Arms Control and Defense Postures in the 1980s by Richard Burt

Author:Richard Burt [Burt, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429724398
Google: 5iuNDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 44598082
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Standards for Framing the Problem

There is no consensus on these linkages or differentiations. Staunch opponents see arms sales in the Third World as serving few interests beyond greed. Staunch proponents see sales as automatic buttresses to containment or valuable sources of political leverage. The problem here, as in the preceding question of instability, is a fundamental difference in assumptions about international relations, which cannot easily be bridged by empiricism. Opponents of arms transfers usually identify with the idealist tradition or theory which runs from Kant's Perpetual Peace to the current academic schools of thought emphasizing "world order," "transnational" relations, and the "declining utility of force" engendered by economic interdependence. Proponents of the idealist tradition see war as unnatural and unnecessary, more often provoked by artificial catalysts than intractable conflicts of genuine interests.11 Those on the other side identify with the Realpolitik tradition, advanced from Thucydides to Morgenthau, that views conflict as unfortunate but inevitable and national self-assertion as the enduring engine of world politics; order emerges from the balance of power, it cannot replace it. These basic differences in orientation account for most of the confusion about whether Third World military development can or should be avoided, and how it relates to superpower defense concerns. And such confusion must be resolved before stipulating criteria for judging the feasibility or danger of arms trade control.

Aggregate statistics about worldwide arms transfers are meaningless, as is the concept of a "general" arms race as opposed to specific disagreements between states about what their relative capabilities should be.12 Absolute standards, even in regard to specific cases—about the amount or cost of arms—do not themselves indicate how transfers will affect regional security. The relevant criterion for sufficiency or excess is the net assessment of relative threat and the ratio between the client's power and interests. Small transfers may be devastating or large ones inadequate, depending on the power of the opponent. In 1975 the Soviet Union sent few arms to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in Angola, but they had a major impact on the outcome of the civil war.13 Cheap, precision-guided munitions can also be effective against high-value tanks and aircraft, so a declining amount of funds spent on arms imports could coincide with absolute and relative increases in a country's military power.14 The irrelevance of the global standard is no greater than the irrelevance of an undiscriminatory regional standard.

Blanket permissiveness or blanket restraint in sales to a region is sometimes justified as a "fair" or "equitable" policy. That is so only if suppliers are politically disinterested in the outcomes of regional conflict. And those are cases in which the suppliers' own defense planning concerns are no problem. Equitable provision or denial of supplies can produce inequitable outcomes because it only makes the other unequal variables determinative. Equitable purchases only reify the preexisting balance of military power, economic resources, and intensity of concern. Any simple categorical guidelines for arms transfers in general must include a stipulation "all else being equal," and all else is rarely equal.

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