THOUGH parts of Asia are racked by long-running insurgencies, terrorist groups, banditry or low-level civil wars, it is striking that the continent has not suffered a full-scale war between countries since China’s brief and bloody punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979. All the more striking, then, that the region now accounts for almost half of the global market for big weapons—nearly twice as much as the war-ravaged Middle East, and four times more than Europe.
This week the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which maintains a database of arms transfers, published data showing that six of the ten largest importers of heavy weapons are in Asia and the Pacific: India, China, Australia, Pakistan, Vietnam and South Korea. From 2011-15 the region as a whole bought 46% of global arms imports, up from 42% in 2010-14. Asia is not witnessing a classic arms race between two great powers and their allies, of the sort Britain and Germany engaged in before the first world war, or a cold-war contest like that between America and the Soviet Union. But certainly Asian countries are competing to modernise their military forces. The “Military...Continue reading
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