At the current rate of production of
bullets in the world today (16 billion per year), you have 33 bullets waiting
for you if you are 20 years old. That may seem an exaggerated production but
the arms industry doesn’t to think so. And with the production of small arms
running around 1 million per year and with their longevity of 50 years, there
are more than enough weapons to aim those bullets in your direction. The problem
is not restricted to those countries of Africa and Asia engaged in armed
conflict or Honduras with its armed repression. Wherever you live in the world, you are a
potential target for amred violence either through social conflicts, repression
or crime.
Approximately 1 ½ trillion dollars are spent each year on the production
of arms of all sorts. This is sufficient money to eradicate poverty from the entire
world as well as to provide decent housing, food security, safe drinking water,
sewage facilities, electricity, universal education and health care to everyone
in the world who lacks these essential services. There would even be enough
left over to tackle global warming! Still, the production continues and for a
very strong reason: profit. There is an enormous amount of money to be made
from producing and selling arms. The industry embraces a wide spectrum of production that branches out into all aspects of dealing with conflict through arms. We are perhaps more easily conscious of the production of nuclear arms—which continues at a great pace and involves increasingly more countries—as well as that of conventional arms. This
is the “heavy machinery” of the game of war and includes everything from tanks
and artillery to all the various forms of aircraft including the newly developed
drones. The industry is at the cutting edge of technology. Billions of dollars
are invested every year in research to perfect existing weapons as well as to
develop entirely new forms of waging war such as sophisticated sound and
microwave arms that can destroy people while leaving buildings and other
objects intact.
The less well known aspect of the arms industry is
that of small arms: anything a single person can carry. This includes
everything from rifles, shotguns and
sub-machine guns to mortar and land-to-air antiaircraft rockets. Currently
there are about 24 areas of the
work considered to be in armed conflict. Most of the people killed in these
conflicts die because of the use
of small arms and these are largely women, children, youth and the elderly.
One of the factors that is important in the
continuation of the arms industry is the “market” that is available outside formal
structures. While nation states account for a large part of arms purchases, there
is also a considerable sector devoted to supplying arms to those who are tagged
as “freedom fighters,” “rebels,” or “terrorists.” It is also true that, while
the major suppliers to these latter groups are the same as those who supply
governments—there are a number of ways to circumvent the efforts to control international
transfer of arms—an extensive array of informal suppliers also exists through
(relatively) clandestine workshops that are able to produce high quality small
arms in particular. Northern Pakistan and Colombia are, for example, producers
of quality small arms through small clandestine workshops.
The arms industry is
not restricted only to the production of arms that propel explosives and to the
munitions (bullets or rockets) they use. There also exists
a wide array of products essential to the warmaking venture that are associated
with war making and
specifically designed to complement the impact of the arms themselves. We can
include in this category things
like carrier vessels (including everything from aircraft carriers to trailers
for artillery). Also important
are training tools (including aircraft simulators), targeting devices
(including night-sight devices and
guidance systems for rockets and well as all the (very expensive) gear combatants
wear to protect themselves.
And we cannot overlook the enormous intelligence systems set up to track
movement, survey communications
and provide information to military headquarters. The development and
deployment of such
systems, in the United States alone, runs into many billions of dollars every
year.
Most of the profits from these gadgets go into the pockets of a few major
international arms producers in the United States, China, France, Russia and
England. Some of these companies have a direct history back to the time of the
Second World War. These arms producers are also linked closely to major sectors
of the world economy such as transportation, energy (oil in particular),
communications and finances. This interlocking of interests makes it almost
impossible to separate out the military interests within current globalized economy.
This is much truer today than when President Eisenhower invented the term “militaryindustrial
complex” back in the 1950s
Arms respond to no basic human need. Yet, they are,
in proportion to their utility, among the most expensive items a society can
produce and the largest single cause of environmental degradation in the world.
Still, in the name of security, we not only continue to allow them to be
produced, we and our governments buy them up in great numbers.
For several
decades now there is a constantly declining curve in the number of armed
conflicts in the world. Yet, the numbers of victims in those conflicts amounts
to tens of millions of men, women and children since the Second World War. The
number of soldiers who are victims to armed violence in the world also shows a
constant decline. Today it is women, children and the elderly who are largely
the victims.
Then there is the question of nuclear arms. With all the talk
since the Second World War about disarmament, you might have the impression
that nuclear arms are no longer an issue. However, we cannot forget that there
are more than 22,000 armed nuclear missiles still stockpiled throughout the
world. Some are in roving submarines with multiple warheads. The great powers
are still in a position to destroy most of the population of the world at any
moment. They are well aware that a nuclear device can be manufactured from
enriched uranium and transported rather easily anywhere in the world. Yet the
production of enriched uranium for nuclear energy and for armaments continues.
We tend to think of a nuclear war in the framework of something like Hiroshima.
However, already there are many armed conflicts in the world where arms
containing depleted uranium—to harden the shells and give them more penetration—are
being used. The radiation is affecting the health of soldiers and civilians
alike. In this sense, the major armed conflicts in the world are all “nuclear”
conflicts.
There have been major international efforts to bring this lucrative
industry under control. There are international nuclear disarmament treaties
(that have to be renewed every so often and at great risk of collapsing altogether);
there are treaties to control the production and sale of conventional military
weapons (heavy artillery, airplanes, tanks, etc.) and right now there is a
major effort to create an international small arms treaty that would establish
norms for the production and international transfer of small arms (those that
can be carried by one person alone). The United Nations meets every two years
to review world arms trade practices and to strengthen those practices that
effectively reduce the risk of arms falling into the hands of non-State forces.
In practice, the international transfer of these arms is, all too often, a sophisticated
dance around international restrictions with holes in them as big as barns.
Many of the most effective measures for controlling the arms market are resisted
by major industrialized nations under pressure from their military-industrial
sector. Who are the greatest arms producers in the world, those who manufacture
and export the most arms? They are precisely the permanent members of the
Security Council of the United Nations who have the right of veto: The United States,
France, Great Britain, China and Russia.
Nevertheless, there are signs of
movement and slow steps forward. The effort to establish international norms
for production, inspection and transfer of arms, the efforts of the United
Nations to provide alternatives to armed conflict through negotiation, the
fragile efforts to supervise cease-fires, while inadequate, are setting precedents
for new international practices. While the wheel turns very slowly, it does turn
and the decreasing number of armed conflicts is one indicator.
Any effort to come
to terms with major changes in the world economic system, and its financial
institutions, will have to take into account the ways in which the arms
industry is central to the structures of economic activity.
Meanwhile, those 12
billion bullets and one million small arms continue to be produced each year; 1
½ trillion dollars continue to go into military spending and someone is shot
somewhere in the world every minute. ❑
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