The Arms Trade

There is a great overlay at the end of Andrew Niccol's latest film "Lord Of War" that reads something like this:

"The largest arms dealers in the world are currently the USA, UK, China, Russia and France. They are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council."

I was reading Pilger's "The New Rulers Of The World" on my flight last night and he was quoting this article by Neil Mackay which says that the UK is selling chemical weapons to countries such as Iran and the Sudan among others.

So during my "relax" time tonight, I went in search of more information on the global arms trade.

I found this excellent resource site by Anup Shah. He has links to many other resources such as this:

Each year the U.S. Congressional Research Service releases a report looking at arms transfers to the developing world. The 2004 report is titled Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1997-2004 (link is to a reproduced PDF format by the Federation of American Scientists). These reports are also known as the Grimmett Report, after the author, Richard F. Grimmett.

This report is fascinating. It details the amount of arms sales coming from the USA, etc and talks about who is buying them. These are the "official" sales of course. It doesn't cover the CIA-funded covert sales "Iran-Contra" style deals that largely never hit the radar.

Anyway, the next time you hear US and UK politicians talking about "the peace process" and urging the people of other countries to stop killing each other, take a moment to  remember who is selling those countries the weapons in the first place.