Armed & Dangerous
Abstract: Does the political importance of countries on the international stage result in them receiving more arms? Given the known tendency for countries to attempt to buy influence and favor of politically important countries vis-a-vis international favors and benefits such as foreign aid and IMF program support, we hypothesize that the arms trade is another possible means of gaining political influence. We apply this logic to the case of Germany, whose unique situation in the international political arena gives it motivation to exert influence over other countries. After analyzing data that controls for factors such as economic development, regime type, trade relationships and war, our results show that a robust relationship exists between Germany’s arms exports and the recipient nation’s political importance as defined by non-permanent UNSC membership. Comparing these results to those of other major arms exporters, we find that this relationship is unique to Germany, which may suggest that it uses its arms industry to give itself a larger political voice on the world platform.
Introduction (Background, Research Question & Hypothesis)
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” With wars raging across the globe, it becomes rather clear that the world knows very little of peace--the demand for power continues to surpass the power of love. The quest for power does not begin or end with the individual man, for we see it manifest itself in groups, communities, regions, states and multi-state alliances. But what defines power in the international arena? There a few key “status symbols” that the international community simply cannot ignore, one of which being the possession of a strong military and consequently a strong arsenal of arms.
As the world of international relations becomes defined and discussed so often in terms of “developed” and “developing,” those countries finding themselves in the third world begin looking for ways to climb the ladder towards both the status and success of first world countries, it should come as no surprise that they eagerly and actively pursue these “status symbols.” Economic development holds a high seat on every country’s priority list; however establishing and maintaining a well equipped military also holds a high degree of importance. Somehow, the importance of arms becomes lost in translation in the discourse of international relations, despite their blatant importance. Spencer Willardson of the University of Iowa notes that, “arms occupy a middle territory in the international relations literature--they are instruments of “hard power”, the primary currency in the international relations literature--and yet they are treated as simply another variable in most international relations literature”(Willardson, 2013). He goes onto note that although it is clear that the role of arms and arms transfers should be paid more attention on the international scale, little is known about how these arms transfers matter.
It is in this void of information that our research begins. We begin our search with two questions which reflect Gandhi's observation. Which country’s hold the most power in terms of providing peace? Which country’s hold the most power in terms of providing war? The answers might surprise you… but then again, they might not.
Top Ten “Peace” Providing Countries (Foreign Aid Providers)[1] / Top Ten “War” Providing Countries(Heavy Arms Providers)[2]
1. USA / 1. USA
2. United Kingdom / 2. Russia
3. Japan / 3. Germany
4. France / 4. France
5. Germany / 5. China
6. Netherlands / 6. United Kingdom
7. United Arab Emirates / 7. Spain
8. Sweden / 8. Italy
9. Canada / 9. Ukraine
10. Spain / 10. Israel
Notice the five countries that appear on both lists. The fact that five powerful countries appear on both lists is nothing short of ironic, considering that the end result of delivering foreign aid and arms directly oppose each other. This observation is not the only contradictory one. Of the five countries appearing on both lists, three find themselves on another list--as three of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The other two permanent members, China and Russia, are among the top six arms exporting countries in the world.
Historically speaking, the United Nations and its supreme committee, the United Nations Security Council, have attempted to satisfy a seemingly ever growing need. Since World War I, world leaders have called for an international institution capable of inspiring legitimate multilateral collaboration, cooperation, and compromise with the goal of world peace and progress as the goal. After the first attempt of satisfying this need was the unsuccessful League of Nations, the international community has more or less accepted the United Nations as the international institution through which countries would attempt to work towards peace and progress. However, the effectiveness of the United Nations has always been (and will continue to be) questioned. Aside from the inherent ideological critiques of international institutions across the various schools of thought, additional factors play into the equation that results in a lack of confidence and suspicion of the United Nations. Since its inception, many have voiced their opinions of both approval and criticism for the United Nations as a whole and especially the Security Council. Seeing that the five permanent members also find themselves providing heavy weaponry, which appears contradictory to peace, perhaps this criticism is not unfounded.
Detractors directing criticism specific to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) generally orient their arguments around its unique hierarchical structure. Over the years, numerous parties have suggested reform to the United Nations, yet to date, all have fallen short of the necessary measures to induce visible change. Such stagnance also exists as a result of the unique “balance” of power within the Security Council. With the five UNSC superpowers--the United States, Russia, China, France and the UK--each having veto power, it comes as no surprise that any action that could potentially abate their overwhelming power has failed. Countries such as Japan and Germany see the current balance of power as inequitable, especially considering the degree to which Japan and Germany contribute to the UNSC and the UN in general. Take, for example, the top five providers of assessed contributions to United Nations Peacekeeping operations in 2013: 1. United States (28.38%) 2. Japan (10.83%) 3. France (7.22%) Germany (7.14 %) 5. United Kingdom (6.68%) (“Financing,” 2014). Germany and Japan contributed more than both the UK and China, and over double Russia’s contribution, who comes in at 8th with 3.15%. In fact, looking at United Nations Regular Budget Contributions since 1990, Japan and Germany have consistently been in the top five contributors. Since 1992, Japan and Germany’s contribution ranked second and third largest respectively (“United States,” 2013).
In the words of a German ambassador to the United Nations in 2005, the unreformed post-Cold War hierarchy and format of the United Nations Security Council “sticks out like a sore thumb” (“General,” 2006). Given their record of outstanding participation, dedication, and contribution, it comes to no surprise that countries such as Germany and Japan have grown restless and dissatisfied with the seemingly disproportionate balance of power in favor of countries such as China and Russia who contribute significantly less. Since these very countries stand between them and reform, change seems unlikely despite the various propositions currently on the table.
Since a legitimate shift of power to more participatory member states has yet to come to fruition, one could say that these states have taken matters into their own hands. In order to maintain greater influence over UNSC proceedings, some countries have resorted to bribery and unorthodox means of gaining and retaining power. Now, one cannot simply define this sort of bribery in the traditional sense, for it appears to be used more as a tool of international politics instead of a source of corruption. In fact, one could make the argument that without the use of such “incentives,” international institutions such as and specifically the United Nations Security, progress would make even fewer appearances on the international stage than it does today.
There has been substantial literature supporting the claim that non-permanent members of the UNSC that play an important and significant rule in UN action, such as and specifically referring to Japan and especially Germany, augment their pre-existing international power via additional influence bought on the UNSC. Lim and Vreeland explain that since these two countries both have significant motive to seek an augmentation of political influence on the UNSC, considering that one could argue the stand as two most powerful countries without a permanent seat on the UNSC (Lim & Vreeland, 2013). Vreeland and Dreheruspect that both Japan and Germany seek influence over the United Nations Security Council by gaining the favor of elected members vis-à-vis increased foreign aid contributions(Vreeland & Dreher, 2014). Vreeland and Dreher contest that this method of favor-gaining acts as “ a lower-cost approach toward augmenting their limited power at the UNSC” compared to their generally pricey bids for permanent and elected membership. In fact , Malone (2004?) estimates that winning a Western European and other Group (WEOG) seat costs well into the millions of dollars (Malone, 2004).
Clearly, Japan and Germany have significant motive and opportunity to augment their political influence when not on the UNSC by providing current non-permanent members with favors such as foreign aid, but the motive does not disappear when they themselves hold a non-permanent seats. Simply taking into account the fact that they do not hold veto power when they do have the opportunity to serve on the UNSC, one can see that exchanging favors such as increased foreign aid support could help countries such as Japan and Germany even the playing field against the veto powers by gaining the support and allegiance (however temporary) of other non-permanent members.
So there exists sufficient evidence for motive, reasoning and results in terms of foreign aid as well as IMF support (Dreher, Sturm & Vreeland, 2009); however, this revelation begs the question of what other favors do countries accept as bargaining chips for influence and power on the United Nations Security Council. Surely countries have more than foreign aid in their bag of tricks, and that is where our research begins. Looking at countries that have used foreign aid, we find that they also make an appearance on the list of top ten exporters of arms worldwide:
- USA*
- Russia*
- Germany
- France*
- China*
- United Kingdom*
- Spain
- Italy
- Ukraine
- Israel
Interestingly enough, the five permanent members of the UNSC nearly hold the top five arms exporting spots as well, with their reign of the top interrupted only by Germany. We find this occurrence particularly interesting--so much so, that we decide to focus our research on Germany, its arms exports, and what it uses them to accomplish. Going into our research, we knew a few things. First, we know that Germany had significant motive to trade favors for votes and influence on the United Nations Security Council. Second, we know that this behavior should be expected during years that Germany held a non-permanent seat and years that it did not, simply due to the fact that in both instances, Germany would have sufficient motive. As we began to look at the different dynamics at play, we realized that non-permanent membership on the UNSC imputed an appealing attribute to a given country: political importance.
An additionally interesting factor that most certainly plays into the decision-making and action-taking processes regarding international arms exports from Germany. Germany hs several layers of bureaucracy standing between them and successfully approved arms exports. At the center of this bureaucratic minefield lays the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BundesamtfürWirtschaft Und Ausfuhrkontrolle or BAFA). There are several different international export control bodies, each of which preside over a different aspect of the BAFA regulatory system. Regardless of which area a given body focuses in, the general standard of approval for export license is the same. Any item listed in the European or national list requires an export license--heavy weaponry requires such a license. This adds an interesting variable to the equation. We can assume each arm deal holds significant political importance due to the fact that it must acquire so many levels of approval. If heavy weaponry is exported from Germany, Germany really wants it go reach its final destination (“Service”).
Over the course of our research we investigate the potential relationship between political importance, defined by holding a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and arms imports from Germany. Given the aforementioned literature investigating what could widely be called the “exchange of international favors for UNSC votes” but what many would recognize as bribery, we hypothesize that we would discover a statistically significant positive relationship between a given country’s political importance and its arm imports from Germany.
Methodology
We model our regression analysis based on the work done by Vreeland and Dreher. Their work tested relationship between UNSC membership and the reception of foreign aid under certain controls. The main difference from previous research is that rather than using foreign aid as our dependent variable, we instead evaluate arms received.
Our dataset contains 7,690 observations for 187 countries from the period 1966-2012. Some of our data for specific countries is missing due to varying dates of country independence. Additionally, a few control variables have data missing for certain years, either due to lack of information or data that is not up-to-date.
For the variable of interest, we turned to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI for short. It contains a detailed registry of international arms transfers for the past 60 years. By arms transfers, it refers to exchanges of major conventional weapons between countries, rebel group, or international organizations meant solely for military purposes (“SIPRI,” 2014). Some examples of conventional weapons are aircraft, submarines, air-defence systems, armored vehicles, missiles, satellites and ships. It is important to note that “major weapons” do not include small arms and light weapons - these are weapons such as handguns, automatic weapons, explosive weapons (grenades and rocket launchers) and anti-tank missiles (“UNODA”).
Although these exclusions are disappointing, SIPRI’s arms transfer data does have an advantage over other comparable sources due to its measuring methodology. The unique aspect of the SIPRI database is that weapons transfers are not measured by financial indicators, but rather by what it refers to as a trend-indicator value (TIV). The TIV is meant to be a universal unit to measure arms transfers, based on the unit production cost of weapons that accounts for variables such as performance, technology and age. For instance, new Eurofighters might be valued at 55 million TIV each, while used Leopard tanks might be calculated to be 1.6 million TIV each (“SIPRI,” 2014).
The benefit of the TIV is that it provides a consistent measure over time, avoiding the price biases that might occur if financial quantities were used instead. The data is also specific in that it only includes arms exchanged between governments; thus, we can tie our results directly back to country interests.
Additionally, SIPRI allows us to narrow arms transfer data based on the exporter country. We use data for arms originating from Germany as well as six other countries for comparison: China, France, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We include these countries because they, along with Germany, are the top seven largest exporters of arms in the world (“The Top 10,” 2014.) This allows us to test whether our hypothesis only applies to Germany. In addition, we include a data set that has general arms imports regardless of the source country. Overall, our data has eight TIV data values for each country for a given year: seven for arms originating from a particular country, and one for total arms imports. For instance, for the country Argentina during the year 1984, overall arms imports had a TIV value of 694 million, arms imported from Germany are 526 million TIV, and from France, 51 million TIV. We can use the TIV values to consistently determine changes in arms imports within and between countries over periods of time.
UNSC Membership
For our independent variable, UNSC membership, we used a binary variable, coded unsc, which has a “1” if a country was on the UNSC for that particular year and “0” if it was not. We sourced our data from Chapter 5 of Vreeland and Dreher’s book, The Political Economy of the United Nations Security Council: Money and Influence. In order to update the data list to include the year 2012, we use information from the United Nations website (“Countries”).