Tag: Arms trade

China, Russia and the Shifting Landscape of Arms Sales

Image courtesy of ermaleksandr/Flickr.

This article was originally published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on 5 July 2017.

Following the end of the cold war and the break-up of the Soviet Union, there were rapid decreases in Russian military budgets. Soviet military expenditure had stood at almost USD $350 billion in 1988. However, by 1992 it had fallen to USD $60 billion and in 1998 was only USD $19 billion. The more flexible parts of the budget suffered the most, such as those for procurement and operations. At the same time, the Russian arms industry saw several major clients for its weapons disappear, chief among them the former Warsaw Pact members and Iraq. By 1992, the arms industry Russia had inherited from the Soviet Union was in serious trouble. Most of its internal market and part of its export market was gone.

In parallel with this development, China was embarking on a serious military modernization. Boosted by its rapidly growing economy, it began to implement a long-planned reorganization of its armed forces and the acquisition of advanced weaponry. (This modernization had been planned since the 1970s and was given extra impetus by the poor performance of China’s armed forces against Viet Nam in 1979.) Chinese military spending has increased almost every year since 1989, the first year of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data for China, from USD $21 billion in 1988 to USD $215 billion in 2015. With this surge, China overtook Russia’s spending in 1998 and within five years had become the second largest spender globally behind the United States.

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European Defence 2016

Courtesy of Holly Hayes/Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

This article was originally published by the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) on 1 March 2017.

The first EUISS Security Monthly Stats (SMS) brings together defence data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) from 2016. Aggregating figures from the 28 EU member states, the graphics answer a series of questions about defence spending levels and arms exports.

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How Can Arms Embargoes be Made More Effective?

Gun
Courtesy Thomas Hawk/Flickr

This article was originally published by the Institute for Security Studies on 4 October 2016.

The AU is taking a well-timed look at how arms embargoes can be better implemented.

Arms embargoes are the most common type of sanction currently applied by the United Nations (UN), and one of the five main types of targeted or smart sanctions (others are diplomatic sanctions, travel bans, asset freezes and commodity interdiction).

The key aim of smart sanctions is to raise the regime’s costs of non-compliance (with the sanctions) without bringing about the wider suffering often associated with comprehensive sanctions, such as trade bans.

How effective these embargoes are in Africa is the subject of much debate; not least because the continent has been subjected to the majority of arms embargoes since the UN’s first stand-alone arms embargo against apartheid South Africa in 1977. Since then, several African countries have faced such embargoes; some repeatedly. Liberia, for example, experienced a series of UN-imposed arms embargoes in varying degrees and forms between 1992 and 2016. Despite this, illicit weapons continued to be trafficked into the country.

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From Yemen to Gaza and Beyond – UK Arms Export Controls are Broken

Anti-arms trade protest at Occupy London. Image: duncan c/Flickr

This article was originally published by Open Democracy on 17 July, 2015.

The humanitarian crisis being inflicted on the people of Yemen is only getting worse. Over 2000 people have died in the Saudi-led bombardment that, according to the World Health Organisation, has left over one million people displaced. The long term consequences are likely to be no better; the UN has warned that over 20 million civilians are in need of urgent assistance. The situation has been exacerbated by a Saudi imposed blockade that is stopping food and other basic essentials from reaching those in need.

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Business and Finance

Debating the Future of the German Arms Industry, Again

ILA 2010 – Eurocopter EC-665 Tiger. Image: yetdark/Flickr

This article was originally published by SIPRI on 7 November 2014. It is published as part of a collaborative partnership between SIPRI and Economists for Peace and Security (EPS).

As German industry is not at the top technological level in a number of areas of arms production—particularly in aerospace and electronics—preferential treatment for German companies has often led to German participation in co-production projects with companies from other countries. In terms of arms exports, while the 2000 policy guidelines on German arms exports (PDF) state that export decisions should be based on security policy rather than economic considerations, the latter continues to loom large in German arms export-licensing policy.

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