Charles W. King

The United States is the world’s leading exporter of arms, more than the next two largest exporters, Italy and Germany, combined. The United State exported more than a billion dollars’ worth of small arms in 2013 according to the Small Arms Survey, a non-governmental organization supported by a group of western nations. The export of arms, from pistols and rifles to military aircraft and advanced technical systems represent not just an economic boon for the United States that incentivizes the continued growth of its arms industry, but a strategic asset for its foreign policy. Just as the United States controls the export of advanced technologies that it does not want its rivals or pariah states to possess (particularly nuclear and missile technology), it uses arms export agreements to bolster its allies and as an incentive.

The two most famous American arms export schemes are Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program during World War Two and the Iran-Contra Scandal that rocked the administration of Ronal Reagan. Between 1941 and 1945 the United States exported $667 billion in 2017 dollars to its allies under Lend-Lease. Iran-Contra circumvented American law to fund the right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua with the proceeds of arms sales to the Islamic Republic of Iran, primarily missiles and also illegal. While these two programs differ greatly in scope, publicity, and legality they were both intended to provide material support to allies—long standing or of convenience—engaged in conflicts the outcome of which the respective administration felt it had a vested interest in. Today the supplying of arms to belligerents is highly controversial, and when doing so policy-makers must weigh the potential benefits of tipping the scale in a conflict, with the fallout, both domestic and diplomatic, of doing so.

Attempting to decide the winner in conflicts is not the only way that the United States uses arms exports to affect geopolitics. Bolstering the capabilities of allies and even competitors during peacetime can also be of strategic value. Sometimes it is possible to provide support with a direct American military presence, as the deployment of the US Army to West Germany did during the Cold War, and American AWACS Radar and Tanker planes did to the intervention in Libya in 2011. This is not always the case. In 1979 it would not have been possible to deploy American troops to the border between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. After recognizing the Sino-Soviet split American administrations sought to improve the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to fight their Soviet counter-parts, particularly against Soviet tanks. Even with the normalization of diplomatic relations between the US and China in 1979, this was a complicated task to accomplish. Eventually, the Carter Administration received the legislative approval it needed to let the PLA manufacture American designed anti-armor weapons in China under license, direct sales would have been politically impossible.

There is a third strategic use for arms exports that the US actively engages in; incentive and subsidy. The US government subsidizes the Iron Dome missile shield deployed in Israel, much of the money transferred to Israel as military aid comes right back to the United States as payments to US defense companies. This is not only good for the defense sector, but it encourages firms to perform research and development on certain kinds of technologies, like Iron Dome, that the US government wants to encourage but may not have a direct use for at the time.

The United States will remain the world largest exporter of arms for the foreseeable future. Arms sales are an important sector of the American economy. Arms export deals influence manufacturing and the development of advanced electronics and other technologies. They also provide considerable, if controversial, strategic options for American foreign policy. While picking winners may be the most obvious use, policy-makers should remember the utility of enhancing the capabilities of nations with similar interests during peacetime as a preventative measure.

Further Reading

Irene Pavesi, "Trade Update 2016: Transfers and Transparency," Small Arms Survey, (Geneva, Switzerland: Small Arms Survey, 2016).

Charles W. King

The continuing prevalence of improvised explosive devices and suicide bombing attacks in the twenty-first century has prompted the public, pundits, and policy-makers to ask, ‘why?’. This is an important question, but it is so broad that it is problematic. When people ask about the ‘why?’ of terrorism, particularly suicide terrorism the answers typically focus on why an individual would commit an act of suicide terrorism, their psychology, and place in their society. Understanding who is vulnerable to recruiter’s messages can help to counter them. This is an incomplete answer to ‘why?’ Policy-makers need to ask not only why an individual commits an act of suicide terrorism, but why non-state actors continue to use these particularly heinous methods.

Suicide terrorism and IEDs have a strategic utility that is second only to the precision-guided munitions of the US Air Force and its NATO allies. Since their debut on the world stage in the first Gulf War in 1991 the US has relied upon precision-guided bombs and cruise missiles to be able to destroy specific targets without risk to American personnel and with minimal collateral damage. These weapons are not without controversy of their own, but they demonstrate the continued utility to air power. The deployment of long range precision-guided munitions from airplanes and ships remains one of the US’s preferred methods of intervention in the twenty-first century. Guided bombs and cruise missiles are dramatic, do not expose the US to significant risk of commitment, and are politically cheap.

IEDs, vehicle bombs, and suicide bombs provide this kind of strategic utility to non-state actors. Gillio Pontecorvo’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers makes the analogy precisely.  When confronted by a French journalist Ben M’Hidi of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale replies, “Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, sir, and you can have our baskets.” The ability to select targets, for the US Air Force or non-state actors, increases the political and strategic impact of the use of violence. Minimizing the risk of operations and maximizing their political impact is not a new principle, it is central to the theories of use of political violence espoused by Clausewitz and Machiavelli. Western policy-makers should not be surprised that non-state actors have internalized the importance of these principles and have found ways to achieve them without access to advanced technology and billions of defense spending.

Precision-guided munitions are smart, but not as smart as human beings. ‘Smart’ weapons minimize risk to the force using them in exchange for a high financial cost, $1.87 million per Tomahawk cruise missile in 2017. Suicide bombs represent the opposite end of the precision-guided munitions spectrum, a minimum of financial cost and an acceptance of not only of risk but sacrifice. Describing the use of IEDs, vehicle bombs, and suicide bombs as ‘barbaric’ or ‘irrational’ denies the strategic utility of these methods and fails to comprehend that the groups using them may be desperate but they are not irrational. They have political objectives and are using the most effective methods available to them. To describe them as anything less is a grave underestimation, and serious strategic failure.

Further Reading

Gillio Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers, (Algeria/Italy: 1966).

Mike Davis, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb, (New York, NY: Verso, 2007).

Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, (New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006).

Charles W. King

The enormous cost and dubious return on funds provided for reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted another round of resistance to further ‘Nation Building’ by the United States. Previous resistance to nation building peaked after the NATO peacekeeping missions in the Balkans in the 1990’s and after the Vietnam War in the 1970’s. Many Americans are not aware of the massive efforts made to support the Republic of Vietnamese. The United States spent $1.5 billion on state building projects between 1954 and 1960. American contractors built not only military bases in South Vietnam, but massive infrastructure projects including harbors, airports, and highway networks. After the war the US government was reluctant to engage not only in the manner of warfare experienced in Vietnam, but also investments of the scale it had made in the South Vietnamese state.

The failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan contrast starkly with the unbridled successes of American rebuilding efforts in Western Europe and Japan after World War Two. In both Europe and Asia the US was able to turn devastated countries into strong allies and vibrant markets in just a few years. The fact that reconstruction efforts in West Germany and Japan were during peace time rather than in the midst of a conflict is an important factor, but it is not the only factor. In Germany and Japan the US was rebuilding the infrastructure of existing states. In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan the US was building, not rebuilding, infrastructure for a new state. Germany and Japan already possessed strong state institutions. Where they had been turned towards war, now these institutions were being turned to collective defense and the free market. The existence of these institutions meant what  Germany and Japan needed was institutional reform and to rebuild their broken infrastructure. This taught American policy-makers in the decades since an incorrect lesson, that rebuilding broken roads and power grids was enough to create a strong state.

It is institutions not infrastructure that facilitated Germany and Japan’s transition from fascist aggressors to keystones of the post-war liberal order. The inability of infrastructure investment to create strong institutions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan should not be a surprise to policy-makers. It is essential to recognize what construction projects in states without strong institutions can and cannot accomplish. The question for policy-makers in cases such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States has a vested interest in establishing stable states, is how to create institutions that will endure and be effective.

Further Reading

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, (New York, NY: Vintage, 1996).

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998).

James A. Baker III, and Lee H. Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2006).

James M. Carter, Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954-1968. (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press: 2008).