I mean it’s a pretty academic question. Do the merchants of war drive global conflict, or are they necessary for national defense? Or is the issue more nuanced?
Russia historically makes up about half the world’s arms trade. Though that has declined in recent years due to Ukraine. So who is the chicken and who is the egg?
Fwiw, I tend to agree that arms manufacturers do play a role in driving global conflict, but it’s also clearly A responding to B and B responding to A.
Dunno about China but surely AKs being the small arms of choice for many countries, rebles, freedom fighters, terrorists and partisans of every flavour must put Kalashnikov Concern pretty high up there.
Did you want me to say Norinco? They only have a license to make AKs but I don’t think that should count or it gets real hard to calculate what arms company did what.
This has also changed significantly since 2022 since Russia has effectively stopped exporting weapons. They used to be pretty close to the US in terms of total exports
Does that include weapons manufacturers in Russia and China?
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I mean it’s a pretty academic question. Do the merchants of war drive global conflict, or are they necessary for national defense? Or is the issue more nuanced?
Russia historically makes up about half the world’s arms trade. Though that has declined in recent years due to Ukraine. So who is the chicken and who is the egg?
Fwiw, I tend to agree that arms manufacturers do play a role in driving global conflict, but it’s also clearly A responding to B and B responding to A.
Dunno about China but surely AKs being the small arms of choice for many countries, rebles, freedom fighters, terrorists and partisans of every flavour must put Kalashnikov Concern pretty high up there.
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Did you want me to say Norinco? They only have a license to make AKs but I don’t think that should count or it gets real hard to calculate what arms company did what.
Kalashnicov Concern… What?
I’d guess the US, Germany, China, and all the other many countries that produce the things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47
https://lemmy.world/comment/9929213
According to them, yeah seems that way.
This has also changed significantly since 2022 since Russia has effectively stopped exporting weapons. They used to be pretty close to the US in terms of total exports