Vietnam, for instance, has increased its defence budget by 70 per cent this year, and Indonesia last month announced a 35 per cent step-up in its defence outlay. At about the same time South Korea announced the setting up of a new naval base on a large southern island, while Indonesia has decided to add a third naval fleet by 2014. The US, meanwhile, has agreed to retro-fit 145 F-16s of the Taiwanese air force.

A glance at the map of Asia makes it clear that all of this has to do with the sustained arms build-up by China and its expansionist claims in places like the South China Sea, but few countries are willing to admit as much. Japan is the exception; Tokyo announced last year that it was shifting focus from the Cold War target of Russia to the new threat from China. But South Korea contends that its new base on Jeju island is designed to face threats from North Korea, although the map makes it obvious that the base off Korea’s southern coast will help its navy reach the South China Sea much faster — and South Korea is after all one of the world’s leading trading nations and has a massive stake in open sea lanes.

It goes without saying that the Chinese defence budget (about $114 billion) is bigger than that of any other country in the region; it also happens to be more than three times India’s. Only if you combine the defence outlays of virtually all of East Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and all 10 members of the Asean grouping ) does their total spending firepower match Beijing’s. But since these countries do not co-ordinate their defence, China’s armed power remains unchallenged by any single Asian country. In this context, an unspoken issue in defence planners’ minds across the continent must be the recognition that the US presence in East Asia, which has so far acted as a regional security blanket, may not be available indefinitely into the future in quite the same way.

It is precisely this awareness that must be driving the ratcheting up of national defence outlays. In a five-year period, Malaysia has increased its arms purchases by as much as 700 per cent, Singapore by 140 per cent, and Indonesia by 84 per cent. The Indonesian defence budget has gone up 125 per cent in just three years. This arms build-up does not mean that defence spending has begun gobbling up national budgets, far from it. Most countries in the region still spend less than two per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence (as a reference point, India spends 1.8 per cent, and China 2.2 per cent); the exceptions are Singapore and South Korea, while Japan is mandated by law to spend no more than one per cent of its GDP on self-defence. Nevertheless, it is clear that the general perception of a more assertive China that is willing to use force, or threaten the use of force, in order to back its territorial claims, is making virtually every country in the region re-assess its defence needs.

If India is responding to the perception of heightened threat from China on land and sea, so is every East Asian country that is anywhere near China. As defence budgets go up across the board, one wonders whether this is what Beijing wants.