The global arms trade is the largest sector of spending in the world. It is worth around a trillion dollars anually, a figure that corresponds to about $170 for every person on the planet, and increases every year. The income generated for producers of weapons is massive, and the geopolitical importance of strategic arms sales cannot be overstated. At what costs do we pursue economic and strategic supremacy using this deadly trade? Can we ever justify such actions?

The answer depends on how you see the world. To state the obvious, guns kill. Armed conflict kills approximately half a million people every year, the vast majority of whom are civilians. According to the Control Arms campaign, a life is ended in armed confrontation every single minute. Startlingly, most of these casualties are caused by small arms such as guns, grenades, land mines and light missiles. The misuse of weaponry in the hands of both governmental and independent forces leads to atrocities such as genocide, hostage taking and rape, not to mention unnecessary military deaths. To add fuel to the fire, the arms trade is not selective: anyone with sufficient finance can acquire firearms and ammunition, regardless of whether they are terrorists, police or criminals. It is well documented that the West has sold weapons to Turkey, where they were used against the Kurdish population in some of the worst human rights violations of recent times. Guns sold legitimately can end up in the hands of some of the world’s most feared organisations, such as Al- Qaeda and Hezbollah. How can we assault the legitimacy of the arms trade? It would be naïve to suggest that removing the supply of armaments would cause a cessation of conflict in the world’s most troubled areas. History has demonstrated the effectiveness of low-grade and improvised weaponry in countries such as Iraq, Rwanda and Israel, where makeshift explosives, machetes and homemade rockets have been employed to devastating effect. Moreover, the sale of munitions to putative freedom fighters living under despotic regimes could even be seen as heroism. Would we question the supply of arms to resistance movements in the Second World War?

There is much more to this issue than meets the eye. The real harm of the arms trade lies below the bloody veneer of casualty statistics and human rights violations. According to Oxfam, the world spends under $60 billion per year on aid, a mere fraction of the trillion dollars spent on weapons and ammunition. The figures are damning -the vast majority of sales are to developing countries that simply cannot afford to purchase them. They rely instead on loans, which could be used to improve the standards of living. Pakistan, a country where a quarter of people live below the poverty line, spends half of its budget on defence. This expenditure is hardly necessary for security- Tanzania, for example, spent $40 million on high-tech radar systems, which are wholly inappropriate for their security requirements. Oxfam states that the amount of money spent could have assured healthcare for 3.5 million people. As President Eisenhower once remarked, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children”.

The financial costs of dealing with the effects of gun use are substantial. The International Action Network on Small Arms, IANSA, claims that in El Salvador the cost of treating gunshot victims makes up 7% of the public hospital budget, scarce resources which could be used in health education and treatment of disease, both essential factors for development. The Inter- American Development Bank estimates that the cost of gun violence in Latin America in the 1990s was equivalent to 14% of regional GDP, and non-governmental organisations place the cost of armed conflict in Uganda at $100 million per year. Whose fault is this? Blame can be firmly placed on weapons producers in the West. Only four countries, Bulgaria, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, have denied weapons sales on the grounds that they harm development. Those countries who continue to supply choose to inflict a double penalty on innocent civilians: not only by selling a potent means of suffering to their governments and rebel groups, but also by denying them the aid and assistance that they sorely need. Historically, it seems this trade can be justified. In the recent past, the Cold War was the rationale behind any morally questionable, yet highly effective policies. Arms sales to Africa could be argued as an effort to keep a particular country ‘on side’, the long-term welfare of the populations of these countries being a secondary concern. In the suppliers’ defence, desperate times call for desperate measures. However, since the fall of the Berlin wall, does this constitute a legitimate foreign policy? The United States, United Kingdom and France all supplied arms to Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, reasoning that a victorious Iraq would be the lesser of two evils in comparison to the destabilising power of a victorious post-revolutionary Iran. Nonetheless, they also sold weapons, albeit less overtly, to Iran. Notwithstanding the human rights violations of both sides, the logic of helping out the preferred country collapses when arms are supplied to the enemy as well, serving only to demonstrate the immoral nature of this horrendous trade.

Geopolitical justification can remain, even if the moral grounds behind it are dubious or inconsistent. In this Hobbesian world of international relations there appears to be no reason why a country should not do whatever it can to secure its position. If they can make a vast profit in the process, so much the better. Armaments are highly desirable goods for leaders across the globe, and therefore a valuable tool for securing cooperation and friendship. Arms sales to Turkey illustrate this-the use of the weapons when received is irrelevant, because the suppliers now have access to a vital geo-strategic site at the fringe of the Middle East, a conduit for troops and, perhaps more crucially, oil. In spite of this, humanitarian intervention as in Somalia and in Iraq, has often been criticised when one of the key objectives has been to bring democracy, equality and security. If we cannot justify this, how can we justify a trade where there is obvious and absolute detriment to the country in question?

It is all very well to argue about the immorality of the arms trade, but in practise there is little that can be done. The United Nations is in the process of constructing an arms trade treaty, which would impose strict limits on people wishing to purchase weapons. Thus far, The United States has been the only country to vote against the treaty. It is perhaps a curious coincidence that , the United States accounts for more arms sales than the next three suppliers combined. Unfortunately, the United States can easily choose to disregard the chastisements of the United Nations, as it demonstrated when it invaded Iraq in 2003. It is unlikely that an international treaty would have any effect were it not to be endorsed by the United States, since any kind of economic or military sanction would have massive negative effects for the rest of the world. Without any effective world order which can hold countries to account, there is no way in which the movement of armaments can be effectively monitored and regulated. Given the current trends in sales, it is unlikely that any individual country would choose selfimposed arms control legislation. Furthermore, there is a significant alternative trade in arms. Legal loopholes are often exploited by private entrepreneurs in order to sell arms to rogue states, criminal gangs or paramilitary groups. Enduser certificates, in theory a concrete way to control a weapon’s ultimate destination, are often faked or simply ignored, since there is no practical way to verify them. The IANSA states that 80% of arms in Mexico were originally sold legally in the United States.

Prospects appear bleak for those hoping for a change in the status quo. As long as there are profits and political gains to be made by supplying arms, and no effective way to police the trade, there is no incentive for governments and private companies to stop; however immoral, and ultimately deadly, their actions may be. Essentially, weaponry is a necessity for governments worldwide. The idea of each country domestically manufacturing its own arms is as absurd as it is undesirable, due to the economic efficiency of production and the incapability of some countries to produce the required hardware. Therefore, the arms trade is as unavoidable as the possession of arms themselves.