The arms trade and the military-​industrial complex: a UK perspective

The UK has rated con­sist­ently as the fifth largest arms exporter in the world, trail­ing behind the USA, Rus­sia, Ger­many and France (in that order) since at the very least the year 2000[1]. Those exports notori­ously and under­stand­ably caused caco­phony when it was revealed that the UK was trans­fer­ring arms to repress­ive Middle East­ern and North African regimes. 158 arms export licenses were con­sequently revoked as a res­ult of the Arab Spring, with the Com­mit­tees on Arms Export Con­trols (CAEC)[2] express­ing, in its “Scru­tiny of Arms Export” report of 2012, dis­sat­is­fac­tion at the UK Government’s judg­ment for hav­ing approved those licenses to “author­it­arian regimes” in the first place”[3]. Des­pite those 158 arms export licence revoc­a­tions since Janu­ary 2011, from coun­tries inclus­ive of Libya, Bahrain, Tunisia, and Egypt, the Gov­ern­ment still main­tains an aston­ish­ingly hypo­crit­ical, profit-​concerned stance by includ­ing, inter alia, Saudi Ara­bia and Libya in its list of Pri­or­ity Mar­kets[4], with the For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office sim­ul­tan­eously provid­ing that those coun­tries are “Coun­tries of Con­cern”[5], i.e. coun­tries that could be broadly defined as hav­ing a his­tory of human rights abuses and/​or internal con­flict and insec­ur­ity. License revoc­a­tions, although demon­strat­ive of a pos­it­ive effort to more effect­ively con­trol arms exports, only solve half of the prob­lem, par­tic­u­larly when arms have already been trans­ferred: you can recall a licence, but you can­not recall equip­ment. License sus­pen­sion mech­an­isms[6] were fur­ther intro­duced to pre­vent the poten­tial of fur­ther revoc­a­tions being neces­sary, but sus­pen­sion mech­an­isms still do not fully account for a list of Pri­or­ity Mar­kets that is inclus­ive of coun­tries with a his­tory of oppres­sion and human rights abuses.

The CAEC also con­demned the Government’s repeated and mis­lead­ing use of the phrase “crowd con­trol goods” in its 2010 Annual Report on Stra­tegic Export Con­trols[7], given that the phrase is com­monly asso­ci­ated with non-​lethal equip­ment; In fact, “crowd con­trol goods” encom­pass equip­ment such as, for example, shot­guns, semi-​automatic pis­tols, assault rifles, sub­ma­chine guns, and armoured fight­ing vehicles. The con­dem­na­tion was con­sequently ignored by Vince Cable and Wil­liam Hague in their Writ­ten Min­is­terial State­ments[8] [9] in riposte to the CAEC report, in which they both con­tin­ued to use the term, and fur­ther, did not qual­ify its use as tem­por­ary ter­min­o­logy that neces­sit­ated review and rad­ical change. The con­tin­ued util­iz­a­tion of such lan­guage alludes to the employ­ment of an insens­it­ive dis­curs­ive strategy aimed at down­play­ing the harsh blow of the real­ity that the UK Gov­ern­ment is allow­ing the export of lethal weapons to regimes not averse to using them against their own people, such as in Syria[10].

His­tor­ic­ally and in present times, Bri­tain in par­tic­u­lar runs one of the most suc­cess­ful military-​industrial com­plexes in the world, and is respons­ible for the intro­duc­tion of mech­an­ized war­fare with its devel­op­ment of the tank (Leonardo da Vinci had drawn sketches of large, mon­strous war machines as early as the 15^th cen­tury[11]) , which was first oper­a­tional dur­ing World War I on 15 Septem­ber 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, and was designed to help over­come the dead­lock that trench war­fare had caused along the West­ern Front. Going back fur­ther in time, if one is to take the devel­op­ments in metal­lur­gical tech­no­logy into account (with metal­lurgy being fun­da­mental to indus­trial advance­ment in the 19^th cen­tury, as metal­lurgy was cent­ral to the devel­op­ment of machinery, chem­ic­als, and trans­port equip­ment), Bri­tain led the way, ahead of France, Ger­many and the US. Indeed, this led to a revolu­tion in Brit­ish (and French) naval arma­ments in the 1860’s and 70’s that would have likely led to a swift defeat of US naval powers[12].

In the 21^st cen­tury, Bri­tain is home to the world’s second largest arms com­pany by arms-​related rev­enue, BAE Sys­tems, with, for example, $32.667 bil­lion accrued in 2008[13] and $32.88 bil­lion accrued in 2010[14]. With BAE Sys­tems, the military-​industrial complex’s reach into the realm of the polit­ical (and the judi­cial) seemed to reach its astound­ing meridian when alleg­a­tions of the com­pany main­tain­ing a £60 mil­lion Saudi “slush fund” dur­ing the al-​Yamamah arms deal led to an invest­ig­a­tion by the Ser­i­ous Fraud Office, which was later dropped. The decision to drop the invest­ig­a­tion was later ruled as “law­ful” by the House of Lords[15] (now known as the Supreme Court of the United King­dom). Cases of major bribery and cor­rup­tion are tol­er­able, it seems, when invest­ig­at­ing them could mean dam­aging inter­na­tional rela­tions, threaten national secur­ity, and jeop­ard­ize Brit­ish multi-​billion pound com­mer­cial rela­tions with above-​mentioned “Coun­tries of Con­cern” with author­it­arian regimes.

In the 21^st cen­tury, the military-​industrial com­plex is pro­gress­ing almost entirely unob­struc­ted to per­vade all aspects of social life, with the Anglo-​Danish con­glom­er­ate G4S, for example, hav­ing col­on­ized large parts of our every­day exist­ence. G4S, provides, amongst other things, ATM troubleshoot­ing, cash deliv­er­ies and cash col­lec­tions, pro­cesses a third of the UK’s cash require­ments, runs elec­tric and gas meter­ing ser­vices, runs privat­ized pris­ons (and is fur­ther expand­ing its already-​existing pres­ence in the sphere of poli­cing), runs “Secure Train­ing Centres” for chil­dren in between the ages of 12 and 17 who have been sen­tenced to peri­ods of deten­tion, assists in run­ning the “Wel­fare to Work” pro­grammes for the Depart­ment of Work and Pen­sions to help the unem­ployed back into work, has provided secur­ity for the Lon­don 2012 Olympics (and done dis­astrously), and provides mil­it­ary train­ing, equip­ment and ser­vices in con­flicts abroad; the 21^st  cen­tury neo-​liberal military-​industrial com­plex, it seems, has suc­cess­fully per­meated even our civil­ian life.

Linda Roland Danil is a Doc­toral Can­did­ate, Teach­ing Assist­ant, and Researcher at the Uni­ver­sity of Leeds, UK.

[1] Stock­holm Inter­na­tional Peace Research Insti­tute [Online], Avail­able: http://​arm​strade​.sipri​.org/​a​r​m​s​t​r​a​d​e​/​p​a​g​e​/​t​o​p​l​i​s​t​.​php [22 July 2012].

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