Russian Arms Sales To East Asia After Cold War

From the traditional perspective of international relations, military-technical cooperation is a typical "high politics" area. Especially the closer and closer arms trade and technical cooperation among nations, they are directly related to the national security and strategic interests of the cooperating nations, and their impacts are bound to related to bilateral, regional and international levels.After the Cold War, Russia remains a great power with important international influence after inheriting the mantle of the Former Soviet Union. She still holds the cutting-edge technology in many fields and has a complete military industrial system. On this basis, Russia's foreign military-technical cooperation, mainly in arms exports are active since the 1990s. The military and technical cooperation with foreign countries has become a powerful tool for Russia to pursue its great power strategy, and foreign arms sales have become an important part of its foreign strategy at present.Russia benefits a lot through foreign military-technical cooperation. From the domestic side, Russian saved its endangered military-industry system, preserved its own scientific and technological potential, gained a lot of much-needed money for economy recovery, and promoted the social stability in transition period; From the foreign side, Russia consolidated and expanded its influence in the surroundings, Asia Pacific, Middle East, South America and other regions, enhanced its cooperation with the nations in these regions. Particularly, Russia and East Asian countries conducted extensive Military-technical co operations for their respective national interests. The main form is Russia's weapon sales to the East Asian countries. The countries of East Asia obtained needed high-tech military weapons and equipment, accelerated the modernization of their armies, enhanced the technological levels of their military enterprises, and laid the material foundation for safeguarding national security and seeking regional strategy advantage. But for Russia, she not only obtained a large number of military orders to maintain the functioning of its military industrial enterprises and improve her economy conditions, but also enhanced the right to speak on the international affairs, especially East Asian affairs, which increased her bargaining chips in the international games.This paper mainly summarizes, analyzes and discusses the decision-making motivations, managements and operations, implementation overviews and their impacts of Russia's weapon sales to East Asian countries after Cold War. Russia affects the balance of powers in East Asia and participates in shaping the security environment in this region using weapon sales as its main means for implementing security strategies. These activities have profound impacts on East Asia and the world.