The Global Politics of Arms Sales

by Andrew J. Pierre

Overview

Marshaling a great deal of new information in a highly readable manner, the author explains the reasons for the dramatic expansion of arms sales during the past decade and clearly traces such trends as the rise in sophistication of weapons being sold so as to include the most advanced technologies, and the shift in sales to unstable parts of the Third World.

Originally published in 1982.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691614731
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #72
Pages:	374
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

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The Global Politics of Arms Sales

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By Andrew J. Pierre

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1982 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07635-5

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CHAPTER 1

PART ONE

DILEMMAS

Arms sales have become, in recent years, a crucial dimension of international affairs. They are now major strands in the warp and woof of world politics. Arms sales are far more than an economic occurrence, a military relationship, or an arms control challenge — arms sales are foreign policy writ large.

The dramatic expansion in arms sales to the developing world during the 1970s is by now widely known. Less clear is what judgment to make of this important phenomenon.

To some observers, the arms delivered feed local arms races, create or enhance regional instabilities, make any war that occurs more violent or destructive, and increase the tendency for outside powers to be drawn in. The arms received are often seen as unnecessary to the true needs of the purchasing country and as a wasteful diversion of scarce economic resources. The remedy often proposed is drastic curtailment of arms sales, with tight international controls as the best means for achieving this.

To others, the recent increase in arms sales is no cause for particular concern. Sovereign nations have every right to the weapons that they deem necessary. By giving or selling arms the supplier country acquires political influence or friendship. It receives economic benefits. Regional peace and stability may be advanced rather than hindered by the transfer of arms. In any case, there is little that can be done about the international trade in arms. If one country does not sell the weapons, some other state will be only too happy to oblige. Accordingly, seeking international restraints is a will-o'-the-wisp.

Neither judgment is fully right or wrong. In order to be better understood, the arms trade phenomenon must be viewed in the wider context of the transformations under way in world politics.

Arms sales must be seen, essentially, in political terms. The world is undergoing a diffusion of power — political, economic, and military — from the industrialized, developed states to the Third World and the so-called Fourth World (poor and without oil). The acquisition of conventional arms, often sophisticated and usually in far greater quantities than the recipient state previously had, is a critical element of that diffusion.

Arms are a major contributing factor to the emergence of regional powers such as Israel, Brazil, South Africa, or, until recently, Iran; their purchase makes a deep impact upon regional balances and local stability. The diffusion of defense capabilities contributes at the same time to the erosion of the early postwar system of imperial or hegemonic roles formerly played by the major powers around the globe. Thus the superpowers, and even the medium-sized powers such as Britain and France, are losing the ability to "control" or influence events in their former colonies or zones of special influence. And the transfer of conventional arms is only one element of the diffusion of military power. Another, of prime importance, is the trend toward nuclear proliferation. As we shall see, the relationship between the two is intricate and complex.

Arms sales must also be seen in the context of North-South issues. They constitute a form of redistribution of power whose significance in certain cases may be equal to or greater than that of some of the well-recognized economic forms. Certainly the withholding or granting of arms can have a great political and psychological impact. Arms transfers can also be a form of transfer of technology; an increasing number of states do not want the weapons fresh out of the crate but the technology that will enable them to build, or "co-produce," them at home.

Finally, arms sales remain a key element of the continuing East-West competition. Indeed, they may now be the prime instrument available to the Soviet Union, and a significant one for the United States, in their rivalry for the allegiance of much of the world. The condition of mutual deterrence at the nuclear level, and the risk that a conventional conflict could quickly or uncontrollably escalate to the nuclear level, make a direct military confrontation between the two superpowers unlikely — hence the tendency toward competition by "proxy" in the Third World, with the superpowers supporting friendly states or regimes, or (in the case of the Communist states) assisting "movements of national liberation." Sometimes alliances and the identification of "friends" alter quickly, as happened in the Horn of Africa where the Soviet Union initially supported Somalia with arms and the United States supported Ethiopia, only to see their respective roles reversed. A contributing factor to the emerging importance of arms transfers as an instrument of the East-West competition has been the relative decline of ideology as an element in the continuing struggle, because of the diminishing attractiveness of both the United States and the Soviet Union as models. Yet another factor has been the declining size and role of economic and developmental assistance. Both the United States and the Soviet Union now give less in economic assistance than the value of their arms sales.

Arms do not of themselves lead to war. The causes of war are manifold and complex, but the underlying roots are usually found in political, economic, territorial, or ideological competition. Yet arms sent into a region may exacerbate tensions, spur an arms race, and make it more likely that, as Clausewitz taught us, war will emerge as the continuation of politics by other means. Once war has started, the existence of large and sophisticated stocks of weapons may make the conflict more violent and destructive. And if the arms have been acquired from abroad, often with the establishment of a resupply relationship and sometimes including the presence of technical advisers from the producing country, they may have a tendency to draw the supplier into the conflict. Yet these undesirable developments need not be inevitable. Arms may deter aggression, restore a local imbalance, and generally enhance stability. All depends upon the specifics of the case and the perceptions that exist about it.

Nevertheless, the people of the world can take little comfort from the trend toward a higher level of global armaments. Total world military expenditures have grown from $100 billion in 1960 to $500 billion in 1980. Measured in constant prices this is an increase of 80 percent. The rise in arms spending in the developing world has been especially acute. Since 1960 military expenditures in the Third World have risen over fourfold (in constant prices), while those in developed countries have gone up a more modest 48 percent. (Note 1, this chapter, discusses fully the data base for this study.)

For all these reasons, we need a more complete and sophisticated understanding of the global politics of arms sales. We also need to think more creatively, as well as realistically, about developing some type of international management for the process of transferring weapons.

Neither of these aims is easy to achieve. What we term the global politics of arms sales involves an enormous number of variables: the foreign affairs of close to 150 nations; their economic affairs, ranging from their industrial or development policies to questions of balance of payments and trade; their approach toward the acquisition or sale of technology; their perceptions of the threats to their national security and what must be undertaken to maintain it. This involves, in turn, a very large number of bilateral and multilateral relationships. Arms are usually sought because of the desire to maintain security vis-à-vis one's neighbors, or to enhance one's role and status within a region — hence the importance of a regional approach to both comprehending and controlling arms transfers. This regional emphasis is reinforced by the present diffusion of political, economic, and military power away from the principal postwar centers of power and influence.

Beyond the task of better understanding the arms transfer phenomenon is the need to manage or regulate it. But this is uncommonly difficult because of the lack of norms by which to measure restraints and controls, or even of agreement on the basic necessity for them. With regard to the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities, a general consensus has been reached in the world that nuclear proliferation is undesirable. There are some exceptions to this agreement but they are quite negligible. The nuclear non-proliferation debate today, significant as it is, is about the means for preventing or retarding proliferation, not about the widely accepted end goal. No equivalent consensus exists on the proliferation of conventional arms.

With regard to conventional arms three general points of view can be identified. Some persons perceive arms to be inherently wasteful or even evil. They seek a maximum curtailment of their production and distribution. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who make no moral judgment on arms and who view their sale abroad as essentially a commercial activity. They would prefer to have a minimum of regulation by governments, with the arms trade left to the forces of the marketplace. A third perspective — and the one reflected in this study — is primarily concerned with the impact of arms transfers upon regional stability and international security. Arms transfers, it is argued, should be managed so as to prevent or contain conflict and enhance the forces of moderation and stability.

But how are such laudable purposes to be achieved? Assuming that some restraints or controls over arms transfers are desirable in principle, how are they to be created in practice? Underneath the practical aspects of the problem is the difficulty in making normative judgments that have universal applicability.

A particular sale may be destabilizing, or it may restore a balance. It may promote an arms race in a region, or it may act so as to deter a potential conflict. Moreover, what is true in the short run may not hold true for the longer term. Who is to say how a weapon transferred now could be employed in ten years' time? And who can vouchsafe that the political leadership of a country will be as sober and "responsible" about the use of weapons in the future as it appears at present? Or that the alliances and foreign policy alignments of today — upon which the prospective supplier must base his decision — will be the same tomorrow?

Arms sales are fraught with policy dilemmas. There are no easy answers to the above questions. There are no "simple truths" to guide policy makers. Even when a supplier country has adopted general policy guidelines, each weapons transfer decision will involve complex judgments and trade-offs. Long-term risks must be weighed against shorter-term benefits. The prospective economic advantages of a sale may have to be balanced against potentially disadvantageous political or arms control consequences. One foreign policy goal, such as strengthening an alliance relationship or a nation's capacity for self-defense, may run counter to another goal, such as promoting human rights. As the debates of recent years on individual arms transfers show, one can almost take for granted that every decision will involve competing objectives.

Trends In Transfers

It is, of course, the major increase in both the quantity and the quality of arms sent to the Third World that has given this problem its current salience. Complete and reliable data on arms transfers are not readily available. Governments are not inclined to release data that could prove to be embarrassing either at home or abroad. Nevertheless, enough is known to give a reasonably accurate impression of the trends.

In worldwide terms, arms transfers have more than doubled in the past decade, having grown from $9.4 billion in 1969 to $19.1 in 1978 (in constant dollars). At the beginning of the 1980s most estimates of arms sales worldwide were on the order of $21 billion per annum.

The United States has been the largest supplier of conventional arms and has had the greatest increase in sales. American foreign military sales (the accounting for these sales includes items other than weapons, such as training and logistical assistance, which can account for 40 percent of the total) totaled $1.1 billion in 1970 and rose sharply to $15.8 billion in 1975. They have since remained above $10 billion per annum, with a projected all-time high for 1981 of $16 billion. As sales went up, however, there was a decline in grant aid through military assistance programs. Equally significant has been the more than quadrupling of the French and British export of arms since 1970, as well as a marked increase in the level of Soviet transfers.

Changes in the qualitative dimension of the arms trade have been as significant as its quantitative expansion. In the past, most arms transferred to less developed countries were the obsolete weapons of the major powers which they wanted to eliminate from their inventories to make room for new, more advanced ones. Often they were gifts from surplus stocks of over-age, technologically inferior equipment. Thus many of the arms transferred to the Third World prior to the 1970s were still of the World War II, or early postwar, vintage. Even in the early 1960s, the aircraft transferred to the developing world more often than not were ten-year-old American F-86s and Soviet MiG-17s rather than the first-line planes of the period (such as F-4s and MiG-21s) In contrast, today many of the arms being sold are among the most sophisticated in the inventories of the supplier states. This is strikingly evident with certain advanced fighter aircraft. The F-15, the most sophisticated plane of its type, is being sold to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and plans are in progress to have it co-produced in Japan; the Soviet MiG-23 is being exported to several nations in the Middle East, as is the French Mirage F-1. It is less evident, but equally significant, in smaller yet very advanced systems such as the TOW anti-tank missile, which was not released from the American inventory until the critical stages of the Yom Kippur War but has now been approved for sale to more than a dozen countries. As was the case with the $1.3 billion sale of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to Iran, foreign orders have been accepted while the producing country was still deciding about procurement for its own armed forces. Foreign orders have occasionally been given higher priority than domestic ones or have become the necessary element in a favorable decision to start a production run to equip the supplying country's own armed forces.

Another dimension of the qualitative change has been the significant growth in the transfer of arms through co-production agreements. These enable states to acquire through licensing arrangements the knowledge to manufacture or to assemble a weapons system. More than two dozen developing countries now participate in such arrangements. As a result of this trend, there has been a spread in sophisticated weaponry around the globe.

The acquisition of a new weapon by one country in a particular region creates strong pressures in the surrounding countries for the acquisition of comparable weapons. In 1960 only four developing nations had supersonic combat aircraft; by 1977 the total had risen to forty-seven. There has been a similar proliferation with respect to long-range surface-to-air missiles, from two nations in 1960 to twenty-seven by the mid-1970s.

A third change has been in the direction of the arms flows. Until the mid-1960s most weapons transferred went to developed countries, usually the NATO allies of the United States or the Warsaw Pact allies of the Soviet Union. It was not until the war in Southeast Asia in the second half of the decade that the dominant portion went to the developing world. Nor was the trend reversed by the end of the Vietnam War. During the late 1970s the Persian Gulf and Middle East countries received by far the largest portion of arms. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel were the major recipients of Western arms, while most Soviet weapons were shipped to Syria, Iraq, Libya, and, a little earlier, Egypt. The importation of weapons by Third World countries rose from $6.2 billion in 1969 to $15.5 billion in 1978 (in constant dollars). Over three-quarters of the global arms trade now goes to the Third World. No area has not seen some growth in its imports; after the Persian Gulf and Middle East, the most notable increases have been in arms sent to Africa and Latin America.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Global Politics of Arms Sales by Andrew J. Pierre. Copyright © 1982 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. v
• List of Figures. List of Tables, pg. ix
• Preface, pg. xi
• Trends in Transfers, pg. 8
• Uncertain Rationales for Arms Sales, pg. 14
• Competing Foreign Policy Aims, pg. 28
• United States, pg. 45
• Soviet Union, pg. 73
• France, pg. 83
• United Kingdom, pg. 100
• The Restrictors: West Germany, Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland, pg. 109
• New, Third World Suppliers, pg. 123
• Middle East, pg. 136
• Asia, pg. 210
• Latin America, pg. 232
• Sub-Saharan Africa, pg. 255
• New Significance of Arms Sales, pg. 275
• The Need for International Management, pg. 278
• Past Approaches to International Restraints, pg. 281
• The Conventional Arms Transfer Talks with The Soviet Union, pg. 285
• Forms of Multilateral Regulation, pg. 291
• Priority to The European-American Dimension, pg. 296
• East-West "Rules of The Game", pg. 301
• Third World Arms Industries— A Limited Role as Suppliers, pg. 303
• Recipient Perspectives and Regional Approaches, pg. 306
• Notes, pg. 313
• Index, pg. 337
• About The Author, pg. 353