Re-evaluating Economic and Technological Variables to Explain Global Arms Production and Sales

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate discussion of the economic and technological incentives currently at play in the decision-making of nation-states that encourage the expansion of national arms production centres and the subsequent diffusion of arms and military technology across national borders. This focus contrasts with currently prevailing notions that emphasise strategic and political factors to explain the upward climb of military spending on arms and the growth of the arms trade. One recent, widely publicised book on the subject, for example, characterises arms transfers as a ‘new diplomacy’.1 Another writer, long acquainted with the arms production in the developing world, argues that ‘the primary purpose of a Third World arms industry is enhanced national security’.2 These writers stress the real and perceived security needs of states, their desire to escape external manipulation by major suppliers, their effort to minimise external dependency on other states, their search for political bargaining leverage, and their pursuit of enhanced national status associated in many minds with strong military forces and indigenous production capabilities.3