The Geopolitics of Shifting Defense Expenditures

"The shift in global defense spending associated with the global economic crisis is accompanied by a deeper and more fundamental geographic change. A market report published Thursday remarked upon the shift from defense spending in the developed world (particularly Europe) to the developing world as fiscal austerity in the West takes hold. Indeed, upon returning from a trip to China, Indonesia’s defense minister announced Wednesday that his country might soon begin domestic licensed production of modern Chinese anti-ship missiles, once the purview of much more developed military powers. This comes close on the heels of the publication Wednesday of the annual edition of the Military Balance by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, which suggests that cumulative defense spending by Europe may, for the first time, be overtaken by such spending in the Asia-Pacific region (it has already converged in recent years).
It is now commplace to refer to the Asia-Pacific as "the future." The value of trans-Pacific trade has outstripped trans-Atlantic trade for decades now. The only remaining global superpower is also -- not coincidentally -- uniquely native to both oceans compared with both traditional European and emerging Asian powers. Stratfor has long noted that the events of two decades ago marked not only the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War but also the European era of nearly half a millennium in which Europe was the center of the global system.
This reflects a geographic shift and necessarily has military implications, but defense spending is merely a symptom..."

at http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical-diary/geopolitics-shifting-defense-expenditures