The Political Battle Royal

[wall_rus]

Put simply...yes, but there is a lotta complexity behind the issue. If the goal is to make money using arms sales, than it is to the advantage of the sellers to make sure there is volatility in the various regions to provide the rationale for their purchases. The 5 largest arms dealers are all members of the Security Council......rather ironic.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/74/the-arms-trade-is-big-business#Armssalesfigures

In order to make up for a lack of sales from domestic and traditional markets for military equipment, newer markets are being created or sought after. This is vital for the arms corporations and contractors in order to stay afloat.

Respect for human rights is often overlooked as arms are sold to known human rights violators.

Heavy militarization of a region increases the risk of oppression on local people. Consequently reactions and uprisings from those oppressed may also be violent. The Middle East is a current example, while Latin America is an example from previous decades, where in both cases, democracies or popular regimes have (or had) been overthrown with foreign assistance, and replaced with corrupt dictators or monarchs. Oppression (often violent) and authoritarianism rule has resulted. Sometimes this also itself results in terrorist reactions that lash out at other innocent people.

A deeper cycle of violence results. The arms trade may not always be a root cause, because there are often various geopolitical interests etc. However, the sale of arms can be a significant contributor to problems because of the enormous impact of the weapons involved. Furthermore, some oppressive regimes are only too willing purchase more arms under the pretext of their own war against terrorism.

In quoting a major international body, six basic points harshly criticizing the practices and impacts of the arms industry are listed below, by J.W. Smith:

That the armament firms have been active in fomenting war scares and in persuading their countries to adopt warlike policies and to increase their armaments.
That armament firms have attempted to bribe government officials, both at home and abroad.
That armament firms have disseminated false reports concerning the military and naval programs of various countries, in order to stimulate armament expenditure.
That armament firms have sought to influence public opinion through the control of newspapers in their own and foreign countries.
That armament firms have organized international armament rings through which the armament race has been accentuated by playing off one country against another.
That armament firms have organized international armament trusts which have increased the price of armaments sold to governments.
— J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth II, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994), p. 224
But, this was not of the arms industry of today. Smith was quoting the League of Nations after World War I, when “Stung by the horrors of World War I, world leaders realized that arms merchants had a hand in creating both the climate of fear and the resulting disaster itself.”. And unfortunately, it also summarizes some of the problems of today, too. Justification for arms and creating the market for arms expenditure is not a new concept. The call to war and fear-mongering is an old tradition.

This rush to globalize arms production and sales ignores the grave humanitarian and strategic consequences of global weapons proliferation. Already, profit motives in the military industry have resulted in arms export decisions that contravene such U.S. foreign policy goals as preserving stability and promoting human rights and democracy.

— Globalized Weaponry, Foreign Policy In Focus, Volume 5, Number 16, June 2000
Hidden Corporate Welfare?
Industrialized countries negotiate free trade and investment agreements with other countries, but exempt military spending from the liberalizing demands of the agreement. Since only the wealthy countries can afford to devote billions on military spending, they will always be able to give their corporations hidden subsidies through defence contracts, and maintain a technologically advanced industrial capacity.

And so, in every international trade and investment agreement one will find a clause which exempts government programs and policies deemed vital for national security. Here is the loophole that allows the maintenance of corporate subsidies through virtually unlimited military spending.

— Stephen Staples, Confronting the Military-Corporate Complex, presented at the Hague Appeal for Peace, The Hague, May 12th 1999.
Vast government subsidies are sought after in the pursuit of arms trading.

US and European corporations receive enormous tax breaks and even lend money to other countries to purchase weapons from them. Therefore tax payers from these countries end up often unknowingly subsidizing arms sales.

While there are countless examples, a recent one that made a few news headlines was how Lockheed managed to get US subsidies to help sell a lot of fighter planes to Poland at the end of 2002/beginning of 2003. This was described as the biggest deal ever in Europe at that time.

It Does Not Seem To Matter Who Arms Are Sold To
Last year [2000] the U.S. controlled half of the developing world’s arms market…. This dominance of the global arms market is not something in which the American public or policy makers should take pride in. The U.S. routinely sells weapons to undemocratic regimes and gross human rights abusers.

— Uncle Sam World’s Arms Merchant Again; In 2000 U.S. Sells $18.6 Billion Worldwide, $12.6 Billion to Developing Countries, Arms Trade Insider—#53, Arms Trade Oversight Project, Council for a Livable World, August 20, 2001
As mentioned above, the “War on Terror” has seen the U.S. selling weapons or training to almost 90% of the countries it has identified as harboring terrorists. Yet, for decades, a lot of the arms that the West has sold has gone into the hands of military dictatorships or corrupt governments. This can have the additional intention or effect of hampering any form of democracy in those countries.

Sometimes, these arms sales are made secretly and sometimes, arms are sold to human rights violators (such as one third of all sales by the US, in 1998, as the previous link notes).

According to a report, from the Council for a Livable World’s Arms Trade Oversight Project, “[s]ince the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the world’s largest arms dealer … Consequently, governments with some of the worst human rights records [have] received American weapons and training.”

In November 2001, The Center for Defense Information, a military watch-dog in Washington D.C., provided a detailed list of the 18 countries and 28 terrorist groups cited by the U.S. State Department as hotbeds of terrorist activity. Included in the list is a chronology of U.S. arms sales and training from 1990-1999 and information on use of child soldiers by governments and non-state actors in each country. The U.S. supplied arms to a number of these nations:

In the period of 1990-1999, the United States supplied 16 of the 18 countries on the [U.S.] State Department list with arms through the government-to-government sales under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, or through industry contracted Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) programs, or with military assistance. Recipients included Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka …, where, arguably, the risk of diversion is high. In addition, the U.S. military (and the CIA) has trained the forces of many of these 18 countries in U.S. war fighting tactics, in some cases including individuals now involved in terrorism.

— A Risky Business; U.S. Arms Exports To Countries Where Terror Thrives, Center for Defense Information, November 29, 2001
A report from the World Policy Institute released mid-2005 has found that the U.S. is routinely funneling military aid and arms to undemocratic nations. In 2003, for which the most recent data was available at the time,

The United States transferred weaponry to 18 of the 25 countries involved in active conflicts;
More than half of the top 25 recipients of U.S. arms transfers in the developing world (13) were defined as undemocratic by the State Department;
When countries designated by the State Department’s Human Rights Report to have poor human rights records or serious patterns of abuse are factored in, 20 of the top 25 U.S. arms clients in the developing world in 2003—a full 80%—were either undemocratic regimes or governments with records of major human rights abuses.
The Arms Trade Is Corrupt
As noted in this site’s section on the arms trade code of conduct, many nations are often against measures to improve transparency of international arms.

Part of that reason might be the benefits involved. The international arms trade is also considered to be one of the three most corrupt businesses in the world, according to Transparency International, the leading global organization monitoring corruption.

Professor Robert Neild of Cambridge University writes extensively about corruption, and notes the following with regards to the arms trade:

The Cold War arms race enhanced the opportunities for corruption in the arms trade…. It is not just the buccaneering arms salesmen of the USA or the méchant French who have resorted to bribery. The leading arms firms in virtually every major arms-producing country have been implicated, including reputable firms from most respectable countries…. Nor have bribes been paid only to buyers in the Third World….

— Robert Neild, Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp. 139-140, 142
Neild notes how some of the top most people in rich countries, from ministers, to even a prince, have been implicated in such corruption. The end of the Cold War, Neild also observes, has not led to a let up of corruption in the arms trade:

Bribery in the arms trade has not subsided since the end of the Cold War. On the contrary, as military spending has been cut back the arms firms have been seeking markets abroad more fiercely than before…. One recent estimate reckons that in the international arms trade “roughly $2.5 billion a year is paid in bribes, nearly a tenth of turnover.”

…

[With regards to corruption,] the relevant feature of arms trade is that … government ministers, civil servants and military officers have become so intimately involved in the arms export business that they must have been unable to avoid condoning bribery (for example, by turning a blind eye to it), if not encouraging it (for example, by providing advice when serving in embassies overseas about which members of the local hierarchy it was best to approach and how); or obtaining funds from it for the benefit of themselves, or in the case of politicians, for their political party.

The OECD Convention and the new English law against bribing foreigners are steps in the right direction, but its success will depend on how far the exporting countries, led by the United States, manage jointly and sincerely to enforce restraint and deal with such problems as the payment of bribes through foreign subsidiaries. Part of the arms trade is as elusive and rotten as the drugs trade.

— Robert Neild, Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp. 139-140, 142-143, 195