Why Arms Sales are Complicated - Purchaser Edition

I have spent a lot of time in the past decade researching arms transfers. There are a few of us who study this particular subfield of international relations/economics and sometimes I wonder if there is a really a lot more to say about the subject.  Then I read a bit more and realize that we are really only scratching the surface in terms of the complexity of the subject matter of arms sales.  I am working on some projects now that work to better integrate arms transfers with wider research in IR and that has me thinking more about the motivations of importing states.

I think that many of the models of arms sales think mostly of supplier considerations. There is a lot to commend in thinking of models of how states use arms as a foreign policy tool. Richard Johnson and I published an article last year in International Studies Quarterly (LINK) where we tested whether major democratic arms suppliers take human rights into consideration in their arms sales. Despite some evidence for this a decade ago (Blanton 2005) in the US context, it doesn't appear that human rights are really a major driver in states' decision-making.  That is important information to know, but rather than simply knowing what does not motivate sales, we need to think about what does.

It is often said that the end of the Cold War signaled a shift from a sellers' to a buyers' market in terms of weapons.  There is some truth to that, but states do not usually simply purchase arms "off the rack." The considerations for states in terms of replacement parts, continued supplies, ammunition, training, etc. especially for complex weapons systems also plays a role.  In other words, this is not simply an economic transaction.  Arms sales by their nature are political - and they often involve top-level government involvement in making the deals.  This is especially true of the most complex weapons systems - combat aircraft and ships.

Caverly and Kapstein (2012) argued a few years ago that the US was making a mistake focusing its research and development and arms sales policy on selling the most complex equipment. Their argument was that many states needed cheaper, reliable arms and that the US would push customers towards rivals (Russia and China) by focusing only on the latest generation of equipment.

I thought about that when I read a recent post in The National Interest that discussed Taiwan's decision to stop seeking access to the US F-35 fighter.  Taiwan's strategy has been to collect the most advanced weapons system that it could in order to deter potential future Chinese aggression.  The authors suggest that a better strategy would be one of denial that relies on abundant cheap resources such as anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles to make any potential aggression costly. Rather than going toe-to-toe in terms of quality, to beat the Chinese by using multiple cheap technologies.  The strategic consideration of customers (especially for those that are allies) will do a great deal to determine the types of weapons required. This is to say nothing about budgets and the finite resources that states have to acquire weapons.

A second complication that I have been thinking about is one that came up in an article about India's attempt to upgrade its own air force.  Internal politics of this deal have been extremely heated and complicated.  The Indian supreme court refused to get involved in a case about Modi's deal to purchase French Rafale fighters. Modi changed the terms of the deal - abandoning the licensing and construction of aircraft in India in favor or purchasing aircraft built entirely in France.  Licensing, financing, and other considerations along with long-standing political cleavages and battles within purchasing states can also seriously affect the ability of a state to sell arms, and limit the types of equipment (and therefore the number of potential suppliers) available.

All this means is that there needs to be more work that examines qualitative details of arms sales from both the purchaser and seller perspective. Our quantitative models of arms sales need more accurate inputs and theories to become more reliable.  I am looking forward to an exciting year of digging into arms sales details.

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Blanton, Shannon Lindsey. (2005) Foreign Policy in Transition? Human Rights, Democracy, and U.S. Arms Exports. International Studies Quarterly 49: 647–668.

Caverley, Jonathan, and Ethan B. Kapstein. (2012) Arms Away. Foreign Affairs 91: 125–132.

Johnson, Richard A. I., and Spencer L. Willardson. (2018) Human Rights and Democratic Arms Transfers: Rhetoric Versus Reality with Different Types of Major Weapon Systems. International Studies Quarterly 62: 453–464.

Some Links about Russian Arms

My own thinking about arms is grounded, primarily in my own experience in the Army and a lifelong proximity and love of aircraft.  I don't think a lot about the Navy, but I should.  The past few weeks have provided a number of interesting articles about the Russian navy and arms acquisition and manufacture, which have many applications for I think about the problem of arms in general. 

The first link is to a story about the sinking of the dry dock and damage to Russia's Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier.   The story highlights the importance of infrastructure for both building and servicing military equipment. In addition to the need to think about infrastructure, is a discussion about the shift in strategy and acquisition to favor small ships over a large blue-water navy. For states with arms production capability, the acquisition process is still tied to strategic priorities and bureaucratic politics. This is an issue that has been explored with a bit of depth in the US case and its often dysfunctional arms acquisition process. Opening the black box of other states and understanding what drives the purchasing decisions beyond economic necessity is an under-explored area in the literature on arms transfers.

A two-part article on the Russian Defense Policy Blog discusses the issue of nuclear submarines in the Russian fleet.  Part I of the article is basically a translation of an article that ran in the Russian press that asks hard questions about the priorities of the Russian fleet. Part II of the article provides more commentary on the primary arguments in the original piece. The gist of the piece is that the focus on nuclear subs with a capability that lags behind the US is starving the entire fleet of necessary resources that could provide stronger strategic value.

An interesting question to ask here is how the priority to export weapons interferes with or enhances the strategic capabilities of states.  Jonathan Caverley and Ethan Kapstein have written about this in the US context. They advocate updating the arms acquisition in the US to favor "good enough" weapons that can be exported as well rather than simply focusing on building the top of the line systems. When the state is both dependent on exports for reasons of status and economics (as I found in my dissertation), how do strategic priorities shift?  How can the state allocate resources efficiently under conditions of competing priorities?

In the case of Russia does chasing great power status and a posture that follows the Soviet Cold War allocation of naval resources (in terms of aircraft carriers for power projection and nuclear submarines for nuclear deterrence) harm its ability to meet its new strategic demands and realities?


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Caverley, Jonathan, and Ethan B. Kapstein. (2012) Arms Away. Foreign Affairs 91: 125–132.

Politics, Relationships, and International Arms Transfers

Arms transfers and the politics and relationships that surround them are everywhere when you are tuned in to them.  I know that I suffer from an extreme case of selective attention in the case of arms transfers, but I find them fascinating to think about.  I am constantly surprised both by how much we think about arms transfers in terms of human rights and foreign policy, but how little we actually think about the strategic logic of transferring coercive capabilities between states.  It is an area that is deeply in need of theorizing, and that is what I've taken as my central research task.

This week I had a few stories pop up in my news feed that reinforce the social and political nature of arms transfers.  The first one is one that I find very fascinating - it is the case of Turkey ordering S-400 missiles from Russia.  The original sale is problematic from the point of view of NATO since the S-400 is designed to shoot down NATO aircraft.  The symbolic move of Turkey away from NATO suppliers to Russia also signaled some deeper trends in the fracturing relationship between Erdogan and the West as a whole. 

I wrote about that sale in more detail earlier this year on this blog (LINK) and focused on the aspect that this particular sale may be an interesting case of a leading indicator that can be used to predict a state's alliance and ideological affiliation in the future.  One aspect that I didn't think of was the current state of Russian-Western relations and the fact that Russia faces sanctions.  The US is telling Turkey along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar to back out of the purchase of these missiles from Russia or face the threat of sanctions themselves. LINK

In terms of the sanctions regime, it makes sense that explicitly military goods would be at the top of the list of sanctioned goods.  The fact that these arms are being considered by US allies is potentially troubling in and of itself in terms of what it may mean about the strength of trust between these states and the US in terms of security guarantees.

The second story that caught my eye was the potential for Ukraine to jointly produce armored vehicles with Thailand (LINK).  An article by Vucetic and Tago (2015) that I recently discovered (via Twitter) does a very good job of outlining the trade-off between autonomy and efficiency in the acquisition of arms.  It is most efficient to purchase arms off the shelf, but that leaves a state vulnerable to pressure from the selling state (which is the subject of the first part of this post).  It is costly and inefficient from an economic standpoint. 

What I found fascinating was the description of the meeting between the delegation from Thailand who came to Kyiv as part of bilateral talks between the nation.  The talks between the delegations are about strategic partnerships.  One way that is being considered to increase that partnership is to go into the business of arms together. One aspect of arms transfers that has been interesting to me since I started researching them 8 years ago is the high level of discussions that are involved in these purchases and how often heads of state or with cabinet/department level heads. 

The building of relationships through the transfer of weapons often seems to be part of an elaborate trust exercise.  I love the idea of Suchman and Eyre (1992) and their institutional logic of arms transfers, but I think that the social aspect of states bargaining and building relations based on arms tells an even deeper and surprising story.  It's a story that I'm happy to keep chipping away at.

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Suchman, Mark C., and Dana P. Eyre. (1992) Military Procurement as Rational Myth: Notes on the Social Construction of Weapons Proliferation. Sociological Forum 7: 137–161.

Vucetic, Srdjan, and Atsushi Tago. (2015) Why Buy American? The International Politics of Fighter Jet Transfers. Canadian Journal of Political Science 48: 101–124.

Arms, Social Theory, and Entanglement in the Long-Term

A recent story about Bulgaria’s dilemma in upgrading its MiG aircraft illustrates the difficulty of moving out of a long-term arms relationship. The issue is that Bulgaria is part of NATO, but that its aircraft are out of date.  Bulgaria can’t afford to change its total air force.  There are numerous costs involved in such a potential shift, both directly and indirectly.  Direct costs include the cost of purchasing new aircraft and paying for training for pilots of the new versions of aircraft.  Some of the indirect costs are the loss of expertise and experience that are necessary for competence in war-fighting.

Since MiGs are Russian-made, to upgrade them usually requires Russian involvement.  In this case, the Bulgarian government is considering using a Polish firm which upgraded Polish MiGs a few years ago when Poland faced a similar dilemma.  In this case, Bulgaria can bypass potential issues by using an ally country.

What if Poland was not an option?  The relations between Russia and the West have changed dramatically over the past decade.  A decade is not a long time in the life-cycle of a major conventional weapon like a fighter jet or tank.  Changing suppliers is hard - even when the geopolitical environment has been fundamentally altered.

What can this episode teach us about the arms-buying relationship?  First of all, the decision about suppliers is one that cannot be taken lightly by states - especially states that have real security needs.  Secondly, once that decision is made, it is quite sticky, and that has consequences.  These consequences are visible across a number of different domains. 

In terms of security, purchasing arms from a supplier makes it harder to fight against that supplier later.  This is due to the intimate knowledge that the supplying country will have with the strengths and weaknesses of the system due to firsthand experience.  It likely means (in the case of aircraft) that battles will hinge on the better trained military, and the resource imbalance that leads to exports vs. imports should normally provide an advantage here to the exporting rather than the importing state.

Also important in terms of security are the technological issues of supply of replacement parts, a maintenance program and the ability to upgrade equipment on a reasonable schedule.  Exporting states will have the advantage also in updating and improving the performance of the weapon system.

There is also another potential strategic advantage to the selling state.  The move to a new supplier is a potential indicator of future intentions or at least the assessment of the state about the potential for conflict in the future.  This offers an early warning advantage to the state providing arms.  It can also offer a first mover advantage in terms of conflict.

Even if a move from one supplier to another is not the result of strategic fears in the short and medium terms, the shift in relationships can be a powerful indicator about the status of the relations between the supplying and recipient states.  The sale of arms between states is a gamble always because once a state acquires weapons they can only be eliminated after the passage of a long amounts of time or through costly war. 

Because I am interested in the social relationship that is created and maintained by arms sales, such demonstrations of both interdependence and vulnerability provide fascinating insights into the potential mechanisms for studying and understanding interstate relations more completely.

On the Margins - Research Topics and "Selling" your work in Academia

Today I received a desk reject for a paper that a coauthor and I wrote.  The paper is a good one and it does something that we don't think any other scholars have done.  We didn't sell that point well enough, apparently, and the editors decided that our paper didn't fit the scope of their journal.  That is fine and good, and a real part of academia.  I understand that.  However, I am beginning to see a pattern that I had not noticed before when I was less confident in my own work.

Arms transfer research is not mainstream in terms of "big topics" in international relations.  I understood that when I picked the topic.  There is interest in the subject, but it ebbs and flows. Big work in big journals often ignores the more nuts and bolts empirical work of studying patterns in arms flows when they discuss how arms effect international relations.  A good example of this is the recent work by Yarhi-Milo and colleagues building on work by James Morrow about the choice that states have in providing arms or making alliances.  The paper is excellent and the empirical case studies do a great job of illustrating their larger point - that arming protege states is an option for patron states who don't want to be obligated by a formal alliance.

The theory is about great powers - and specifically great powers who are interested in extended deterrence.  This is a limited set of states. The use of case studies in this work is very appropriate. However, ignoring the work that has looked at arms transfers as a general pattern and its findings is a blind spot that is not caught by editors or reviewers.

When work that is grounded in the empirical patterns of arms sales between all states attempts to address wider theories of IR, however, the standards are much different.  That is the case with the paper that was rejected.  The paper addresses an issue that is simply taken for granted or assumed away in the broad literature on international relations - the existence of arms sales by states that are not great powers.  The desk rejection will allow us to "re-frame" the paper in a stronger way and send it back out.  That's not the main issue.  The issue is the difference between how this paper was dealt with and a paper by the same coauthor and I who wrote about arms and human rights and had the paper accepted at International Studies Quarterly.

That paper was accepted because of its relationship with human rights, not because of the arms aspect itself.  Work is also more accepted when it deals with the normative issues of arms control.  In this sense, arms work is not only marginalized, it becomes politicized because work that does not fit into "acceptable" categories may not even make it past the first gate-keepers. 

From a career standpoint this is something that needs to be considered.  In a publish or perish environment, the lack of outlets for work on the margins can either move people away from a topic, or lead them to study in ways that conform to conventional wisdom rather than challenging that work and its assumptions. This is a subtle way in which bias can creep into academic work, and which weakens overall knowledge and the process of creating it.

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Morrow, James D. (1993) Arms Versus Allies: Trade-Offs in the Search for Security. International Organization 47: 207–233.

Yarhi-Milo, Keren, Alexander Lanoszka, and Zack Cooper. (2016) To Arm or to Ally?: The Patron’s Dilemma and the Strategic Logic of Arms Transfers and Alliances. International Security 41: 90–139.

How Fundamental are Arms to State Identity?

This is what I am thinking about all the time as I work on revising my dissertation into a book with a coherent theory.  My dissertation was an "exploration" using a foreign policy framework.  I am glad that I wrote the dissertation that I did because it allowed me to try a lot of things, to fail at most of them, but really to think about the topic of arms transfers in a way that is becoming more helpful to me now that I am more intellectually equipped to handle it.

Two articles from Radio Free Europe came across my reader this week and are stuck in my brain. I am writing my theory section of my book now and I am focusing on the ways that state identity is shaped by arms.  My larger project is about the power of arms to shape the roles that states take on in the international system - and the power that exporting states have in shaping the role of subordinate ore less powerful states.

And its a great time to be an arms research scholar because the issues of arms seem to be more prominent in discussions of international relations and foreign policy.

The first article is about Vladimir Putin's recent address to Russian legislators. During his two hour speech he discussed the new weapons that are in development - weapons aimed at defeating the US in a nuclear war. I'm not an expert on nuclear deterrence, but I seem to remember that first strike capability is quite useless if the other side can retaliate.  We are returning to the MAD MAD world, which is a disappointing development.  The interesting thing is that none of the weapons touted are ones that are useful in the kind of wars and conflicts that Russia is involved in (Syria, Ukraine) or will likely be in.  These weapons, and Putin's focus on them are meant to project an image of power.

The second article is about four Western powers (France, UK, Germany and the US) issuing a statement condemning Iran's export of weapons to Yemen in face of an arms embargo on that nation during its civil war. Russia vetoed a UN resolution that would have formally condemned Iran. Two things from this story stick out to me.  The first is that Iran is doing what other states do - using arms to socialize and support its allies.  The fact that they are doing it contrary to an embargo is the issue, but the action is one that is repeated hundreds of times a year.  All the states on the list export arms to other states - including to states that have poor human rights records.

Jennifer Erickson has written extensively about arms treaty compliance.  The increasing polarization of the world and the collapsing foundations of the liberal world order in the face of constant attacks by revisionist and non-liberal powers (I'm looking at Russia here) will mean that arms sales will be another arena for ideological and material competition in ways that hearken back to the Cold War.

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Erickson, Jennifer L. (2015a) Dangerous Trade: Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation. New York: Columbia University Press.

Erickson, Jennifer L. (2015b) Saint or Sinner? Human Rights and U.s. Support for the Arms Trade Treaty. Political Science Quarterly 130: 449–474.

Erickson, Jennifer L. (2013) Stopping the Legal Flow of Weapons: Compliance with Arms Embargoes, 1981–2004. Journal of Peace Research 50: 159–174.

Lo, Bobo. (2008) Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing, and the New Geopolitics. London: Chatham House.

Lo, Bobo. (2015) Russia and the New World Disorder. Brookings Institution Press.

The complexity of Arms Sales

A recent article about India's pursuit of advanced aircraft illustrates the complicated world of arms transfers.

The article itself is correcting some misinformation that India was going to purchase the F-35 and open up some joint manufacturing facilities for the aircraft there.  It turns out that initial inquiries into the possibility of F-35s in the future was confused with a current bid for the purchase of F-16 fighters.  India is looking to upgrade its aircraft but is in the bidding stage with both Saab and Lockheed Martin.

In both cases, the Indians will open factories to perform final assembly.  Such licensing and joint production is common.  F-16s are manufactured in Turkey under a similar agreement, for example.  The F-35 is a unique program because it is being built on licensing and co-production from the very beginning with partners all over the world.  It is a complex and collaborative endeavor that relies on pre-existing alliance ties and mutual trust and support. 

India is not approved for the purchase of the F-35 at this time.  The authors of the article noted that the issues of technology transfer that are more acute with this particular advanced aircraft.  The components are more advanced and there is a real worry that the technology could fall into the wrong hands.

For me this article is fascinating because it touches on so many of the complex and fascinating aspects of arms sales that I have been thinking about for the past few years.  The first is the importance of relations and relationship building.  There is a great deal of high-level negotiation that takes place for these arms deals - because they must be approved (in the case of the US) by the State Department working with the Department of Defense.  It is not just a mater of defense firms going out and making sales.

The complexity of licensing and production deals is another aspect of arms transfers that is unique.  There is an incentive for many states to build their own capacity while they purchase weapons systems.  This makes sense from a realist perspective of anarchy and fits with the logic of internal balancing outlined by Morrow (1993).  States don't want to be too dependent on arms imports because it limits their own actions.  States that wish to play a more independent role in international relations will avoid becoming too dependent on a supplier.

Even if the production facilities are mainly symbolic, they offer some work, build native capabilities, and establish the state as being less dependent than a state that simply imports finished arms. My current thinking about arms is about the ways that they are used to socialize states, and the use of licensing deals is an avenue that needs to be explored in more depth.
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Morrow, James D. (1993) Arms Versus Allies: Trade-Offs in the Search for Security. International Organization 47: 207–233.