As Prepared:
9TH ANNUAL IISS GLOBAL STRATEGIC REVIEW
PLENARY SESSION 4, 11 SEPTEMBER 2011
RISE OF A MILITARISED ASIA – GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS
If we were meeting a hundred years ago instead of in 2011, the country in Asia that would attract our attention would be Japan. It had defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Japan went on to become the first Asian nation to defeat a Western power. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the Imperial Japanese Navy utterly destroyed the Russian fleet in the Tsushima Strait with hardly any loss of its own. We would have looked with some alarm at the rising militarism in Japan. The Japanese had learnt from the Prussians not just modern military concepts, but also the belief that military success required unswerving loyalty to the emperor, and that the military should be free of civilian control. A hundred years ago, Japan was clearly on its way to becoming a militarised nation. This would lead it to the second Sino-Japanese War, and ultimately to the Second World War.
This potted history of Japan suggests that the process of militarisation contains the following elements:
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The development of a large military
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The development of a military-industrial complex
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A willingness to use the military beyond defensive purposes – either for aggression, expansion or military adventurism
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The adoption of an ideology of militarism
In the 20th century, there were three countries that militarised in a dangerous way: Germany, Japan and Italy. Of course there were other countries that were building up military capabilities: Britain, the United States, Russia, and France. But it would be fair to say that in these countries, unlike in Germany, Japan and Italy, the ideology of militarism did not exist.
In the 21st century, the United States stands out with the largest defence budget. Within a decade, it has fought two wars, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But there is no ideology of militarism.
In Asia, the nearest competitor of the US is China, but with a declared defence budget one-fifth the size of the United States’. The next largest defence budget belongs to Japan, which is half the size of China’s and a twelfth the size of the United States’. India’s is even smaller.
What is perhaps more interesting is that between 2000 and 2010, China’s defence budget almost quadrupled, while Japan’s held steady. Not surprisingly because of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US defence budget during that same period more than doubled. India, South Korea, Australia and Thailand also saw their defence budgets more or less double in size. Indonesia’s tripled. Pakistan’s increased by a third. The only country in Asia to see a decline in its defence budget during the same period was Sri Lanka, because of the end of the civil war.
In contrast, defence spending in Europe has been on a downward trend since the end of the Cold War. The last couple of years have seen real cutbacks in countries like the UK and France. These will continue into the future. Germany, for example, is projected to cut defence spending by 20% between 2010 and 2015.
Increases in defence expenditures will translate over time into larger and more modern militaries. In Asia, Australia, China, India, Japan, Pakistan and South Korea all have large defence industries. The question is whether this necessarily points to the rise of a militarised Asia.
An element of militarisation is the willingness to use the military for more than defensive purposes. In Asia, there are insurgencies in Thailand and the Philippines, and a major terrorism problem in Southeast Asia. The armed forces are clearly needed to deal with such threats, along with the police.
In the last few years, there has been a rise in tensions over the several competing claims in the Spratlys and Paracels. Japan and China dispute ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, and South Korea and Japan over Dokdo/Takeshima island. But while these flare up from time to time, they are unlikely to lead to war between states.
The more dangerous flashpoints lurk in the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, and at the border between India and Pakistan. These flashpoints all have the potential to escalate into war, with not just regional but also global implications. But in the last few decades, two of these three flashpoints have been managed not through military force, but through largely structured diplomatic processes, bilaterally through the Koo-Wang talks over the Taiwan issue, and multilaterally in the case of the Korean peninsula, through the Six Party Talks. This approach, rather than overt military pressure, has prevented them from erupting into open conflict.
However, the Kargil War of 1999, and the 2002 India-Pakistan military standoff at the international border and the Line of Control, both threatened more than a limited military encounter, because of the danger of escalation into a nuclear war between the two countries.
In spite of a recent history of military conflict and confrontation, the US Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) of 2010 has a sanguine assessment of India’s military build-up. It stated that “India’s military capabilities are rapidly improving through increased defense acquisitions, and they now include long-range maritime surveillance, maritime interdiction and patrolling, air interdiction, and strategic airlift. India has already established its worldwide military influence through counterpiracy, peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief efforts. As its military capabilities grow, India will contribute to Asia as a net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond.”
In contrast, the QDR has a sharper assessment of China, stating that “China’s military has begun to develop new roles, missions, and capabilities in support of its growing regional and global interests, that could enable it to play a more substantial and constructive role in international affairs. … However, lack of transparency and the nature of the Chinese military development and decision-making processes raise legitimate questions about its future conduct and intentions within Asia and beyond.”
Indeed, the PLA has been upgrading, especially in the last decade or so. It has developed and acquired fourth generation fighter aircraft equivalent to F16 and F15, and most recently, it unveiled a stealth fighter aircraft, the J20. The PLA Navy is also upgrading, seeking a transformation from a brown-water to a blue-water capability. The renovation of the Russian Varyag aircraft carrier reflects this ambition, as does the PLAN’s deployment to the Gulf of Aden for anti-piracy operations. This upgrading is systemic, as the force modernisation has apparently been accompanied by an effort to improve professionalism and interoperability within the PLA.
However, while Chinese military power will increase relative to the US’, it is probably a couple of decades behind the US in terms of capabilities and technology. It has also not undertaken the transformation that is commonly termed the Revolution in Military Affairs (or RMA). In quantitative terms, China will not catch up unless the US stops spending on defence. Instead, it has opted to pursue an asymmetric strategy, including demonstrated capabilities in cyber warfare, an emerging capability in missile technology, and the upgrading of its submarine fleet as part of its access-denial strategy.
But the US also spends roughly 10% of its defence budget on R&D, not counting what industry spends. This is another area where the US has a huge advantage that the Chinese will need a very long time to overcome, if ever. This point was reflected in then US Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ statement earlier this year that while the Chinese may have 50 stealth fighters by 2020 and a couple of hundred by 2025, the US would have 850 and 1500 by the same dates.
A realist would argue that the growth of the military is almost a given among great powers and emerging powers – all such powers want to maintain a favourable balance of power, if not to gain a strategic advantage. However, others might argue that military power is a potent element of national pride and self-image, and this is especially so for emerging powers. This argument has some resonance in China’s case. Its growing military power has a lot to do with the way that China characteristically draws on its historical experience. In the present day, with China as a global player that is rapidly acquiring the comprehensive attributes of a superpower – political, economic, and military – it is easy to forget that China spent most of the early 20th century as a “semi-colonial state” carved up by Western and Japanese imperialism.
The rhetoric of Chinese leaders even in the 21st century shows a profound consciousness of this historical past and an entrenched perception of itself as a “victim state”, even if no one else sees it as such. Thus the Chinese appear to feel a strong need to be taken seriously as a global player. This means that, among other things, military power must be acquired. This is a major reason for the rapid build-up of the PLA in recent years. The question is how much of an active threat this poses. We see China’s desire for international respectability and influence – the desire to be taken seriously – more often than not taking the form of actions in more peaceable spheres – such as in the drive to play a greater role in international multilateral groupings like ASEAN+3 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, or in hosting spectacular events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.
In the 21st century, the driving force in international relations is not necessarily material capability and military power – but identities, perceptions and norms. This leans towards the constructivist school of thought.
As an example of this, the US QDR of 2010 seemed to be looking at China and India through different lenses. In its preamble, the QDR stated that the “rise of China, the world’s most populous country, and India, the world’s largest democracy, will continue to reshape the international system.” [Emphasis mine.] Seeing India as the largest democracy in the world led to a more positive assessment of its military capability, while China which is merely the “most populous country” gets a more ambiguous report card.
I am not making an argument either for the realist school of thought regarding the military build-ups in Asia, or for the constructivist school.
But I would argue that in today’s context, the identity of powers such as China is no longer so strongly based on military capability. Indeed, since the PLA’s punitive military incursion into Vietnam in 1979 to “teach it a lesson”, the Chinese have eschewed any form of military adventurism. Instead, China has pursued a “soft power” approach, promoting itself as a responsible and constructive global player bilaterally and multilaterally through its “peaceful rise”. This soft power approach depends more on China’s political and economic influence, rather than on military strength.
Since Deng Xiaoping, China’s main objective has been to grow its economy and more recently, to redistribute wealth more evenly amongst its people. To this end, its global interests are today guided by its goal of economic development, through fostering trade and ensuring resource security, devoid of ideological considerations.
In the first half of the 20th century, a combination of many highly militarised states, and an ideology of militarism in some of them led to two world wars. Since then, the focus of international relations has been on diplomacy aimed at creating behavioural norms – through bilateral and multilateral institutionalism and other “soft power” channels. As stated in the QDR, “whether and how rising powers fully integrate into the global system will be one of this century’s defining questions . . .”
Hence the issue is not whether we face increased threats from the military build-up in Asia. It is whether behavioural norms among states can be established such that a world ruled by law instead of a world ruled by force emerges, norms that level the playing field on which all states, big and small, interact with one another. In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”.
So that there will not be the rise of a militarised Asia, the emphasis should be on promoting transparency, building confidence, increasing predictability in state-to-state relations, strengthening civility by subjecting states to the judgement of their peers, and providing alternative channels of communication when bilateral channels do not work.
In Asia, a regional architecture defined by a network of groupings centred on ASEAN that engage regional and global players has emerged over a period of almost four decades. These include the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conferences, ASEAN+1, ASEAN+3, APEC, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and most recently the East Asia Summit (EAS). This complex web of overlapping groupings have helped to manage relations among the major powers in the region, and has gone a long way to reducing the potential for conflict and war.
The last major institution in Asia to embrace multilateralism is the defence establishment. Ten years ago, the IISS’ Shangri-La Dialogue kicked off an effort to socialise the defence establishment in the Asia-Pacific region [Asia-Pacific because the US is a key participant] into the benefits of multilateral dialogue. Even though a track 2 event, the Shangri-La Dialogue today can justifiably claim to be an important part of the intricate network of institutional fora in the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed the private discussions that took place during the Shangri-La Dialogue helped to defuse the India-Pakistan standoff in 2002. We now also have the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM), established in 2008, which is the first major platform in the region to institutionalise the engagement of the defence ministers of ASEAN and eight major Asian and global powers.
Such meetings are often criticised for being talk shops – NATO, no action, talk only. Of course they cannot solve all problems. For example, the Korean peninsula is not amenable to a solution in any of these meetings. Instead the Six Party Talks remains the main forum that has a hope of resolving the Korean issue. But the various elements in the regional architecture have a value in promoting dialogue and consultation. Conducted regularly from the Summit level down to the level of senior officials and specialised professionals, academic and business community, even youth groups, and civil society organisations, these meetings collectively have helped to develop a habit of consultation rather than confrontation, promoting trust and respect, rather than suspicion and ignorance.
The ARF has moved on from just dialogue to the conduct of HADR and maritime security exercises involving the militaries of the participating countries. This would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. These have real benefits because at the operational level, they help to strengthen interoperability, and at the political level, to build trust and confidence.
Transparency is a real issue. It is an ongoing challenge to persuade nations, whether in Asia or elsewhere, to detail and explain their defence policies and military acquisitions. Nevertheless, in Asia, some progress has been achieved in this area. Since 2001, the ARF has published the annual ARF Security Outlook. Over time, ARF members have become more open in their write-ups for the ARF Security Outlook. This is as much a process of confidence-building, as it is a snapshot of transparency in defence and security policy in the ARF region.
The increase in defence budgets in the Asian region mirrors the growth of Asian economies since the Asian Financial Crisis. The stronger its growth, the more a country is able to spend on defence. In the West, there is a propensity to emphasise military competition, particularly between the US and China, rather than the building of regional and global institutions.
In contrast, in Asia, the emphasis is on process and consensus. The West looks at immediate outcomes and often dismisses regional institutions as talk-shops with little policy impact. This is a significant cultural divergence that needs to be narrowed.
Clearly the rise of China and India within a very short period of time has created a new strategic dynamic in Asia. This poses risks to the region and beyond because it challenges the dominance of the US. But it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy to only focus on the perceived threats of a militarised Asia. This accentuates the risks of conflict and war. Instead, the focus should be to shape the regional architecture that manages relations in the region, especially among the major powers, such that the diplomatic approach is emphasised and that military build-ups do not increase tensions, or result in risky behaviour. To this end, countries in Asia, as well as others which are major stakeholders in the region, should be encouraged to build collaborative and inclusive mechanisms, and to participate in multilateral platforms that emphasise cooperation, consultation and confidence-building.
