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From International Socialism, No.79, June 1975, p.40.
Transcribed & marked up by by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Arms Trade with the Third World
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Penguin, £1.00
THIS IS a revised and updated (to 1972) version of SIPRI’s 1971 study of weapons trading by the USSR, USA, UK, China and France. Many of the more detailed tables of the original publication have been omitted and, at a pound, the book is expensive. That said, why read it now? The only reason; the book provides a detailed and extensive documentation of international cynicism on a vast and lethal scale. For while the super powers talk of the need for international détente, they promote conflict between the third world nations; pious words about the need for economic aid are coupled with massive scales of economically useless military hardware. The GNP of the developing countries has grown at an annual rate of 5 per cent; their military expenditures at a rate of 7 per cent and their imports of major weapons systems at a rate of 8 per cent. What kind of a recipe is this for ‘development’? – or for peace? Do I hear a comrade say that we are revolutionaries, not pacifists, and that we should not lump together US imperialism and the fraternal assistance given by the Soviet Union to the liberation struggles all over the world? Indeed we should not, and the gentlemen from SIPRI enable us to distinguish the destination of Soviet major weapon exports. Over the period 1950 to 1972, 44.5 per cent of USSR major weapons exports went to the Middle East, and 17.9 per cent to the Indian sub-continent (areas, where the liberation struggles are notorious only for the extent to which they have been crushed by governments friendly to the USSR). To Vietnam and the rest of the far east went 28.5 per cent of arms exports – just over a quarter. North Africa received 2.8 per cent, Latin America 4.8 per cent, and sub-Saharan Africa (including the black liberation movements) just 1.6 per cent. Too bad the freedom fighters are a bit short on oil-wells. So this SIPRI book is a useful reference book (though now a little out of date: what has happened to the weapons trade now that the international recession is under way?); but it won’t tell revolutionaries a great deal they didn’t already believe. Read it if you want to be able to back your prejudices up with figures.
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Last updated on 16.2.2008