The current war in Iraq makes a discussion of the international arms trade particularly timely. As Southall has observed, “the international arms trade is the substrate for global armed conflict” (1457), causing threats to the health and welfare of people, the environment, and our notions of community (Craft 2). Although the world’s governmental bodies and organizations such as the United Nations are fully aware of these threats and the extent of irrevocable damage they cause, the international arms trade remains largely unregulated, from the earliest stages of manufacturing to the transactions in which weapons are provided by one country to another (Southall 1457). In order to understand the dynamics and implications of the international arms trade, it is important to understand the historical and political factors that influence weapons dealing across borders. By looking to these historical and political influences, one begins to see how central arms trading is to political and economic life across the world, and because of this, one also begins to understand why most governments are resistant to changing the status quo in terms of their policies, while they simultaneously call for weapons control.

The role that weapons have played in modern history is an entrenched one. In fact, as long as there have been arms and the demonstrated will to use them, countries have competed with one another to acquire and store weapons, the ostensible intention being to develop their capabilities for self-defense against other countries that are also stockpiling weapons (Craft 1). The “arms race,” however, accelerated dramatically during the Cold War era (Laurance, Wagenmakers, & Wulf 225). The psychological tension that results is one that might seem somewhat paradoxical; as a country begins building up its arms capacity, it also becomes increasingly anxious about the capabilities of other countries, thereby sparking tensions that can—and often have—lead to war (Craft 2). Most countries complain that the increasing stockpiles of other countries justify their own weapons buying and storing strategies. The common defense that is used to justify the arms trade rests on three main points, namely that a country has an inalienable right “to arm for defensive purposes [to] guarantee the security of their constituents in an anarchical international system, that… deterrence supported by military power enhance national security, and that governments should refrain from… imposing on the economic welfare of …citizens” (Craft 2). Because one country can complain but cannot reasonably prevent another country from exercising the right that it is also exercising, the international arms trade continues unabated.

The fact that countries cannot prevent one another from weapons stockpiling because they themselves are engaged in the same practice has resulted in a bustling international arms trade by so-called “merchants of death,” those individuals who make their living by selling highly desirable and expensive weapons, ranging from high-powered semi-automatic weapons to grenades, missiles, and even chemical weaponry (Hartung 79). The merchants of death operate within a business environment that is virtually unregulated; they have commanded what Craft refers to as “institutionalized power and independence [within] what is increasingly being seen as a global military industrial complex” (2). While some countries, including the United States, require special licensing to export weapons to another country, other countries have no regulation whatsoever, and the international community at large lacks standards for weapons trade, given that it is such a sensitive and politically contentious issue (Southall 1458). Southall contends that while some steps have been taken by governments to improve internal regulations and to forge non-proliferation agreements, the relatively weak measures and poor oversight that characterize the international arms trade in general have only served to push the trade underground, where a thriving black market has developed (1458). A secondary gray market has also emerged, in which dealers occupy an ambiguous zone between “fully legal and illegal sales” (Pierre 44).

The international arms trade itself is labyrinthine. Weapons sales are typically initiated by a developed country with a robust economic and military resources that wants to sell its used goods to a developing country (Pierre x). Sometimes the arms dealers are government-sanctioned representatives, but it is the ever-burgeoning group of private arms dealers who negotiate lucrative exchanges of weapons for cash or in-kind actions that are the greatest cause for concern at present. The kinds of deals that the merchants of death broker involve providing weapons to individuals and governments that agree to the extracted promise of performing actions that might include anything from provoking ethnic or sectarian warfare in a strategically desirable region, to toppling a political regime deemed unfriendly to the selling country’s interests, or providing some coveted natural resource—oil and diamonds, being the most popular (Pierre 43-44). Because the sales are illegal or occupy the ambiguous gray space, it is hard to estimate exactly how much underground arms trafficking occurs (Pierre 44). Nonetheless, as Southall points out, it seems safe to assume that the underground weapons trade is doing a brisk business (1459). Otherwise, how can one explain the fact that impoverished nations suddenly have an impressive store of weapons? Furthermore, how can one account for the environmental damage and loss of life that has been caused at the hands of illegally acquired weapons?

The specific role that the United States and its policies and actions has played in the international arms trade is a complicated one. As one of the world’s superpowers, the United States has long had one of the world’s most well-funded militaries that has benefited from the most advanced technologies. Because weapons technology advances rather quickly, the United States has frequently been in the position of needing to relieve itself of old weapons to make way for new ones. Thus, as Pierre explains, a licit and government sanctioned program in arms dealing was initiated and has long been part of U.S. military policy and practice, though not without controversy (47). As with illicit arms dealing, the U.S. military provided weapons to countries as a means of advancing its own strategic political interests, resulting in questionable practices such as the provision of arms to rogue states and to countries that have been arms recipients ultimately turned into foes, including, most notably, Afghanistan and Iraq (Pierre 15). In recent decades, the licit arms trade initiated by the United States has “declined significantly” (Pierre 43).

As is the case with the development of any underground market, the subterranean arms trade developed, quite simply, because it was lucrative. The desperation for weapons in other countries was, and remains, so acute that arms dealers can wring out promises and compromises from arms recipients that can result in decades of wealth (Pierre 135). Although the underground trade of arms is increasing steadily in other countries, most notably, Russia and China (the latter being current involved in supplying weapons to conduct ethnic cleansing in Sudan), the United States is a major player in the underground arms market. Although the United States likes to portray other countries as being responsible for the majority of illicit arms trading activity,  Pierre points out that “the United States has long been, and will continue to be the leading arms merchant,” both in the legal market and the illegal one (x).

In addition to involvement as an active player in arms dealing, the United States has had a complex and often contradictory role in policy-making, both domestically and abroad. The United States has “basically [been] sitting on the sidelines” when it comes to multilateral negotiations about arms regulation and non-proliferation agreements (Laurance, Wagenmakers, & Wulf 225). The United States has been resistant to international and non-governmental organizations’ efforts to determine arms-related policies, dusting off the well-worn argument that the country has a right to defend itself. The United States was a reluctant party to the UN Register of Conventional Arms, forged in the early 1990s, which was intended to impose some regulatory boundaries on the international arms trade.  The United States took the position of advocating a “modest annual report system,” while other superpower countries supported the full registry of arms trade as proposed by the United Nations (Pierre 163). The ambivalence of the gesture made by the United States with respect to the UN Register of Conventional Arms proposal is understandable, though; the country could hardly have argued any other position, as it was embroiled in Iraq at the time (Pierre 163). More recent policy initiatives that have resulted in the trauma of war are equally contradictory and confounding, most notably the failure of weapons inspectors to find any hidden weapon stockpiles in Iraq, which was one of the reasons President Bush had posited as justification for war.

The historical and political antecedents of the international arms trade are clear, then, as are the reasons why the pattern of both licit and illicit arms trade has not been disrupted. Despite the fact that the consequences of the arms trade are felt disproportionately by impoverished countries, where genocides have been conducted on more than one occasion using First World weapons, and despite the fact that the short- and long-term consequences of the arms trade are damaging to people, the environment, and even to countries’ national identities and the world order, it is unlikely that the arms trade will drop off anytime soon. The historical value of the arms trade system is too entrenched and the political efficacy and expediency that results from the arms trade is too attractive for governments to take any posture other than the one they have assumed since the Cold War, and this is especially true for the United States. Although it is likely that international organizations will continue to push for non-proliferation, it seems unlikely that governments will comply; quite simply, it is not in their interests to do so.

References

Craft, Cassady. Weapons for Peace, Weapons for War: The Effect of Arms Transfers on War Outbreak, Involvement, and Outcomes. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Hartung, William D. “The New Business of War: Small Arms and the Proliferation of Conflict.”Ethics and International Affairs 15.1 (2001): 79.

Laurance, Edward J., Hendrik Wagenmakers, and Herbert Wulf. Managing the global problems created by the conventional arms trade: An assessment of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms. Global Governance 11.2 (2005): 225.

Pierre, Andrew J. Cascade of Arms: Managing Conventional Weapons Proliferation.  Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997.

Southall, David P. “Empty Arms: The Effect of the Arms Trade on Mothers and Children.” British Medical Journal 325 (7378): 1457-1461.