Northeast Asia heaved a sigh of relief at the latest news of a breakthrough in the nuclear negotiations with North Korea. The prospects of integrating North Korea into the international community and constructing a peace and security structure for the region have never been rosier. But the headlines of the US and North Korea narrowing their differences over the declaration of the latter’s nuclear programme are deceptive. Despite all the talk of peace in the current Six-Party Talks, the military trends in the region tell a very different story.

Even though it looks relatively peaceful on the outside, Northeast Asia is in fact the heart of the global military-industrial complex. The armies that confront each other in this region — the US, Russia, China, Japan, and the two Koreas — are the largest in the world. They are responsible for at least 65 per cent of the world’s military spending. Not only is Northeast Asia one of the most heavily militarised regions of the world, it is currently in the middle of a major arms race. Five of the six countries in the negotiations to shut down North Korea’s nuclear programme have increased their military spending by 50 per cent or more in the last five years.

Recent events are only making matters worse. The cold war is heating up again on the Korean peninsula in the wake of conservative Lee Myung Bak’s inauguration as South Korea’s new president. China is desperately trying to put out fires on its periphery, from Tibet to Xinjiang. And nationalist politicians in Japan are pushing for an end to the country’s “peace constitution”. Northeast Asia’s arms race, which has been largely hidden from view, is threatening to break into the open. The most paradoxical part of this arms race is in Korea itself. Although the two halves of the peninsula have established joint ventures, tourism projects, and numerous cultural exchanges over the last decade, both sides continue to spend copious amounts on the military.

South Korean presidents Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun touted their engagement policies with the North. But between 1999 and 2006, South Korean military spending jumped more than 70 per cent. In 2007, South Korea launched its first Aegis-equipped destroyer and announced a plan to build three more at a cost of $1 billion each by 2020. The new South Korean president Lee Myung Bak has supported this vision of a new blue water navy, and South Korean military spending will go up by an estimated 10 per cent a year through 2020.

The old geopolitical competition between the continental powers of the “Eurasian heartland” and the maritime powers of the “rimland” is re-emerging. China, Russia, and the Central Asian states have built the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. And the US is building its own necklace of allies from India to Australia to Japan to contain this Eurasian challenge. This spiraling arms race jeopardises all short-term victories.

But the arms race in Northeast Asia and globally is not simply a potential threat. The international community needs a huge amount of capital to address a range of current threats — nuclear proliferation, climate change, the destabilising gap between rich and poor. By drawing funds away from human needs, many analysts believe this new arms race is itself a threat to humanity. — IPS