Quotes of the Day

In late August, after visiting Chinese military facilities, U.S. Admiral Michael Mullen sounded an almost buoyant note about Washington's relations with Beijing. "What I have seen is actions, not just words," Mullen said, praising China's openness. "I consider that to be very positive." But that public warmth seemed to last about as long as a Lindsay Lohan rehab stint. Just days later, India, Australia, Japan and the U.S. held a comprehensive naval exercise, the first appearance of the Seventh Fleet in the Bay of Bengal since 1971, while Shinzo Abe, then Japanese Prime Minister, called for an "arc of freedom" across Asia, linking the region's democracies.

Taking place hard on the heels of war games among China, Russia and Central Asian states, the four-nation exercise revealed a side of the region supposedly made extinct by growing economic and diplomatic integration: Asia has embarked upon a new arms race. And with China, Russia, Japan and India all feeling their strength, the region's powers are beginning to divide into two broad alliances.

India may spend as much as $40 billion on new weapons over the next five years, many coming from U.S. companies. China boosted its military spending this year by nearly 18%. Japan is modernizing its forces, with the Ministry of Defense switching from Russia to China as its potential new enemy. Bolstered by the rising price of oil, Russia sees itself again as a Pacific power and is rebuilding its Asian fleet.

Fifteen years ago, this regional arms race might not have seemed surprising. Many countries openly feared China, which advertised its military strength and staked claims to islands in the South China Sea. When China lobbed missiles near Taiwan in 1995 and '96, the White House sent aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait. But Beijing apparently recognized its mistakes and shifted course. Over the past decade, it has signed ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and pushed a collective free-trade deal with Southeast Asia. Focused together on terrorism, Washington and Beijing have built closer military links. Just as important, nations across Asia have created a web of new economic and diplomatic links, from currency swaps to trade agreements to the new annual East Asian Summit.

Yet even as Asian countries extend one hand in an embrace, they keep the other behind their back, clenching a gun. Despite Beijing's attempts to reassure other governments, its growing economic and military might frightens its more open neighbors. Given China's opaque politics, leaders still cannot predict whether Beijing will prove benign or threatening. Average people, too, reflect this mistrust. In the latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, a majority of people in only two Asian nations surveyed had favorable opinions of China, and one of those two was ... China.

In the shadow of these giant alliance shifts, Southeast Asian nations, too, are scrambling. Vietnam, for one, is fortifying its outposts in the Spratly Islands and wooing its old enemy, the Pentagon. Singapore has become a de facto base for the U.S., and the Philippines has welcomed back American forces after booting them out in the early 1990s — mainly to fight local terror groups, but also possibly as a bulwark against China. Nations from Singapore to Malaysia have upgraded their submarine fleets, and Indonesia just signed a $1 billion weapons deal with Russia.

New arms deals only stoke fears — and more arms deals. Indonesia's purchases probably will worry Australia, whose naval dominance is critical when Australian forces intervene near its giant neighbor, as in East Timor in 1999. Worse, each step that major countries like Australia, Japan, the U.S. and India take toward an alliance only worries China more, sparking its fears of containment and prodding it to build its own links to Russia, Central Asian nations and Pakistan.

Unfortunately, Asia lacks any real security forum to hammer out problems. In Northeast Asia, the six-party talks on North Korea have not developed into a permanent institution. In Southeast Asia, diplomats have invested sweat on a free-trade zone, but pay little attention to the ASEAN Regional Forum, Southeast Asia's security-talk shop. Washington doesn't help, either: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice simply skipped the Forum in August. Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo put the best face on her absence, saying, "Provided the U.S. stays engaged, this can be a new golden age for Asia and the world." But in case that golden age never comes, Asia can still rely on steel.

• Joshua Kurlantzick