Blood Work Blood Flows: Arm Transfers
Cold War Spawned Many Secondary Arms Suppliers
- During the Cold War secondary suppliers emerged in Taiwan, North Korea, Brazil, Egypt and Israel, widening the global supplier base beyond the US and USSR.
- Today top suppliers still cluster in the US, China, UK and Europe but the top 100 include firms from Turkey, Czechia and Indonesia.
Geopolitics Redirected Arms Toward Proxy And Civil Wars
- Cold War geopolitics shifted buyers from developed-state exchanges to heavily arming newly independent and proxy states, fueling intrastate conflicts.
- Example: Nigeria's civil war saw both sides using similar weapons sourced from competing external suppliers.
Arms Transfers Let Powers Fight Without Troops
- The US used arms transfers to avoid direct troop casualties, exemplified by Nixon's Vietnamization shifting fighting to local forces while the US supplied weapons.
- That tactic encouraged covert funding channels and private intermediaries to keep operations off congressional oversight.
We trace the evolution of international arms transfers from mercantilism to the modern era, and the perverse incentives produced by the symbiosis of private enterprise and state imperatives in arms production.
Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production
This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony
Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron
Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel
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THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Killstreak Inbound
ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
Inspired by the Pentagon’s recent deployment of computer game graphics to promote its illegal bombardment of Iran, producer Thomas takes a longer view at the relationship between the United States military and the video games industry.
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Image: Soldiers patrol outside of Goma International Airport in North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of Congo (2022)