Explaining Acquisition Strategies: Spy Satellite Capabilities in Northeast Asia

• In Event: Poster Session: International Security I

Abstract

Under what conditions do states develop indigenous security capabilities? Development of military technologies is costly; in addition to the significant financial costs posed by research and development for new technologies, states must worry about security dilemmas with their neighbors or, in the case of democracies, justifying the price of these capabilities to domestic audiences. Furthermore, most states able to invest in these programs have preexisting security relationships with other powers capable of providing them with either the technologies or the security that they seek. In this paper I seek to explain variation in states' acquisition strategies for high-tech security capabilities: do they develop indigenously at cost, do they purchase capabilities or develop them under license from allies, or do they eschew capabilities entirely and rely on foreign support? In this paper I evaluate three explanations for this variation: a "threat timeline" argument which claims that states purchase capabilities which address immediate threats and indigenously develop capabilities which address longer-term threats; a "business" argument which claims that states develop capabilities which represent possible spin-offs in the commercial market, and an "alliance" argument which claims that whether a state chooses to acquire capabilities from allies or develop domestically is dependent on the strength of the relationship with those allies. In order to evaluate these explanations, I present three case studies, comparing the development and/or acquisition of intelligence gathering satellite capabilities in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Author

• Deirdre Quinn Martin, UC Berkeley