Arms Barons Go Underground

Thirty years ago, the idea of an “illicit arms trade” did not hold much meaning for international lawyers. In fact, very little law existed to regulate international arms transfers. Each country exported weapons according to its own domestic rules, and while some had very strict rules, others had none in place. Variation in enforcement drove the plots of adventure films such as “Lord of War” movie starring Nicolas Cage. But this era is long gone. While arms trafficking may be as hard to eradicate as organized crime, the international community is in a good position to establish acceptable limits over the next hundred years.

Thirty years ago, the idea of an “illicit arms trade” did not hold much meaning for international lawyers. In fact, very little law existed to regulate international arms transfers. Each country exported weapons according to its own domestic rules, and while some had very strict rules, others had none in place. Variation in enforcement drove the plots of adventure films such as “Lord of War” movie starring Nicolas Cage. But this era is long gone. While arms trafficking may be as hard to eradicate as organized crime, the international community is in a good position to establish acceptable limits over the next hundred years.

Law against Lawlessness

The United Nations has planned a momentous event for March 2013: the discussion and adoption of the multilateral Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a fairly revolutionary document aimed at introducing order in international arms transfers.

When this initiative was first brought up at the United Nations in 2006, a group of government experts alongside an open-ended expert team took the lead in drafting the first proposal. In all, there were four preparatory conferences, while the UN General Assembly along the way passed four resolutions supporting the treaty drafting efforts. Over time, support for passing the ATT grew and grew. At the First Committee meeting in November of 2012, 157 votes were cast in favour of the document, with only 18 abstentions.

Photo: gunpundit.com
Kalashnikov rifles on the open market in
Mogadishu, Somalia

If the ATT is adopted in March 2013, signatories will assume legally binding obligations to observe a number of important rules. One of most important concerns ATT enforcement procedures over arms exports, which aim to ensure control over all stages of weapons transfers as well as monitor the agents responsible. Signatories also pledge to honour restrictions on arms supplies in a set of agreed upon cases, to comply with mandatory obligations that require reporting arms exports and imports to an international authority, and to set up an international mechanism by which to monitor the enforcement of the ATT, including punishing violations.

Upon passage, the ATT will be a momentous, but hardly the first, document governing the international arms trade. Over the past two decades, unbeknownst to casual observers, international law in this area has evolved considerably. Interested experts readily confirm that these legal developments are in fact leading to strict law-based order in this sensitive sphere [1].

If history is a guide, over the next hundred years international law will become even more comprehensive and help eliminate the gaps that until recently allowed the arms traffickers to go unpunished.

Back Door

However, for some countries where staying in power depends on arms flows, the new international legal order may serious threaten their very existence. These states will do everything in their power to resist enforcement, and probably even establish an alternate arms trading system. Future eager participants of this system might include North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Iran. It doesn’t take much imagination to also see the governments of Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Pakistan and Belarus coming on board to such an initiative, as well as countries from the Middle East and Central Asia, China and Russia. This may lead to a scenario of confrontation, but then, when has this world been without confrontation?

Small arms are the most dangerous commodity in the today’s illicit arms market; they are more often than not used to commit common crimes, military coups and genocide. This pattern is likely to continue into the 22nd century.

In 1980, the world had 200 licensed small arms producers. By 2001, their numbers had tripled with over 600 factories worldwide. As of today, there are more than a thousand companies across 100 countries manufacturing small arms and light weapons. Nearly 80 nations worldwide produce munitions for handguns, submachine-guns, rifles and machine-guns. By licensing production techniques and harnessing freely availably technology, new entrants can set up their operations without any lengthy or costly research and development investments. Over the next hundred years, the number of producers is only expected to grow, as the result of the following two reasons.

First, with the evolution in metalworking tools and gunpowder technologies, small arms production is becoming more accessible to the average producer. 3D printing (a process of making three-dimensional solid objects through successive layers of material being laid down in different shapes) offers us a glimpse of the future of legal (and even likelier, illicit) manufacturing of handguns and rifles. Firms may not have the necessary materials today, but few doubt that the field of nanotechnology will not find production solutions in the next hundred years.

Photo: smallarmssasia. wordpress.com
Small Arms, Mass destruction

Across the manufacturing world, mass production within huge factories is fast becoming a relic of the past, as some industries are more and more offering customized solutions to customers. New technologies are now more likely to move from the large factory floor to smaller premises, such as offices (even in domiciles) where customized products will be packaged and shipped to the client. These tailor-made orders will in all likelihood become a real alternative to mass production. There is thus strong reason to believe that some of the first lucky customers to enjoy these custom-made goods will be buyers of small arms. In other words, arms production will become more accessible.

Secondly, as international law in arms trade control grows stricter, countries facing a risk of international sanctions will instead turn to developing defence production domestically. In actuality, this has already happened in the past, as many of the today’s great powers owe their successes in the defence industry to threats of international isolation. There are no fewer than 25 countries currently involved in illicit production of small arms, as such violating intellectual property rights (examples include West African countries, Pakistan, Colombia, Philippines, etc.) Because in its currently proposed draft the ATT does not include any provisions for import and export controls over defence technologies, this creeping process will for some time remain ignored by the world community.

Another driver of black market in arms is competition. Despite its huge size and unwavering growth, arms markets are very competitive. New players with new (or sometimes existing) models enter the market frequently and engage in dumping, thereby driving down prices.

Producers are always looking for new markets, which is understandable given their need for increased revenue and growth. The luckiest firms enjoy the custom protection from their own governments. Interestingly, small arms producers have another lifeline among fans of sporting and hunting weapons, as well as non-lethal weapons used by security services worldwide (often referred to as “traumatic” weapons in Russian). Together with police supplies, these other products sometimes account for at least as much, if not more, than defence orders. There is definitely cutthroat competition for such clients worldwide.

Importantly, exports of police and non-military weapons are, as a rule, subject to different and less stringent requirements. As a result, with a bit of tinkering, exporters can convert military weapons and sell them as non-combat arms where combat ones are prohibited. It is very probable that these new classes of weaponry will at some point flood the black market because of the less strict controls they are subject to, even though their distinction from combat arms is often rather symbolic.

As arms transfers become subject to stricter international controls, the market for non-lethal and police weapons will become another destination for numerous producers, which they will protect with all their might. For a window into the extent of influence that one defence industry already has on a domestic market, one should look at the United States, where producers rely on the strong support of small-arms owners through the National Rifle Association. What if such organisations decided to pool together internationally? Their voices are hardly heard today, but circumstances have not driven them into the corner yet.

Future Threats

We might also expect that consumer goods and special equipment will become plug-in and hybridized, impeding easy identification and export control. Even today, some instruments are virtually impossible to identify. Jamming systems in navigation and telecommunications are nothing but frequency generators. Interception and bugging systems are difficult to identify unless their sets are produced complete with aerials. How might one identify cyber-weapons if the software product is unknown to officials? The next hundred years will create even more problems for customs authorities: the human genome has been deciphered, and it will not be long before selective biological weapons are developed. Most of the components that go into current reconnaissance drones will be able to be ordered from model airplane builders catalogues. Combat drones will shrink to the size of a fly, with squadrons of such “flies” controlled from a dove-size drone. Radio electronic components will become so miniature yet powerful that amateur radio lovers will be able to design instruments that today is treated as a destructive radio electronic device. Put differently, new appliances and inventions will be pose significant challenges to export control systems, which will not be in a position to resolve.

International arms transfer monitoring capacities will undoubtedly grow: today sophisticated technical controls make it possible to track down ships, planes and cargo vehicles. But while international controls will grow tougher, the arms black market is here to stay, Meanwhile, corruption worldwide grows larger and larger, as it has historically since the Roman Empire. Corrupt practices will fuel the black market for arms. And what sort of an official will overlook these abuses? The one who does not want to see them. Even the strictest rules do not, and will not, function effectively in a country reigned by corruption. These same principles will boost arms trafficking even a hundred years down the road.

Key Players

With some oversimplification, all agents on the illicit arms market can be divided into three categories:

• Influential businessmen, who are, as a rule, respected entrepreneurs, with connections in the highest circles of power and who may for the sake of profit violate the law from time to time, alleging ignorance. But these individuals generally refrain from too much criminal activity mainly because they know the legal loopholes that allow them to stay true to the letter of the law.
• Government agents, who are mostly “unsung heroes” serving their country and circumventing international bans in the interest of national security.
• Criminals, as individuals for whom the law exists only to be violated. These people do not bother about any formalities.

Photo: UN Photo / S. Waak
Some light and heavy weapons collected from
fighters under a disarmament programm

The current illicit arms market has one distinguishing feature: the former two categories of people rarely enter into business with the third, criminal, grouping, which might lower their reputation.

Because of the vast differences in national export control systems, entrepreneurs identify numerous opportunities for taking advantage of the law, even if these activities are borderline illegal. For instance, a producer may be located in one country, with a customer located in another, the intermediary firm in a third, the transporter in a fourth, the banking account in a fifth, and the final buyer in a sixth.

As already mentioned, the situation has changed considerably over the past two decades: new, albeit not always efficient, international instruments have come online to help monitor the arms market. These tools are improving every year. When the existing gaps and loopholes are eventually closed, the “respectable businessmen” group will completely exit the illicit arms markets. Latecomers will end up in prison.

The other two groups – government agents and criminals - will be forced by necessity to form alliances. The former will become criminals, while the latter, by contrast, will acquire the glory of Robin Hoods and justice fighters.

At this point, the illicit arms trade will have to go underground. This is not to say that today’s traffickers openly publish their statements and publicize their activities. However, many infamous figures in the industry have escaped punishment, and some of them have even become respectable members of society (sometimes with newly acquired nationalities). In a hundred years, arms trafficking will invariably acquire one verdict and one verdict only: a criminal sentence. This means that illicit trafficking networks, in an attempt to protect themselves against casual contacts, will devise secret languages and communications channels. The ethnic factor will gain even more importance: strangers and newcomers are too noticeable in a homogeneous group. Ingenuity, a willingness to take risks and loyalty will be highly prized, thereby driving up prices in the illicit market.

Standards in Russia

Photo: FOM
Arms trade in public opinion. Infographics

With regards to Russia, in contrast to European notions of good and evil, the arms trade represents a net positive for Russians as long as it is of use to the domestic defence industry. When Russia builds a huge Kalashnikov factory in Venezuela, this development is indisputably good. But if Cyprian authorities arrest a Russian ship with weapons intended for Syria, it is an obvious, vicious intrigue by enemies of the state.

Since the expert community in Russia does not have any alternative points of view on the arms trade, we might conclude that social and political views in this country are evolving in the direction exactly opposite to the one prevalent across the world. To be fair, many countries in the world may profess similar views, but they try not to make them too public.

Russian legislation forbids Russian individuals or legal entities from trading in arms. The government also controls a state monopoly on arms export. Anyone wanting to participate in this business will be dealt with by the Criminal Code. However, in reality, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians tend to be the most frequent figures in international arms trade scandals. However, they have not technically broken any domestic laws because the deals have been made outside the country, which Russian law does not expressly prohibit.

American laws are based on extraterritoriality, which means that US citizens must comply with these laws anywhere. Russian authorities respond by claiming to that Russian laws can only be valid inside Russia, which means that, for some time to come, the right of Russians to trade in arms abroad will remain protected by the domestic legislation.

With all these arguments in mind, we propose the following intellectual exercise to get a glimpse of the future and read some of the 2113 news reports.

News from the 22nd Century

In 2113, the world community celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Arms Trade Treaty, which introduced the first legally binding rules in international arms transfers. At the 29th ATT conference, celebrating the occasion, member countries unanimously passed a resolution detailing terms and conditions for international security guarantees to be offered to countries that have renounced their defence programmes. As observers note, there is a long history behind the demilitarisation of national economies. When fifteen years ago a group of developing nations from West Africa announced their plans to scale down defence projects, sceptics did not miss this occasion for writing scathing commentaries, remarking that African states were renouncing technologies they had never possessed in exchange for modern agricultural know-how.

________________

NGOs who were the first to argue in favour of phasing out defence production were often persecuted in their countries and accused of being foreign agents. For instance, active members of the Indian pacifist movement called ‘Successors of Gandhi’ were forced to flee India and escape to China. However, after the Israeli Government signed the programme, which was strongly supported by the UN Secretary General and offered multilateral security guarantees in exchange for scaling down defence projects, Egypt and Vietnam joined the discussion.

________________

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) notes in its annual report that the number of small arms producers worldwide has reached 10,000 with half of them located in the United States. (Today half of the small arms production facilities concentrate in the US where citizens have the right to bear arms under that country’s constitution).

________________

Amnesty International has recorded a rise in the number of domestic crimes committed with the so-called kitchen-made small arms. They also note that fans of historic re-enactments are now more often crossing the line with their homemade replicas of ancient harquebuses, fusils or other museum weaponry specimens that have become a public danger. International human rights activists insist that sales of 3D printers should be subject to licensing.

________________

Analysts from the international Arms Control association record a decline in the control of arms transfers across the Middle East.

________________

In December 2113, the Kuwaiti military intelligence uncovered supplies of the powders used in missile production among Kuwaiti separatists on Bubian Island. The shipment, declared as cement, was delivered by sea from Iraq under the guise of the humanitarian aid to victims of a lethal earthquake. Just prior, on Bubian Island, police discovered a cache of AK-47 automatic rifles manufactured using Q&K 3D printers. The investigation showed that the software used in the automatic rifles production was purchased by separatists from unidentified Russian programmers using the Salaam Aleichem payment system. The Bubian seaport is the southern tip of the new Silk Road which Iran and Iraq vie to control.

________________

The Thousand and One Night Tower in the new Kuwaiti capital Al-Harir, the world-renown symbol of the country and the highest building in the world, can be seen from as far afield as in neighbouring Iraq and Iran. In March 2113, powerful electronic devices were reportedly discovered on the tower’s upper floors, capable of disrupting military and government telecommunications and obstructing air navigation in the vicinity of the military and international airports. For months, armed rebels from the Free Bubian movement had been delivering and installing equipment, posing as workers from a firm allegedly engaged in using electronic sonar to search for minerals and water.

Investigators continue to search other facilities where separatists might have installed other dangerous electronic equipment.

________________

In early 2113, Kuwaiti police reported finding specialized European-made military equipment such as through-wall vision devices, directed electronic pulse generators, and EuroArms anti-tank missile systems. An inquiry by the European Union showed that items bearing the relevant series numbers were exported to Sierra Leone. However, the Sierra Leone Justice Ministry failed to identify the government officials involved in the sham deal.

________________

The International Human Right to Self-Defence Association recently convened a conference in Brussels. Delegates from 1,500 military history organisations, national rifle associations and hunting societies approached the United Nations with a demand to remove repressive restrictions imposed on owners of shooting and hunting as well as self-defence weapons. Conference participants argued for an individual’s right to protect his or her civil liberties, to be able to oppose any attacks on private property, and to enjoy the right to protect themselves and their families against genocide.

This appeal was supported by the International Union of Small Arms Producers. It was also welcomed by the Islamabad Agreement member countries, all of whom have not joined the multilateral Arms Trade Treaty and have insisted on their right to protect national sovereignty with every means, including military. Members of the Organisation of Islamabad Agreement (OIA), established in reaction to the ATT, refuse to introduce any restrictions in the proliferation of defence technologies. OIA members argue for free transfers of technologies, growing international contacts between scientists and engineers, exchanges and joint research and development projects. They lend their support to the international association called the Human Right to Self-Defence that raises awareness, stages pickets at the UN Headquarters in support of detained activists, sponsors translations of Muammar Kaddafi’s Green Book, as well as works by Kim Il Sung, Mao, Leon Trotsky and Che Guevara for dissemination at rock concerts, auto shows and football matches.

* * *

Despite all the efforts to impose control over arms transfers over the past decades, there is still no answer to a seemingly simple question: how do trafficked arms come to be trafficked in the first place? Where are the secret channels that connect legal markets with illegal ones? The black market arms trade amounts to an estimated USD 2 to 10 billion. Up to 20 per cent of all world arms sales may in fact be illegal. This has serious potential to destabilize politics. Movements in the black market (if there is anyone capable of analysing them) may help predict nascent conflicts across the world. But even with the insufficient powers to disrupt arms trafficking, human civilisation has survived for five millennia, and only recently started to contemplate earnest measures to strengthen controls. Illicit trafficking in arms in the future will most likely not pose a more significant threat to international security than it already does today. We should remember that there are more and more means of surveillance and quick response mechanisms to the associated dangers. It has been argued that only biological weapons may result in a disaster should they be trafficked illegally. However, that is a separate topic.

1. In 1991, five leading nations of the world and members of the UN Security Council, including the USSR, adopted in London the guidelines for conventional arms transfers. The UN Register of Conventional Arms was established the same year to develop annual country reports of imports and exports in a number of weapons categories. In 1996, a new international regime was created: the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. In 2001, the UN General Assembly approved the UN Programme of Action on small arms and light weapons. In 1997, countries signed the Mine Ban Convention, followed in 2008 by the Convention on Cluster Munitions.