What drives a state’s decision to acquire weapons? Almost all states are concerned about being cut off from their arms supply. While some states manufacture their weapons, others buy them from abroad. Regardless, foreign inputs into military capabilities are inevitable due to the internationalized supply chains of military technologies nowadays. States can rely on foreign suppliers for higher-quality weapons and thereby enhance military power. Nonetheless, they also want to avoid dependence in case of deteriorating bilateral relations. However, it’s puzzling that some states pursue autonomy in weapons production while sacrificing advanced military capabilities. It's equally puzzling to observe that some states acquire substantial weapons systems when their foreign policy goals contradict those of their suppliers. 

My book project, Sourcing Security: The Pursuit of Autonomy and the Politics of Armaments, revisits critical theoretical issues regarding arms and allies. This book will discuss the role of weapons acquisitions in international relations. I pose international weapons acquisitions as a dilemma of autonomy. Building weapons without foreign inputs enhances one's autonomy. However, reducing foreign inputs compromises a state's military capabilities and sometimes security. Therefore, the tradeoff between autonomy and foreign control lies at the center of the international politics of weapons acquisitions. I argue that weapons acquisitions could be best understood as a bargaining process over a contract of control over weapons programs, reflected by a buyer's make-or-buy choice in weapons acquisitions. The choice will be determined by a buyer's security interest compatibility with a supplier. When interests diverge, one could either diversify or engage in domestic production.  Yet, this strategy would be conditioned by the difficulty of replacing current sources - asset specificity of weapons systems. Occasionally, the effect of asset specificity offsets the effects of shared interests. 

With this framework, I will present a large-N observational study to show how states build their force structures. Using the SIPRI Arms Transfer Database, I design a new indicator of asset specificity and conduct a social network analysis. The empirical outcomes show that shared interests and asset specificity work as I hypothesize. States acquire weapons from like-minded counterparts. If interests diverge, they acquire less from each other. Nonetheless, high asset specificity wipes out such effects. 

After this large-N chapter, I deliver a mixed-method research showing how former Warsaw Pact members reoriented their weapons acquisitions of C4ISR equipment after the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War served as an exogenous shock to these states and allowed them to recalibrate their foreign policy.  As some of them sought to join NATO, they must fulfill some key requirements, including hardware requirements. Among them, C4ISR was of key importance. Therefore, states aligned closer with the West should be motivated to acquire Western-standard C4ISR weapons. Those holding different interests should continue to acquire Soviet-style weapons. This chapter features a stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) with the Distribution of Military Capabilities Dataset (rDMC). It also provides a case study of Poland's decision to reduce its dependence on Russia and the former Warsaw Pact members. 

In addition, I will also use archives to analyze naval acquisitions in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan after the 1969 Nixon Doctrine. The year opened an era of geopolitical uncertainty. With the US retrenchment and the US-Sino realignment, Northeast Asia faced unprecedented challenges. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, all deeply integrated into the US alliance networks, depended largely on the US arms supply. The year of 1969 forced them to switch the track. All three states boosted their defense industrialization to buffer the diverging interests of the US. Against this background, this chapter looks into the naval acquisitions in Northeast Asia in the 1970s. The relatively difficult and complex process of naval acquisitions exposed the difficulties of replacing the US as a supplier. My preliminary results show that the more ambitious project a state pursues, the more likely it will continue to rely on the US even if interests diverge. The dilemma of pursuing autonomy remained a central theme in these cases.

This book concludes with chapters discussing the future research directions and policy implications. The ongoing events demonstrate that arms production and transfers are closely related. Moreover, they are more than a matter of military buildup. Instead, they are parts of a grand strategy that dictates resource allocations and a state's foreign relations, both of which serve particular foreign policy goals.