Defence Minister Christopher Pyne recently called for an expansion of the Australian weapons industry. It would enable Australia to join the United States and Britain as a major exporter of weapons and further Australia’s strategic goals. The move has a logic: if you want weapons it is cheaper to make them than buy them; if you make them it is more profitable to sell them to others than to keep them all for yourself; if you sell them it is best to sell them to your friends.
When you see weapons at the point of production they look enticing in their new paint, hidden power and contribution to the bottom line. The trouble begins when they are used. They can then blow up people and strategic goals. Consider, for example, the anniversaries listed by Wikipedia for August 4, the day this piece is to be sent out. The list is heavy with events in which weapons were used. Three stand out. On this day in 1914 Great Britain declared war on Germany, bound by the 1839 Treaty of London. This was one of several treaties, designed to ensure peace, which led Europe to war.
Also on 4 August 4, 1964, two United States destroyers reported that they had engaged with North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. It followed another reported attack two days earlier. Finally, on the same day in 2006 seventeen workers from a French NGO were murdered by Government police in Muttur, Sri Lanka, after a battle between Government and LTTE forces. Earlier, the LTTE had been classified as a terrorist organisation.
In all these conflicts Australia had a strategic interest. All of them generated a great demand for arms by both sides. In the Great War the whole economy of many nations was diverted to producing arms and using them. The Vietnam War brought in arms from both the Western and Eastern blocs. Overseas weapons multiplied in Sri Lanka, too, and were decisive in the eventual victory of the Government forces.
Weapons used to further strategic interests, however, often destroy these interests. The Great War caused a huge loss of life, hunger and social dislocation. It led to the Great Depression, social upheaval, the rise of totalitarian regimes and eventually to an even more disastrous war with more powerful weapons. For Great Britain it was the beginning of decline, which compromised all the interests that seemed vital in 1914.