Michael Auslin disagrees with my blase attitude about an Asian arms race:
Greg writes that â??uncertainty isnâ??t necessarily a bad thing if it catalyzes an arms race in Asiaâ? and that â??if the Obama administration is creating some uncertainty in the minds of Americaâ??s Asian allies about the U.S. commitment, and that uncertainty is catalyzing greater defense expenditures on the part of our allies, is this really a bad thing?â?In a word, yes. Iâ??m not in favor of any more arms races in Asia, since they by nature change the status quo, insert new levels of uncertainty and anxiety, and can give a mistaken and tragic sense of bravado to countries with both legitimate and made-up dissatisfactions. Undoubtedly, part of the secret to Asiaâ??s general success the past decades has been some sense of boundaries that the United States would not allow to be transgressed (think 1955 Quemoy and Matsu, continued presence of U.S. troops in Japan and South Korea, and the 1996 Taiwan Straits incident). We have no way of knowing what the effects on state competition and rivalry would be from losing that sense of ultimate security, no matter how instinctual and undefined.
Japan (and other liberal nations) should certainly be increasing its naval and airpower capabilities, and purchasing more submarines is an important first step. However, Iâ??m less comfortable that a desired outcome (i.e., more submarines) is resulting from an undesirable condition (less confidence in U.S. capability and will). It would be far preferable for Japan to decide to purchase more subs in conjunction with the United States, so to speak, than to be doing so in order to hedge its bets.
I'd agree with this but here's the rub - how to incentivize our allies to bolster their own defenses without cutting them completely loose (which I don't think we should do). This is easier said than done. Take Europe, where defense budgets fall irrespective of Washington's beseeching.
An Asian arms race obviously isn't an ideal scenario, but the other scenario, having the U.S. taxpayer foot the bill so that the wealthy economies in Asia don't have to, strikes me as an equally bad deal, especially now, when America's balance sheet is in such disrepair. I guess I might be more sympathetic to the notion that America has to play the hegemonic stabilizer in Asia if it was understood that we would do so with the cost savings accrued by abandoning that role in the Middle East and Europe. But somehow I don't see that happening.
