1/7
On #defence and #security policy choices in the #IndoPacific :
I recently produced research assessing how 12 nations are aligning, looking at defence spending, arms imports, military exercises, intel sharing, and force presence agreements.
Who balances against #China?
2/7
Looking at trends in the values of stocks of imported #armaments, #Vietnam and #Indonesia seem clearly to be balancing against #China, whereas #Malaysia drops off strongly, suggesting #bandwagoning. Singapore stable.
3/7
A statistical analysis on trends in stocks of imported armaments shows most countries with a break (a change) around the year 2014 - this is consistent with threat perceptions towards #China going up around 2012.
4/7
It gets interesting with data on multinational military exercises - since around 2012, military exercises involving U.S. Allies in the region begin to attract new partner nations, and exercise scenarios orient more towards high intensity warfare.
5/7
Similarly with Force Presence Agreements (Status of Forces / Visiting Forces / Reciprocal Access), some interesting developments post 2012, notably involving #Japan - with #Australia and most recently the #UK
6/7
And at the same time, total defence spending in the region hasn't gone through large shifts if measured as a percentage of GDP - that was the initial research puzzle. But pulling in additional indicators helps make sense of the regional picture.
7/7
The paper is published with the journal Defence and Peace Economics and is available Open Access.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
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