Arms industry: do you support it?

Freddy Vanson, Amnesty International Campaigns officer at the University of York shares with the Yorker his knowledge and views on the arms trade.

"The arms industry is one of the biggest global industries: the world spends some $1,000 billion annually on the military. Military expenditure outstrips nearly every other sector of business, more than anything we spend on public services and welfare institutions. In more recent years, annual sales of arms have risen to around $50-60 billion. War is big business. The death of millions is another profitable market.

The cost to life, the many murdered with these arms, is rarely factored in the cost of production. Only money matters in trade deals between arms companies and any militia with enough cash to buy expensive arms.

However, disarmament is still a touchy subject. At the heart of the arms trade is a dichotomy; the real story is of a battle between security and freedom.

Some people argue that possessing arms is necessary for security purposes. ‘Terrorist attacks’ and ‘insurgents’ urge the world, mainly America and the UK, to have a strong global ‘defence’ industry and an expensive arsenal of dangerous military submarines, apache helicopters and atomic weapons. “The true cost of replacing and operating the Trident nuclear missile system would be at least £76bn,” the Guardian states.

The people claiming that we need to spend millions of pounds on weapons for ‘national security’ reasons are often the same people rewarded by business and military elites.

These same people claim that the world would be a safer place if everyone had a firearm; that peace and equality can only come from more tanks, bombs and nuclear weapons. And yet why will the people making most of the blood money rarely fight on the front line?

Away from the glossy lies of commercial media outlets, defence industry really means attack industry.

The invasion of Iraq and the occupation of Palestine have earned large companies like BAE Systems huge sums of money from arms sales to American, British and Israeli forces. Not to mention all the various armed services of other corrupt governments. The U.K is the 4th largest arms supplier in the world with sales in arms close to $27 billion (2008), mostly to developing nations.

Student tuition fees also contribute to the arms trade. The University of York is the 3rd biggest investor in the arms trade and has shares worth close to a million in BAE Systems: the 4th largest arms manufacturer in the world. When it is our money being invested in an arms industry at a cost to life - human rights abuses, military oppression, damage to the environment and the general despotism of whole communities – we have to do something to change this.

Around the world one in five people still live on less than £1 a day. And while a few people, hiding in safety, make billions of pounds from arms sales, the vast majority of people are left for dead or live in abject poverty, surrounded by a world of war and violence. It’s also intriguing how little we hear or read about acts of ‘state terrorism’, the wars waged for commercial ventures. The best-paid government lobbyists and military analysts are behind the commercial propaganda machine powering a global industry of war.

The arms trade perpetuates cycles of war to make ever-greater profits; this is the ugly truth we choose to ignore. The ‘defence industry’ is a complete hoax, a trick to make us believe we need to waste vast amounts of public money on weapons, a scam to have us believe we need weapons of mass destruction for our own security.

It is no less than a war economy we’ve created, profiteering from the deaths of innocent people in acts of ‘state terrorism’ and preventable wars. Politicians and businessmen use the threat of ‘terrorism’ and the need for ‘national security’ as cloak for invading countries in pursuit of land, oil and other profitable resources.

It appears that large corporations don’t particularly care who their clients are, if they pay the price. Arms companies use local antagonisms and global rivalries and sell to both sides of the map to maximise profit. Not to mention all the corruption that goes with it, illegal arms deals, bribery and government payoffs.

With the increased volume and effectiveness of arms come more military invasions, occupations and violent killings; more guns, more shootings, more unnecessary deaths. The decimation of whole populations can take place with little thought and difficulty.

Without the many millions of arms around the globe, disproportionately sold to the side with more wealth and power, mass genocide would not happen on the same scale. (The massacre of many thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese women and children in Beirut between 1982-87 is just one such case.)

Thus, the mass-genocide in Gaza today could not happen without a well-equipped Israeli military, supported by British and U.S governments selling tonnes of bombs and millions of bullets (as a gun is pretty useless without ammunition).

Surely more weapons and ammunition in global circulation is not the answer to ‘terrorism’, but will only increase the chances of armed violence. To solve the problem of ‘terrorism’ we need to plough money, time and dedication into public services and community development projects, not just nationally but globally.

Instead of spending on war, we should spend on peace. Surely free education for all children, better health services and greater employment opportunities, good working conditions and fair pay, a more equal distribution of wealth, stopping racism and fascism, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, upholding civil liberties and human rights through democratic judicial structures, inclusion of all people in society no matter ethnicity, class, colour, sexuality or gender through participation in the political system, all seem more reasonable suggestions to make when attempting to tackle inequality and injustice, and could be set into motion as social policy, instead of in an arms industry and a foreign policy of war.

Most people seek freedom from military oppression and tyrannical leaders. Many of the world’s poor have struggled for generations to be free from the chains of discrimination, exploitation, and violence, but have been oppressed at every turn by the military invasions of imperialist empires seeking to gain the riches of the land. Arms companies have capitalised on this, selling cheap weapons to desperately poor communities having to arm themselves against imperial invaders.

The growth of the arms industry will only result in larger numbers of mass-murder victims and many more bloody wars over territory and resources; hence disarmament is the only way forward. A symbolic act that would say to the world we don’t want to invest in an immoral industry of armed warfare. Instead of investing in the arms industry we should be investing in sustainable development programmes trying to combat the problems of poverty, resource depletion, water shortages and energy crisis’s - to name a few. We must stop fighting amongst each other and work together, stand shoulder to shoulder in an act of solidarity to fight against social injustice and environmental devastation.

So please look out for Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) events taking place on campus in the next few months, and support the Disarm campaign to stop university investments in the arms industry: divert investment towards positive and constructive causes."

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