Arms Procurement Links: Japan Jumps in and India Sinking

One area that I neglected (out of ignorance and not deliberately) in my dissertation was the effect of domestic arms arms procurement procedures on arms exports and imports.  This is an area that I covered recently in a course that I am teaching on the Politics of Arms in International Relations.  I think that I have been primed to see problems of acquisitions because of the readings that we did in class - along with my own personal epiphany about the lack of such thinking in my earlier work. At the bottom of this post I'll post the readings that I had my class look at that turned my own view on the subject.  First, however, I am linking to two stories about domestic arms acquisitions that caught my attention in the past few weeks.

1. Japan to Launch a Defense Procurement Agency (LINK)

Japan's Ministry of Defense will use its new constitutional powers to set up an agency to manage international trade of weapons and military equipment. 

The ministry confirmed with IHS Jane's that the new agency will be named the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency, and will begin operations on October 1. 

The agency's key objectives will include promoting international cooperation on the procurement of defense equipment, enhancing project management, and enhancing development for Japanese defense production and technology bases. 

The Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency is set to become one of the most powerful wings of the Japanese Ministry of Defense, and will employ 1,800 people.

It is interesting to think that Japan did not have this agency earlier.  The country obviously has the capacity to engage in defense acquisitions, but those functions were not concentrated in a ministry that was part of the defense establishment.  This new move may not necessarily make acquisition more rational (Caverley and Kapstein), but it will make the Ministry of Defense more powerful.  This will be an interesting subject to follow over the next few years.

2. India's acquisitions process is corrupt and broken (LINK)

In a long and interesting story, the details of India's decades-long failure to replace its rapidly aging and diminished artillery is still not complete.  Problems of corruption meant that the acquisition agency changed its rules.  These rules have negative consequences:

The other problem involved India’s Ministry of Defence. India’s defense procurement establishment has shown an extreme risk-averse behavior and Defense India observes external link that when a competition devolves to a single-vendor solution, the practice is often to re-tender. Soltam and Denel’s exit left just BAE Bofors, until they, too were eliminated by allegations that Bofors had paid INR 640 million (about $16 million) in bribes, trying to secure the order. 

The net effect of corporate blacklists, plus single-vendor prohibitions, is a process that can’t field equipment to India’s military when it’s needed – and sometimes ever. Unfortunately for India’s front-line soldiers, their need for working artillery hasn’t changed.

Things only got worse and weirder.  I recommend that you read the entire article.  The more I think that I understand the dynamics of the arms trade, the more new information like this appears.  I guess I should be happy that there is still plenty of research for me out there!

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Class readings related to (at least tangentially) to domestic arms acquisition processes:

Kovacic, William E., and Dennis E. Smallwood. 1994. “Competition Policy, Rivalries, and
Defense Industry Consolidation.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 8(4): 91-110.

Mayer, Kenneth R., and Anne M. Khademian. 1996. “Bringing Politics Back in: Defense Policy and the Theoretical Study of Institutions and Processes.” Public Administration Review
56(2): 180-90.

Pearson, Frederic S. 1989. “The Correlates of Arms Importation.” Journal of Peace Research
26(2): 153-63.

Caverley, Jonathan, and Ethan B. Kapstein. 2012. “Arms Away.” Foreign Affairs 91(5):
125-32.

Qingmin, Zhang. 2006. “The Bureaucratic Politics of US Arms Sales to Taiwan.” The
Chinese Journal of International Politics 1(2): 231-65.

Smith, Ron, Anthony Humm, and Jacques Fontanel. 1985. “The Economics of Exporting
Arms.” Journal of Peace Research 22(3): 239-47.