ABSTRACT
The egalitarian nature of the arms makers’ creed seems perversely commendable, and the U.S. Department of Defense’s regular assurance to Congress, and therefore the American people, that arms sales meet foreign policy needs and are not destabilizing provide a sense of studied precision. However, Ohlson and others make the more prominent assertion that increased globalization of the arms industry is threatening to peace and stability in the international system.3 While the analysis from the preceding chapter indicates that weapons sales are directly tied to increased likelihood of wars begun, wars under way, and magnitude of wars in the international system, what is yet to be established is what effects arms sales have on individual states. It is argued that there are both supplier and recipient effects. For the suppliers, Pearson posits that arms transfers infer a strong commitment from supplier to recipient.4 Subsequently, suppliers are more likely to intervene militarily in the affairs of recipients and thus more likely to become involved in war. For recipients, the assessment is that arms imports cause instability, arms races, military imbalances, and war.5 Concurrently, there are alternative viewpoints. Arms sales and their more diffuse incarnation in the form of technology transfer may be seen as a benign form of business transaction, conducive to peaceful relations based on mutual deterrence between states, or at least neutral factors in war decision making.6 To deprive companies, defense establishments, and countries of potential profits, employment, and beneficial production efficiencies represents an unnecessary encroachment on rights and privileges (however trade may be viewed in a given society) by the state. As espoused by the creed of the arms maker in Shaw’s Major Barbara, arms merchants play a vital role in international relations by servicing a global, multibillion-dollar market. By doing so, they provide “economies of scale…reduce research and development costs, reduce fixed costs, absorb nonrecurring costs, and create longer production runs or avoid gaps in production lines” that benefit society as a whole.7
