Description
The world has never spent more on war preparation. Simultaneously, record numbers of people are being forced to flee conflict and violence. The arms trade is a key link in the chain between the obscene amounts that (some) governments spend, the weapons their companies produce, the wars and violence they fuel, and the death and displacement they generate. While military spending and weapons production are concentrated in the USA, Europe, Russia and China, the economic, political and social costs are felt most violently and directly in the countries of the global South. Increasingly, populations in the global North are realising the costs being imposed on them, too – the opportunity costs that military spending poses for inequality, social spending and climate action.
This paper takes a journey through the global arms bazaar to draw connections between where weapons are made, the circuits they move through, and the sites of violence they’re used at. It tells a story about how the arms trade facilitates both domination and resistance: a global story that puts western and non-western involvement in the arms trade into conversation. Drawing connections between sites of violence means we no longer need to choose which humanitarian crisis is “worst”, or whose violence is more egregious. Rather, we can ask what the social forces are that drive war and violence, so that we can pursue solidarity as a shared fight in the unfolding, ongoing process of decolonization and changing global order.
