From Ukraine to Israel...the arms race puts the world on the verge of a volcano

The United States leads the world's arms market (Associated Press)

At a time when the world is preoccupied with the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and counting the number of martyrs, wounded and missing people and the massive destruction there, a question must be asked about the huge machine and market for manufacturing lethal weapons that have witnessed great development in recent years, especially since the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

Expectations were for a decline in the arms race between East and West after the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, which relied on the so-called balance of terror in possessing weapons between the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union and the capitalist bloc led by the United States of America.

However, the flames of wars did not subside, but rather their flames flared up again, as if humanity had not been deterred after two devastating world wars, and the international system had not succeeded in curbing the tendency to armament.

In its January 2024 issue, the French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique published a report on the role of the Ukraine war in escalating the arms race in the world, in which it pointed to the tragic consequences a century after the global symposium organized by the major powers between 1932 and 1934 in Geneva to disarm Weapon.

Today, the arms industry is recording record numbers in sales, and the International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm acknowledges that the world’s arms spending budget witnessed a continuous increase in 2022 for the eighth time in a row, and is at its highest levels in more than 30 years and the end of the Cold War, with a total estimated at 2055 billion. Euros, or a rate of 2.2% of global GDP.

American hegemony

It is worth noting that we are back to square one in terms of major powers competing in the arms race, as the United States, followed by Russia, remained at the top of the top ten arms exporting countries.

Statistics indicate that between 2017 and 2022, the United States topped the list of countries exporting weapons with 40% of sales, followed by Russia with 17%, then France with 10%, China’s share was 5%, and Germany’s share was 4.5%.

Such statistics confirm Washington’s dominance over the arms trade. Its companies, Locked Martin, Rayton Technology, and Northon Grumman, top the list of arms production companies, with sales estimated at $62 billion for the first company, $40 billion for the second company, and $32 billion for the third company.

The US defense budget for 2023 was approved at $858 billion, an increase of $45 billion over the budget proposed by President Joe Biden, with the aim of increasing soldiers’ salaries by 4.6%, and increasing spending on weapons and aircraft, in light of continued American support for Ukraine.

American military hegemony is evident in its advanced position in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the world's first military organization, which was able to expand its influence after Finland and Sweden - two European countries belonging to the Scandinavian group - joined this alliance after the policy of these countries was It is based on neutrality, which is evidence that these two countries do not trust the European Union, and that their confidence is greater in the military power of the alliance, specifically the American umbrella.

Expansion of the arms trade

This expansion is considered one of the most important repercussions of the war in Ukraine. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Finland justified the request to join NATO by saying: “We have a long border with Russia (1,340 kilometers) and we want to maintain a safe situation there.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin's answer was that there is no danger to Finland, that abandoning neutrality would be a mistake, and that changing Helsinki's foreign policy would harm bilateral relations.

This war also led some countries to change their defense strategy by increasing military spending and increasing the armament of their army, which raises fears of the rapid pace of conventional armament with the worsening of the Western-Russian conflict.

In this context, an escalation in European armaments is observed, fearing Putin’s ambitions on the eastern European borders, especially since he annexed the Crimean Islands in 2014 and then Dombas to Russia.

France is reevaluating the military programming law, while establishing a technological industrial base for European and French defense, allocating $400 billion between 2024 and 2030 for military spending.

For its part, Germany seeks to have the largest conventional European army in NATO thanks to huge investments and allocating 2% of the gross domestic product to the defense budget, bringing the military spending budget to between 70 and 80 billion euros annually after agreeing to establish an exceptional fund worth 100 billion dollars.

The fears did not stop at European space, but rather extended to Asian space, and new countries entered the arms race, such as Japan and South Korea. It is among the countries that were pursuing a peaceful approach, far from militarization.

Speaking of the Asian continent, the Chinese giant is not limited to its competition with Washington on the economic level, but rather it seeks military competition through its huge arms production companies, and by exploiting the Russian and European decline globally to become a difficult figure in the international equation.

The hot Arab arena

In the Arab world, in recent years, the Arab arena has recorded a serious development in regional conflicts, in addition to internal armed conflicts between two parties within the same country.

It is sufficient to point out the statistics for the top ten countries on the list of the most arms importers in Asia for the period between 2017 and 2022. Although India topped the list, it includes 5 Islamic countries, including 4 Arab countries in the Middle East.

The Nile Basin and the Horn of Africa have also had the lion's share of civil wars, as Sudan is witnessing violent fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, and the war has expanded beyond the capital Khartoum to other areas of the country, which threatens national security and the security of neighboring countries.

In a blog post by the head of the Sudanese National Strategic Center, Dr. Taj Al-Sir Othman, he said that whoever thinks that the conflict agenda will stop at the borders of Sudan; "He is delusional."

Not far from Sudan, Somalia is experiencing a civil war that is exhausting it due to a war of attrition carried out by the Al-Shabaab Mujahideen movement since the beginning of the current century against the Somali government and its allies at home and abroad. Always on the African continent, specifically in its north, Libya has witnessed a bloody conflict.

The problem in these wars is that each party benefits from its foreign alliances to strengthen its arsenal of weapons and the resulting destruction, sabotage, chaos, and scorched earth politics.

The matter does not stop at buying and acquiring weapons through legal or illegal means, but rather goes beyond resorting to armed militias such as the Janjaweed forces and the Wagner groups, which further complicates the situation.

War without morals

“Arms production and trade is an area in which ethics takes second place.” This is what was stated in the commentary of the Le Monde Diplomatique newspaper report referred to above.

The newspaper provided examples of this, including that monitoring institutions discovered that many of Moscow's weapons, including ballistic missiles, widely use electronic components made in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Israel, and China. These precise and sensitive devices are acquired in devious ways through indirect channels in collusion with Chinese brokers.

Another example is the political whitewashing of Viktor Bug, an arms broker of Russian origin known throughout the world.

Pugh was detained for 15 years in the United States and was exchanged in December 2022 for an American basketball player accused of drug use by Russian authorities.

A third example is that Washington decided in June 2023 to deliver cluster explosive munitions to Ukraine, and President Joe Biden justified this by saying: “It is a very difficult decision, but it is the right thing to do.”

It is known that 120 countries have abandoned the use of this type of cluster explosives, which kill indiscriminately and cause many civilian casualties. However, the United States, Russia, and Ukraine have refused to abandon them.

In the immoral context of war, the Israeli aggression against Gaza stands out, in which the occupation army uses advanced and lethal American-made weapons against children, women and the elderly in a besieged strip whose area does not exceed 360 square kilometers.

Despite the lawsuit filed by the State of South Africa to the International Court of Justice against violations that amount to a crime against humanity, Israel did not stop its bombing and extermination operations, in defiance of all international laws and norms.

Finally, the Chief of Staff of the French Land Army, General Pierre Scheele, issues a warning about “the resounding return of major wars to once again become a privileged means of settling conflicts, and the process of unleashing endless violence, in which moral and legal barriers are shattered under the blows of the most unbridled barbarism, at a time when we thought that such Aggression has been consigned to the history books.”

Source: Al Jazeera