OLD GUNS: Military budget constraints leave most countries vulnerable, write Wu Shang-su and Eddie Lim

CONTRARY to the popular notion of an arms race in Southeast Asia, the region is currently in a phase of unbalanced military modernisation, which constrains the military options open to regional states.

Apart from Singapore and Brunei, which benefit from robust investments and relatively small armed forces to maintain a good life-cycle management of their military assets, most of the other Southeast Asian militaries face different levels of ageing arsenals – much of them a lingering legacy from the early and middle stages of the Cold War.

… Wu Shang-su is a research fellow and Eddie Lim is a coordinator at the Military Studies Programme of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore