Can Human Power Stop It?

SINCE the arms merchants rob an enormous amount of needed goods and services from the poor, why do people not stop them? The simple answer: The arms business commands money and power. The following facts about the scope, interests, and methods of this big business will help you to find out why human power cannot stop it.

Many people live off the arms business. Since the beginning of this century, the arms business has been the world’s most international industry. It employs some 50 million people worldwide, directly or indirectly. Additionally, one quarter, or some 500,000, of the world’s scientists are engaged in military research.

Immense economic interests are involved. The world’s nations have spent 15.2 trillion dollars ($15,200,000,000,000 in 1984 U.S. dollars) on the arms race since 1960. And the demand for arms continues. For example, in 1987 military expenditures reached a new high at 1.8 million dollars a minute! Twenty-two hot wars, with at least 2.2 million casualties, were fought in 1987​—more wars than in any previous year in recorded history!a The war between Iran and Iraq, ranked as the bloodiest and most resource-consuming local war in recorded history, for years soaked up arms from all over the world.

While there is much talk of peace, global military expenditures reached about a trillion dollars. Actually, the world spends nearly three thousand times as much on military forces as on peacekeeping efforts!

Many nations stand behind the global arms-bazaar counter. The two superpowers are the world’s leading arms sellers. France, Britain, West Germany, and Italy are Western Europe’s largest arms dealers. Greece, Spain, and Austria have recently joined them.

Even neutral nations sell arms and military technology. Sweden, esteemed as the origin of the Nobel Prize for Peace, has two of the world’s most advanced arms companies, manufacturing jet fighters, artillery, and explosives for export. Switzerland, pledged to the Red Cross and humanitarian efforts, is also involved in the international arms business. To add to this intense competition, an increasing number of Third World countries are also becoming arms producers.

Cutthroat Competition

All merchants want to convince people through advertising that their products (whether they are cars, shavers, or brooms) are the best. Likewise, in lavish, full-color trade journals, arms merchants advertise their deadly products as having proved lethality.

How would you react if you read an ad in the morning newspaper saying: “Looking for a killer missile? RBS 70 packs a highly effective warhead”? Or another, offering you a lightweight antitank weapon, saying: “A hit​—and a certain kill! . . . Nothing can stop it”?

Such ads would upset people if published in ordinary papers. But arms-trade journals are studded with them. Nowhere is it mentioned, however, that the adversary is offered the same weapons, just as deadly, just as accurate, just as technically full-fledged. Nowhere is it suggested how these weapons will be used, how civilians​—the final “consumers”—​will be affected by these terrible arms.

Shady Business

While most arms transactions are made between governments, the business is shady. A private report says: “A vast commercial network operates clandestinely as well as through approved channels. Governments pursue their own interests, often secretly.”

Although several weapon-producing states have strict rules regulating military exports to warring countries, their arms continue to find their way to the battlefields. A report from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute explains why: “There are no waterproof bulkheads between the legal, ‛white’ arms business and the ‛gray’ and ‛black’ arms transactions. No state selling arms seems to be able fully to control how, against whom, or by whom these weapons will be used.” A Newsweek report on the arms trade forecasts: “Restraints on arms sales are likely to collapse as more countries enter the competition for weapons sales.”

In the shadow of this international arms trade between governments, an army of private salesmen operate all over the world. They maintain contacts in high political and military circles. Among these are salesmen employed by the big arms industries, agents (middlemen) who never touch the arms, smugglers who trade drugs for arms, and small-scale wanglers.

In their rush for money, some arms companies seem to stop at nothing. The following list shows some of the intrigues they have been accused of, according to Anthony Sampson, an investigator of the arms trade:

1. Fomenting war-scares and persuading their own countries to adopt warlike policies and increase armaments.

2. Large-scale bribing of government officials.

3. Spreading false reports on military programs in various countries to stimulate armament expenditure.

4. Influencing public opinion through control of mass media.

5. Playing off one country against another.

6. Organizing international trusts in order to increase arms prices.

Yet, the armament business is flourishing more than ever. And no one seems to be able to close down this mighty arms bazaar. The two biggest international peace organizations ever formed in history, the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations, have not been able to convince even one of their member nations to ‘beat its swords into plowshares.’ The arms business has become so politically and economically intertwined with world affairs that many people feel that it is beyond human power to stop it. Then, is there any power strong enough to do it?

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 8]

Even neutral nations sell arms and military technology

[Pictures on page 7]

Arms merchants advertise their deadly products in lavish, full-color trade journals