McNair Paper 36, Explaining and Influencing Chinese Arms Transfers, February 1995

Nations elect to export arms: 1) to enhance their security; 2) to influence the policies of another state; and 3) for economic gain.(Note 33) Since these goals are often interrelated and mutually supportive, it is difficult to assess their relative importance when looking at a particular arms transfer. Nevertheless, by examining them separately, we are able to draw some useful inferences about the rationales informing supplier state decisions.

Nations have throughout history used arms transfers to improve their security. (Note 34) Weapon exports can support a state's strategy by: 1) improving the military effectiveness of an alliance; 2) adding to the war fighting potential of the supplier state; or 3) increasing the capabilities of a non-allied recipient so as to weaken the security of a common adversary. These are elaborated below.

1) Improving the Military Effectiveness of an Alliance: A country capable of producing weapons may opt to strengthen the forces of an alliance partner through arms transfers as part of its overall strategy against an adversary. For example, the United States, throughout most of the Cold War era, viewed commercial and foreign military sales, and military aid, to fellow-NATO members, Japan, Korea, and other allies, as vital to its anti-communist containment policy. Additionally, weapons transfers can help attenuate the combined arms doctrinal and logistic problems inherent in coalition warfare. The predominance of Soviet equipment among the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact was usually viewed in these terms.

2) Increasing the Supplier's War Fighting Potential: States also provide weapons to other nations in exchange for special privileges that add to the former's military power. These concessions include basing rights for forwardly deployed units, the establishment of logistic depots and intelligence collection facilities, and accords governing aircraft overflight, ship transit, refueling, provisioning, and maintenance. Both the USSR (with Somalia, Ethiopia, Vietnam, North Korea,) and the United States (with Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya,) have used arms deliveries for such ends. (Note 35) In fact, lack of other tools of influence is commonly cited as the reason the Soviets predominantly relied on the export of military hardware to achieve their security objectives abroad. (Note 36)

3) Arming a Recipient to Weaken an Adversary: A nation can also choose to arm a non-allied state or party which is opposed to a common foe. The Chinese expression "my enemy's enemy is my friend" is an apt description of the logic inherent in this strategy. Supplier objectives can range from merely diverting adversary resources, to seriously weakening him in a proxy war of attrition. U.S. aid to the Mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan fits into this category.

States also transfer arms to influence the recipient's policies. The provision of armaments to a nation may help gain and maintain access to key political and military leaders (the United States transfers to the Shah of Iran), deny an opponent the opportunity to make inroads (the United States sale of Hawk SAMs in 1975 to Jordan, preempting Soviet attempts to reach an agreement with Amman), or result in specific policy acts by the recipient (Egyptian and Israeli acceptance of the Camp David accords). Efforts to acquire leverage over another state through the supply of military equipment have met with mixed results. In fact, complex, symbiotic relationships frequently develop between arms producers and their clients, with recipients often gaining reverse leverage power. Such is attested to by the recurring policy debates in the United States over the sale of advanced weapons systems to states demanding their transfer as a litmus test of friendship and support (for example, the late 1970's- early 1980's controversies surrounding Iran's and Saudi Arabia's requests to purchase the AWACS aircraft).

Finally, nations sell weapons for economic benefit. Arms sales can represent major sources of foreign exchange, contribute to favorable trade balances, and boost domestic employment. Within the defense industry sector, weapons exports reduce unit R&D costs, defray the high learning costs associated with the initial stages of production of complex systems, and help preserve critical manufacturing capabilities and labor skills. (Note 37) All of these factors were expressed in various ways, for instance, by advocates of the 1992 Bush Administration decision to sell the F-16 fighter aircraft to Taiwan. (Note 38) Additionally, a state might hope to exchange arms for technology, either in the form of a major end item for subsequent reverse engineering, or as information contributing to defense industry R&D or production.

Three summary observations on the international supply of arms are useful before returning to the Chinese experience. First, nations with strong security interests in a particular area of the world will tend to place a high premium on the military implications of weapons deliveries to that region. A superpower, such as the United States, with a large stake in the maintenance of global order and stability, can be expected to have far-reaching concerns about the effects of arms deliveries on military balances. A local power, with less broadly defined strategic interests, will be inclined to only seriously consider the security consequences of arms shipments to countries in its environs. Second, a supplier's reliance on weapon's exports as a means of influencing other states may be tempered by its domestic policies (Germany and Japan, for instance) as well as the range of its alternatives (as mentioned above, the Soviet Union stands out as an example of a country with few options beyond using deliveries of military equipment to achieve its aims). Third, the economic advantages of arms transfers are more critical to those suppliers whose home markets are relatively small, and who have influential advocates and beneficiaries of domestic defense industries. (Note 39)