A Study Of East Asia Adverse Disarmament In Post-Cold War

After the cold war, with the end of bi-polar confrontation and a long term of highly-fierce arm race, disarmament has become popular around the world. As many countries reduced their military expenditure and army, a very good international environment for arms control and disarmament has appeared. However, the end of the Cold War also raised some new challenges to international security, esp. in the region of East Asia. In this region, the international structure has changed greatly after the Cold War. Some countries realized the lack of security and they speeded up their national defenses modernization. These nations began to raise their military expenditure, enlarge their armament and enhance the level and quality of their weapons, and all these are against the grand trend of international arms control and disarmament. This phenomenon is called "adverse disarmament".The paper aims at founding the background of "adverse disarmament" in East Asia and the way-out to settle it. In this paper, a review of studies was made in "adverse disarmament" and some analyses were raised about the concepts and relative issues from the angle of the theories of deterrence, security dilemma, and costs and benefits. And then, the paper analyzed the reasons of "adverse disarmament" in East Asia, and explored the influences brought by this phenomenon on East Asia and China security environment. At last, a conclusion was driven that to face the challenge of "adverse disarmament" in East Asia new security concepts should be widely accepted and effective multi—lateral security cooperation mechanism be built.