Military Modernization in Strategic Asia

On September 29, 2005, the Asia Program joined with the Seattle-based National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) to host a conference exploring the ramifications of military modernization in Asia and the implications of defense transformation for the grand strategies of the region's principal powers, including the United States. Conference attendees sought to examine the drivers and gauge the progress of military modernization in Asia, and to assess the influence of these developments on the regional balance of power. This event was timed to mark the publication of the NBR report Strategic Asia 2005-06: Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty, edited by Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills.

China's rapid military modernization – in the context of a rising China more broadly – dominates the strategic thinking of the United States and the other major powers in Asia. George Washington University's David Shambaugh predicted that China's military power and regional reach will steadily increase in the years ahead, and will alter the balance of power in Asia. Nonetheless, Shambaugh cautioned against overestimating Chinese capabilities, or concluding that double-digit increases in China's military spending in each of the past 15 years mean that the Chinese military will be able to transform itself into a first-class fighting force with global reach in the near term. China's military possesses numerous deficiencies in both quantitative and qualitative terms, especially when compared to American capabilities. But when viewed in the context of a Taiwan Strait conflict, Shambaugh added, China has made steady and even surprising progress in increasing its strength. China's aspiration and plans regarding defense modernization, he judged, are much what one would expect for a nation of China's size, wealth, location, national interests, and global role.

The remainder of the first panel focused on the military modernization programs of Asia's other major powers, Japan, Russia, and India. Christopher Hughes argued that Japan is gradually forsaking its post-1945 pacifist tradition, and moving along a long-term trajectory toward assuming the military capabilities and security roles customarily expected of nations of Japan's size and wealth. Japan is acquiring enhanced power projection capabilities and will inevitably play a more active role in both regional and global security. While Japan has no realistic option other than to maintain its close security links with the United States, Washington can expect Tokyo to become a more assertive ally, one that demands greater reciprocity and more equal treatment from the United States.

Stephen Blank contended that despite rising defense outlays, the Russian military remains an archaic, dysfunctional, and inefficient force, and is unlikely to carry out a program of modernization that is capable of fulfilling Moscow's ambitious aims. Absent major systemic reforms reaching far beyond the defense sector, Blank asserted, Russian influence in Eurasia will continue to wane, to be replaced by a more visible Chinese presence in areas traditionally subject to Russian influence.

Volume co-editor Ashley Tellis characterized India's "very large and extremely proficient" military as capable of defending Indian territory and interests in a war with China, though not quite able to defeat Pakistan in a brief conventional war. The dramatic increases in India's defense spending over the past half dozen years, he explained, must be seen in the context of a decade of lean years for the Indian military in the 1990s. Tellis highlighted three facets of India's current modernization: 1) technological modernization, especially in air and sea power; 2) doctrinal innovation designed to enable India to field a sizable combat force 48 hours after mobilization; and 3) organizational innovations, such as an emphasis on smaller military units, that will facilitate the new emphasis on rapid response. India, Tellis added, has departed from its traditional posture of non-alignment and now has a new interest in coalition warfare, with the United States being a plausible coalition partner.

The morning's second panel explored how other Asian nations have responded to these developments in the major Asian powers. Looking at the Korean peninsula, Jonathan Pollack suggested that the ground force standoff that has long dominated peninsular security planning will decline in relevance in the years ahead. Pyongyang will increasingly focus on deterrence and longer-range strike capabilities, while Seoul will pursue deterrence without automatically assuming adversarial relations with the North. South Korea, Pollack added, will be increasingly unwilling to undertake major long-term defense investments based on a predominantly threat-based military strategy, a stance that may pose acute risks to the South Korean – U.S. alliance. In the discussion following this analysis, one participant noted that Seoul acts as if it believes that the United States needs South Korea more than Seoul needs Washington – which, if true, would mark a significant change in strategic thinking in South Korea.

Michael Swaine contended that modernization in Taiwan has been marked by inadequate funding, an absence of strategic clarity, misplaced priorities, and unaddressed vulnerabilities. Taiwan needs to be far more serious about its defense environment than it has been recently, Swaine asserted. Glaring shortcomings in Taiwan's military modernization efforts could lead to miscalculations in both China and on Taiwan, resulting in one side or the other undertaking dangerous or destabilizing actions. Nonetheless, both Taipei and Washington must continue to balance efforts to rectify Taiwan's defense deficiencies with the need to avoid an escalation of tensions with Beijing.

Turning toward the nations of Southeast Asia, Sheldon Simon of Arizona State University asserted that the region's security concerns are primarily internal, including separatism and ethnic and religious violence. Transnational threats such as piracy, terrorism, and the trafficking of contraband, people, and arms constitute the next tier of security threats in the region, while external threats from other nations are the least pressing of the security challenges Southeast Asia confronts. Simon reported that notable breakthroughs in multilateral security cooperation have taken place over the past several years, including coordinated naval patrols by Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, and cooperation with the United States by several of the littoral states in anti-piracy patrols. Rising insurance rates for ocean-going commerce transiting Southeast Asian waters, Simon observed, have been an important factor pushing the region toward greater multilateral cooperation.

Kimberly Marten observed that military modernization in the five Central Asian republics has focused more on officer corps retraining and professionalization than on hardware acquisition. Regional leaders, she warned, often exaggerate the Islamist threat as a ploy to gain external support, including from the United States. Foreign defense assistance acquired in this fashion is then often used to suppress populist opposition movements and, as a consequence, to bolster authoritarian regimes while undercutting the human rights concerns of the donor nations. The opium trade originating in Afghanistan does constitute a major security concern for the region, but this threat cannot be successfully addressed by military modernization alone.

The day's final panel focused more directly on the implications for U.S. national security of these developments in the modernization of Asia's militaries. Aaron Friedberg, who spent the past two years as a senior advisor to Vice President Cheney, applauded Japan's retreat from its pacifist tradition of the past 60 years, as well as the improved tone in U.S. – India relations and India's greater ability to contribute to the maintenance of a regional balance of power. Among the troubling trends he highlighted were Russian sales of advanced weaponry to China, a problematic U.S. – Russia relationship, a growing divergence in strategic perceptions between the United States and South Korea, Taiwan's failure to spend "adequately" on its own self-defense, and skillful Chinese diplomacy that is reaching out to traditional U.S. friends such as Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines.

The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon observed that for all the talk in the Pentagon of a "revolution" in thinking about American security needs, very little has actually been accomplished in this area. As one example of the continuity between the Bush administration and its predecessors, he noted that the Defense Department has still had no serious discussions with Tokyo about the U.S. Marine presence in Okinawa, notwithstanding the serious difficulties the Marine bases create for the Japanese government and for sustaining popular support for the U.S. alliance.

Robert M. Hathaway emphasized the need for American leaders tasked with managing the U.S. - China relationship to make choices among competing priorities, to realize that "we can't have it all." Even a step that is as widely supported among U.S. decision makers as Japan's movement in the direction of becoming a "normal" state is not cost-free – that is, such a Japan is going to become a less pliant partner for the United States, and could alarm not only China, but other Asian powers.

In the day's final presentation, Ashley Tellis offered three tests for American policy makers wondering if they ought to be concerned by Asia's military modernization: 1) what are the political aims of the country in question, and what is the character of the governing regime?; 2) is the modernization oriented toward denying U.S. capabilities (as much of China's is, Tellis added)?; and 3) how has the modernization impacted not only the technological base of the country's military, but its operational effectiveness?

Underlying the discussion throughout the day lay two fundamental questions: 1) do American interests in Asia require U.S. hegemony in the region?; and 2) is any enhancement of China's military capabilities, no matter how incremental, detrimental to the United States? The answers to these two queries supplied by American leaders in the years to come will go far in determining whether China's rise to power is accomplished without a repetition of the violence that accompanied the rise of Germany and Japan in the previous century.

Drafted by Robert M. Hathaway
Director, Asia Program (ph: 691-4012)