How does selling weapons promote peace?

February 8, 2009 9:06 AM

How do its proponents argue that the arms trade contributes to peace/stability?

I'm pretty conscious of the arguments against the arms trade, and I understand the general economic arguments about maintaining a national defence industrial base (and how it keeps workers in jobs etc). But I have heard it claimed that the arms trade contributes to peace and stability which I am struggling to get my head around.

If you have recommendations of websites or articles (I have wide journal access through my university) that deal with this subject I'd love to know about them.

posted by knapah to law & government (13 comments total)

Without having any specific knowledge of it, I'd wager that it's a larger-scale version of the arguments for widespread gun ownership: If everybody has the ability to defend themselves, everyone will be very reluctant to actually start any wars. If only a few nations are well-armed, though, they'd likely be tempted to run rampant over their weaker neighbors.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:15 AM on February 8

The most common argument is basically MAD lite. The theory is that neighbors are a lot less likely to abandon diplomacy for open warfare if the potential consequences of warfare are truly devastating.

Basically the bigger and nastier weapons you put into everyone's hands, the less likely they are to use them. Yeah, sounds silly, but it was also a major strategic doctrine the U.S. followed through the entirety of the Cold War.
posted by tkolar at 9:17 AM on February 8

I'll help by emphasizing that you noted arms trade and not proliferation. So I'd think deterrence isn't an item in this context. Alignment... probably. During the cold war you could just glance at a photograph of a fighter and determine which larger government, or type of government they supported purely by the rifle they carried; m16 or ak47.
posted by ezekieldas at 9:19 AM on February 8

If Country X has nuclear weapons and Country Y also has nuclear weapons, then it would behoove Country X not to nuke Country Y, lest Mutually Assured Destruction work out. The same logic applies to conventional arms as well, it just comes up most frequently when speaking of nuclear weapons.

If Country Y doesn't have sufficient weaponry to strike back, then Country X has much less to lose if it invades or bombs Country Y.

There's lots of good theoretical stuff on this if you search for "realism" or something like that. JStor is usually good for this type of search. An easier read, if you're interested in the inverse of this theory (that uneven arms buildup causes conflict) is Thuycidides' Peloponessian War.
posted by thewestinggame at 9:19 AM on February 8

I'll help by emphasizing that you noted arms trade and not proliferation. So I'd think deterrence isn't an item in this context.

Arms trading would seem to be the most efficient route to effective mutual deterrence. If mutual deterrence is desirable, surely it's better that all states can purchase the best arms going for the money they've got, thereby more swiftly and reliably reaching a state of true mutually assured destruction than if they had to rely on their own manufacturing capabilities?

I mean, if you buy into the entire worldview. Which I don't.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 10:03 AM on February 8

There are many armed non-state actors out there- narcoterrorists in south america, religious fanatics around the world, pirates in the Sudan and so on. The legal arms trade is to the governments, who will presumably (not always) tend to act in the interests of long term stability and peace.
posted by jenkinsEar at 10:40 AM on February 8

It's a two-part equation.

First, an unarmed state is an ineffective state. As with many questions at the intersection of the practical and philosophical, Robert Frost said it well: "good fences make good neighbors." Effective weapons and men trained to wield them are the "good fences" of nations. (While we like to complain about (for example) sub-Saharan Africa having too much military, what has, in fact, is far too little of formal state military power. It's completely unsurprising that the only reasonably effective state (South Africa) is also the only state having sufficient force to maintain its sovereignty against reasonable threats abroad and within.

Second, economics of trade and specialization. Most states could never efficiently manufacture their own modern weaponry: many of them couldn't even try, and those who could, the costs would be outrageous. Their buying weapons, and weapons-building specialists selling them, satisfies all parties concerned like any other trade.
posted by MattD at 2:24 PM on February 8

Allowing people and groups (including, but not necessarily limited to, governments) to obtain arms legally is the only way to ensure that people and groups who wish to obey the law can protect themselves and innocent others from people and groups who choose not to obey the law.

Robert Frost did say "good fences make good neighbors," but it was in the context of a poem lamenting the walls people erect among themselves. It was meant as an expression of sadness about "fences," not an endorsement of them as the proper way to construct societies.
posted by decathecting at 2:55 PM on February 8

Thanks everyone.

I'm still not convinced by the arguments, but that's not terribly surprising, at least I can understand them better now. It's funny how the same action - selling arms to country x - can be used to support both pro- and anti- arms trade arguments. Pro-, by allowing mutual deterrence... anti-, it leads to arms races and instability, hence conflict.

More comments are welcomed, particularly if you can direct me to academic articles supporting the arms trade.
posted by knapah at 3:12 PM on February 8

David Kopel writes research papers on the subject, though he focuses on civilian arms rather than government arms.

I read one of them, and the gist as I remember it was that keeping civilian populations disarmed via international law didn't really help prevent political violence, because governments always have access to weapons, since any nation will gladly become a client state of a major power to get the weapons they need, or manufacture them, and there's always a power willing to forge an ally. Then, these governments will in turn arm client groups of their own to engage in violence on their behalf. (The Janjaweed militias in Sudan are an example of this. They are armed by their government so that they can attack the people of Darfur, who are unable to obtain sufficient weapons to defend themselves because of international small-arms control and local laws.)

Also, arms trade or no, small arms and even some heavier weapons can be crafted with surprisingly unsophisticated means. Essentially, the toothpaste is never going to be put back in the tube.

Though, personally, I think the international arms trade should be more like the civilian gun trade. You run a background check on the guy before you sell him weapons, and if the current administration is in the business of murdering people, you should consider canceling the sale.
posted by Doctor Suarez at 4:49 PM on February 8

You need to clarify your terms.
There's no such thing as a unitary "arms trade". There are, for instance,
- legal intra-government sales of weapons
- quasi-legal intra-government money-for-guns deals
- military aid in the form of weapons, supplies, advisors, and experts
- illegal intra-government weapons deals (ie. Iran-Contra)
- arms sales to non-government bodies (to one side in civil wars, to rebel movements, insurgencies, terrorist groups, etc.)
- foreign cash for such arms sales, and finally
- the all-pervasive black market in small arms.
This is all not to mention domestic arms sales, which, especially in the United States, is enormous, legal, normal, and perfectly legitimate.
Some of these, especially those called "military aid" can have decent supporting arguments for peace and security, others, far less so. There's a great difference between, say, international support through the UN for East Timor's police, and the guns/drugs trade in Latin America. You just need to be clear about what kind of trade you're talking about.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:02 PM on February 8

I'm referring to the legal and quasi-legal trade in arms primarily, either by or approved by governments. Military aid comes into it, but at a lower level, and sales to non-governmental bodies is interesting, but less relevant to what I'm thinking about.

Examples would be the sale of F16s to India and Pakistan by the USA, the sale of ships to Romania by BAE Systems (approved by the UK govt), the sale of a military radar system to Tanzania (by BAE, approved of by UK govt.), or the sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia by the Reagan administration.
posted by knapah at 5:43 PM on February 8

Then the arguments you're after are always going to be subsets of those governments' foreign policies, I think. Peace and stability are ensured through the maintenance of international agreements and alliances, rather than through disarmament.
Consider the United States' arguments via Condoleeza Rice last year:

Ms Rice made it clear that the main reason for the deals was the growing influence of Iran in the region, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has refused to stop enriching uranium which the international community suspects is designed to develop nuclear weapons.
"We have the same goals in this region concerning security and stability," the US Secretary of State said, during a stopover on the way to the Middle East in Shannon, Ireland.
"There isn’t a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to ... US interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see."
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:19 PM on February 8