True. I have noticed that we in Sweden give away a rather substantial portion of our national gross product in order to fight poverty in other countries. Most of those countries - including India are in this list. The outcome seems to be that we give away money to cater for their poor, while they happily exploit their own workers to out-compete us on every market, while maintaining huge military budgets that they apparently spend on buying things from our most aggressive neighbor. Excellent.
India gets huge amounts of arms import and otherwise support to act as a geopolitical counterweight to China. Both USA and Russia are interested in limiting Chinese influence in South East Asia, and assisting India is a natural way to do so.
Oh, also, you should probably think through what the actual goal of foreign support is. Aside from short term humanitarian aid, the stated goal of these funds is to allow systemic uplift. The actual goal is more likely to combination of domestic feel goodism, and permanently crippling the recipient country's ability to uplift on their own will.
Hi my name is Natalia, and I'm the creator of this visualization. I want to thank the person who posted it here, and everyone for the discussion. I'd love to hear topics/ideas you are interested in for the future visualizations.
WOW, thank you for this - brilliant ideas - and I personally love the topics which means a lot of inspiration while creating for me.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Natalia
Nice! I think it would be nice to be able to group and cluster the countries, rather than just sort them by name. Either geopolitical clusters based on the data, or just by region might make it easier to spot some interesting connections.
Data source is SIPRI Arms Transfers Database http://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers (the link for the data source is always given below all data visualizations). The latest data available is for the year 2013.
Wow. I always knew the US exported arms, so I kind of expected that we were the worst offenders. But whoa! Look at Russia. The country must be depending on weapon exports to keep their economy going, which is simply not diversified enough to weather through the down times.
I don't think those values can be interpreted like that.
They are some type of "trend indicator values" that "do not represent real financial flows but are a crude instrument to estimate volumes of arms transfers, regardless of the contracted prices, which can be as low as zero in the case of military aid".
I'm pretty sure the US exports for sale dollar amounts much much more than anyone else does.
There is also the question of the graphed "value" of small arms vs larger systems.
I agree with you, I don't think this graphic (or at least the underlying data) is very useful as an indicator of international military relationships. Of course it doesn't claim to be either.
As a single example, I recently decided that I don't know enough about US-Israel relations and started reading more on the topic. A report[1] I found linked from Wikipedia states that the US has provided Israel with $121 billion dollars (non-inflation-adjusted) since WWII, almost all of it military aid. The graphic shows $35 million in exports to Israel for 2013, the report lists $2.9 billion dollars in military aid in 2013.
If those figures didn't make it onto the graphic, there are probably many others which also don't.
depends on the definition of "success" :) I'd say that no number of AKs would have protected the Assad regime the way the S-300/400 has done so far. The Su-27 platform has been kind of AK of multi-purpose fighter planes.
They licensed it to China, what was the Eastern block, etc. And, light arms are cheap, relative to other armament; they're not going to make a dent into those kinds of numbers.
What about the fact that (before Russia invaded Ukraine) global death rates from conflict go down nearly every year? Could their be an argument made that prevalence of weapons systems reduce outbreaks of conflict, in effect making arms providers 'peace manufacturers'? Not my perspective, just wondering.
This was an interesting way to visualise the arms database.
Some patterns are interesting:
What appears to be almost 50% of Russia's exports go to India, while what appears to be almost 90% of China's exports go to the countries surrounding India (Pakistan, Bangladesh, and a Myanmar).
Yeah, what's up with that? I know India and Pakistan aren't exactly best friends (Kashmir and all that), but they're not at full scale war with each other are they? Why the need for all the arms? India's arms imports in particular are shockingly high, especially for a country with so much need for investment in infrastructure and poverty alleviation.
No idea where Bangladesh and Myanmar stand in relation to all this.
"India's arms imports in particular are shockingly high"
If you are a country with China for a neighbour, and have experience of having already fought (and lost) a war with China, I bet you would import a lot of arms. India is (among other things) importing arms to defend against China, not Pakistan.
No surprise with Russia topping the list. Since 1990 the country's entire economic output has been exploiting what's left of soviet infrastructure and selling natural resources.
Well non-competitive isn't quite correct. Certain industries indeed were non-competitive (i.e. automotive, which btw boomed domestically post 1990), but as a whole they were torn apart by privatization and corruption.
One reason being that the way these business and industries transferred into private holdings was always somewhat dubious (and hence the very real risk of losing these holdings with the next change in political winds e.g. Khodorkovsky). Anyone that got their hands on a piece of the soviet-pie tried to get as much out of it putting as little as possible into it.
With as popular as Glock is, you'd think Austria would be bigger than a basically insignificant sliver.
I suppose if it was scaled by units sold instead of dollar values that may swing it towards inexpensive small arms like Glock pistols. Actually, that may be why USA and Russia are so enormous as exporters: they make expensive heavy arms like tanks, artillery, warplanes, ships, machine guns, bombs, while lots of places "gun guys" (which I sort of am) would think may show up (like Austria) won't because they only make relatively cheap small arms.
All of my arms are made in Russia or USA, if that means anything.
EDIT: Some other commenters have mentioned the stats don't include firearms and crew-served machine guns. Again, it's all the big stuff.
As an Australian, I remember when guns were not something to be feared, but rather used if you need to .. my grandmothers 410 was used to dispatch snakes (dangerous) and rabbits (vermin) on a regular basis, and I remember fondly the bush trips with my uncles and cousins to eradicate invasive swine in the region.
Fortunately, Australia is yet to be invaded (unless you count our own ancestors heinous actions against the native owners of the land), or you would perhaps have a different perspective on just how foreign gun ownership can impact your life .. the time may well come, in our lifetimes or shortly thereafter, when Australians are even more subservient to a foreign power than they currently are ..
Many nations in which guns are commonplace amongst the citizenry have been invaded, many times. The armies fought, the occupation happened, the vast majority of citizens did not pick up whatever weapon they had to hand to fight the invading army. The prevalence of weaponry amongst the citizenry of the countries involved has no bearing that I can see.
Can you explain what you mean by 'lost'? What would you define as 'winning'? IMO those labels are subjective. To assess them, one should state the goals of the operations and the achievement thereof.
Commonplace =/= prevalent. What wars are you thinkint of? No snark, just curious.
In terms of prevalence, I don't think there is an apt comparison in the historical narrative for the US. I heard, but cannot confirm, that we blow off more rounds for target practice than the active conflicts around the globe use in combat. Even if that statement is incorrect, I can think of no other nation with an equivalent saturation of small arms.
Target practice plus bird hunting, which can use a lot of shotshells with little to show for it if you're not so good at it like me ^_^. I don't think most other forms of hunting use that very many rounds.
US civilian production is between 13-14 billion rounds per year (military production at Lake City, I don't know, but we get sold canceled orders and lots that fail milspec tests but are otherwise good ammo). Rimfire production alone is 3 billion. For some time a lot of that has been getting stored for ... a rainy day. And if you do the math that's only a bit more than 40 rounds/person/year.
But the number is still very very large. Heck, in one high school academic year on the JROTC rifle team I probably shot over 2,000 rounds of .22 LR (for every morning of practice, 3 sighting in shots plus 10 rounds each in two positions).
As for "saturation", yeah. In the last three years, the number of Missouri state issued concealed carry licenses (note any state's is good, and many are cheaper) in my county has almost doubled, to the point where 5% of the age eligible adults have one. And the 19-20 age range has only been eligible for about a year, while those getting them are largely the older, age and less ability to defend yourself + the Baby Boomers entering retirement age is a major driver.
42-3 states have "shall issue" concealed carry regimes, and California and Hawaii look to be following soon (it's being litigated, but some large population counties have already thrown in the towel); the Supremes could extend that to all states. In the last 4 years, Chicago went from nobody but the anointed being allowed to own handguns to shall issue concealed carry and more than a few incidents of legal self-defense with them.... Etc. etc.
What wars are you thinkint of? No snark, just curious.
I was thinking of the invasion of Western European countries during the second world war, but those are just the first ones that came to mind. Weaponry easy enough to come by (especially during an actual shooting war), but civil uprising and rebellion relatively sparse.
The USSR based a LOT of stuff in the Ukraine, both in terms of operational units, and supporting industry. Most of which was inherited by Ukraine when the USSR was dissolved. While many of the operational units were also dissolved, or traded back to Russia (for example, some Tu-160 strategic bombers), arms export is a pretty sweet way (relatively) for a new country to get some nice cashflow. Wiki says that Ukraine received about 30% of the USSR's arms industry... which is a lot.
>arms export is a pretty sweet way (relatively) for a new country to get some nice cashflow.
Ukraine was delivering relatively modern tanks - T-84 - to Thailand about the time when they outlawed Russian language while its army still had the old T-64. Historic lesson - putting your army on modern tanks should be the first step while outlawing a language of a major minority - second - and not otherwise :)
How do you mean? Half of Kiev (Ukrainian capital) speaks Russian as their first language. Half of the Ukrainian army and National Guard (including the volunteers) speak Russian as their fist language. Outlawed, eh?
they made it illegal (outlawed) to have schools in Russian, various government proceedings, etc... - all the achievements of the "Law of the Language", the results of the multi-year completely democratic and lawful process, were scrapped right in a first second by the junta right after the Maidan coup and thus among others sending a clear message of no more democracy for the ethnic Russians.
That's one of the reasons for the civil war in Ukraine, an attempt(successful) to dismantle the left-over military industrial complex in Eastern Ukraine that was inherited from Soviet Union (competes with US's military industrial complex).
They didn't want to do it peacefully(The EU-Ukraine association pact required shutting down these factories) , Yanukovich refused(his support base came from the East) now all of it lies in ruins (thanks to the US installed junta)
>democratically elected government of Mr. Poroshenko
interesting how democratically elected Poroshenko is ok while democratically voted separation of Crimea isn't. Democracy is supposed to be a principle not a substitute for the "i like the outcome" label :)
What part of the helicopter assault and naval blockade of Crimea is comparable to the Kosovo settlement? Which previous war with a genocide chaser primed the put-upon citizens of Crimea to form an army, gov't., etc? There is no comparison between Crimea and Kosovo in terms of extra-national interference. Please keep in mind that preping an assault force of Hinds and thousands of unmarked soldiers takes quite a while. The moment the Yanukovich ceded power, Russia began to act.
A better example of western tampering after a 'legitimate' election is in Gaza.
> Which previous war with a genocide chaser primed the put-upon citizens of Crimea to form an army, gov't., etc?
why wait for the genocide to actually happen? The new government in Kiev was completely clear with their very first action being the outlawing of Russian language. The international law, UN, recognize the right for self-determination without requirement of a genocide happening beforehand. Crimea used that right. They were just lucky that Putin's interests were aligned with theirs. The people of Donetsk weren't that lucky - the Kiev's "pacifier" operation (manned by the volunteers from Western Ukraine hating the ethnic Russians with their gut) in Donetsk region had gone into full swing and been really succeeding by the August of 2014 and would definitely succeeded if not for the direct Russia's intervention back then when finally Putin recognized that letting the ethnic cleansing happen in Donbass wouldn't be good for his regime.
Or lets try it from other side - how many ethnic Russians should have been killed by the Kiev pacifiers before you'd recognize right for self-determination for Donetsk (or Crimea if Russia did let the pacification to happen in Crimea) ?
...Russia provided troops and equipment for the peacekeeping force in the Balkans. Also, that operation was planned and executed by NATO ( their first, I believe). Whatever the case, I believe the Kosovo/Serb cold conflict will be the next excuse for Russian expansionism. Either there, or as well as there, in Dagestan/Ossetia/Georgia regions.
It was free voting by the majority of people on that territory. Can you explain why such a thing can be called a farce? As the only reason i see to call such thing a farce is because one doesn't like the results.
In the world where the February 21st deal to keep Yanukovych in power until end of term [1] was reneged on with support by Voice of America and funding and training to Euromaiden groups from the West, prior US knowledge of the ouster and discussions about a suitable replacement [2], and a world where US policy makers suggest covert arming of the Ukraine [3]. It's also important to keep the broader context - that the nine former Warsaw Pact nations have in the past decade joined the EU of NATO and that the very aggressive terms and a near NATO deal with the Ukraine caused the original crisis that led up to the Feb deal. That the West and US armed other conflicts in the region (Moldova and Georgia). That US anti-ballistic missile battery systems have been installed along the Baltic that denies Russia it's anti-nuclear interception capabilities and directly violates Cold War treaties. Russia, too, plays dirty. But we can't pretend the West doesn't.
> the February 21st deal to keep Yanukovych in power... was reneged
It wasn't. The annexation of Crimea started before the deal was signed (Feb. 20) and Yanukovich decided to close shop and flee soon afterwards[1].
> and a world where US policy makers suggest covert arming of the Ukraine
With Ukraine undergoing a not-so-covert invasion, and Russian leadership having already laid a claim to half of Ukraine, no less[2], defensive weapons to help stop the aggression are hardly too much to ask.
> and a near NATO deal with the Ukraine caused the original crisis
European association agreement is hardly a "near NATO deal" and Ukraine had laws that precluded it from becoming a NATO member - so that wasn't even in the plans. The people took to the streets when Yanukovich abruptly reneged on his promise to sign the association agreement after visiting Moscow.
AFAICT we don't disagree on any points. Regarding support for Yunukovych, the deal was signed and not followed up on. It's true his authority was fading fast - these things are not mutually exclusive. The Feb 21 deal was struck to resolve the standoff discussed in your linked NYT article - can you point to where it says that annexation began before Feb 21st (the earliest I can find it mention is March)?
Similarly with covert armaments - the discussion of 'too much to ask' or 'right or wrong' is orthagonal to whether the West takes covert action in the Baltic to achieve policy objectives. My claim is merely that it is done - not that it is wrong.
And similarly wrt the association agreement - it has to do with the context of EU and NATO encroachment and Western action in the Baltic (I would have to admit that it was EU membership, not NATO, in this case).
The grandparent may have anti-European or -NATO sentiments. I don't. But I will defend the idea that the West, having heavily polled Ukraine and called for its own elections, and having discussed options for replacing the leadership, and training and funding groups in the Ukraine, and having controlled the election process in Kiev (calling afoul when Russia performed the same in the Crimea) absolutely is not above influencing its own support. Again I am not calling this bad.
The Party of Regions basically rebranded itself as "Opposition Block" and got 29 seats in the Parliament.
All of the country voted (including the Eastern regions). A smaller part of the Donbass region couldn't vote because the insurgents didn't let the Ukrainian polling stations to operate.
when one third of the country is under constant bombardment (by both sides) and not allowed to vote, the other third are refugees living in neighbouring countries, what you sadly have is not an election but a farce.
One third of the country? Please get your facts straight. It's not even one third of the Donbass region that's affected by the hostilities, and Donbass is only 2 of the 24 regions ("oblasts") of Ukraine.
I think showing the types of arms exported by country would be considerably more meaningful. I'd be interested to know if the reason the dollar amounts for certain countries is so high is that they're selling very expensive defense systems and not just a high volume of small arms. And from the source data, it looks like the value is expressed in constant 1990 dollars.
As cool as it looks, its almost impossible to get the finer details with these kinds of visualizations.
For example, India apparently exports 10m worth of arms. To find out which countries buy from India is nearly impossible because of the relative scale of the visualization.
Below is a link to an image from the SIPRI db about countries India exports to. The database they used is pretty easy to use if you want to go more in depth.
Does not appear to include firearms, or even some classes of crew served weapons. The source db is here: http://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers you can get 'get everything' query and take a peak at the categories yourself. From a quick skim, its basically every possible type of actual weapon (as in actually kills things) except firearms and crew served machine guns... and I guess grenade launchers. Portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons are on the list. A lot of aircraft and naval avionics is on the list as well.
...Protecting Israel's security is "part of my country's raison d'être," Merkel said in a March 2008 speech to the Israeli Knesset. "For me as German chancellor," she continued, "Israel's security will never be open to negotiation."
Partly as a result, Israel gets nuclear-capable submarines from the Germans, as well as any other weapons it wants. This time the Israelis wanted more modern launchers for rocket-propelled grenades and anti-armor weapons, made by Dynamit Nobel Defence near the western German town of Siegen.[0]
It's not necessarily surprising as Germany gives huge discounts on these equipments to Israel. I don't have figures for all deals, but it seems usual for German taxpayers to pay for about a third of the costs.
Example:
> In 2006, the deal for 2 Dolphin AIP boats was finalized at a total of $1.27 billion, with the German government picking up 1/3 of the cost.
It may be a factor, but the US and Russia have very few imports overall. They don't need to, because they already produce almost everything they need at home.
The graph is difficult to read, but it appears that most countries either have a significant arms industry (and mostly supply themselves and sell to others) or don't (and mostly buy from others). I don't see any countries that have significant amounts of both imports and exports.
