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The Wired Seas of Asia: China, Japan, the US and Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Hamish McDonald  and
Richard Tanter
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While most recently mainstream discussion of peace and security in Asia has focussed on the rise of China and its consequences, a little noticed arms race that has been underway since the end of the Cold War involves many more countries than China. According to Desmond Ball, one of its most constant analysts, this began with widespread modernization of armed forces after the end of the Cold War, but has moved on to continuous systematic increases in military capacity in most countries in the region. Action-reaction patterns of competitive armament cycles are evident, and most disturbingly, there are few bilateral or regional political institutions to dampen these negative feedback cycles. For Ball, the most important areas where this kind of action-action momentum can be seen, are major naval capabilities; long-range ballistic and cruise missiles, and missile defence systems; electronic warfare systems; and information warfare (IW) and cyber-warfare capabilities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 16 , April 2015 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2015

References

Notes

1 Desmond Ball, “Asia's Naval Arms Race: Myth or Reality? 25th Asia-Pacific Roundtable”, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 29 May - 1 June 2011.

2 Jeremy Page, “China's Submarines Add Nuclear-Strike Capability, Altering Strategic Balance”, Deep Threat, Wall Street Journal, 24 October 2014; David Tweed, “Xi's submarine sale raises Indian Ocean nuclear clash”, Bloomberg, 17 April 2015; Trude Pettersen, “Four nuclear submarines under construction in Russia's Far North”, Barents Observer, Alaska Dispatch News, 18 February 2015; Zachary Keck, “China's Worst Nightmare? Japan May Sell India Six Stealth Submarines”, The Buzz, The National Interest, 29 January 2015; Akhilesh Pillalamarri, “Watch out, China: India is building 6 nuclear attack submarines”, The Buzz, The National Interest, 18 February 2015; Zachary Keck, “Silent but Deadly: Korea's Scary Submarine Arms Race”, The Buzz, The National Interest, 13 February 2015; and Yoo Kyong Chang and Erik Slavin, “South Korea Establishes Submarine Command”, Stars and Stripes, 23 February 2015.

3 Richard Tanter, “The $40 billion submarine pathway to Australian strategic confusion”, Nautilus Institute, NAPSNet Policy Forum, 20 April 2015.

4 Owen R. Cote Jr., “Assessing the undersea balance between the U.S. and China”, MIT Security Studies Program, SSP Working Papers, February, 2011; Paul Dibb, “Maneuvers make waves but in truth Chinese navy is a paper tiger”, The Australian, 7 March 2014; and Desmond Ball and Richard Tanter, The Tools of Owatatsumi: Japan's Ocean Surveillance and Defence, ANU Press, 2015.

5 Desmond Ball and Richard Tanter, The Tools of Owatatsumi: Japan's Ocean Surveillance and Defence, ANU Press, 2015; and Robert Ayson and Desmond Ball, “Can a Sino-Japanese War Be Controlled?”, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, (2014) Vol. 56, No. 6, pp. 135-166.