Trading in Death: Weapons, Warfare and The Modern Arms Race by James Adams

Author:James Adams [Adams, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2017-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

15

Out of the Ashes – A New Contender

Before the Iran-Iraq war began, political and military theorists had often argued that a conflagration between two oil producing countries in the Middle East could mark the beginning of World War Three. A reduction in oil output would lead to huge price rises while the superpowers, anxious to secure their own energy sources and looking for power and influence in the region, would inevitably get involved. In fact, the war came at a time when the industrial nations were conserving energy after the shock of the oil price rises in the mid-1970s. So, the price of oil actually fell and the international markets barely seemed to notice the decline in output from the two protagonists.

It had also been expected that a war between two such well-armed nations using some of the most sophisticated equipment available in the world today would demonstrate for the first time the chilling effects of modern weapons. In fact, the reverse was the case. This was not a fast war with both sides employing air power, tanks and artillery to produce combined arms assaults and flexible maneuver warfare. Instead, neither side used its technological capabilities to the full.

The Iranian air capability was limited from the early days of the war by a lack of equipment but the Iraqis had no such difficulties and could have used their vastly superior air power to control the skies and thus control the war. For reasons that remain unexplained, Saddam Hussein refused to commit his air force to the conflict, a strategic error that cost his nation dearly in cash and lives.

Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union showed any inclination to get involved in the war. It is true that the US, which before the war had branded Iraq as pro-Soviet and a nation supporting terrorism, became closer to the Hussein regime. In 1982, the US removed Iraq from the list of those countries which supported terrorism and in 1984 full diplomatic relations were restored. This shift in Iraqi loyalties away from the Soviet Union was a major coup for the US. The Soviet Union, for its part, continued to talk to both sides but did little to determine the course of the war.

The absence of heightened world tension because of the war in part accounted for the lack of urgency with which the superpowers and other bodies such as the United Nations looked for a solution. Everyone seemed almost content to let both sides go on killing each other just so long as the war did not spill over into other countries.

This parochial view has had an extraordinary effect on the world arms market. The Iran-Iraq war was such an enormous consumer of arms that it brought to the market new nations that were able to develop indigenous arms industries on the back of the conflict. Countries such as Brazil, North Korea and South Africa, pygmies in the international arms business at the start of the war, were among the giants by the end.

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