Weapons sales to Southeast Asia have surged in the past five years, piling up concerns that an arms race could threaten regional stability, a leading security institute said Monday.
The huge rise is partly a consequence of profit-driven military dealers stoking fears over the fast development of China, analysts said.
Arms deliveries to the region almost doubled between 2005 and 2009 compared with the previous five years, as imports in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia increased 722 percent, 146 percent and 84 percent respectively by volume, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report.
"The current wave of Southeast Asian acquisitions could destabilize the region, jeopardizing decades of peace," Siemon Wezeman, SIPRI's Asia expert, said.
Military expert Liu Jiangping said defence against China may not be the main reason Southeast Asian nations are making arms purchases.
"Conflicts within the region are the major reason for the current military buildup there," Liu said.
The remarkable rise in purchases of combat aircraft and warships by the three countries prompted some neighboring countries to follow these acquisitions with orders of their own, according to the report.
Last year, Vietnam joined its regional counterparts, becoming the latest Southeast Asian country to order long-range combat aircraft and submarines. Singapore is the first Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member to be among the top 10 arms importers by SIPRI since the end of the Vietnam war.
Global arms transfers during the five-year period grew 22 percent, with Asia and Oceania the biggest recipients accounting for 41 percent of the total, the Swedish institute said.
Europe followed with 24 percent, then the Middle East with 17 percent.
The United States remained the world's biggest weaponry seller, accounting for 30 percent of overseas arms sales during the period. Almost 40 percent of its deliveries went to Asia and Oceania and a similar proportion to the Middle East, the report said.
Shannon Kile, a Senior Researcher with SIPRI, said the US is the only beneficiary of an arms race in the region.
Many Asian nations believed that China and the US might become competitors in the future, even opponents fighting a war, Kile said, adding that standing with the US means turning into China's enemy and therefore it'd be natural for these Asian countries to take immediate action to arm themselves.
But it's a shortsighted decision for the Southeast Asian nations to expand their arsenals, for it would in return anger China, leading to an arms race in the whole of Asia, Kile said.
Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia this month beefed up patrols at sea in the Strait of Malacca, after Singapore's navy claimed it had been informed of planned terrorist attacks on oil tankers.
Apart from terror concerns, Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong, a professor at the Chinese National Defense University, said Southeast Asian countries, especially Singapore and Malaysia, felt unease with the rise of China.
"They are concerned that China would dramatically strengthen its role in the Malacca Strait," Zhang said.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to counter China's presence in the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea, over which China had repeatedly affirmed sovereignty, Southeast Asian nations strengthened their military build-up by increasing arms purchases and seeking support from the US.
India's increasing military presence in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, which is near Malacca Strait, also aroused concern from Singapore and Malaysia, Zhang said.
Zhao Gancheng, of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, noted that China's strengthened national power makes some of its neighbors wary, but it is not reasonable to blame China as the main factor.
China, Japan, India and Iran are the main regional players, but there lacks a mechanism for negotiations on security issues, a fact that would add to an unstable environment, Zhao said.
Transfers of major conventional weapon systems to China have dropped significantly in the past three years, the report finds. With the exception of a handful of helicopters from France and Russia, no major conventional weapons were delivered to China in 2009, it said.
The report finds that the volume of arms transferred to China and India, the two largest importers, for both periods, decreased by 20 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively.
"China's demand for arms dropped since the former leader of Taiwan, Chen Shuipian, who advocated independence after taking office in 2000, stepped down," Zhang said, adding that China's strengthening research and development competence also reduced China's dependence on imported weapons. - Agencies
Global Times
