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This article examines the implications for the regional strategic landscape of uneven regional military modernization in Southeast Asia. At heart, there is a fundamental issue that pertains to all military modernization - no military force can afford to be static in nature and capability. To remain relevant and effective, all military forces have to undergo periodic change, both in terms of their hardware and capabilities on the one hand, but also in terms of their doctrines and strategies, as capabilities change. As strategic conditions in Southeast Asia change - the demise of traditional internal security concerns revolving around revolutionary or armed separatist movements, and the movement towards greater emphasis on external security concerns - this has facilitated the increasing attention that regional armed forces have paid to the process of transformation from counter-insurgency towards conventional military postures and force structures. However, the ever-increasing pace of modern technological change and the increasingly high costs of modern military technologies complicate this modernization process. Not all states in Southeast Asia can actually financially afford to support this military modernization. This has resulted in an uneven process of regional military modernization that can shape the security environment of the region in ways that cannot be anticipated.
Introduction
For too long, the study of Southeast Asian arms acquisitions has been asking the wrong question - whether or not there is a regional arms race. The typical regional answer, whether from policy-makers or analysts, has been a resounding no, that what has been taking place is force modernization, which suggests an essentially natural process by which states acquire military capabilities and upgrade them regularly through a natural process of obsolescence and replacement. There is some truth to this answer. Most of the armed forces of Southeast Asian states have been configured to meet internal security challenges that have, for some, only recently receded into insignificance; whereas for other Southeast Asian states, internal security challenges remain the predominant security concern for their armed forces. As such, by the standards of conventional warfare requirements, virtually all Southeast Asian armed forces have been weak and under-equipped. Inasmuch as internal security challenges have receded, the region's armed forces have had to undergo a process of reconfiguration and restructuring to take on new conventional military...