The (State) Hypocrisy of the Arms Industry
Over the course of the last decade, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has descended into what one might characterize as tense and chaotic instability. Religious fanaticism, competition between regional powers, persistent foreign intervention, the unequal distribution of wealth among the oil states, and even the process of development, can all, among many others, be thought of as part of the fragmented and contested answer to the question of why these regions are in such a state.
However, what can certainly be considered a tangible and stimulating cause of the instability in MENA states is the unregulated trade of conventional weapons. The demand for weapons from MENA nations has doubled, with overwhelming data such as the 245% surge of arms imports in Qatar. Although the main supplier to the MENA region continues to be the West, there is global competition to enter this exceedingly lucrative industry. In terms of a specific example, after the Saudi war on Yemen, British weapons exports to Riyadh yielded a profit of £6 billion, causing a public dispute over the moral consequences of such trade. The CEO of War Child UK, Rob Williams, scathingly criticized these sales, declaring that it was “morally repugnant that the UK government is allowing companies to make killer profits from the deaths of innocent children.”
Although there is a polemic debate over the role of Western nations on their connection to the cause of these conflicts, it is inarguable and final that they are providing the fuel for their escalation and intensification, establishing the incredibly deadly nature of the hostilities.
The international community has made past attempts, granting hollow in implementation, to regulate the arms trade. The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), approved in 2014, deals with the trade of conventional weapons, and compels nation-states to effectively regulate the arms flow within their borders, and to report their imports and exports. A most notable signatory that has failed to ratify the ATT is the United States of America, also known as the biggest arms exporter in the world, accounting for one-third of all global exports.
It is imperative to understand the devastating detrimental effect caused by the major players in the global arms trade. The USA and majority of states in the MENA region, have purposefully refused to implement the treaty.
In 2016, the USA sold $217.4 billion worth of arms to the one hundred countries in the world, and the biggest customers originated from the Middle East: 13% went to Saudi Arabia, 8.7% to the United Arab Emirates, and 6.3% was sold to Turkey. Due to their failure to comply with the ATT, the nature of the sales of these weapons inherently means that there will be little transparency, and the eventual use of these weapons once purchased will be completely unknown (a terrifying fact).
The pressing issue of the final destination of these arms once they move past the first acquisition must be analyzed. Either the arms are used for state-sponsored activities that result in deaths of civilians, the arms are lost (in the same manner that the US army “lost track” of $1 billion worth of weapons), or they are sold directly to nefarious groups. For instance, in 2015, Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, approved monetary funds of around $500 million to train and arm “moderate groups” in Syria under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Actually, these resources were used to support Sunni groups that assimilated Islamic extremism, albeit to differing degrees. The NDAA funded the al-Nusra Front, a Salafist jihadist organization endorsed by Al Qaeda, which is unambiguously against the virtues of the American government, regardless of the profits that such a sale would guarantee the state.
The Western-sponsored and -subsidized proliferation of weapons within the MENA region has reached unthinkable heights, cementing the grave danger that this new trend represents. While instability and friction might be present in the region regardless of this ongoing business, the vast influx of conventional weapons militarizes the Middle East to an unprecedented extent. Furthermore, it also means that all aggression is fundamentally incredibly more deadly and injurious, with distressing outcomes. The states exporting arms to the region must reevaluate the consequences of these sales, and realize how absolutely immoral it is to fund these conflicts that are having such ruinous effects on civilian populations, without even mentioning the numerous, alleged, human rights abuses.
This is not a question of economics or profits, it’s a question of enabling. And by continuing to look the other way and failing to uphold their transactions to the same moral policy they advocate to the rest of the world, these Western nations severely and irreversibly damage their reputation, credibility, morality, and authority.
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