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Chapter 27 Capitalism, armament race and arms trade, Yves Grenet
Capitalism has always maintained close ties with the works of death.
Admittedly, the economic and social systems that preceded it did not ignore the manufacture, use and trade of armaments.
The war itself dates back about 7,000 years, to Neolithic times in Western Europe, when it became possible for a group of men to concert and organize themselves with weapons in order to force another group to cede their wealth or enter into slavery in the service of the victor.
That is to say that it was born with class societies.
Subsequently, whether in Antiquity, the Middle Ages or in Modern Times, armaments and wars continued their career, the improvements of the former (old war machines, artillery, firearms, etc.) allowing the successes of the latter.
The progress of science and technology, accelerated from the eighteenth century, play a role but the relations of production are even more important.
The Prussian general and philosopher Karl von Clausewitz wrote in his master work, /emph{On War}, in 1827, during the period of the rise of capitalism in Europe, that war “is a conflict of great interests which is resolved only with bloodshed, and which differs only in this precisely from all the other conflicts that arise between men.
It has much less to do with the arts and sciences than with commerce, which is also a conflict of great interests, but it is much closer to politics, which is itself a kind of commerce with enlarged dimensions, in which it develops like the child in its mother's womb.”
He added in another place, studying the wars of the Revolution:
“We must attribute the new facts that manifest themselves in the military field much less to inventions and new military ideas than to this change in the social state and social relations.”
The term capitalism was of course ignored by Clausewitz but he had sensed the essential link between war activity and this regime.
Capitalism is at the origin of the arms races, the one that accompanied the wars of the Revolution and the Empire or the American Civil War in the nineteenth century, those that prepared and marked the two world wars of the twentieth century, the one that could have led to a Third World War and that still lasts, although many claim the danger of it averted.
Capitalist companies have always traded in arms, weapons intended to serve here and there in the world.
This trade thus contributed to bloody it on an unknown scale before capitalism entered the world scene and imposed itself on the entire planet.
/section{Rise of capitalism and the first arms race}
The progress of industrial capitalism in Western Europe, in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, also applied to the manufacture of armaments.
Until then, weapons came mainly from the royal arsenals of the time of mercantilism.
With the rise of liberalism, they will increasingly be produced by private companies even if it is the state that is the main or sole recipient.
The quarrel between arsenals and private producers dates from this period. It is not over.
England is followed by the France and then the other European countries in this evolution.
“During the eighteenth century, as the English hobsbawn writes, iron foundries identified roughly with cannon casting.”
It is true that his compatriots were ahead of the curve for the puddlage to transform cast iron into iron and steel and that the metal drilling and boring machine invented by Wilkinson in 1774 would be used well for the manufacture of weapons.
But France has also had its advances. General Jean-Florent de Vallière standardized in 1732 the caliber of the guns and their length (25 times that of the caliber).
In 1771, the military engineer Cugnot developed his “fardier”, a steam car intended to drag artillery pieces.
These were modernized in 1776 by the inspector general of artillery Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval:
the cannons of which he gave the model will equip all the armies of the Revolution and the Empire.
The wars that followed one another from 1792 to 1815 led to an arms race that reached volumes that were out of all proportion to those common in conflicts under the Ancien Régime.
The France being besieged by all the monarchies of Europe, the Jacobin Republic set up the Subsistence Commission which gave priority to armies.
The country became a powerful military store to supply them.
At the beginning of the war, contracts with the state were awarded by auction and only financial companies had the necessary capital.
Capitalism fed on the arms race. The mass raising was to provide a million men. But, Barère cried out in August 1793:
“It's not enough to have men... Weapons, weapons and sustenance! It is the cry of need.”
The Committee of Public Safety cannot be content to supply them with liberal capitalism.
The state took control of certain companies and created national factories on the model of those of the Ancien Régime.
In February 1794, the Extraordinary Commission on Arms and Powders was in fact a Ministry of Armaments on which mines and steel depended, manufacturing cannons, rifles and ammunition.
The cannons “in full” and new steels were poured. Thus it was possible to manufacture 240,000 rifles and 7,000 cannons per year, considerable figures for the time.
After Thermidor, the tendency is to abandon this statism to return to liberal capitalism and the “suppliers to the armies”, which are getting richer.
Financial companies banned in 1793 were allowed again in 1795.
The 400,000 men raised by the Directory have sufficient armaments to face the armies of the coalition but it is against a background of speculation and concussion, evils that will sweep away this regime.
Under the Consulate and the Empire, industry modernized at least in some of its branches. The vastness of the market provided by the Empire and its vassals is very favorable to this progress.
Armament holds its place and makes the prosperity of some capitalists such as the manufacturer of cannonballs Jean-Nicolas Gendarme.
The Parisian banks helped to make a place for themselves in the sun a less efficient steel industry while its English rival and a copper industry supplying the imperial army and navy.
On the other side, “the war coincided with the emergence of Britain as the dominant industrial power in the world,” as A. D. Harvey (/emph{Collision of Empires}) notes.
Military inventions are made there such as the new artillery munition invented in 1803 by Henry Shrapnel; shrapnel was successfully used in the bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 and Vimeiro in 1808.
English ships are reinforced with iron pieces. In 1806 out of 305,000 tons of iron produced in British factories 56,000 were for the war needs of the government.
From 1803 to 1815 the British manufactured 2,700,000 firearms and bought 293,000 abroad.
At the same time the French made the same number and captured 700,000 from their opponents.
Both provided them to their allies: 220,000 English firearms to Spain from 1808 to 1811 for example.
The duality between private capitalist industry and state arsenals existed in Britain during this arms race of the early nineteenth century but not without relations between them.
Thus new methods of manufacturing weapons developed in Scotland by the Carron company were adopted in 1809 by the Woolwich factory, the gas lighting used by Boulton's soho Works in Birmingham in 1802 was used to illuminate 24 hours a day the production of copper equipment for the Royal Navy in the portsmouth docks from 1807 etc.
But the superiority of British capitalism over French capitalism appeared mainly financial.
In 1805, the French budget was the equivalent of £27.6 million, the British budget was £76.5 million, and in 1813 it was £46.5 million and £109 million respectively.
The Waterloo Campaign of 1815 cost the British government £21.3 million for its army, £12.9 million for extraordinary service, and £11 million for loans and advances to its allies.
The “cavalry of Saint George”, which British capitalism has always been able to make good use of, especially if it is accompanied by arms deliveries, makes it possible to win wars.
/section{Development of capitalism and armaments during the nineteenth century}
Capitalism continued to flourish after the Congress of Vienna of 1814-1815.
The Holy Alliance (September 1815) contained too many elements of the past to be entirely favorable to it, and the ideology of the Liberals was better suited to it.
Its secular arm, the Quadruple Alliance (England, Prussia, Austria, Russia) of November 1815, an essential part of the Metternich system, needed weapons to quell the revolts of the peoples that the Congress of Vienna had made inevitable.
The uprisings of General Pepe in Naples (1820), Riego in Cadiz (1820), the Portuguese army (1820), Turin (1821), the revolutions of France, Belgium and Poland (1830), the movement of the canuts of Lyon (1831), the new revolts in Italy (1832), the riot
the cloister of Saint Merry in Paris (1832), a new revolt in Spain (1843), the agitation in Ireland (1843), the great strike of the Silesian weavers (1846),
the anti-Austrian demonstrations in Milan (1846), the Porto revolt in Portugal (1846-1847), all this required weapons for repression.
The economic and financial crisis of 1847 led to the “Spring of the Peoples” of Europe in 1848 which resulted in popular movements in Italy, Germany, Austria, the February Revolution and the June Days in France and real war operations in Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, the Kingdom of Naples, in southern Germany.
There is a need for weapons for forces not only of reaction but also of liberation.
However, their regular production did not give rise to an arms race comparable to that of the Napoleonic years.
England reduced its armaments from 1816, the other countries maintained or a little increased theirs.
The development of capitalism has taken place in Great Britain in particular through the succession of periods of prosperity and crises of its own.
The severe British economic and banking crises of 1825-1827 and 1836-1839 marked this period significantly. That of 1847 extended to all of Europe leading to the explosion of 1848.
Progress in industry, particularly in the steel industry, has had an impact on armaments, but at a relatively slow pace.
The rifle loaded by the mouth in the eighteenth century is gradually replaced by the rifle loaded by the breech, but with some setbacks such as those had the Prussian government in 1841 with 60,000 Dreyse rifles of this type that exploded inappropriately.
Smoothbore guns are increasingly giving way to rifled guns in all European armies. The most notable advances in armaments are being made in the maritime field.
Large wooden sailing ships, carrying from 70 to 130, guns were first reinforced with armor around 1820-1830.
A first steam warship appeared in England in 1814 but paddle wheels are too exposed to enemy fire and it is only after the invention of the propeller in 1840 that all the navies of the capitalist world will adopt steam at the same time as rifled guns and grenades invented in 1822 by the French general Paixhans, allowing at sea an almost horizontal trajectory and high precision.
The triumphant capitalism of the years 1850-1890 marched forward despite crises, such as the British financial crises of 1857 and 1866 and especially the first truly global crisis of 1873.
The Crimean Wars (1845-1856), the Italian Wars (1859), the Civil War (1861-1865), the Mexican War (1864-1867), the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Franco-German War of 1870-1871, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 are a reminder that no more than the Empire, capitalism is peace.
It was also during this period that armaments made great progress linked to those of chemistry, steel and mechanics.
In 1846, the German scientist Schônbein had invented pyroxylin much more powerful than gunpowder, in 1847, the Italian chemist Sobrero had nitroglycerin.
In 1862, the Swede Nobel undertook the manufacture of this nitroglycerin on an industrial scale, in 1867 that of dynamite (75% nitroglycerin + 25% porous earth), exploding with a mercury fulminate detonator, then in 1888 the Nobel powder dynamite.
Owning factories in Sweden, Germany, France and other countries, he is the very type of arms capitalist although he would have preferred to be remembered for the creation of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Other chemical mixtures with primer are born: tolite, lydia, melinite etc. The properties of picric acid, which heat detonates, were increasingly used until the First World War.
Chemical plants can develop, in addition to explosives, weapons that are themselves chemical. As early as 1855, Great Britain had projectiles capable of spreading ammonia gases that were not used.
British Admiral Dundonald proposed that same year to reduce the Garrison at Sevastopol with sulfur fumes and the American Doughty to use chlorine vapors in 1862, during the American Civil War;
they were denied permission. But the idea of chemical warfare, which industrial progress made possible, was in the air.
The interdependence of armaments and capitalism manifested itself with great clarity during the Civil War, a confrontation of Yankee capitalism and the slave-owning South, in certain aspects that were still pre-capitalist.
The industrial advances made by the United States have allowed the adoption of the rifle rifled with very precise fire, the loading of cannons by the breech, the use of mortars, the use of repeating weapons.
Both North and South had advanced steam warships, including ironclads or battleships, including the /emph{Merrimac} among the Confederates and /emph{the Monitor} among Union supporters.
In many respects, even more so than those of the Revolution and empire, it was an all-out war, which left more than 500,000 dead on both sides, heralding the great killings of the world wars.
Imperialism, arms race and World War I
Concentration is a natural tendency of capitalism that constantly puts it in contradiction with the principles of liberalism it professes.
The combination of industrial capital and banking capital, which has been called imperialism, into a single finance capital, increases the effects of this concentration by allowing the creation of huge joint-stock companies.
At the same time, the search for raw materials and the desire to open new markets provoked not only the stranglehold of capitalism on the colonies or semi-colonies of Africa, Asia and Latin America but also, after attempts at understanding, a division of the world that two world wars would try to challenge.
The rise of imperialism is closely intertwined with the arms race that preceded the First World War as well as with that that which ended in the Second.
The industrial potential of the great powers allows more than a few but the development of weapons techniques.
High-quality steels, specialized machinery, chemical discoveries and the transport industry are used. Artillery in particular is making considerable progress.
The Prussian guns loaded by the breech were superior to the French guns in 1870.
But French industrialists and military developed in 1893 a rapid-fire field gun, absorbing the shock of recoil and allowing a rolling fire, with an effective range of 8 kilometers, the famous 75.
The English have adopted, since the Crimean War, the cylindrical rifle bullet of the French Colonel Minié, thanks to which the rifled barrel of the rifles allows a very precise shot at 650 meters and quite accurate up to 1,300.
The automatic rifle was invented between 1870 and 1880.
Artillery and then rifles benefited from smokeless powder, developed in France in 1884, progress imitated elsewhere, so that Great Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States had it at the beginning of the twentieth century.
But the new infantry weapon is the machine gun. At the time of the American Civil War, in 1862, Richard J. Gatling introduced a model with ten rotating guns powered by a crank.
In France, a few years later, we go to twenty guns and 125 shots per minute.
The real modern machine gun is the work of Hiram S. Maxim in 1884; the Maxim machine gun is adopted or imitated everywhere.
The weapon is so deadly that some believe they can say it will make war impossible. Alas...
One form of arms race between major imperialist states, particularly spectacular, is the naval rivalry between Britain and Germany in the years leading up to the 1914 war.
The British battleships (dread noughts) ended up being monsters with a speed of more than 30 knots, displacing 60,000 tons and whose 16 main guns were capable of sending 2,000-pound projectiles accurately to more than 20 miles.
To this must be added cruisers, destroyers and other types of surface ships.
The race takes the form of a competition between the armor of ships and the penetrating power of modern shells or torpedoes developed before 1914.
Sea mines, already used during the Civil War, were perfected in the early twentieth century.
After the first real combat submarine the double-hulled “Narval” armed with four torpedoes, invented by the engineer Laubeuf (1899), the great powers all have submarines equipped with torpedoes ready on the eve of the war.
The air weapon is as old as the accession to power of capitalism since balloons flew over the Battle of Fleurus and a corps of aerostatiers of the Republic had existed from 1793 to 1798.
We then turned to free and then airship balloons like that of Henri Giffard in 1852.
The Russian Tsialkowski had equipped an airship with a metal frame in 1887 and the German Ferdinand von Zeppelin had experimented with one in 1900 that would be developed for military purposes until 1914.
But, for this purpose, the heavier than the air seemed more full of promise. The first modern aeroplane was the one for which the Russian Mojaiski obtained a patent in 1881.
Then came the German Otto Lilienthal, the Frenchman Clément Ader (1897), the English Wright brothers (1900).
The engines were perfected from 1903 to 1908 and the propellers from 1906 to 1912, so that planes were ready for reconnaissance, bombing and combat missions (oh how modest!) when war broke out.
The arms race calls on the arsenals of the capital states, but private capitalism plays a preponderant role in it.
The major arms companies of these early days of imperialism are called Krupp in Germany, Vickers-Armstrong in Britain (which manufactures the Maxim machine gun), Schneider-Le Creusot in France, Skoda in Austrian Bohemia, Putiloff in Russia.
Their specialty as arms manufacturers is in the continuity of their general industrial activity, in particular the steel industry.
Thus Krupp presented at Crystal Palace in London a cylinder of 2 1/4 tons of steel in which we can see the prototype of one of its giant guns.
Weapons even benefit from processes that are considered too expensive for everyday use.
Thus the large ingots of special steels in the crucible are intended at Krupp, as at its competitors, for guns whose bore is the next step.
Everywhere large corporations play an essential role in the arms race.
“The trust leading to extermination, this is the last invention of modern capitalism,” exclaimed Jaurès to the Chamber of Deputies in 1909.
If it is the big capitalist corporations that produce, it is the imperialist states that pay for the armaments.
In 1920, the economist Charles Gide quantified the annual military expenditure required by the preparation of the war among its main protagonists:
1883* 1913* Accroissement
France 789 1 471 86 %
Great-Britain 702 1 943 177 %
Russia 894 2 642 195 %
Italy 311 749 140 %
Germany 504 2 302 357 %
Austria-Hungary 318 822 158 %
* in millions of francs
The acceleration of the arms race is evident in this picture.
It was lower for the France, which had started earlier, than for Germany and Great Britain.
The First World War was a shock of imperialisms that was particularly costly for the world.
Millions of men died on the battlefields, not to mention civilian casualties.
In our field, it has been a period of intense activity, capitalist enterprises hastily manufacturing armaments, whose research has been considerably accelerated.
It was not until 1916 that the French and the English caught up with the Germans and Austrians in the field of heavy artillery.
Shells of all calibers, German Minenwerfers and French crapouillots, underground mines, grenades and flamethrowers turned the front into hell.
Of course, all these machines ensured a high level of activity for the metallurgical and chemical industries.
The British, French and German automobile industries began to manufacture tanks used from 1917, armed with cannons and machine guns, the best known of which on the Western Front was the Renault tank, from the famous Billancourt firm.
The chemical industry found a new outlet with the war of gases: chlorine, phosgene, hydrocyanic acid, yperite (30,000 killed in one day near Ypres in 1917), lewisite.
The 120,000 tons of toxic chemicals used during the war claimed 300,000 lives, including more than 100,000 deaths on the Western Front.
While Zeppelin airships bombed Paris and London, aircraft manufacturers on both sides developed fighters and bombers (such as the British Vickers Vimy with 2,500-pound bombs).
Submarine warfare was another innovation: German U-boats sank 11 million tons of Allied ships, preparing for the future activity of the shipyards.
Despite a reinforced state control in all the countries at war embodied in France by the Minister of Armaments Albert Thomas, it was a capitalist war not only by its arms suppliers but also by its aims and results.
It made extensive use of the economic weapon of the blockade.
The arms race was accompanied by arms supplies by the imperialist states to their future partners (e.g. Germany to Turkey, Great Britain to Japan).
They intensified during the war towards the new belligerents (Italy) and the Arabs in struggle against the Turks as if to allow the troops of the colonies to seize the German territories (Cameroon, Tanganyika).
The arms trade has, for economic and ideological reasons, accompanied the whole life of capitalism with strong moments (wars of the Revolution and the Empire, Civil War, First World War).
It is consubstantial with it as the production of armaments.
/section{New Arms Race and World War II}
At the end of the war, Western imperialisms were both victorious and challenged by the Russian Revolution and those that followed it (Germany, Hungary).
The Allies' intervention against the Soviets uses the same weapons that served in the Great War, including chemical weapons, is generally modestly ignored.
The Treaty of Versailles and its corollaries imposed the disarmament of the defeated States.
The victors sent their troops back to their homes and initially reduced their military spending.
But one is surprised to find that, in a historical study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the global military de-thinking of 1925 is higher than that of 1913, the peak of the arms race that preceded the First World War.
It is true that these expenses include those of a state that is no longer capitalist, the USSR which, feeling surrounded, spends on its defense (but the 1913 figure included Russia).
It is also true that these data include both operating expenses (maintenance of troops) and equipment.
Finally, it is true that the latter consists of increasingly expensive armaments, which are increasingly profitable for their manufacturers.
Between the two wars the size of the mortars is increased (from 82 to 120 millimeters) as well as their range (4 kilometers).
Germany acquires guns of 88 and the United States of 90 which will be the weapons of the Second World War.
Theorists of future wars envisioned a massive use of tanks and aviation, which required progress from them, but the former often remained small and poorly armoured, such as the English Bren, and the latter made rather slow progress until Nazi Germany acquired the Luftwaffe in 1935.
In the naval field, the debates between imperialist countries led to a limitation of the tonnage of cruisers and battleships to 525,000 tons for Great Britain and the United States, 315,000 for Japan and 175,000 for France and Italy at the Washington Conference in 1922;
those who saw it as a prelude to general disarmament had to admit their mistake.
Annual world military expenditure (in billions of constant 1970 US dollars)
1908 9,0
1913 14,5
1925 19,3
1926 19,6
1927 21,5
1928 21,5
1929 21,7
1930 23,2
1931 21,9
1932 20,3
1933 20,1
1934 23,9
1935 32,6
1936 47,1
1937 58,8
1938 61,6
While the economic crisis of 1920-1921 had been followed by a fairly rapid recovery despite the financial and monetary difficulties of the capitalist countries during the twenties, the crisis of 1929 made capitalism itself tremble on its foundations.
Hitler's seizure of power in January 1933 set Germany on the path of excessive rearmament with the restoration of military service in 1935, the reintegration of the Rhineland in 1936 and the prominent place of armament in Göring's Four-Year Plan.
It was German capitalism, the Krupps, the Thyssens, the Hugenbergs, the Schachts, who put Hitler in power and benefited from rearmament.
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) served as a test bed for armaments, particularly in the fields of tanks and aircraft.
In the Far East, Japanese militarism played the same role as Nazism in Europe and invaded China in 1937.
The arms race was revived everywhere and global military spending tripled from 1933 to 1938. When war was declared in 1939, Germany was ready.
In May 1940, it aligned 136 divisions, including 10 Panzer Divisionen, and 2,700 military aircraft against an equal number of Allied divisions but only 1,330 aircraft.
Its strategic superiority allowed it to prevail at that time and to make Europe the supplier of raw materials, labor and capital to a German capital more imperialist than ever.
Unfortunately for him, Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941 and his ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor in December, which put the Americans on the same side as the British and Soviets and ensured victory for the Allies in 1945.
American capitalism is already the most powerful in the world and it will strengthen further during the Second World War.
The United States becomes the gigantic arms factory of all the allied world from which the giant companies derive the profits: Boeing, Lockheed, Hughes, Me Donnell, Raytheon, Martin, General Motors etc.
The assault rifle, intermediate between rifle and machine gun, was developed in the United States (and improved in 1944 in Germany).
The bazooka is invented (2.36 inch M9), the US rocket launcher 4.5 inch is able to fire 24 at the same time.
The M4 Sherman tank entered service in 1942, especially in North Africa (El Alamein), and remained the main armored vehicle of the British and American armies until the end of the war.
To face the German Panthers, it was completed by the US M26 Pershing, a heavy tank, in the last months of the conflict.
The American forces had a profusion of vehicles, from the Jeep (pronunciation of GP: gênerai purpose or all uses) to tracked half-tracks and giant scrapers.
The Second World War revealed the possibilities of aircraft carriers in the naval field and confirmed those of submarines.
Japanese aircraft carriers almost completely destroyed the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
But the power of U.S. industry made it possible to build aircraft carriers at very fast speed, the main support for other warships and amphibious forces that advanced from island to island towards Japan.
German submarines sank from 1939 to 1945 more than 14 million tons of Allied ships, more than during the First World War (11 million tons), including at least 200 large warships.
U.S. submarines sent 5 million tons of Japanese ships from the bottom, but this tonnage represented a much larger proportion of the capabilities of the Empire of the Rising Sun.
Only British and American industries allowed the construction of the elements necessary for the landing of June 1944, as well as radar (Radio detection and ranging) and sonar (Sound navigation ranging), to locate respectively aircraft and surface ships or submarines.
In the air domain, the war had initially pitted the Spitfire III fighters against the Messerschmitt 109, the France campaign had revealed the Stuka (Junkers 87).
The initiative then passed to American industry, including Boeing, which developed the B17 (flying fortress), with a range of 1,000 kilometers, then the B 29 (flying superforteresse), exceeding 45 tons.
A raid by the first carrying phosphorus bombs caused 42,000 deaths in July 1943 in Hamburg and another, again by means of incendiary bombs, killed 185,000 people in March 1945 in Tokyo.
It was B-29s that took on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 with bombs each equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT (20 kilotons) causing respectively 72,000 deaths and 80,000 wounded and 40,000 dead and 40,000 wounded, to which must be added the subsequent victims irradiated.
The end of the Second World War also marked the beginning of the nuclear age.
/section{The Cold War Arms Race}
The Allies have won but only the Westerners recognize themselves in capitalism.
The USSR, whose Red Army bore the main weight of the land war in Europe and advanced as far as Berlin, appears to them as a foreign body that will have to be weakened and eliminated.
The United States has an atomic monopoly. Faced with the “Iron Curtain” they brought together the capitalist countries of Europe by the North Atlantic Treaty concluded in April 1949 and the resulting Organization (NATO) will dominate the years of the "Cold War".
They tried to complete their system by creating ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States) in 1951, SEATO (South-East Asian Treaty Organization) resulting from the Manila Pact of 1954 and CENTO (Central Treaty Organization) born of the Baghdad Pact of 1955.
The creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and the Korean War (1950-1953) explain this military pactomania that the USSR feels as a desire for encirclement.
On both sides, a new arms race began. By 1948, world military spending had exceeded in constant currency that of 1938.
The Korean War gave them a boost: they almost doubled from 1950 to 1953 (see table), decreased a little from 1954 but remained at a high level.
The escalation resumed in the 60s: annual global military spending increased by 60% between 1960 and 1970 and by another 20% between 1970 and 1980.
In 1975 the world devoted resources for military purposes greater than the total world production in 1900.
A third of the world's research and development spending was aimed at war in the late 70s;
500,000 scientists, researchers and engineers work there, including about 350,000 years in capitalist countries.
Their work is leading to new armaments being developed at a very rapid pace.
In the land domain, the United States asked its automobile industry for heavy military vehicles, Great Britain and France more light all-terrain vehicles used by the latter in the Algerian War (1954-1962), by the Portuguese in their African colonies until 1974 and by the Moroccans in Western Sahara from 1976.
For tanks, the United States created derivative versions of the M 4 Sherman and the France the AMX 30. Guns with a caliber of 120 mm mounted on high-speed vehicles have become common.
In the 70s, the United States launched a new class of 78,000-ton aircraft carrier, the Forrestal class, carrying 76 fighter jets; among these entered service in 1970 the American twin-engine grumman F 14 Tomcat fighter.
It was also the time of the Dassault F1 single-engine (1966) and the British V STOL Hawker-Siddeley Harrier tactical support single-engine (1969) with short take-off. Jet devices change from subsonic to supersonic.
The U.S. Air Command Strategy is equipped by Boeing with the B 36 and B 47 bombers, which can carry nuclear bombs, and the B 52 whose heavy bombs will cause so many victims in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973.
U.S. Accession to New Weapons
Atom Bomb 1945
Hydrogen bomb 1952
New strategic bomber 1953
Medium-range missiles 1953
Tactical nuclear weapons 1955
Land-based intercontinental missiles (ICBMs) 1955
Nuclear Submarines 1956
Artificial satellites 1958
Submarine Missiles (SLBM) 1959
Solid-fuel intercontinental missiles 1962
Multi-warhead missiles 1964
Independently programmed multi-warhead missiles (MIRV) 1970
Cruise missiles 1978
Neutron weapons 1981
It was the United States that brought the world into the era of nuclear weapons.
These, first with fission (atomic bomb) and then fusion (hydrogen bomb or thermonuclear), quickly found their correspondents in the opposing camp (for the latter as early as 1953).
Within the arms race itself there was a megatoning race between the United States and the USSR.
Britain possessed atomic weapons as early as 1954 and France as early as 1958. Progress has been in reducing the weight and size of the machines.
Above all, although many strategic bombers such as the B 47 have emerged, it is the missiles that have taken a prominent place.
NASA developed in the 1960s successors to the German V 2, of the Minuteman or Titan type.
Land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), with a range of more than 5500 km, were joined by those of the submarines (SLBM) of the three-headed Polaris type (i960) and then the poseidon type with ten independently programmed heads (1970).
The creation of these MIRVs and the increased precision of the machines put an end to the race to megatonnage.
In addition, there are medium-range (from 1100 to 2775 km) and intermediate (from 2775 to 5500 km) missiles, such as the Pershing II.
Cruise missiles launched from aircraft or submarines became efficient in the early 80s, such as Boeing's ALCM.
Tactical nuclear weapons have been multiplied, loaded on mobile carriers like the French Pluto put into service in 1974.
The Cold War between capitalist and socialist countries has given an ever-increasing scale to the arms race, which is reflected in the evolution of world military spending.
The “Trente Glorieuses”[Thirty glorious ones, refer to a prosperous period from the 50's to the early 70's in France] from 1945 to 1975 allowed the capitalist camp to finance the enormous mass of ever more sophisticated armaments that it opposed to its opponents who in turn had to follow it on this path.
To revive the arms race, its supporters in the United States periodically put forward alleged shortcomings of these (for example the “missile gap” justifying the creation of new types of missiles).
Annual world military expenditure (in billions of constant 1980 US dollars)
1948 146,3 1968 473,0
1949 153,5 1969 481,4
1950 166,2 1970 472,5
1951 241,9 1971 472,7
1952 310,2 1972 478,7
1953 318,6 1973 480,0
1954 286,5 1974 482,0
1955 288,1 1975 483,4
1956 286,0 1976 522,5
1957 291,2 1977 531,9
1958 286,7 1978 547,1
1959 297,8 1979 561,8
1960 295,7 1980 567,1
1961 324,9 1981 579,6
1962 356,3 1982 615,1
1963 371,0 1983 631,6
1964 366,7 1984 642,6
1965 366,7 1985 663,1
1966 403,8 1986 681,0
1967 445,2 1987 701,4
/section{End of the Cold War and maintenance of military-industrial complexes}
The arms race at the time of the Cold War opened a new stage in the evolution of capitalism.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower was not mistaken when he spoke in 1954 of a “military-industrial complex.”
The close interweaving of finance capital and large military structures characterizes the imperialism of the second half of the twentieth century.
The same names of societies dominate it that present the tendency towards concentration and integration inherent in the capitalist regime.
Thus in the United States, Mr. Donnell Douglas, a firm resulting from a merger, works for aviation, electronics and missiles, General Dynamics has the same branches plus military vehicles and missiles, General Motors of course manufactures all kinds of land-based devices but extends its activities to missiles, electronics and aircraft.
In recent years, despite the end of the Cold War, this concentration has accelerated.
Between 1990 and 1995, Northrop and Grumman merged their aircraft and electronics production. Missile manufacturer Martin
Marietta was absorbed in 1995 by Lockheed to form a giant aviation and missile group.
But Lockheed Martin did not stop there and in 1996 acquired all of Loral's military activities.
That same year 1996 saw Boeing buy McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell's aerospace business to play a leading role in the industry, Raytheon joined Texas Instruments' missile and radar businesses and Chrysler's military electronics business, and in 1997 bought Hughes Electronics.
The movement of concentration is set to continue.
The rapid evolution of American companies worries their generally smaller European competitors.
It is true that the United States, within the framework of NATO, delivered many armaments during the years of the Cold War to its European partners (Federal Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal).
From there, these switched to licensed manufacturing, and then some national bases of the arms industries were reconstituted.
A real West German military-industrial complex, like the phoenix, was reborn from the ashes of its Nazi predecessor with firms such as Messerchmitt, Daimler, MTU or Rheinmetall (Röchling group);
however, American interests are present in German firms, particularly in the latter.
Great Britain has maintained, despite the decline of its manufacturing industry, a high level of military production (50% of aeronautical production has this character for example) from firms such as British Aerospace, GEC, Lucas Industries, Rolls Royce, Vsel, Hunting.
The France pursued a policy of independent military production, reflecting Gaullist determination, benefiting the firms Thomson, DCN, Dassault, Aerospace, GIAT, Matra.
Concentrations have taken place within the national framework:
merger of Daimler Benz and Messerschmitt, merger of Krupp Maschinenbau and Rheinmetall in 1990, absorption of Ferranti and Plessey by GEC, current desire to bring Aerospace and Dassault closer together despite the reluctance of the latter.
But /emph{these} mergers increasingly involve companies from different European countries.
Siemens shares with GEC the remains of Plessey, Thomson buys the great Dutch specialist in military electronics HSA, the Belgian arms industry disappears absorbed in particular by the French.
Matra and British Aerospace created in 1996 a joint company Matra Bae Dynamics, which comes immediately after Raython Hughes for the manufacture of missiles.
Non-European firms participated in the movement: the Canadian company Bombardier took over Shorts, the largest armaments firm in Northern Ireland and the Bruges armoured manufacturer in Belgium, the American United Technologies 40% of the capital of the British Westland.
The European Union aims to acquire companies of comparable size to those of the United States with the creation of the European Armaments Agency.
Since 1976 there has been an independent European Programme Grouping (EIPG).
However, the British armaments industries, especially but also German, have strong ties across the Atlantic and aircraft orders from European states are often placed with the United States.
Eternal contradictions of imperialism.
Among these contradictions between Europeans and the United States, the one concerning the Western European Union is not the least.
Created by the Paris Agreements of 1954 as a substitute for the defunct European Defence Community, this WEU was chosen in the Maastricht Treaty of 1991 as the military structure of the European Union.
But at the same time it is considered the “European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance” under American leadership. The result is very happy contortions of the Maastricht text.
Who will prevail from submission to US imperialism or the desire of capitalist states to maintain sufficient military independence at the risk of confrontation with it?
The wave of neoliberalism has also passed on the arms industries.
Thus, the Royal Ordnance Factories, arsenals created in England long before the birth of industrial capitalism, were privatized in 1988 by Mrs Thatcher.
From this point of view, the fact that the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA), the Industrial Group of Land Armaments (GIAT), the Directorate of Naval Construction (DCN) and the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in France depend on the State represents a real heresy in the eyes of neoliberals, heresy that should end with their privatization as quickly as possible.
The trade unions' defence of arsenals is opposed to this.
The real problem is the diversification of activities and the conversion to civilian production of an arms industry that is oversized in relation to real needs.
The twenty-five largest Western companies producing armaments in 1990 and 1995 (Arms sales in millions of US dollars)
1990 1995
1 Me Donnell Douglas (US) 9020 Lockheed Martin (US) 13800
2 General Dynamics (US) 8300 McDonnell Douglas (US) 9620
3 British Aerospace (GB) 7520 British Aerospace (GB) 6720
4 Lockheed (US) 7500 Loral (US) 6500
5 General Motors (US) 7380 General Motors (US) 6250
6 General Electric (US) 6450 Northrop Grumman (US) 5700
7 Raytheon (US) 5500 Thomson (Fr) 4630
8 Thomson (Fr) 5250 Boeing (US) 4200
9 Boeing (US) 5100 GEC (GB) 4100
10 Northrop (US) 4700 Raytheon (US) 3960
11 Martin Marietta (US) 4600 United Technologies (US) 3650
12 GEC (GB) 4280 Daimler Benz (Ail) 3350
13 United Technologies (US) 4100 Direction des Constructions navales (Fr) 3280
14 Rockwell International (US) 4100 Litton (US) 3030
15 Daimler Benz (AU) 4020 General Dynamics (US) 2930
16 Direction des Constructions navales (Fr) 3830 TRW (US) 2800
17 Mitsubishi (Jap) 3040 IRI (It) 2620
18 Litton Industries (US) 3000 Westinghouse (US) 2600
19 TRW (US) 3000 Aérospatiale (Fr) 2550
20 Grumman (US) 2900 Mitsubishi (Jap) 2430
21 Aérospatiale (Fr) 2860 Rockwell (US) 2430
22 IRI (h) 2670 Rolls Royce (GB) 2050
23 Westinghouse (US) 2330 Alcatel Alsthom (Fr) 2000
24 Dassault Aviation (Fr) 2260 Commissariat à l’Énergie atomique (Fr) 1740
25 Texas Instruments (US) 2120 Texas Instruments (US) 1740
The Cold War came to a head with the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a project for anti-missile bases in space launched in 1984 by President Reagan and whose major arms interests were expecting an abundant windfall.
They reaped many benefits, but this project was never realized. A similar project covering European countries is currently under discussion, but there is no shortage of contradictions here too.
Public pressure had led to certain arms limitations on anti-ballistic missile systems and the number of submarine missiles (SALT I agreements of May 1972) and offensive strategic weapons (SALT II of June 1979) between the United States and the USSR.
Talks between the two powers were underway (START) when the first disarmament agreement on intermediate-range missiles in Europe (INF) was signed in December 1987 in Washington.
The first START treaty had just been announced in July 1991 in London when the events of August in Moscow led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December and the end of the Cold War.
The arms race imposed by capitalism on its adversary has largely contributed to the latter's economic difficulties and thus prepared for its fall, although it is not the only cause.
With the East-West tension gone, it was questionable whether the enormous accumulation of armaments and the expenditure devoted to them would not gradually disappear, allowing peoples to receive the “dividends of peace”.
It was a misunderstanding of capitalism. Although the Warsaw Treaty was dissolved in 1991, NATO continued to exist and expand to Eastern Europe.
Global military spending, after reaching an all-time high of $1 trillion in 1989, began to narrow from 1990 onwards and in 1996 hovered around $700 billion.
NATO's military spending (including France) fell by 31% between 1989 and 1996 but remains enormous.
U.S. military research and development spending fell by 25 percent between those two dates, Germany's by 21 percent, France's by 19 percent, and Britain's by 15 percent.
Evolution of NATO military expenditure (in billions of US dollars at constant 1990 prices)
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
United States 331,2 323,9 320,4 306,2 269,0 284,1 269,1 254,0 238,2 226,4
Canada 11,5 11,6 11,5 11,5 10,4 10,5 10,4 10,2 9,6 8,8
Otan Europe 186,6 184,7 186,2 186,4 184,6 176,3 171,6 166,5 159,0 159,7
Otan total 529,3 520,2 518,1 504,1 464,0 470,9 451,1 430,7 406,8 394,9
The START I Treaty between the United States and Russia, signed in 1991 and limiting the number of strategic nuclear warheads owned by each of them to 6,000, entered into force in 1994.
The START II Treaty, signed by the same in January 1993, provides for a reduction in the number of such heads to 3 000-3 500 for each country by 1 January 2003.
Despite the difficulties of negotiations and ratifications, it is indeed treaties that restrict nuclear weapons between the two powers, both claiming to be capitalist.
But, especially if we add the other official (France, Great Britain, China) or unofficial (Israel, Pakistan) owners of these weapons, there are still enough nuclear weapons at the end of the twentieth century to destroy the entire planet.
Various international agreements have also been concluded: the Chemical Weapons Convention was signed in Paris in January 1993, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was extended indefinitely in May 1995 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was adopted in September 1996.
These treaties have the dual character of taking desirable steps towards disarmament that men of peace can only approve, and of constituting limitations imposed by the capitalist Powers possessing nuclear weapons on those of the Third World which do not, while these Powers do not apply article VI of the NPT, by virtue of which they must move towards nuclear disarmament.
In addition, seven capitalist countries (the United States, Great Britain, France, Federal Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan) settled among themselves by creating the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 1987 to prevent other countries from accessing technologies to acquire strategic missiles (25 states now adhere to the MTCR).
The countries of the South felt this discrimination, which led India and Pakistan not to sign the extended NPT without a time limit.
The Gulf War in January-February 1991 and the control measures imposed on Iraq, which almost led to a new armed conflict in February 1998, stem from the same spirit of imposing the submission of the rest of the world to the great imperialisms.
The United States intends to play the leading role in this unipolar world, as President Clinton periodically reminds us.
The arms race continues with research, particularly in the United States and France through the simulation of more sophisticated nuclear weapons for the twenty-first century.
Will imperialisms in the time of globalization continue to reach an agreement among themselves in the face of the peoples or will their oppositions prevail, their contradictions making the struggle of peoples easier but also increasing the danger of war?
/section{Capitalism and the arms trade}
Under capitalism, weapons are commodities but not commodities like any other.
Indeed, any other commodity requires a market with a more or less large number of consumers. Arms producers have only one customer: the state.
Whether they come out of the arsenals of the latter or — as is increasingly the case — from private companies, their recipients are primarily the armed forces of the country.
Instead of exhausting themselves by finding customers in a large market, it is enough to convince those armed forces that maintain a close symbiosis with manufacturers — that is the whole meaning of the term “military-industrial complex”.
Of course there can be competition between companies (for example in the United States between different models of missiles) but, as soon as there is the agreement of the armed forces, the goods are placed.
Better still, the contract with the State may be subject to price increases, for example for in-process processing: experience shows that this is very often the case.
Weapons are a wonderful commodity from this point of view too.
In addition to domestic use, we must add arms sales abroad by one State to another State because it is its ally or because it suits its geostrategic interests or simply because it promotes the balance of trade.
All the capitalist states producing weapons market them.
However, arms exports are subject to authorisation with various control procedures: in Germany the authorisation of the Bundestag is required;
in France it is so far issued by the government on the advice of the Interministerial Commission for the Study of Exports of War Material, and the a posteriori control by Parliament is most theoretical;
in Britain the Arms Sales Department takes care of everything and the “Head of Defence Sales” is usually the leader of a large capitalist arms group, it's more frank.
Sometimes a State refuses to sell a particular type of armament or any type of armament to a country, for example because the latter is subject to an embargo.
In this case it is not uncommon for weapons allegedly sold to one country to end up in a second or third after more or less long journeys;
these illegal diversions often lead to “cases” involving a particular industrial group that deceived the State (such as the Luchaire case for the delivery of shells to Iran in 1983, which was then subject to the embargo).
Capitalist companies are legally engaged in the arms trade, the largest being Interarms in London, AGWAH in Düsseldorf, Levy Industries in Toronto, Firearms International in Montreal, Cogswell and Harrison in London.
To this must be added the illegal trafficking carried out in a much more discreet way by pharmacies supplying themselves in the military surpluses of countries that are not too attentive, and whose methods are often more akin to gangsterism, including assassinations, than to the usual style of trade in capitalist countries.
But the arms trade as a whole, a trade in works of death, raises the strongest criticism from moral authorities, churches and politicians within the capitalist states themselves.
Advocates of the arms trade justify this by saying that modern armaments are too expensive to be made for a single country; the argument is that “long series” are necessary for National Defence and that, in its interest, the largest possible amount of armaments must be placed abroad.
But these sales promote local conflicts, cost Third World countries dearly, increase their debt and increase international insecurity.
The capitalist countries do not, however, deprive themselves of selling their weapons to the South: this is even the bulk of their sales for many years.
The arms trade accompanied the entire career of the capitalist regime. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, Beaumarchais supplied rifles to the American insurgents.
The Revolution sent them to its allies in Europe and England to the monarchies of the continent.
During the nineteenth century weapons were sold by the producing countries of Europe, especially during the American Civil War.
Colonial powers sometimes provided them to adversaries of competing countries as part of their rivalries.
The capitalist states deliver them to the countries taking part in the Balkan wars or to their future allies in the war of 1914-1918 (they are sometimes the same).
The 1920s and 1930s were the great period of the “cannon merchants”. The two Chaco wars of 1928-1929 and 1932-1935 between Bolivia and Paraguay, which were in fact wars between capitalist oil interests to exploit this territory, allowed these merchants to supply both sides largely: they were particularly bloody.
The role of these “gun dealers” was such that in the United States a special committee was created in 1934 by Senator George Norris to investigate with Gerald P. Nye the role of American ammunition manufacturers, while the famous special issue of Fortune, “/emph{Arms and the Men}” and the book /emph{Merchants of Death, Iron, Blood and Profits}, a title that deserved to be reported in this Black Book, having been chosen in the largest capitalist country in the world about armaments.
The Cold War gave an unprecedented boost to the arms trade on both sides. The Americans supplied them to western European countries as part of their policy of containment of the danger represented by the East.
They supplied their allies in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, sending arms flows around the world called "military aid."
For their part, the other capitalist powers not only used their weapons in their own colonial wars (Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Kenya, Algeria) but delivered them for those of other states:
Portugal fought with French equipment in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique from 1961 to 1974.
The U.S. War in Vietnam led to strong arms flows to South Vietnam and neighboring countries until 1975.
U.S. arms exports had increased sixfold from 1961 to 1975.
What is remarkable is that they continued to rise rapidly after the Vietnam War with an exceptional peak in 1978 (13 times those of 1961) under the influence of the exacerbation of the Cold War.
Arms exports from capitalist countries, like those from around the world, after declining slightly in the late 70s, began to grow again, reaching peaks from 1982 to 1984 and in 1987.
The 80s were marked not only by the maintenance of a high level of the Arms Trade of the United States but by an extraordinary surge in arms sales of the France, the amount of which sometimes exceeded 40% of American sales and even reached 70% to the countries of the South.
This made France the world's largest per capita arms exporter.
The recipients were largely in the Middle East, so that at the time of the Gulf War, in early 1991, French public opinion may have feared that French soldiers would be killed by French weapons delivered to Iraq in previous years.
The international détente from 1988 onwards explains a fairly rapid decline in the capitalist arms trade as well as its rival in the last years of the Cold War.
Exports of major conventional arms by capitalist countries from 1982 to 1990 (in millions of constant US dollars in 1985)
“”
1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
United States 12 707 11 878 10 226 8 800 10 304 12 596 10 503 11 669 8 738
France 3 472 3 460 3 853 3 970 4 096 3 011 2 300 2 577 1 799
United Kingdom 2 065 1 077 1 908 1 699 1 500 1 817 1 401 1 816 1 220
West Germany 861 1 826 2 535 1 075 1 120 676 1 270 716 963
Netherlands 154 87 98 88 240 265 532 725 152
Italy 1 350 973 869 646 457 389 471 169 96
Other developed capitalist countries 818 1 565 1 250 850 1 232 1 740 1 363 1 341 312
Total developed capitalist countries 21 427 20 866 20 739 17 128 18 949 20 494 17 840 19 013 13 280
Total world 33 600 32 703 34 112 32 504 36 453 39 777 33 767 33 509 21 726
N.B.: Major conventional weapons include six categories of the most sophisticated and expensive weapons:
tanks and armoured vehicles, artillery, missiles, military aircraft, warships and military electronics.
Nuclear weapons, which cannot be sold because of the NPT, are obviously not one of them.
Exports of major conventional arms by capitalist countries from 1991 to 1996 (in millions of US dollars at constant 1990 prices)
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
United States 1 041 14 187 14 270 12 029 10 972 10 228
Russia 3 838 2 918 3 773 763 3 505 4 512
France 1 090 1 302 1 308 971 785 2 101
United Kingdom 1 156 1 315 1 300 1 346 1 568 1 773
Germany 2 505 1 527 1 727 2 448 1 549 1 464
Netherlands 453 333 395 581 430 450
Italy 360 434 447 330 377 158
Other capitalist countries 1 828 1 855 1 567 2 586 3 006 1 700
Total capitalist countries 24 272 23 871 24 787 21 054 22 192 22 386
Rest of the world 1 255 969 1 657 766 997 594
Total world 25 527 24 840 26 444 21 820 23 189 22 980
Based on Sipri Yearbook 1997 the trade in major conventional Weapons
The end of the Cold War was marked only by a certain slowdown in the arms trade.
The Gulf War resulted in both new arms exports to the Middle East and a desire to “moralize” the arms trade, which led to the creation of a United Nations Register of Conventional Arms (1991), to which not all states make their contributions and which is very incomplete.
The European Council adopted a code of conduct for arms transfers at its meetings in Luxembourg in 1991 and Lisbon in 1992.
On the other hand, an "international code of conduct" was presented by Nobel laureates in 1997.
These attempts at moralization in the era of globalization and neoliberalism may meet with some skepticism, regardless of the goodwill of the authors of these proposals.
Capitalism will continue to sell weapons where and when it seems profitable, if it does not come up against a vast movement of public opinion.
Sales in the capitalist countries still represented 92% of those of 1991 in 1996.
The United States comes out on top, followed by Russia and the three major Western European countries (France, Germany and the United Kingdom).
The German arms trade increased during these years as a result of the frg's sale of GDR army equipment to various countries around the world.
The United Kingdom has sometimes managed to surpass the France. The Gulf War was followed by an increase in orders from the Middle East.
Following the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), there were “cascading” sales, with the most developed countries ceding their least sophisticated equipment to those that were moderately sophisticated and the latter in turn sending their old-fashioned equipment to the Third World.
At present, the main recipient of sales from capitalist countries that engage in unbridled competition is no longer the Middle East (which still hosts nearly a quarter) but Asia (which receives half).
What conflict will these weapons preside over? India-Pakistan, China Sea, Korea, there is no shortage of areas likely to ignite on this continent.
French arms manufacturers are concerned about the current evolution of the arms trade, despite the rise in exports in 1996, which place France third in the world.
Among the most notable deliveries are that to Taiwan of 60 Mirage 2000-5 by Dassault-Aviation in 1996 and 6 La Fayette frigates by DCN carried out very discreetly at the end of January 1998, with advance settlement in order to avoid any blockage of mainland China.
The armament of a potential conflict zone is thus strengthened. Another is increasingly emerging in the Indian subcontinent:
Pakistan has secured the modernization of 40 Mirage 3 Dassault, the delivery of 3 Atlantic 1 aircraft and especially the supply of 3 Agosta submarines by the Directorate of Shipbuilding.
This last market poses the problem of “compensations” since the third submarine is to be built in Karachi thanks to the transfer of French technology.
Other cases include that of 30 AS 532 Cougar helicopters for Turkey, destined like the twenty others purchased in 1993 for repression against the Kurds, which Eurocopter has pledged to let Ankara produce.
These “compensations” depriving them of an expected profit are one of the current concerns of the armaments capitalists.
They are also concerned that the orders placed in 1996-1997 (e.g. 40 Mirage 2000 by Abu Dhabi to Dassault-Aviation, 12 helicopters by Saudi Arabia and 5 by Israel to Eurocopter, Mistral missiles to Matra by Indonesia and Exocet missiles to Aerospace by Oman and Qatar) will be insufficient to ensure activity in future years.
The limited reduction in equipment and research appropriations linked to a certain staggering over time of the programmes of the 1997-2002 military programming law contributes to their pessimism.
The diversification of activities and reconversion protecting employment are desirable outcomes that the popular movement alone can impose on those who fear that they will not generate as much profit as the machines of death.
Capitalism continues the arms race and arms sales almost as if nothing had changed with the end of the Cold War.
Not only have its leaders maintained NATO, but they are trying to extend it to the countries of Eastern Europe, which raises the protests of the new capitalist Russia.
To justify the continuation of the arms policy, it is suggested to the West that a new danger could arise from the East and it is openly said that the main danger is in the South
(the White Paper on French defense is clear on this subject as well as some statements by President Clinton).
Will the peoples of the South continue to suffer the consequences of an arms race, a major obstacle to genuine development?
Will they not find a way to join their efforts with those of the peoples of the North to move towards disarmament and peace?
Capitalism, through its policy of excessive armament, has shed the blood of the peoples for two centuries.
It would be good if the twenty-first century did not constitute a bloody new century or that it did not end prematurely with a nuclear catastrophe that is always possible in today's world.
The answer does not belong to the masters of armaments, it belongs to the peoples.
Yves Grenet
Yves Grenet is an economist. He heads the National Committee for Independence and Development (CNID). He is a former member of the presidency of the World Peace Council.
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