Alternatives to militarism and arms production

Executive Summary

Arms production is now an international military-industrial network, dominated by US-based corporations including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the essential function of which is to support the United States in maintaining its military supremacy and its geo-strategic goal of continued access to energy supplies. The leading European arms companies, BAE Systems, EADS and Thales, have pursued aggressive acquisition programmes in the USA to gain access to the lucrative American market. BAE, which already had an effective monopoly position in UK arms manufacture, is now one of the largest suppliers to the Pentagon, generating more sales in the US than the UK.

Various trends are clear, including the increasing use of foreign subsidiaries and subcontractors by these corporations and the rationalisation of the traditional, domestic arms manufacturing bases in the USA and Europe, with significant job losses. For example, since the early 1980s, UK arms-related employment declined from 740,000 to 315,000 by 2006.

A hierarchy of production exists, with the United States maintaining clear supremacy in first-tier sophisticated military platforms based on its massive procurement and R&D programmes, including the most advanced fighter aircraft and weapons such as satellite-guided missiles. This ensures its domination of the global arms trade and provides a form of technological leverage with client states to gain support for its over-arching strategic goals. Second-tier suppliers include the UK, France, and Russia offer other large platforms and weapons but with lesser capabilities. However, there are emerging nations including South Africa, South Korea, Brazil and India that have used their role as subcontractors in the international structure to modernise their own manufacturing capacity and now seek to challenge existing second-tier suppliers in their export markets. Below this is a much larger group of countries supplying basic, mass-produced weapons including sub-machine guns and rifles.

The arms trade is characterised by an intense supply-side dynamic to sell high-technology weapons into areas of regional tension like the Middle East and there are widespread allegations of corruption and bribery around these contracts, such as the Al Yamamah deal between BAE and Saudi Arabia to supply Typhoon/Eurofighter. At the same time, the diffusion of arms production has made it increasingly difficult both to monitor and control the arms trade when regional arms races are an increasing threat and may trigger the outbreak of major conflicts.

The UK has accepted a subsidiary role to the US in the latter’s broader strategy of global military force projection not least because it seeks to retain access to leading edge military technologies, including nuclear weapons. But the cost of this subservience is continued multi-billion pound expenditure on a range of sophisticated equipment that offers no contribution to the country’s real security needs; a significant and shameful role in a corrupt and dangerous arms trade; and no real commitment to support efforts at international disarmament, including nuclear disarmament.

Supporters of the military economy and the arms trade argue that, despite the massive job losses in the sector, they provide the UK with internationally successful, high technology niches in aerospace, engineering and electronics, as well as skilled work and spin-offs beneficial to the civil sector. But the real cost has been the diversion of resources from other forms of manufacturing activity that, if provided with similar long-term government investment, could actually have generated greater employment and direct benefits to the civil economy through improved technologies and industrial processes.

The dominance of BAE as a systems integrator for military aircraft, nuclear submarines and surface vessels is clear. However, the decline in arms employment has left only a handful of local economies with a residual dependency on military R&D and production, including Preston, Barrowin- Furness, Yeovil, Brough and Glasgow. These reflect the pattern of regional concentration in the North West, South West and South East, although the latter is not as significant as it was. Even at these sites, there have been considerable job losses since the 1980s and there is continued vulnerability to further rationalisation.

The military aircraft sector is particularly dependent on arms exports, with the BAE Brough site in East Yorkshire facing closure because of the lack of follow-on orders for the Hawk trainer aircraft. The Warton site in Lancashire is also heavily dependent on the Saudi Arabian contracts for Typhoon aircraft, and is vulnerable to regime change should the corrupt Al Saud absolute monarchy be overthrown.

Overall, because arms-related employment constitutes such a small proportion of national employment, the adjustment from a further restructuring based on deep cuts to military expenditure, is a minor one. Only in these small pockets of local dependency would further assistance be required to help diversify the local economies. This would be the sort of restructuring that many local areas have experienced after the loss of a staple industry and can be done successfully through support to regional and local economic development agencies in order to create a diversified and robust economic base.

More ambitiously, central government has a vital role to play in developing a radical, political economy of arms conversion and common security. By moving away from military force projection and arms sale promotion, the UK could carry out deep cuts in domestic procurement including the cancellation of Trident and other major offensive weapons platforms, as well as adopting comprehensive controls on arms exports, including the suspension of weapons exports to the Middle East. The substantial savings in military expenditure could help to fund a major arms conversion programme.

Here the emphasis would be on environmental challenges, including a multi-billion pound public investment in renewable energy, particularly offshore wind and wave power, that would substantially cut the UK’s carbon emissions and reduce dependency on imported oil, gas and uranium supplies. These new industries will also generate more jobs than those lost from the restructuring of the arms industry. In this way, the UK would be taking a leading role in establishing a new form of international security framework based on disarmament and sustainable economic development.

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