Asia’s Other Big Market

When you look at this mar­ket and the oppor­tu­ni­ties, its mind bog­gling.
For a few years now, its been impos­si­ble to pick up a news­pa­per or turn on the news with­out stum­bling into these kinds of com­ments about the huge untapped mar­kets in Asia. But these guys arent talk­ing about the com­bined 2.5 bil­lion peo­ple in India and China expected to begin large-​​scale pur­chas­ing of con­sumer goods in the next 20 years. Theyre talk­ing about the other large and grow­ing Asian mar­ket thats been increas­ingly dis­cussed the last few weeks: the Asian arms mar­ket.
The quote, from a Lockheed Marketing VP, is men­tioned in a recent piece from the International Relations and Security Network. The piece also notes esti­mates that in the next few years East Asia will pass the Middle East as the worlds num­ber three defense mar­ket. (Dont worry, were still num­ber one with a gun.) Ideally, this would hap­pen because the Middle East had become so peace­ful and sta­ble that their weapons mar­ket was qui­etly shrink­ing. But no.
The big excite­ment came a few months ago after an annual arms show held in Singapore called Asian Aerospace 2006. The events pro­mot­ers were agog with the news that this had been the biggest year in the events his­tory, with new records for atten­dance, par­tic­i­pat­ing nations and deals inked. (Although the fact that the record deals amounted to US$15.2 bil­lion is a good reminder that we’re still talk­ing about an emerg­ing mar­ket…)
Activity has been man­i­fest­ing itself in a lot of other places, as well. Last week fed­eral author­i­ties arrested 4 men try­ing to nego­ti­ate an ille­gal arms deal between Indonesia and a Detroit-​​based com­pany. Yes, where the mar­ket goes, the black mar­ket will fol­low. (Actually, where the mar­ket goes, the black mar­ket was prob­a­bly the pathfinder, but thats nei­ther here nor there.) One shady deal caught and stopped invari­ably means many oth­ers com­pleted, par­tic­u­larly in nations a lit­tle more ambiva­lent about whos buy­ing their weapons.
Americas most intense scrutiny is not, obvi­ously, on Indonesias mil­i­tary ascen­sion. But while America and much of the West may be focused on Chinas mil­i­tary ascen­dancy, more eyes in Asia are on a ris­ing Japan. Even within its estab­lished con­sti­tu­tional lim­its, the Japanese Self Defense Force is already a world class power, and arguably the best in the region, even if its not the biggest. The prospect of a resur­gent Japan — and one with a lit­tle bit less self-​​conscious approach to secu­rity has started to receive more atten­tion in the West as well. Meanwhile, a Japanese diplo­matic report just released reit­er­ated Japans con­cern with Chinas mil­i­tary build-​​up.
Of course, arms acqui­si­tions this large, in a geo­graphic area this small, have a ten­dency to make things pretty tense, pretty fast. One spokesman has already asserted that its going to be very, very com­pet­i­tive, but we have the prod­ucts, tech­nol­ogy and peo­ple to win. Oh, sorry, that was the Lockheed guy again.
Actually, most of the Southeast Asian mil­i­tary improve­ments are more likely to be used to quell domes­tic insta­bil­ity and threats than against other states. India-​​Pakistan and China–Taiwan remain the flash­points theyve been for the last few decades, but thats why both of these trou­bled rela­tion­ships have head starts on the arms race dynamic.
The con­cern for the hori­zon is com­pe­ti­tion fuel­ing an arms race between China and Japan. The prospect is dis­cussed in an arti­cle from the cur­rent issue of Foreign Affairs, where a com­par­i­son is made between Sino-​​Japanese com­pe­ti­tion and the arms race between Germany and England that fueled the start of World War I (sub­scrip­tion required). If you buy this, there may be a sil­ver lin­ing to the coop­er­a­tion implied by shady arms deals between Japan and China. But with an estab­lished mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial leader of the region fac­ing the prospect of an assertive, late-​​coming nation seek­ing to take what it deems its right­ful place as a regional hege­mon, WWI is an anal­ogy thats dif­fi­cult to ignore.
– Matthew Tompkins

April 18th, 2006 | Strategery | 315026 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/04/18/asias-other-big-market/Asia%27s+%3Ci%3EOther%3C%2Fi%3E+Big+Market2006-04-18+12%3A57%3A19wonk You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.