Asia Follows China into an Old-Fashioned Arms Race

Across Asia, purchases of submarines, the “new bling” in the words of Bernard Loo Fook Weng, a Singaporean defence expert, are multiplying. India, South Korea and Vietnam, the latter concerned about what it sees as Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea, plan to buy six apiece by the end of this decade. Australia, in the midst of its most important defence modernisation since the second world war, wants 20 more within the next two decades. Altogether, Asian nations are expected to buy 110 submarines in the next 15 years.