Arms Diffusion

The Spread of Military Innovations in the International System

THomas W. Zarzecki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317794295
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

Weapons proliferation is one of the most pressing global concerns following the end of the Cold War. Despite the absence of an overarching superpower conflict, armaments and related technologies have continued to spread throughout the international system. This has been particularly true in areas like East Asia and the Middle East, where the traditional two party arms races are not readily apparent. This text addresses these concerns and shortcomings using data on fourteen specific military technological innovations that diffused throughout the international system from 1960 to 1997.

Chapter 1
The Global Diffusion of Arms

Introduction

THE GLOBAL SPREAD OF ADVANCED MILITARY ARMAMENTS CAN BE USEFULLY characterized as a diffusion process, defined as the communication of innovations among the units of a social system over time. But what causes innovations in military technology to diffuse across the international system? The answer to this seemingly basic question is critically important to any understanding of the spread of arms. Despite this, it is rarely posed or addressed in so general and direct a manner. Scholars and policy analysts have written volumes of specific case studies on arms exporters, arms importers, and categories of military technologies. These studies usually contain numerous implicit and explicit explanations of why nations acquire armaments. Many descriptive and prescriptive overviews of the arms trade also attempt to explain the rationale behind arms transfers. However, there have been few if any empirical studies which attempt to systematically measure the rate of the spread of specific arms technologies across the international system as a whole. Fewer still then use this data to test theoretical causal hypotheses. This project attempts to fill this gap in our understanding of the arms proliferation phenomenon.

This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part centers on the significance of the global spread of arms in the post-Cold War era. The changed global strategic environment has clearly placed arms proliferation at the center of current security concerns. I discuss the key factors which have lent it this newfound prominence. The second part details the views of arms spread throughout the Cold War period. I explain how these perspectives evolved over time to accommodate changing global circumstances. The third part outlines how the idea of arms diffusion provides a new framework for analyzing the spread of arms in the post-Cold War era. Arms diffusion is conceived of as a singular global process. This allows it to be tracked, measured, and analyzed in a systematic fashion. A concluding segment outlines the chapters that follow.

The Importance of the Spread of Arms

Many policy-makers now publically rank the global spread of armaments as one of, if not the most, critical global security issues of the post-Cold War era. U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton (1992, 40) has argued that “the greatest security danger of the 1990s is weapons proliferation.” Shortly after taking office, the Clinton Administration promised an “enormous priority placed on the issue of counter-proliferation” (Starr 1993a). And in the view of the Pentagon, “the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons represents a threat nearly as big as the specter of global conflict between Moscow and Washington during the cold war” (Weiner 1996).

These views are not restricted to U.S., or even Western, decision-makers. Sergei Kortunov, a Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, has described weapons proliferation as “the major challenge of the 1990s” (Kortunov 1994a). In 1993, then-Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov claimed that “tracking international proliferation” was a “priority task” of the Russia Foreign Intelligence Service (Starr 1993b). According to Masahiko Hosokawa, a senior official in Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Japan considers it “especially important” to restrict arms proliferation in the East Asian region. As a result, Japan planned for the first time to undertake a major regional security initiative to put an export control regime in place in the 1990s (Ebata 1993). Finally, no less multinational a body than the United Nations Security Council issued a congruent statement at the end of its January 1992 summit. It read that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was “a threat to international peace and security (codewords for justifying the use of force), and committed Įmember states] to concerted follow-up actions to strengthen non-proliferation approaches” (Roberts 1993, 139).

Contemporary scholarly assessments echo these sentiments. Many further claim that such attention is warranted by the increasingly rapid spread of arms. Keller and Nolan (1998, 120) exemplify this argument in writing that:

Military industry and technology is spreading around the globe at an accelerating rate… the scale, sophistication, and destructive capability of military technology entering the international marketplace are also increasing dramatically.

Undoubtedly, warnings of ever more rapidly spreading weapons have always characterized scholarly work on the arms trade and proliferation. However, they are particularly common in the current wave of literature. Molander and Wilson (1995, 3), while outlining a number of possible nuclear proliferation scenarios, chose to emphasize “the prospect of nuclear chaos” in the title of a recent work. Shukman (1996, 235) claims that a new wave of advanced conventional weapons is “joining the arsenals of a growing number of countries.” Roberts (1993, 145) claims that newly-developed weapons are being exported much sooner than ever before, thus leading to more rapid proliferation. Klare (1994, 145) predicts that the arms trade is “on the verge of a new expansionary cycle.” Finally, a number of authors (Keller 1995, Moodie 1995, Bitzinger 1994) have emphasized the increasing internationalization of arms production technologies. They argue that the growth of international arms projects and the spread of production technologies are making proliferation essentially uncontrollable by national governments.

Clearly, such concern over global weapons proliferation is not new. But from its earliest days, when attention was focused almost exclusively on the spread of nuclear arms, the field of proliferation studies always existed in the shadow of more pressing security concerns. The new centrality of proliferation to both scholars and policy-makers thus marks something of a watershed in the development of the issue area. How can this newfound significance be explained?

Three critical, interrelated changes in the global strategic environment of the 1990s have led to this heightened status. First, the immediate threat of war between the superpowers has been eliminated. Second, the Soviet collapse has spawned new proliferation fears. Finally, Operation Desert Storm and its aftermath have led to renewed appreciation of the possible consequences of the global spread of arms. When combined, these three factors served to raise proliferation to the central position it now occupies in the minds of many observers. The impact of each is detailed below.

The End of Superpower Rivalry. The end of the Cold War enhanced the awareness of arms proliferation as a security issue in two important ways. First, in the minds of scholars and policy-makers alike, the Cold War’s conclusion removed the ongoing threat of a superpower conflict as the preeminent concern. After World War II, the possibility of a war involving nuclear weapons between the U.S. and USSR tended to drown out most other security fears. Representing as it did both an immediate and overwhelming threat to all of human life, the superpower nuclear balance was also the crux of strategic planning and arms control efforts. With the likelihood of that event largely eliminated, other, previously less encompassing and immediate threats had a chance to move to the forefront of concern (Roberts 1995, 247; Lockwood 1993, 23). Weapons proliferation thus ranked much higher on the scale of global threats after the end of the Cold War than before, even though wide acknowledgment of the phenomenon predated the Soviet collapse.¹

A second, related issue involved the scope of conflict in the new global geostrategic landscape. Immediately after the Cold War’s end, some observers predicted that the “end of history” had been reached. They expected that the failure of communism as a socio-political and economic system would lead to a more tranquil international environment dominated by the norms of liberal, capitalist democracy (Fukuyama 1989). But others feared that the world would witness a renewed scramble for power (Mearsheimer 1990, Gati 1992). To these thinkers, the Cold War period appeared in retrospect to be a time of relative global stability. Freed from the constraints of their respective blocs by the Cold War’s end, the divergent goals and interests of various states and other international actors could now breed a “new world disorder.”² Historical ethnic, national, and religious differences seemed ready to explode in many regions. The resultant conflicts, it was hypothesized, could spark an increased demand for arms and encourage the proliferation of destabilizing types and amounts of military hardware. From this viewpoint, even if arms proliferation had long been a feature of the international system, systemic changes during the late 1980s and early 1990s were only going to make the problem worse.

The Impact of the Soviet Collapse. A second factor which enhanced proliferation’s status as a security threat was the expected direct effect of the Soviet collapse itself. From the early 1990s, many observers expressed fears that ex-Soviet arms would flood the international system, fueling the conflicts mentioned above. Two sources of such proliferation were envisioned. Analysts warned of the immediate diffusion of existing weapons held in the arsenals of the rapidly disintegrating Soviet armed forces throughout the FSU. Over the longer term, they feared a threat from unrestricted Russian exports of newly-constructed arms incorporating cutting-edge technologies.³

The earliest worries about proliferation after the Soviet collapse focused on the fate of the existing Soviet arsenal under emerging conditions of lawlessness. The Soviet Union had been perhaps the most heavily armed state on earth. Conventional arms were forward deployed and stockpiled throughout the former republics. Research and production facilities for nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons and ballistic missiles were similarly widespread. Weapons designers at these facilities often went unpaid for months and were vulnerable to recruitment by foreign governments (Goldanskii 1993). In such a chaotic situation, it took little imagination to envision scenarios under which this technology could fall into the “wrong hands” and proliferate “among local warlords, criminals, and terrorists” (Galeotti 1992, Fulghum 1992; Allsion et al. 1996). Rumors of the availability of advanced weapons at “fire sale” prices only fueled these concerns (Friedman 1992b, Nelson 1993).

As the Soviet break-up appeared to be progressing in a less chaotic fashion than initially feared, a second strain of thinking began to emerge. The Russian Republic, inheritor of the most complete portion of the Soviet-era military-industrial complex, was expected to become a dangerously uninhibited arms exporter (Friedman 1992a, Zaloga 1992, Smart 1992, Covault and Rybak 1993). Russian government and arms industry officials predicted an economic windfall from arms sales under the new laissez-faire export policy (Kortunov 1994b). U.S. intelligence agencies agreed, saying that economic hardship conditions in arms factories would force Russia to:

…offer more advanced systems…at lower prices or in barter deals… [and while] Russian officials have repeatedly said they would carefully control such sales and exercise discretion in choosing clients, dire conditions could encourage individual plants to attempt unauthorized sales (Greenhouse 1992).

This sparked predictions that “dangerous new technologies will spread as Russian factories win more freedom to seek customers” throughout the world (Erlanger 1993, “Russia’s Swords” 1993). Stories abounded of Russia using arms sales profits to help convert into a free market economy. Many analysts were “convinced arms sales [were] being made in a reckless manner…[and that] Russia could be subject to heavy economic pressure in the form of curtailed transactions with the West and lost investments” (“Iran Eyes” 1992). Reports of massive arms orders by various buyers, particularly Iran and China, seemed to substantiate these claims.⁴

Operation Desert Storm. Finally, the impression that the waning of the Cold War had dramatically altered the global strategic environment was unmistakably driven home by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent international response. Operation Desert Storm and its aftermath placed the significance of arms proliferation on the center stage of world attention in a manner that the Soviet collapse by itself would never have been able to accomplish. Several aspects of the Gulf War lent it this importance.

First, Saddam Hussein’s attempt to gain control over Middle Eastern oil supplies forced the realization that, rhetoric of a “new world order” governed by international legal norms aside, the utility of military force in the international system had not ended along with the Cold War. Both Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the U.S.-led Coalition’s subsequent response boldly underlined this fact. The Gulf War served to mute much prior speculation about the replacement of traditional military threats by new security problems like environmental degradation, refugee movements, and other non-military phenomenon.⁵ And if military force was still relevant after the Cold War, then the weapons possessed by states engaged in armed conflicts would also obviously continue to matter. By conducting an openly military invasion of Kuwait that generated a clearly military response from the Coalition allies, Iraq thus demonstrated that the impact of the global spread of weapons was an issue of continuing importance.

Second, the arsenal that Iraq had amassed was large and in some ways quite sophisticated. Undoubtedly, Iraq’s military did perform poorly in the war. Desert Storm was indeed a showcase for the U.S. high-technology approach to conventional warfare. On the other hand, pre-war assessments stressed the scope of Iraq’s conventional capabilities. These included its vast armor and infantry forces, its dense national air defense system, and its stocks of Silkworm and Exocet anti-ship missiles (Timmerman 1991).⁶ And it did take six weeks of intensive, uninterrupted Coalition bombing to destroy just half of this fielded military equipment. The war also shed light on Iraq’s NBC weapons projects and force of modified Scud ballistic missiles. Postwar United Nations inspections provided detailed descriptions of the extent of Iraqi success in creating and weaponizing chemical and biological agents like VX and anthrax (Hewish and Lok 1998). Iraq’s ballistic missile attacks on Israel also raised the specter of an Israeli nuclear response. As Keller and Nolan (1998, 117) point out, “the idea that a small, semi-industrialized country like Iraq could acquire such a destructive arsenal was a wake-up call for some policy-makers.” This aspect of Desert Storm also dramatically underscored the fact that weapons proliferation, conventional and non-conventional, was both a reality and a potential threat to global security.

Finally, the war clearly demonstrated how quickly threats to regional and global stability could emerge from unpredictable directions. As a result of this, at least from the U.S. perspective, the defense and foreign policy apparatus that had focused on the Soviet Union would thus need to shift its attention to other potential opponents. These new threats were more “fragmented and varied” (Clark 1998), and, individually, would not pose the same grand strategic challenge as had the USSR. But the analytical challenge of determining their exact nature and scope would thus require a new set of planning tools and assumptions (Davis 1994).

Unfortunately, the war revealed many U.S. weaknesses in identifying, assessing, and countering these non-Soviet military threats. U.S. pre-crisis intelligence on Iraq’s military infrastructure was limited. After the war, it was revealed that strategic bombing had destroyed little of Iraq’s NBC weapons complex because the existence and location of much of it was unknown to Coalition targeters.⁷ Postwar assessments of the campaign against Iraq’s ballistic missile force were similarly critical. Offensive strike missions had a very difficult time locating and attacking mobile ballistic missile launchers.⁸ The Patriot missile’s success at intercepting incoming ballistic missiles became the subject of contentious debate (Postol 1991). Much was also made of the fact that Iraq’s defeat might not have been so ce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 The Global Diffusion of Arms
• Chapter 2 The Arms Trade, Proliferation, and Diffusion: A Literature Review
• Chapter 3 Developing Theoretical Models of Arms Diffusion: Why Do Arms Diffuse?
• Chapter 4 Arms Diffusion and the Nature of Military Innovation
• Chapter 5 The Diffusion of Arms: Mapping the Empirical Terrain
• Chapter 6 Testing Models of Arms Diffusion
• Chapter 7 The Future of Arms Diffusion
• Appendix A Weapon Systems Designations and Nomenclature
• Appendix B Combat Aircraft
• Appendix C Attack Helicopters
• Appendix D Main Battle Tanks
• Preface to Appendices E, F, and G
• Appendix E Ground-Based Surface-to-Air Missiles I: Long-Range SAMs
• Appendix F Ground-Based Surface-to-Air Missiles II: Point-Deeense SAMs
• Appendix G Ground-Based Surface-to-Air Missiles III: Shoulder-Fired PADs
• Appendix H Anti-Tank Guided Missiles
• Appendix I State Diffusion Scores By Region
• Bibliography
• Index