War and conflict are often viewed as some of the great drivers of technological development. One particular category of weapons whose absence from the SIPRI database speaks volumes is that of the nuclear weapon. In a 2010 article titled “Was the nuclear arms race deterministic?”, historian Alex Roland discusses a widely held viewpoint that the threat of nuclear annihilation has been the main factor in what some historians have termed “the long peace”. This statement is questionable on many points, the most fundamental of all being that is has a very specific definition of peace, which is defined as the absence of major wars between the top Western nations. Much violence has been waged in their absence, and despite numerous cries for nuclear disarmament in general, there are very few being made for disarmament in general. In late 2017, the US dropped the most powerful non-nuclear weapon, the “Mother of All Bombs”, on what they believed to be an ISIS cave complex in Afghanistan (Cooper et al.). The “long peace” indeed.
The bar chart above illustrates some of the most frequently sold categories of arms, filterable by both years of purchase and the purchasing country. According to the SIPRI, aircrafts (encompassing planes and helicopters alike) provide the greatest additions to a country’s military capacity. This becomes increasingly true over time, with US-produced aircraft dominating over all other types of weapons sales. Again, this could be because of a variety of reasons. Perhaps aircraft transactions are easier to track then artillery and armored vehicles, or perhaps other countries are increasingly relying on domestic arms manufacturing for other types of weapons. However, their predominance in the realm of arms transfer is not surprising, as they support a variety of functions asides for dropping bombs, such as personnel and supply transport. More than half of the transactions that were labeled as being for purposes of “aid” were for transport, training, and light aircraft.
