Gun Politics the Diffusion of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Southeast Asia

     

    Working-paper-seriesAuthor: Charmaine Misalucha

    Introduction

    This research is about the changing nature of security. It shows that our traditional notions, which have been shaken to the core since the end of the Cold War, have undergone a dramatic change. It demonstrates that threats to States are no longer external but also internal.

    This research, in particular, shows that the diffusion of small arms and light weapons has a different dynamic than that of the proliferation of major conventional weapons. During the Cold War, research on the conventional arms trade focused on Government-to-Government transfers of major weapons systems. While such activities still take place today, events of the past decade show that traditional models have lost much of their utility. Globalization, for one, has led to new security dilemmas for states. For instance, Beverly Crawford argues that interdependence reduces threats by weakening incentives for military conquest.

    At the same time, however, it also increases vulnerabilities and threatens to weaken the state because military resources are increasingly found in global commercial markets over which states have little control. In other words, threats, and therefore fears, increase because the technology vital to military strength is found in global commercial markets. The new security dilemma rests on the fact that to ensure access to military resources, market control must be consolidated in such a way, as to stabilize open markets while reducing the possibility of control by others and at the same time, the commercial competitiveness necessary to military strength must be maintained.

    Another reason for the need for new models for understanding the conventional arms trade today is the increasing number of intra-state conflicts in the Third World. Major conventional systems, such as battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large-calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, and missiles and missile launchers, are usually transferred to states that face external threats. In most Third World countries, however, the threat is internal and hence the arms the combatants need are small arms and light weapons. This is not to say that small arms and light weapons are the cause of these conflicts. As Michael Renner explains:

    The proliferation of small arms is the fuel of conflict, not the starter. Widespread unemployment, poverty, social inequity, and the pressures of environmental degradation and resource depletion in the presence of large quantities of small arms make a highly combustible combination…. Under such circumstances, making firearms available is like lighting a match near a fuel tank.

    The United Nations’ (UN) definition of small arms comprise of revolvers and self-loading pistols, rifles and carbines, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, and light machine guns below 20 mm in calibre. Light weapons include heavy machine guns over 20 mm in calibre, portable anti-aircraft guns, portable anti-tank guns and recoilless rifles, portable launchers of anti-tank missile and rocket systems, portable launchers of anti-aircraft systems, and mortars of less than 100 mm.

    Small arms and light weapons are the weapons of choice in most contemporary intrastate conflicts for several reasons. First, they are portable and therefore easy to hide, carry, and use. Unlike major weapons that can be acquired only through manufacture or trade, the transport of low value and lightweight small arms and light weapons can move across borders and exchange hands within countries with relative ease. Moreover, paramilitary groups often operate in remote areas behind government lines so the portability of their weapons is essential. These groups are ill-trained volunteers who can be equipped with simple infantry weapons but who lack the expertise to operate and maintain heavier and more sophisticated equipment.

    Second, they are cheap and easily accessible. With the end of the Cold War, millions of weapons were declared surplus by their original owners and dumped onto the world market. This accessibility leads to the third reason for the prominence of these weapons in intra-state conflicts, and that is the central role played by brokers and middlemen. As the belligerents involved can rarely afford or gain access to major weapons systems, they turn to private individuals, sub-national groups or non-state actors who act as conduits for actual users.

     Furthermore, these brokers are members of networks or highly concentrated channels for the movement of small arms in various regions of the world. Swadesh Rana emphasizes that “[t]here is no phenomenon in [the] international trade in major weapons that can be compared to the leaking, rupturing and continuing pipelines of small arms.”

    All these reasons for their popularity make the diffusion of small arms and light weapons a cause for alarm. Aside from their diffusion being uncontrollable, these weapons also contribute to the number of deaths and in the duration of intrastate conflicts. In response to this problem, small arms and light weapons control agreements have been reached between and among states. But do the solutions really address the problem?

    This research argues that there is a mismatch between the effects of small arms and light weapons on intrastate conflicts and the efforts to curb the diffusion of these weapons because of two reasons: the international community fails to understand that the diffusion of small arms and light weapons exacerbates a weak state’s problems, and because states refuse to give up their fragile security. These broad themes constitute the major parts of the cases of the Philippines, Burma/Myanmar, and Indonesia; these are the states that have ongoing intrastate conflicts in the ASEAN region. While the conflicts in these states began in the middle or the latter part of the last century, this research focuses only on the events in the post-Cold War period.

     

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