David Cameron spent the best part of last week visiting Middle Eastern countries accompanied by members of the British arms industry and after taking a roasting for his tasteless trip, came out in defence saying Britain had 'nothing to be ashamed of' for selling weapons to Arab leaders.
The PR companies employed by the British arms industry have since been out in force painting a picture of honest British arms companies providing British jobs and propping up our economy while selling arms to grateful democracies in need of self-defence.
Honest arms companies? The largest UK arms supplier BAE Systems admitted two criminal charges of bribery and corruption in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and was fined £286m.
Providing British jobs? Arms exports are subsidised by the government by around £900 million per year and according to the MoD, 49,000 jobs are sustained by military exports which amounts to 0.2% of the UK workforce. That works out to UK taxpayers paying over £19,000 per person in this industry. Think of any other private industry where it costs us almost a billion pounds just to run it?
Propping up the economy is the third argument. The MoD's own economists have concluded that the economic benefits of arms exports are insignificant and that the 'balance of argument about defence exports should depend mainly on non-economic consideration'.
Grateful democracies? Democracies like Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE and Yemen. None of them democracies, all very grateful though.
That just leaves self defence. The main players in the arms trade are often those using weapons for aggression and repression and most of the countries involved in violently putting down demonstrations over the last month have used British bought arms against their own citizens.
Indonesia, Israel, China and Morocco have all been excellent customers of the British arms exporters, not the civilians of West Papua, Palestine, Tibet or Western Sahara who have been so easily bombed and terrorised by the first four.
Let's not forget to mention that we export arms to 19 of the 20 countries identified as "countries of concern" for abusing human rights including Saudi Arabia, Israel, Colombia, China, Russia, Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey. All certified human rights abusers and all somehow avoid falling into the laughable ethical foreign policy that we will not sell arms to nations involved in internal oppression, external aggression, or regional tensions. We love and want them doing all three because if they didn't, we wouldn't have a market to sell to.
We can be proud that the next time we watch the news and a group of demonstrators have been cut down by a spray of bullets or watch with horror as another tyrant bombs his own people that our current Prime Minister and the one before that and the one before that went some way to making that happen and that should bring a lump to the throat, a tear to the eye and an overwhelming feeling of shame every time.
10 comments:
Hmmm, if the people had guns maybe they could get rid of their oppressors...
q
arms makers. if we didn't have them there would be no violence in the world... because humans don't kill, guns kill...
q
What always bugs me is when you find out there's been official governmental knowledge/endorsement of our weapons makers arming both sides...
The old more-guns-the-better theory i didn't understand last time you pitched it q (might have been nog that threw that one out actually). There was killing before guns q but guns made killing easier and more effective.
Yep, that happens also Cheezy but it makes someone rich so blind eyes are turned.
Lucy,
Here is the undeniable logic:
1. people are violent with or without weapons
2. nefarious people use power to harm
3. good people use power to protect
4. even without weapons nefarious people do harm
5. nefarious people are cowards and only do harm when they have advantage
6. good people need weapons to prevent nefarious people from having advantage
7. if nefarious people have weapons good people must have weapons
8. the worst is when nefarious people run your government
9. good people need weapons to protect
Reveal a time in human history where this logic is wrong.
Sorry that I'm right.
q
The only thing I'd take issue with is the ridiculously simplistic division of humanity into 'goodies and baddies'. Apart from that, it's fine.
Q - I will work into a post 'Why the often repeated idea by q and nog of having more guns in society is just plain wrong' so we can bat it about in the main bit rather than the comments. Sharpen your pencil Texan.
Y'all aren't econ folks? Often, "military production" isn't economically productive because it is geared towards destruction. Some weapons making is needed and productive because it protects us from what is bad, just as some garbage men and are productive even though they spend their time picking up "garbage" (and garbage isn't "good")***.
But military production as a jobs-creation strategy is just absurd. An economist once used the example of "burning Paris" to explain why destruction is not productive. Yeah, you get to rebuild Paris which "creates jobs", but had you not burned Paris you would have Paris and whatever those people would have created in other employments. People who make fire-bombs to burn Paris with aren't adding to the economy and should do something else.
But what about all of the jobs created making bombs? Although most folks tend to think of economic activity as though it is independent of everything else (for instance they think that when someone suggests not spending government funds on a school that the choice is between "building a school" and "doing nothing"), this isn't what happens. Every resource and man-hour that gets spent making a bomb would have been spent on something else (a car, a shelf, a house, some service). The choice isn't between employing people at BAE making bombs and letting them starve, the choice is between employing them at BAE and employing them somewhere else. Given that some military production is unnecessary, I'd take a hard look at "somewhere else".
I agree on the main point here. I guess the logic is "If we don't sell to them Russians/ Chinese/ British/ French will". I'm actually somewhat pleased that, taking our larger industrial capacity in to account, the United States probably has the least mercenary arms policy of the Big 5 (with Russia, China, and France being the most mercenary). Every country that we'll sell to, the other Big 5 will sell to, but there are countries that we won't sell to that the others will (Libya, formerly Iraq, Iran, Sudan, probably not Venezuela, Cuba). I guess it's probably because everyone, whether they admit it or not, expects us to play world police (and know that we will); and we at least don't want to get shot with our own guns.
***Similarly disease is not "good", but doctors are productive for getting rid of it (even when their means of removal is painful and unpleasant).
cheezy,
of course it is ridiculous to put everybody into two categories (like poor/rich, good/bad, old/young, left/right, conservative/liberal, tall/short, fat/thin, right/wrong) but we do it all the time don't we?
does it really change the logic of my argument if i add groups like "people that are evil sometimes", "people that good sometimes", "people that are always too confused to pick good or evil", "people that are evil accidentally", "people that are good accidentally", "people that are evil for a bad reason", "people that are evil for a good reason", etc. etc. etc.?
for this argument there are 3 groups and I only addressed 2 of them. I will classify 3 groups as: wolves, sheep, and and sheepdogs.
most people (shall we say 98%) are sheep and just go about their business with no intent of harming others. some do harm by accident, some fall back on evil when under duress, etc. we know that evil and harm vary culturally and socially meaning good/evil vary to some degree geographically. women, children, elderly, sick, and poor tend to be the sufferers because they are often culturally/socially viewed as a drag on the "tribe". they are also less able to effectively use force (until our buddy Colt made men - and women - equal. right? a woman with a gun has a good chance defending herself against a man that is faster and stronger but is unarmed. remove the gun and the odds drop a lot).
the wolves (evil - shall we say 1%) are out for their own benefit and willingly and even gleefully offend the cultural rules for their own pleasure and benefit. nothing will keep them from gaining and using a disproportionate advantage - gun control won't work. the police show up in time to protect the crime scene evidence and the body.
sheepdogs (good - shall we say 1%) are the people that willingly and gleefully seek out the wolves. they use force to protect the sheep, not to harm the sheep. they follow and try to enforce the cultural and societal rules, not on the sheep, but on the wolves.
taking guns away means i have to break the rules to protect my family (become a wolf of a sort), or hope the sheepdogs just happen to be handy when a wolf starts messing with my family (1% trying to protect 98% leads to bad odds for the sheep). don't make me be a sheep in wolf clothing... let me keep my gun and be a sheepdog in sheep clothing...
q
"I will classify 3 groups as: wolves, sheep, and and sheepdogs."
This is reminding me of a certain Pink Floyd album, only they also had pigs and, erm, Mary Whitehouse.
"let me keep my gun and be a sheepdog in sheep clothing..."
I've always said that Americans should decide American gun policy, just as we should decide our own (radical idea eh?) so I'm down with that plan.
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