A round up of arms-related goodness

This is a post for me to take care of some bookkeeping tasks.  There have been a number of articles written about arms sales that relate to my research interests lately.  However, I have needed to put them aside to finish up some other projects and to finish up the end of the year.  I will present this as a roundup list with a little commentary so I can come back and do some deeper work with these sources later.

Vietnam

The Vietnam War ended long ago.  The US has now lifted its arms prohibition on the country.  It was done via an executive order and announced by President Obama.  This is an interesting story for me.  In this case, the prohibition on sales was political - trumping economic concerns.  This decision is also political - a signal to China about the US interests in security in the region. It looks like the US will start fielding requests for aircraft. (LINK)

Russia has been supplying arms to Vietnam for a long time.  I wrote a vignette about naval sales to Vietnam for a paper I wrote in 2012 (unpublished).  Here is an interesting piece on the mechanics who maintain Russian-made Sukhoi jets for Vietnam (LINK).  This aspect of arms sales and military effectiveness has not really made its way into the literature on arms sales.  I think that it is really fascinating. If arms are something more than symbolic, they need to be maintained. The capacity for states to maintain their own high-end equipment puts them ahead of states that need to rely solely on the manufacturing country.  I am still thinking of how this could be incorporated into a research paper, so for now it remains an interesting small question.

Russia

Russia and arms are always interesting.  An interesting article from RFE/RL outlines the proliferation of new and fancy weapons being built by Russia and the fear that they will lead to a new arms race.

In other interesting news, Russia and the US (along with the rest of the P5) agreed to re-arm the Libyan government for that government to fight internal rebels (LINK).  This is a very interesting state of affairs.  The norm for western governments has been to avoid providing weapons to states to deal with internal repression (at least in policy and rhetoric). Now states are agreeing that states arming to fight against extremists is okay.  This in many ways validates the Russian position in Syria. States have a right to protect their regime from violence. Does this signal a shift in norms to take into account the growing threat of Islamic violence (i.e. ISIS), or is this a unique case?

F-35

The Pentagon admitted that the F-35 will be delayed and will not be ready for full production until (at least) 2018 (LINK).  The delays in this program are an interesting issue in arms acquisition and production.  The F-35 was supposed to be cheaper and better and it is morphing into a hybrid that is neither.  For me the interesting question to ask in a few years is whether the political capital gained by outsourcing and cooperating on its production are worth the cost in terms of acquisition cost and speed as well as the ratio of those two factors in effectiveness.

The Politics and Economics of Arms Sales

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about the nexus between the politics and the economics of arms sales.  It is a question that lies at the heart of my dissertation, but one which is mostly inadequately appreciated by both economists and political scientists.  I had my class (Politics of Arms in International Relations) read some pieces this week which relate to this decision-making nexus and it has brought some of these issues back to the forefront in my own thinking.

First off is a great quote from Smith, Dunn, and Fontanel (1985) about the problems of politics in the transfer of arms [1]. (Emphasis is mine)

"Although arms transfers comprise a significant component of world trade, they have received little attention from mainstream economists.  This partly reflects the data difficulties which inhibit accurate estimation and quantification, and partly the contamination of the topic by political and strategic elements beyond the economists' expertise."

The idea that an issue is contaminated by political and strategic elements is an interesting perspective of political science.  It is refreshing to see economists admit that there may be something that is beyond their expertise as well!

Smith et al (1985) argue that there are three primary reasons for states to wish to sell weapons:

1.     Strategic: governments wish to maintain an indigenous arms industry ins order to ensure weapons designed exactly to their requirements, national independence of supply, and access to the latest military technology. There is an incentive to export, even if exports are below the average cost. (242-3)
2.     Political leverage in foreign policy: nation can assist their "friends" by strengthening their military position while at the same time having potential to influence their behavior (Kinsella tie-in) or that there is a prohibition that weapons not used aggressively or for internal repression (tie-in with Blanton). (243)
3.     Economic benefits: these include technological spin-offs, employment benefits, economic momentum (243-44)

Caverley and Kapstein [2] look at similar arguments in the case of the United States arms production. They argue that the US lost its advantage in arms exports because of the domestic demands of the pentagon.  The penchant for the US military to ask for the nicest, highest spec equipment means that the finished product is priced out of range for non-domestic buyers.  They give the example of the F-35, which was designed to be a low-cost high tech fighter that would be good enough for most missions and which would be eminently exportable.  The rising costs of that aircraft have meant that many staunch allies have reduced or cancelled orders for the aircraft. The increased design specifications have made the aircraft less suitable for the domestic role that it was originally meant to fill.

This is an interesting dilemma.  The world's superpower which has the advantage of a strong domestic market is being squeezed out because of the unrealistic demands of that same market. This echoes the findings of Smith and colleagues in the case of decreased military spending by Britain, GDR, and the US means fewer exports, while the opposite was true for France and Italy.  They note that it was the civilian oversight of the procurement process in those states - with an eye toward exports - that caused this result.

I had some articles in my newsfeed about aircraft sales that made me think of these arguments today.

_________________________
Links

First F-35 built in Europe goes for its maiden Flight: LINK

Making F-35s more quickly can lead to problems: LINK

Kuwait is buying the Eurofighter.  LINK

Brazil is buying a Swedish fighter: LINK  LINK2

__________________________
REFERENCES

[1] Smith, Ron, Anthony Humm, and Jacques Fontanel. 1985. “The Economics of Exporting Arms.” Journal of Peace Research 22(3): 239–47.
[2] Caverley, Jonathan, and Ethan B. Kapstein. 2012. “Arms Away.” Foreign Affairs 91(5): 125–32.

More Arms Round Up - Strategic Bombers and Navy for Russia and United States

US Aircraft News

I have been following the development of the F-35 with interest for the past few years.  It represents a new way of building aircraft, but seems like it may be a model that is not sustainable, or feasible.  I didn't know the US was looking at creating a third generation strategic bomber, but that seems to be the case.  This article gives some details about the development and testing of this new aircraft.  It will be some time before it is ready for production - if it is chosen as an option.  LINK  LINK2

US most Advanced Fighters, the F-22 raptor, deployed (kind of) to Europe as a reassurance against more aggressive Russian maneuvers in Europe's airspace.  The problem with this power projection is the weakness that it represents because of the low numbers of aircraft in service. LINK

Russian Bombers and MiGs

Meanwhile, Russia's strategic bombers the TU-160 is being modernized.  LINK  With new avionics: LINK

Russia's new smart bombs to go on those updated bombers. LINK

Russian MiGs owned by Bulgaria to be repaired in Poland.  LINK

This is a fascinating look at dependence (my students will have read Kinsella (1998) and should know about dependence) and using an outside state to provide maintenance.  This can't be good for Russia's long-term arms sales.  I am wondering about the long-term implications for arms sales if the supplier is seen as being too pushy.  That's a take on things that I don't think I've seen in the literature before.

Link-O-Rama: Arms Edition

Apologies and Excuses

So much for resolutions! (Link) A bold prediction about my future blogging awesomeness followed by 1 post in 5 months is not a stellar beginning.  In my defense, the past 5 months have been as busy as any in my life.  These are the highlights of the past five months:

• The end of the semester
• chairing our graduate admissions committee
• A trip to the US to sit on a hiring committee
• A trip to the US a week later to attend a seminar at Brigham Young University
• Graduation
• A trip to Poland for a conference
• A vacation to the US for 5 weeks to visit family
• The return to Astana to start the new semester with a new role: acting department chairIn addition to the normal activities of getting ready for the semester (preparation of syllabi, courses, etc) I have had the new administrative tasks associated with my new position.  I also had an article accepted for publication that needed work to be ready for the publisher.  I have also been scrambling to put together my paper for the American Political Science Association Meeting (APSA) which is next week. 

I now have a better understanding of the wisdom of my PhD advisers who emphasized that life after graduate school was more busy.  The pressures and activities are a bit different, but it is definitely busy.

______

Arms Links

With the preamble over, I am now going to post links to articles about arms.  I am doing this in conjunction with my PLS455/555 Politics of Arms in International Relations course at Nazarbayev University. I thought this would be a good resource for my students as they begin their case study assignments for the course. It is also a good way for me to organize these links and resources and to put together some initial thoughts.  In this edition I will keep my comments brief. I would like to do this more regularly and add more context and analysis. 

F-35

• Australia drops out of F-35 program. Large-scale weapons system collaboration is hard! Link
• A good roundup of lots of arms news.  News on Russian Sukhoi fighter jets, and the ongoing saga of the F-35 fighter. Link
• F-35B not doing well in carrier testing and certification. Link

Mistrel

• France returns Russia's money for the Mistrel.  This is a great example of the politicization of arms transfers. It's an interesting case of Russia importing (Russia is not a major arms importer) and being denied a weapon system that it really wanted. Link
• France needs to sell the Mistrels it is not selling to Russia.  That will prove very difficult. Link

Russian Arms and Navy

• Russia to develop a new "Doomsday" aircraft command center. Link
•  Russian navy to begin building new destroyer - with capabilities that are very impressive and challenging to the US Naval superiority. Does this mean a comeback for the defense industry in Russia? Link
• New Russian drone design. Link
• Seven new and scary Russian weapons systems.  In this sense scary is for the West, or potential military rivals of the Russian state.  Hypersonic weapons are a new class of weapons that pose an interesting dilemma.  They are definitely weapons of the offensive, but are meant to overcome missile shield technology that rendered earlier nuclear offensive capabilities less secure. This is a demonstration of a technological arms race. Link
• Morocco to buy Russian Amur class submarine.  Why? Link
• New love for an old Bear. The TU-95 and nuclear bomber advantages. Link
• Refurbished Russian submarine with all kinds of capabilities baffles US experts. "The Russians were always more innovative at this than we were."  What also struck me about this sub is its length.  It is half the length of a US aircraft carrier.  The Russians don't mess around when it comes to submarines. Link
• Russian air to air missiles R-73 are flying off the shelves of the arms bazaars. Link
• Story about Russia's new Armata tank. Link
• Interesting video of forum on Russian naval power in the 21st century. Link
• Russia selling powerful anti-aircraft missile system to Iran.  Link

India

• Predictions of US-Russian arms competition in India.  This is an interesting field of inquiry.  India just became part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), but is also a democratic state, unlike most other members of the organization.  India has traditionally been one of Russia's biggest customers, and I have dealt with the issue of Russian-Indian arms purchases in other posts (Link, Link, Link). Will closer security cooperation cement the relationship that has been built between the two countries? Link
• India is going to be buying a lot of arms in the near to medium future. 4.7 Billion dollars is a good start. Link

US Navy and Military

• US begins work on second "Gerald R. Ford" Class of Aircraft Carrier to be named after JFK. Link
• An interesting piece on the size of the US navy.  Arguments on one side are qualitative (our fewer ships can do more than many more ships were able to do earlier.)  Arguments on the other are quantitative.  Fetishizing numbers is not good policy.  However, arguing in terms of threats faced and the ability of the naval force, as presently constituted, to respond to those threats is good policy. Questioning the definitions of threats is the next step in such an analysis.  Policy in the absence of strategy is rudderless. Link
• Russian jammers supposedly render aircraft carriers useless.  Whither the advantage of carrier groups? Link
• The US is not selling, but is deploying F-22s to Europe to ease the minds of allies.  Increased Russian air activity within the context of the Crimean and Ukrainian conflict is increasing tensions in the region. Link 
• Strong market for used US M113 Armored Personnel Carriers and its variants.  I spent a lot of time in one of these in Baghdad 2003. Link I spent more time in the Bradley, though.
• I don't understand why the US Air Force hates the A-10 so much.  I think the Army would be happy to have these aircraft. Link
• 
  

China

• China is holding a large military parade next week and is having trouble attracting western leaders: Link  and another Link

Communist China generally shies away from the vast annual demonstrations of military might that were a hallmark of the Soviet Union, normally holding such events once a decade to mark the foundation of the People's Republic. 

It has struggled to attract world-wide interest for the parade as world leaders are wary of the tone of the event, and the risk of lending it legitimacy. 

Beijing is becoming increasingly assertive in the region and regularly accuses Tokyo of failing to show sufficient contrition for Japan's 20th-century invasion of China.

Other Miscellaneous Arms Links 

• Analysis of Central Asian Military capabilities.  This should be of interest to my students. Link
• Sweden and Brazil sign a deal for Gripen fighters. The deal includes financial terms, as well as details about the licensing and production of half of the fighters in Brazil.  The jet was also modified to fit Brazil's needs.  Link
• French Deliver Rafale fighters to Egypt.  Link
• This link maybe the most interesting.  It details the problem with Pilatus aircraft that was sold to Chad by Switzerland. The aircraft is not mean to be armed or used offensively, but apparently it has been.  This has led the Swiss to pull back on other potential exports. It is interesting to see a principled stance on arms transfers. Economic theories of arms transfers would predict that Switzerland is under too much financial pressure to export in order to support its domestic manufacturing for a product that has a limited domestic market. Interesting counterexample/mini case study to think about in terms of policy-making and the complexity of arms sales as a topic. Link

When Cooperation, Competition, and Politics Collide

The world of international arms transfers is a complicated one. The more I study the complex interactions of states in this arena, the more complexity I see.  The US and Russia are the world's largest arms exporting states.  In most arenas they are competitors.  The reasons for this are both historical  and current.  The reasons are historical in the sense that there is path dependence in arms patterns established during the Cold War. They are current in that Russia's own domestic political weakness is a factor in its anti-US foreign policy decision-making (See Ortmann 2011).

The US has problems with Russia's arms export agency, Rosoboronexport:

Rosoboronexport was subject to US sanctions from 2006 to 2010 for allegedly providing nations including Iran and Syria with equipment that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction. (Source)

The Pentagon, in its Afghanistan mission, has turned to Russia's export agency to provide ammunition for the Afghan forces as well as to supply the reconstituted Afghan army with helicopters.  The first batch of helicopters has been delivered and a new contract is in the works.  The US Congress (both the Senate and the House) are working on legislation to prevent US agencies to work with Rosoboronexport:

In mid-June, US Senator John Cornyn called on the Pentagon to take action against Rosoboronexport, but the Pentagon dismissed his claims, saying that dealing with Russia’s arms exporter was the "only legally available method" to supply the helicopters to Afghanistan.

In this transaction the US is essentially acting as an agent for the Afghan military, which has a preference for the Russian helicopters.  This preference is probably based more on historical considerations than current events, but it is their preference.  The Pentagon is caught in the middle.

This transaction - and others like it in Iraq - show the limits in my current research on the arms trade.  When the sale of helicopters is completed it will show that Russia sold arms to Afghanistan.  The US involvement in the transaction - including paying for the equipment with US taxpayer money is not accounted for.

While such transactions are not the norm, they do highlight weaknesses in the way we code arms transfer data and limitations in the ways we can make inferences from such data.

References

Ortmann, Stefanie. 2011. “The Russian Network State as a Great Power.” In Russia as a Network State: What Works in Russia When State Institutions Do Not?, eds. Vadim Kononenko and Arkady Moshes. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 139–163.

Feudal Domains - Congress, the Military, and Arms Procurement

As part of my dissertation research I am examining the processes through which states make foreign policy decisions.  I am specifically interested in the policies that lead to the export of arms from one state to another. My dissertation focuses on this decision-making in the United States and Russia.  Today's reading of Chapter 5 of Richard Halloran's book To Arm a Nation proved to be a rich source of material.

This chapter focuses on the "Feudal Domains" within both the military and Congress which create unnecessary duplication of efforts in acquisition of arms.  The problems of acquisition are a result of turf battles within both institutions - Congress and the Military. The issue in Congress is the temptation to use the vast military budget to gain political advantage:

"Congress is the site of dozens of fiefs, each more concerned with its own turf....The primary reason is simple - money.  The military budget is so immense that everyone seeks to get as much of it as possible spent in his home state or election district." (Halloran 1986, 146-7)

Within the defense department, the problems come as a result of turf battles between powerful procurement chiefs that are exacerbated by the inter service rivalry within the military more generally.

"But the personnel fiefs are minor compared with those in the procurement of arms, equipment, vehicles ammunition, spare parts, and the vast storehouse of supplies for a modern military force.  It is surely the most divided and conflicting set of fiefs within the military establishment, rarely developing weapons that would be used by more than one service and hence could be produced economically." (Halloran 1986, 161)

Another point that is made by Halloran is of interest to those trying to research processes of decision making.   That is the difference between the people and the system.  He discusses some of the idiosyncrasies of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He contends that they don't function well as advisers to the President and the Secretary of Defense.  The written reports and advice that comes from the Joint Chiefs is "...generally irrelevant, normally unread, and most always disregarded." (Halloran 1986, 163).  This is in contrast to informal meetings between the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense which were characterized by Harold Brown (President Carter's SECDEF).  Brown noted that these face-to-face meetings were "extremely helpful" (ibid).

Of particular interest to those interested in the processes leading to exports are the vignettes on page 170 of ways that Members of Congress push for extra production of weapons systems that benefit their district.

• Carl Levin (D, MI) - Pushes for an additional 120 M1 tanks (840 as opposed to the 720 requested by military)
• Howard Metzenbaum (D, OH) - critic of military spending but big supporter of the B1 bomber program because of the components made in Ohio.
• Sam Nunn (D, GA) - "respected for his evenhanded approach [to defense spending]" fought to have additional C5 aircraft built in Georgia even though the Army and Air Force favored a new plane.

In these cases it seems that there would be pressure from Congress to find foreign outlets for such weapons systems built in their home districts.  If we can sell such items to allies across the world, it is even better for the local economies that Members of Congress represent so fiercely.  Is that a reasonable assumption to make?  Can I think of this as one of the drivers of US arms export policy?

References

Halloran, Richard. To Arm a Nation: Rebuilding America’s Endangered Defenses. 1st ed. Macmillan, 1986.

Russian and US Arms Exports - A Very general Overview

This particular post is just a bit of motivation for me.  I am doing a little exploratory work for my dissertation, but I am also working on learning how to use R for statistical analysis/graphing.  This is the result of my afternoon and evening.  The data come from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

These graphs show the total arms exports from both the US and Russia (USSR before 1991).  There are two things that stand out from this simple visualization: 1) arms transfers are a cyclical process at the macro level, and 2) Russian arms exports dropped off much more quickly than the U.S., but are now rebounding along with the U.S.