9 thoughts on “The Arms Trade”

1. Mark L 27 July 2009 at 11:47 pm

   Hmmm, all the maps seem to treat the former USSR as one country. The SIPRI data shows that Russia has exported arms to other former soviet states, such as Belarus, since 1992, so there should be at least some yellow inside the former USSR borders. Plus, you even mention that Ukraine exported arms to Russia, but only Germany and Poland are yellow on the map. And how did you treat the pre-1992 data for the USSR?

   Another concern is the change in scales across the maps, which could easily be taken to suggest comparable volumes across the chosen countries. The UK exports chart looks more active than the Russia exports chart, but volume from the latter was almost four times higher in the period 1992-2008 (the only period with separate data for Russia). And Australia is certainly a minnow among whales here. How about a chart colour-coded with total export volumes to make the relative contributions clear?
2. Stilgherrian 28 July 2009 at 7:22 am

   A wonderful beginning to the investigations, Sir!

   Only one question from me at this stage: How would Australia’s arms exports to places like the Pacific islands show up? They’d be very tiny dots on this scale of map, and perhaps invisible? Or is my memory faulty about them even existing?

   For an amusing introduction to how the arms trade works (if one that’s biased against its very existence), try Mark Thomas’ As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandala: underground adventures in the arms & torture trade. He explains how you can set yourself up as an arms trader — something he’s done as a class exercise with groups of teenage schoolgirls.
3. stubbornmule Post author28 July 2009 at 10:19 am

   @Mark: you are right about the former USSR. Although the SIPRI data refects the post Soviet borders, the map generating tool is stuck in the past. I’ve been digging around to find out how to update the border data, bit with little progress so far.

   You are also right that the colour scales cannot be used to make comparisons from one map to another. I played around with a few colouring schemes and found it tricky to use a common scale across maps. Most countries would end up with very little differentiation because they are swamped by the size of imports and exports of the largest countries. Maybe I need to think about some kind of logarithmic scale…

   @Stilgherrian: It is certainly a bit tricky to see what’s going on in the Pacific, so here is the list (total exports from Australia from 1980-2008 in 1990 US dollars):

   Papua New Guinea $38m
   Fiji $18m
   Micronesia $18m
   Tonga $18m
   Solomon Islands $12m
   Kiribati $6m
   Marshall Islands $6m
   Palau $6m
   Samoa $6m
   Tuvalu $6m
   Vanuatu $6m

   Thanks for the pointer to the Mark Thomas book. Looks like it’s worth a read.
4. Stilgherrian 28 July 2009 at 11:50 am

   After reading this post, one of my “former military” contacts says:

   I’d agree Australian military exports to the SWPac may be significant in a regional sense but may not register on a world map based on SIPRI data. But there are qualitative as well as quantitative reasons.

   (Assumption: NZ is excluded from this discussion.)

   It’s true that the SWPac nations’ requirements are modest in a quantitative sense. They don’t maintain large standing armies; in fact, many have no military forces at all. But a quick look at SIPRI’s terms of reference suggests that most of our exports to the SWPac simply fall outside their dataset. Our SWPac customers don’t use, nor do we export, many ‘major conventional weapons’ as defined by SIPRI.

   However, I think the ‘minor’ equipment we do export could influence significantly the effectiveness of our neighbours’ forces. We’ve exported stuff like radios, body armour, and small arms: small beer to SIPRI, but probably enough to tip the balance in a conflict between two SWPac nations, none of whom possess artillery or tanks.

   Conversely, the Pacific class patrol boats displace over 100 tons and are therefore ‘[war]ships’ in SIPRI’s eyes. However, they’re mostly used in a coastguard role, rarely armed, and ISTR they weren’t constructed to full naval specs. Admittedly, the PNGDF deployed theirs to the Bougainville AO, but everyone else uses them to rescue lost fishermen. Kiribati has one, and their constitution prohibits them from raising a military. ‘Arms’, then?

   This ‘end use’ question is — probably correctly– irrelevant to SIPRI. Vanuatu doesn’t have an army as such, but a paramilitary police unit (the ‘Vanuatu Mobile Force’ or VMF). An arms dealer might argue that sales to the VMF weren’t ‘arms exports’ because the VMF is officially part of the police. But it would make no difference if the VMF started shooting….

   So there you go!
5. stubbornmule Post author29 July 2009 at 10:23 am

   Mark: the maps have now been updated to correct former members of the Soviet Union.
6. Mark L 29 July 2009 at 7:26 pm

   I think your chart for Russia actually only covers the period 1993-2008. The SIPRI data show that several other countries exported arms to the USSR between 1980 and 1992. For example, Czechoslovakia’s total for that period was $8.8 billion, way beyond the $300m maximum on your scale, and we have to assume that the bulk of this was from the Czech Republic to Russia, yet Czech Republic is white in your Russia imports chart.

   Adding Soviet exports during 1980-1992 to the Russian exports chart would change it significantly (India would be off the current scale, Germany would no longer be white, and Iraq would be at least dark orange).
7. stubbornmule Post author29 July 2009 at 9:58 pm

   Mark: it looks like you are right. I will pick up the USSR data and aggregate it.

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