Arms Trade

The international arms trade is unique because it is a sector of trade that receives a larger amount of attention than its size deserves from an economic perspective. The reason for this attention is obvious: the international arms trade has the potential to fuel interstate conflict, intrastate conflict, and, to a lesser extent, enables repressive policies within states. While there is no overarching theory of interstate arms transfers, scholars generally agree on the base motivations of states to engage in arms transfers. The motivation to import revolves around domestic and international security concerns—no matter whether they are perceived or real. The motivation to export is related to strategic, political, and/or economic interests. Strategic transfers often occur to alliance members, political transfers go to similar states or where an exporter is attempting to gain influence over the foreign and/or domestic policy goals of the importer, and economic transfers are carried out for the benefits that occur for the industry and for the state exporting the arms. Of particular concern to some scholars is the shift in the motives after the end of the Cold War as the seller’s market shifted to a buyer’s market. An issue within the literature is that scholars from different disciplines often account for other fields only in a cursory manner; for example, economic research accounting for politics and strategy by mentioning regime type and alliances while political scientists may look only at gross domestic product (GDP) and trade to account for the economics. In specific regards to conflict and war, the linkages with the arms trade is studied extensively, yet there is not, once again, an overarching theory of the causal processes. One specific area where a significant amount of research exists on the linkages of arms production and transfer with war is that of arms races. However, arms races are the extreme outcome of what Barry Buzan and Eric Herring refer to as the “arms dynamic” in The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (see Buzan and Herring 1998, cited under General Overviews). The focus is not on arms races here as the subject is covered in the Oxford Bibliographies article in International Relations Arms Races.