BEIJING — President Donald Trump‘s on-again, off-again summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has dominated headlines, and for good reason. If the two can successfully reach an agreement on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, one of the world’s biggest security threats could finally be defused.
But as we watch, wonder and wait for the June 12 summit in Singapore — and if anything comes out of it — there is another security issue emerging in Asia that has remained to a great degree out of the spotlight: The militarization of the region at large.
Flush with new-found wealth, some countries across Asia are improving the capabilities of their armed forces at a rapid pace. Between 2008 and 2018, the defense budgets of India and Indonesia have doubled, even when adjusted for inflation, according to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS. Australia’s military spending has surged by more than 40 percent, South Korea‘s by a third and Vietnam‘s by nearly a quarter.
China, though, is undertaking the most dramatic upgrade. Beijing’s military budget has doubled during that same time period, to more than those of India and Japan combined. Sam Roggeveen, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute, an Australian policy think tank, and a former strategic analyst at Canberra’s top intelligence agency, characterizes Beijing’s current naval expansion as the fastest in the world and the biggest since U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s buildup in the 1980s.
China’s program can potentially reshape the entire geopolitical landscape across Asia. “We are really now in the early stages of a major once-in-a-century rebalancing of strategic power in the region,” Roggeveen says.
That spells trouble for Washington. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has been the backbone of a regional security order, forged with allies such as Japan and South Korea, which has made it the dominant power in the Pacific. Now the U.S. is being challenged by China. Beijing has long desired to reclaim its traditional role as East Asia’s dominant authority, and with a still-robust economy, advancing technology and growing riches, China’s leaders have gained the resources to beef up its military and enable its regional aspirations.
The consequences could be frightening. The U.S. order has more or less kept the region peaceful and stable, and that’s been key to the economic success of many Asian countries — China included. With that order under strain, the risk is that old animosities could resurface and longstanding rivalries intensify.
There is no shortage of potential flashpoints. In recent years, Beijing has become more assertive in pressing its claims in a continent-wide series of territorial disputes, hiking tensions with many of its neighbors. In the South China Sea, China’s claims to most of those waters have been contested by the Philippines, Vietnam and other governments. A tussle over disputed islands between China and Japan has fanned animosity between the region’s two major powers, while last year, Indian and Chinese troops engaged in a protracted standoff over a contested patch of the Himalayas.
Behind these current disputes is long-simmering bitterness between many Asian nations. China still smarts over Japan’s brutal invasion of the country during World War II — a wound Beijing keeps raw with continuous anti-Japanese propaganda. Neither India nor Vietnam trust China after fighting wars with their giant neighbor (in 1962 and 1979, respectively).
There are almost weekly reminders of how bad things could get. In April, Chinese President Xi Jinping oversaw the Communist government’s largest-ever naval parade — 48 vessels and 10,000 personnel — in the South China Sea. Building up the navy “has never been more urgent than today,” Xi said, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. A few days earlier, Japan activated its first marine unit since World War II in response to China’s growing assertiveness. “Given the increasingly difficult defense and security situation surrounding Japan, defense of our islands has become a critical mandate,” Tomohiro Yamamoto, Japan’s vice defense minister, said at a ceremony.
Defense analysts are careful not to call Asia’s military buildup an arms race, in which countries spend excessively to match capability for capability. Though countries’ military budgets have swollen, they haven’t outpaced the growth of the region’s economies. China, despite the huge increase in its budget, spends about as much today relative to the size of its economy as it did a decade ago.
Since many countries in Asia are still developing, they grow much more quickly than the U.S. and other advanced economies. While the U.S. grew 2.3 percent last year, China surged 6.9 percent and the five major emerging economies of Southeast Asia by a collective 5.3 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund.
“You need to look at this from an economic perspective,” says Lucie Beraud-Sudreau, research fellow for defense economics and procurement at IISS. “There has been strong growth in the region. As countries have more money, part of this money will be allocated for defense.”
Still, Washington will have a hard time containing China’s military ambitions. Though there are concerns in policy circles that Trump has been weakening U.S. influence in the vital region, in terms of America’s military, its presence hasn’t diminished. The U.S. has actually been widening its military relationships in the region in recent years by expanding its cooperation with countries like India and Vietnam.
But despite repeated protests, the U.S. has generally failed to prevent China from militarizing and tightening its grip on the disputed South China Sea. In May, China’s air force landed bombers on an island in the sea for the first time.
Lowy’s Roggeveen says the atmosphere will really get scary if the arms buildup moves into nuclear weapons — something more likely to happen if Washington can’t persuade North Korea into giving up its nuclear program.
Even so, “I’m worried enough as it is,” Roggeveen says. “There are plenty of indicators that the regional security environment is changing rapidly. I’m talking about the rise of China and that the U.S. is being challenged head-on for its strategic leadership in the Asia-Pacific.”
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Focus on U.S.-North Korea Summit Overshadows Military Buildup Across Asia originally appeared on usnews.com
