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World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

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Re: World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

#21
post #3

Interesting that Ukraine has higher arms export numbers than Sweden, Netherlands and Spain. I never knew Ukraine was an arms exporter at all.

That's one of the reasons for the civil war in Ukraine, an attempt(successful) to dismantle the left-over military industrial complex in Eastern Ukraine that was inherited from Soviet Union (competes with US's military industrial complex). They didn't want to do it peacefully(The EU-Ukraine association pact required shutting down these factories) , Yanukovich refused(his support base came from the East) now all of it…

In what world is the democratically elected government of Mr. Poroshenko, a "US-installed junta"?

Re: World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

#22
post #20

I notice there is no US-russia trade. Is this due to trade sanctions?

It may be a factor, but the US and Russia have very few imports overall. They don't need to, because they already produce almost everything they need at home.

The graph is difficult to read, but it appears that most countries either have a significant arms industry (and mostly supply themselves and sell to others) or don't (and mostly buy from others). I don't see any countries that have significant amounts of both imports and exports.

Re: World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the reasons for the civil war in Ukraine, an attempt(successful) to dismantle the left-over military industrial complex in Eastern Ukraine that was inherited from Soviet Union (competes with US's military industrial complex). They didn't want to do it peacefully(The EU-Ukraine association pact required shutting down these factories) , Yanukovich refused(his support base came from the East) now all of it…

In what world is the democratically elected government of Mr. Poroshenko, a "US-installed junta"?

when one third of the country is under constant bombardment (by both sides) and not allowed to vote, the other third are refugees living in neighbouring countries, what you sadly have is not an election but a farce.

Re: World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

#24
post #18

Wow. I always knew the US exported arms, so I kind of expected that we were the worst offenders. But whoa! Look at Russia. The country must be depending on weapon exports to keep their economy going, which is simply not diversified enough to weather through the down times.

I don't think those values can be interpreted like that.

They are some type of "trend indicator values" that "do not represent real financial flows but are a crude instrument to estimate volumes of arms transfers, regardless of the contracted prices, which can be as low as zero in the case of military aid".

I'm pretty sure the US exports for sale dollar amounts much much more than anyone else does.

There is also the question of the graphed "value" of small arms vs larger systems.

Re: World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

#25
post #18

Wow. I always knew the US exported arms, so I kind of expected that we were the worst offenders. But whoa! Look at Russia. The country must be depending on weapon exports to keep their economy going, which is simply not diversified enough to weather through the down times.

"worst offender" = "arsenal of democracy", at least to Franklin Roosevelt.

Re: World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

#26
post #18

Wow. I always knew the US exported arms, so I kind of expected that we were the worst offenders. But whoa! Look at Russia. The country must be depending on weapon exports to keep their economy going, which is simply not diversified enough to weather through the down times.

I wonder how much of this is AK-47s. It is arguably the most successful arm.

Re: World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

#27
post #18

Wow. I always knew the US exported arms, so I kind of expected that we were the worst offenders. But whoa! Look at Russia. The country must be depending on weapon exports to keep their economy going, which is simply not diversified enough to weather through the down times.

I wonder how much of this is AK-47s. It is arguably the most successful arm.

Not very much.

They licensed it to China, what was the Eastern block, etc. And, light arms are cheap, relative to other armament; they're not going to make a dent into those kinds of numbers.

Re: World's Top Arms Exporters Visualized

#28
post #12

As cool as it looks, its almost impossible to get the finer details with these kinds of visualizations. For example, India apparently exports 10m worth of arms. To find out which countries buy from India is nearly impossible because of the relative scale of the visualization.

Below is a link to an image from the SIPRI db about countries India exports to. The database they used is pretty easy to use if you want to go more in depth.

http://i.imgur.com/qx03P4W.png

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