This study both extends neorealist research on the role of structure and explores the limitations of the neorealist paradigm by applying its concepts and theories to armament behavior. As first advanced by Kenneth N. Waltz, neorealism has argued that structure both creates and constrains opportunities open to the constituents of the international system. Problematic in the argument is the claim for the primacy of structure in explaining international phenomena like arming behavior We apply the basic logic inherent in the neorealist argument to a particular form of structure, namely bipolarity, to see how its structural characteristics influence armament behavior of states. The upshot of theoretical research is a structuralist theory of armament under bipolarity, which intends to explain different characteristic patterns of armament behavior among poles, non-pole, and neutral members. We put structural hypotheses derived from the theory to a test against empirical reality, the armament history of the Northeast Asian states Our findings demonstrate the importance of structure as a necessary ingredient for explaining armament behavior--it shapes and drives, and therefore conditions, armament behavior of states in Northeast Asia--but without reckoning with the unit-level theories that correspond to structural theories, an explanation cannot be causally complete. We expose methodological shortcomings which cannot be easily remedied
